23 posts tagged “pregnancy”

As if I didn't have enough going on. My due date was yesterday. Come and gone. I'm getting over a cold I caught towards the end of last week. I'm still a little horse, but not too bad. Tuesday I get my kids up to go to "school" (mother's morning out, where I also work). My two-year-old keeps complaining of pain in or around his neck. Now, any of you that know my two-year-old know that he is pretty rough and tumble and not one to complain over a minor bump. So, I figure it's got to be pretty painful for him to 1) complain in the first place, and 2) point it out specifically. I'm thinking that maybe he has some sort of crick in his neck or, more likely, an ear infection. Nope. He has a broken collarbone. AND... I have no idea how he broke it [bad mom, bad mom, bad mom*].

He spent the day before with my mother, but I saw him for family time in the evening and when we put him to bed. Nothing out of the ordinary (except that he went to bed really easily). My husband and I were kind of tired so we separated the two-year-old and the four-year-old who share a room to fall asleep in separate rooms, and then move the four-year-old into their room after they were both asleep. So no thoughts of the four-year-old pounding the two-year-old before settling down to sleep. All I can guess is that the two-year-old fell out of bed sometime in the night (uncharacteristic of him, but maybe), but he was asleep in his bed when I went in the room in the morning.

And I keep having to tell this story over and over again of how his mother has no idea how her son broke his collarbone. Fun Stuff.

So, yeah, can I just go ahead and have this baby already!

*I know rationally that I'm not a "bad mom" and that these things happen, but that doesn't mean the gut/guilt part of me doesn't hear "bad mom"

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 had postpartum depression (PPD) after the birth of my oldest. It was rough. For a while I really didn't realize what was going on. It was so hard for me to even admit I was depressed in the middle of what seemed like should be such joy. This was the child I had received after a three year journey of infertility. How could I not be happy? On top of that, most people around me seemed to have little idea of how to help me, and I certainly had no idea while I was in the thick of it how to help myself. I thankfully had an OB that recognized my struggle without me having to ask and prescribed some meds to help me get out of the fog.

When I had my second I was really fearful that this would happen all over again. That's around the time I found the blog Ask Moxie and her plan for preventing postpartum depression. As she herself says there's truly no 100% "preventing" postpartum depression, but she does give some wonderful advice about ways to help you hedge your bets against getting postpartum depression. This advice really helped me to avoid PPD after the birth of my second and third (however I admit I did have a really rough time with the pregnancy of my third which happened at four months postpartum, but that's another story). Below is her summary of the plan:

AskMoxie

Preventing PPD: Summary of the plan

A few people have asked me to write about the plan I made and followed to prevent post-partum depression (a.k.a. post-natal depression or PND). I have had regular depression off and on since I was a teenager, and have a strong family history of it. I was quite depressed during my first pregnancy (and mildly depressed during my second) and was terrified of developing PPD. So I set out to figure out and do whatever I could to prevent PPD. Some of it I researched and planned, and some of it was just stuff I fell backwards into, but I never had any PPD (I, of course, had major hormonal mood swings the first few weeks, but those aren't PPD).

I could honestly write a book about this, so there's no way it will fit into one post. I'm thinking it'll probably take me half a dozen or so posts to put up the basics.

Please note that I'm not guaranteeing that doing all the things in my plan will prevent PPD, but if you do all of them you'll have created a support system for yourself that will act as a safety net so if you do develop PPD those people will be able to help you get treated ASAP.

Here's the outline of what I did, and what I'll talk about in my posts on this:

1. Setting yourself up for a Good birth (my definition of Good is pretty simple)
2. Getting your feeding support in place before you give birth
3. Getting your other support in place for the first few months
4. Finding your tribe
5. Taking care of yourself physically
6. Taking care of yourself emotionally
7. Staying afloat during really rough waters

Source: Ask Moxie: Preventing PPD: Summary of the Plan

She has an alternate version in PDF on her site, but I truly love this version where she goes in-depth on each topic linked. Well worth the read. I've passed her advice on via emails and comments, but I thought I would also send her a little link love via my blog, because her advice on postpartum depression has such a warm place in my heart. 

My Ob/Gyn has finally switched to digital recording of ultrasounds. Yay! I got my DVD, plunked it on my computer when I got home (used Handbrake to convert it to a mp4 for iTunes) and then uploaded it to YouTube. The ultrasound video below is a little over four and a half minutes long. You can find out the gender by watching the video. Enjoy!

Tomorrow I'm having my ultrasound where I can find out the gender. Any last minute predictions?

Today was my first real appointment with a home birth midwife. I had previously seen her at a consultation and that was a fairly long appointment, but I kind of expected that. I mean, home birth is way out of the cultural norm for lots of people in America, not to mention Georgia, so I kind of figured they would devote lots of time to questions and the like during the initial consultation. What I wasn't entirely prepared for is how long the regular appointments are. I had read that the appointments for a home birth midwife are much longer than your typical Ob/Gyn prenatal appointments, but I still don't think I had my head wrapped around what a great contrast there is between the two types of appointments.

My appointment was at 11 a.m. and I wasn't finished until 1 p.m. The conversation was warm and casual, but filled with boat-loads of information. I never felt rushed or like I'm taking up too much of their time. I had a list of things I wanted to ask and discuss, which were similar in length to lists I had brought to my Ob/Gyn appointments, and we covered each item. The midwife also had some things she wanted to go over with me, which we discussed. It was all very conversational. I was given lots of information but I never felt like I was being lectured, or like I didn't know how to make my own informed choice.  

The midwife and her assistant also did all the normal stuff you would expect at an average prenatal appointment. I got to pee in a cup, I had my blood pressure taken, I was weighed, and she listened to the baby's heartbeat. All normal. Yes, nowhere else is it more wonderful to hear how normal you are than from your healthcare provider.

I also never felt like I was wasting my time. I know one of my first thoughts at reading about a two hour appointment would be "what in the world are they taking up all that time with?!" But it wasn't like that at all. The time flew by. When I finally got back in my car (which was the first time I checked the time since the appointment started) I was shocked at how much time had passed. On my way back from the appointment I really noticed how rejuvenated and built-up I felt after the appointment. It was really nice, and I'm so looking forward to my next appointment.  

It's 11:40 p.m. and I almost forgot to post! I have my next home birth prenatal appointment tomorrow. I'm excited to see how it goes. Ok, that's it for today. More to come tomorrow. 

Whoa, I can barely stay awake and it's only 7:30 p.m. here. This is what I feel like: