11 posts tagged “birth”

My official due date is March 11, but anytime between now and 42 weeks (March 25) is game. With my other children I went at approximately 41, 40 and 39 weeks (in that order), but with all those I had a lot more invasive check-ups. With this pregnancy I've so far had no dilation/effacement checks. I'm not sure if that means I'll go longer or not, but it's looking like 39 weeks is out. 

So, play along and give me your prediction for when the baby will be born!

I'm in the home stretch! We're still planning the home birth. I'm so very excited about it and relaxed about it all at the same time. My experience planning my first home birth has overall gone really well (with the exception of hassling with my insurance company). I hope my experience is a sign of the direction to a more open acceptance of home birth in the US and especially Georgia, and not just some fluke of "luck" on my part.   

The home birth has been somewhat of an "open secret" for me. It's not that I'm really hiding it from anyone, but at the same time I'm not volunteering that information to everyone I meet. Every time it gets mentioned I get grilled about why. I guess I can understand that. I also understand that the "why" comes from a lot of different places. Sometimes it's a "why" in horror and sometimes it's simply a "why" of curiosity. Sometimes it's a combination of the two.

The strange thing is even when I try to tell people why I keep feeling like they think I'm really choosing a home birth because I'm looking for some ultimate fantasy, mountain top experience. That it's all about the beautiful, flowering birth experience and nothing about the realities of what birth truly is. Or that it's some female machoism that I have to prove something to myself. Well let me clarify, for me, it's neither of those.

So, why am I choosing a home birth?

• I want to have a healthy child.
• Another medicated birth is a bad idea for me. It just doesn't work. I have to do natural childbirth this time around (and I should have done it the other three times), and after more research I've really come to embrace and look forward to this choice.
• Doing natural childbirth in the hospital scares me. I know what a hospital birth is like, and I feel panicked every time I even think of the possibility of trying to do an unmedicated birth in any of the hospitals around where I live.
• I'm scared of having a c-section and I want to hedge my bets against that happening. Honestly, I don't know why I've been the recipient of this grace, but I feel like it is only by the grace of God that I have gone through three medicated, hospital births and have not had a c-section.
• I don't want to go through the birth process constantly feeling like I'm in an adversarial position with my caregivers.
• I want to be treated respectfully.
• I don't want to feel broken after the birth.
• I want to be able to care for my kids after the birth instead of having to work through emotional baggage resulting from how I was treated during the birth.
• I don't want to have wires strapped all over me during the birth.
• I don't want to have to ASK to move around during the birth.
• I don't want to have to make a "SPECIAL REQUEST" to give birth in a way that makes sense to my body in that moment, which I have a strong feeling is not going to be lying on a bed with my feet high above my head.
• Truthfully, I just want to have a NORMAL BIRTH.

Again, these are my reasons. I'm not trying to make a statement or judgment about anyone else's choices. One really has to look closely at their own body, own circumstances and own comfort level along with taking into account research and evidence based care to figure out what is the right choice for their family. 

I've had this thing on my mind that I've really wanted to write about, but wasn't sure I was really ready to put up a post about it on my blog. Like most of you, I have internet land readers and IRL readers. And, yeah, well you know how that goes.

Anyway, the thing I've wanted to talk about, which been consuming a lot of my thoughts, but none of my writing, is that I'm planning a home birth this time around. I am super excited about it. My husband is not as excited as I am, but is cautiously trusting my decision. I've met some awesome people  on my journey to learn more about home birth, and I feel more well-read and well-researched regarding all things surrounding birth/postpartum than I ever did before any of my other births.

If you're curious about my birth history and what brought me to the home birth decision, but don't want to dig through my archives to piece it together, here goes:

I've had three hospital births. All three were what I consider very classic hospital births. With all three I had epidurals, some other kind of narcotics (couldn't tell you what exactly), IV's, continuous monitoring, laboring while lying down in bed... all the usual stuff for a hospital birth. I had pitocin with my first, but not with my second two. I've torn with all three, but haven't had an episiotomy. Also, all three were vaginal deliveries, full term and over eight pounds.

To be honest, I probably would have been fine with this American cultural standard for birth if it had not had been for the fact that epidurals and pain medicine in general work very poorly, if at all, on me. The narcotics I've been given for labor pain relief generally give me light relief for about 15-20 minutes (just long enough to call the anesthesiologist and wait for him/her to arrive). I've had varying luck with epidurals. With my first it only worked on one side and that was the labor that I also had pitocin with. Fun stuff let me tell you. I was a very poor advocate for myself at the time. The second time I got an epidural with my next child it worked at a tolerable level, although I had to beg him to turn it up. That's another fun feeling: pleading with someone to help you while you are in labor. Fun stuff. But again, I still felt lots of pain, it was just best described as muffled. With my third and most recent birth the epidural did not work at all. However I was more prepared for that possibility. As calmly and clearly as I could muster I told as many staff as I met that it was not working, yet no one took me seriously. I decided that relying on the hospital staff to help me (through pain management or whatever) was a waste and I had to handle this myself. Against staff advice I sat up from lying flat (which was the position I was advised to be in to "help" the epidural work) and began to manage the pain myself. It was extremely frustrating to be dismissed in labor, but with this labor I finally figured out that I really don't need pain medicine to get through the labor. I realized I can manage the pain myself and I manage it better than the pain medicine.

Finally, I realized that my whole attempt to use pain medicine to manage my labor was really a waste of my time. It is no longer a realistic option for me (it never really was). I have to do this myself. But managing pain myself in a hospital environment was (and is) a pretty scary idea to me. I mean, I know people who've done it, and I think that's awesome, but I just can't imagine how I would do it.

With each birth I've tried to labor at home a little longer. I know how I manage the pain at home, and it's not by lying in bed with a bunch of wires attached to me like the hospital would want. And I know the whole argument of "you can just tell the hospital staff what you want," but after three hospital births all I can say is in my experience it just doesn't work that way. Not to mention, it is extremely hard to advocate for yourself in the middle of labor! I just don't want to put myself in an environment where I feel like I'm constantly saying "no" and feeling like I'm in an adversarial position with the people who are supposed to be helping me through this process.

I've also researched the safety issue. I'll probably talk about that more in a future post. However, suffice it to say that study after study demonstrates that home birth is just as safe, if not safer in some ways, than hospital birth for normal, low-risk women.

There just seems to be reason on top of reason why home birth makes a lot of sense for me. And even though it is way out of the cultural norm that I'm surrounded by, I think it is the right decision for me.

We've had a pretty good summer. It's been a busy summer! We spent two weeks out at Camp Inagehi with our 4, 2 and 1 year old children. That was crazy, but so much fun. My oldest thinks he owns the place now. We also had a great Vacation Bible School, Righteous Roundup, that my oldest is still talking about almost two weeks later. After VBS our family spent a few days out at "Papa and Nana's" house (my grandparents, my kids' great grand parents), and we got to visit more family while we were there. But the really exciting thing that happened this summer is we found out:

The baby is due early March. I'm thinking about changing up some things with this pregnancy and birth. So, we'll see how that goes. Sorry I've been so quiet on the blog, but like I said, we've been busy. ;)

I've finally gotten to see this movie. Wow. Having gone through three hospital births there were so many moments in the movie where I was like "yes, exactly." When they talk about the domino effect of hospital interventions, in my experience that is extremely true. Just stupid things like "let's start the IV, just in case." After that it is SO EASY to pump in a drug based on an expert authority's recommendation.

I saw it on DVD and there was some extra footage that I image you wouldn't get to see in the theater. In one of the followup interviews with a homebirth couple the mother talks about how she reached a point in her labor that if there were pain medications available, she would have taken them. What the homebirth midwife refers in the movie to as a "rock and a hard place." Man, I know that place! The homebirth mother says "but I had it easy, I was at home." Wow. She set herself up in an environment where she could get through the pain, the worst pain, without medication and she did. She went on to talk about how she could freely move around, remove all her clothes because nothing felt comfortable (she said her mother kept giving her a robe for modesty's sake--heh!), and squat whenever and wherever she wanted, because she was at home. Even if the hospital "officially" says you can do that, that's just not how things happen. I remember going to a hospital childbirth class before my first child was born and seeing a video of this woman with no clothes on in labor moving around, squating and doing all kinds of stuff in a hospital room. When I got to that same hospital in labor I most certainly did not get "let's change your position to manage your pain," I got "let's start an IV, let's strap this monitor to you and this monitor to you, now lift your legs I need to check you, lie down on your back...."

I got a taste of what a natural birth is like with my last birth, because my epidural did not work. I managed my pain, a drug did not. Don't misunderstand, at that moment I really wanted that drug to manage my pain, but that just wasn't how things played out. I have a history of that also.  With my first birth I had partial numbing on one side and with my second I had an tolerable level of numbing from the epidural. I have never been one of those people that as a result of an epidural couldn't feel or move her legs. No, I was always in pain, just less pain (sometimes). Because of this history, I mentally prepared myself to (as I told myself) "not loose your marbles" if the epidural doesn't work. "Keep your game face on."

This last time I told the staff clearly and repeatedly that the epidural wasn't working. When the staff started feeding me the all too familiar lines "give it 20 minutes, lay on your back, lay on your left side, lay on your right side, bla, bla, bla" I thought "I'm not doing this again." I gave it five minutes of excruciating, lying on my back pain and sat up and said "This is ridiculous." The nurse then scolded me and said "Well, it's never going to work now because you're sitting up and the medicine is just going to all go to your bottom" (whatever that means!). So I said "It's NOT working. I have to deal with this and I can't lying on my back. I don't care." And it was not discussed again.

Since then I've discussed my history with epidurals with a few different health care providers and they seem to think that (as I understand it) pain medicine runs through me pretty quick. I never thought to correlate the two until after, but I also have a history of dentists not believing me when I tell them "I can still feel that!" and then give me line "it's just pressure." You gotta love that. Right, like I (along with everyone else on the planet) don't know what pain is. Anyway, even though I did have pain medicine and IV fluids (and who knows what else) in me I still got that super high after the birth that I didn't get with the other births. I just remember feeling like I have to get up and go. I have things to do and energy to do it. I guess it was because I had to deal with the pain and I was dealing with the pain. I had a lot of pain with my first birth, but I wasn't dealing with it, things were very much out of control for me. I felt like I was being dragged along to places I did not want to go with my first birth. I clearly remember after my first birth having a very fearful and shell-shocked notion of "I don't know if I can do this again." Thankfully, time heals a lot.

I still don't know if homebirth is something I can/will do in the future. But after seeing this movie and doing some more reading on it (both pro and con), I know at least some part of me really wants to. 

Recently I've had the pleasure of being around a number of people who are about to or have just recently embarked into the realm of new parenthood. Naturally, I'm thrilled for them, but I find myself having to choke back the words of unsolicited advice. The problem is I remember how much I hated unsolicited advice and I'm trying really hard not to be that person, but I swear it's a compulsion. I almost can't help but to spill out all sort of information I wish I knew when I was in their spot. So, in an effort to purge myself of the urge to dole out unsolicited advice, I'm just going to write it all down here. If it's useful to you, wonderful, I'm thrilled to be helpful. If not, that's ok too. You do what's right for your family.

Labor

• If an unmedicated labor is something that you want, it's a good idea to try to surround yourself with people who have your same ideas and not people who will be offering pain medication (unsolicited) at every contraction.
  
• Also, one of the most painful positions to be in (which hospitals love to put you in) is what I call the "dead cockroach" position of lying flat on your back. Don't do it (or at least try to be in that position as little as possible) or you will loose your marbles because of how painful it is. Sit up, stand up, squat, rock, whatever you need to do to mitigate the pain, but lying on your back is a bad idea as far as dealing with pain.
  
• However, pain medicine is not the devil. Labor is extremely painful and you do what you need to do to get through it with a healthy mom and healthy baby. If you need it, take it.
• Once you are past the 35/36 week mark don't rush off to the hospital at the first sign of labor. For most people with full term babies the first labor is really long. Once you go to the hospital they put you on sort of a time table and if you don't progress the way they think you should, you could end up with a c-section for "failure to progress". If you labor at home as long as possible, you shorten your hospital labor time and by the time you get there you seem to be "progressing nicely".
• BEFORE the 35/36 week mark, DO RUSH off to the doctor/hospital if you suspect pre-term labor. I went in at least once for each one of my kids. Sometimes I was genuinely showing signs of pre-term labor and sometimes not. I always joked that I needed an extra tour of the Labor and Delivery unit before each of my kids births. Taking care of a preemie is no joke every and every moment in the womb helps.
  
• A c-section is always a real possibility that you should prepare for, so that you won't freak out if it happens to you.  Focus on healthy mom and healthy baby, but at the same time it's ok to be sad if the birth doesn't go the way you wanted. Being sad the birth didn't go the way you wanted doesn't make you bad parents or mean you love your child any less.
• Assuming the baby is healthy and term, don't rush out to talk to the family immediately after the baby is born. They've waited this long, they can wait another 30 minutes to an hour while you have some quiet first moments with your baby. You can never have those first moments back, family can wait.

Breastfeeding

• At very least try breastfeeding. Listen, I'm raising my hand as someone who has struggled with breastfeeding and has formula fed. I know what it is like to be up in the middle of the night, feeling completely alone, bleary eyed, in extreme pain from a bad latch with a screaming baby that you desperately want to feed. I've been there. I guess my breastfeeding advice is more of ways to avoid getting to that point. Do try breastfeeding. Any breastfeeding you can give your baby is a good thing.
  
• The first thing you want to do with your baby when you first hold him/her is not meet your friends and family, but is to try to breastfeed. Remember those first quiet moments I talked about, breastfeeding is one of the things you want to do in those moment.
• Lanolin is your friend! In the beginning use it after every feeding to prevent soreness (or worse). Use it compulsively after every feeding until you are super certain that you and baby have established a good latch and breastfeeding is going well (1-2 months at least). Although lanolin does provide some relief after you've developed sore, crack, etc. nipples, in my opinion it works much better as a preventive measure.
  
• In the early days be prepared to nurse, nurse, nurse. Just go ahead and resign yourself that at this point in time you are a milk maid and don't fight it. Throw out ideas like "but he just ate" or "you can't be hungry again". This is the way newborns eat. They have a tiny tummy and breastmilk is quickly absorbed. It's normal.
  
• To establish a good milk supply be prepared to nurse on demand. No, not even "on demand"; nurse on whim. In the early days put the newborn to your breast for every ailment. Ok, not every problem will be solved by the breast. You will have to change some diapers and burp the baby, but really, for a newborn, the breast really does solve most problems. Nurse, nurse, nurse. It's normal.
• You won't ruin your baby by allowing him to nurse all the time. This is the way our bodies work. It's normal.
  

Newborns

• Caring for a newborn is a somewhat different from caring for what most people think of when they think of babies, which is about a six month old. Six month olds are all chubby, smiley and interactive. Newborns are not. You will give yourself a lot of heart ache if you try to treat your newborn like a six month old. By this I mean, don't stress about schedules and sleeping habits. All that will sort itself out in time. Right now just following your baby's lead.
  
• Newborns want to have a clean bottom, eat, sleep and be cuddled, especially with mommy. Everything else at this point is just gravy.
  
• Newborns do not sleep through the night.  If you by some blessing get a child who will sleep for long periods (after about two weeks of age), enjoy it. But if your child is like most and won't sleep through the night for a while, try not to stress over it, and realize that it's normal.
• Let the baby sleep wherever the baby likes to sleep (safely of course). If the baby likes sleeping in the swing, bouncy seat, stroller, car seat, who cares that the baby is not sleeping in his crib, he is sleeping and so should you. Don't worry, allowing your baby to sleep wherever he wants to won't ruin your baby.
• Co-sleeping is a wonderful way to get some extra sleep in the beginning. Did you ever think that you would be able to multi-task in your sleep? Well, now you can feed the baby and catch up on your sleep all at the same time. 
• Mom's only job in the beginning is taking care of the baby and taking care of herself. Dishes, laundry, house cleaning, older kids, etc. are all the job of husband and whoever else wants to help. You feed the baby, feed yourself, sleep and try to get a shower every now and again.
  
• The best way to start calming a crying baby is to calm yourself. Remember those skills that allowed you to get through those awful labor contractions? Those are the same skills that allows you to calm yourself while holding a screaming baby. I'm not saying it's easy, but I am saying it's possible.
  

In General

• Remember you're doing a good job. Let yourself ease into this new role.
• Let your husband find his own way with the baby. Don't micromanage him. Let him do things his way. Even if it's all wrong and that's just going to make the baby cry, leave him to it. He'll figure out his own way just like you (and you'll be glad he did!).
• Find what works for your family and do that. If no one you know of co-sleeps, but co-sleeping is working wonderfully for you, then co-sleep. And on the flip side, if you are surrounded by people that say co-sleeping is the most wonderful thing, but it's not working for you, don't do it.
  
• Trust your instincts. Remember you know your child best. You can pick up on a lot of things that others can't.
  

That's all the advice I can purge at the moment. Any early parenthood advice that you wish you would have known then?

What are your plans for the weekend?

Have a baby, apparently!

Emma Cathlyn was born just three minutes into Saturday morning. She weighed 8 lbs, 14 ozs. We're all doing well.

I recently had to write this down to send in an email to an old friend of mine I was catching up with after a number of years apart. After writing it and thinking about it, I thought it would be a nice thing to document on my blog.

I went off birth control about a year after we were married, but didn't get pregnant until about two years later and then I miscarried early in that pregnancy. After about a year-and-a-half of no birth control and not getting pregnant we decided we should do something. I was getting pretty depressed. We talked about it and decided that neither of us really wanted to pursue the infertility treatments and would like to adopt instead. So we got the ball rolling with the adoption process, which basically starts off with a series of classes. We hadn't gotten far into it when I found out I was pregnant. I was so excited and happily told everyone I could. Then only a few weeks after I found out, I miscarried. How can I explain how difficult that was? It's losing a child. I know people say (and I heard people say to me) things like "At least you didn't know it longer. That would have been much worse." or "It's just a bunch of cells", but I tell you it was as painful an experience as if I lost one of my children I have today. And it stays with you. People think that once you have a healthy baby that all the pain of a miscarriage just sort of goes away, but that's not really true. I mean, like any painful experience you learn to deal with it and continue to manage your life, and slowly good days start to outnumber bad days, but it doesn't just go away when you have a "replacement"(?!) child. Anyway, after the miscarriage I had to stop everything baby related in our life. I just couldn't take it. Then about nine months after the miscarriage I got pregnant with Joel.

Joel's pregnancy was pretty uneventful (thankfully). I ended up going into labor one day shy of being induced (I was a week overdue). My total labor lasted just over 30 hours (I was only in the hospital for 12 hours of it, though). My epidural only worked on one side and I pushed for about one to two hours (I don't have a clear memory of that part, just that it was extremely painful in spite of me electing to have pain management). My postpartum period was miserable. It felt like I bled forever, I had postpartum depression and I just could not get the hang of breastfeeding. Long story short is I eventually healed, got help for my postpartum depression and switched to formula. The first three months were so rough, though. They are just a blur in my memory. I do remember shortly after coming home from the hospital that all I could think was "I don't know if I can do this again." Of course I ended up changing my mind, but that's how overwhelmed I felt at the time. I was so nervous about getting pregnant again that I went on birth control in spite of my history with infertility.

I went off birth control about six months after I had Joel hoping that perhaps sometime around his first birthday I would get pregnant. Well, Joel's first birthday came and went and I wasn't pregnant. So I just thought that maybe he would be our only child and I had to be ok with that. Of course I got pregnant again. This time with Micah.

MIcah's pregnancy was also pretty uneventful. I had normal pregnancy side effects (tired, sickness, heartburn, etc), but nothing to jeopardize me or the baby. I went into labor with him pretty close to his due date. I was so glad. I did not want to be overdue again. His labor, delivery and postpartum period were like night and day compared to Joel's. Micah's total labor was 12 hours. Only 5 of which were in the hospital. I labored at home for as long as I could and pretty much when I finally got to the hospital I was like "Ok, I'm ready for my epidural," but it took them an hour to process me, etc. to get me to the point where I receive an epidural. That was annoying to say the least, but that was by far the worst thing. When I finally got my epidural (that actually worked) I went to sleep for a few hours. I woke up when my water finally broke. The midwife came in and, I kid you not, I pushed three times and the baby was out. Yeah, a completely different experience! My postpartum period was really well also. I healed quickly, didn't have PPD and I was able to establish breastfeeding with this one. With the great experience I had with Micah I thought it would be just a waste of money to go back on birth control. It had always taken us nine months or longer to get pregnant and I was breastfeeding with Micah, so that should give me an additional buffer, right? I did end up having complications later when my milk started to dry up prematurely. I just switched to formula at that time. I wasn't interested in fighting that battle again. And shortly after that I end up getting pregnant with this latest one (much sooner than I would have ever guessed I would be).

The idea of family planning has been such a joke to us. We've wanted all of our children for certain, but "planned" them, not exactly. All of our "plans" seem to get thrown out the window as soon as they are made.