Some more random bits

I spent most of last week telling people I had ten weeks to go. My yoga instructor, my parents-in-law, my mom, my Birthing From Within mentor, my co-workers, etc. "Ten weeks to go, ten weeks to go, ten weeks to go." Then on Sunday I opened my iGoogle page - which has my adorable little widgetbaby on it - and saw this: "9 weeks and 6 days to go". I freaked right the hell out. Ten weeks seems entirely manageable, but I was not ready to see that shift to single digits. Hyperventilation ensued.

(Note: and now I've sat on this post for nearly a week, so I'm about to experience the weekly freakout when the widgetbaby shifts to "8 weeks to go". I rock!)

I don't know why these numbers make me so nervous, when in fact I am ridiculously excited about baby's arrival. Maybe it's the black-and-white of it? My most common pregnancy dream so far seems to revolve around the theme of me skipping that countdown altogether: either the baby is born and I miss it completely, or the baby is born and I forget to tell anyone about it. Like, my sister calls to see how I'm doing and I tell her I'm fine, the baby slept really well last night, oh shit, I didn't tell you the baby was born, did I? Pretty realistic, huh.

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Random advice received recently: prepare your nipples for breastfeeding by rubbing a wet facecloth on them. Sounds painful. Which is probably why I need to prepare. Two young moms were over at my house the other night, swapping stories and giving me advice. One said pumping hurt way more than nursing, the other said it was the other way around. Either way, the girls are in for a rough time.

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At last week's midwife appointment we learned that the baby is now head-down. This makes me really happy, but on the other hand, if she'd still been head-up the midwife would have reassured me that she still had lots of time to flip. So, just because she was head-down last week doesn't mean that she'll stay that way, right? When do babies get too big to somersault around, and pick a birthing position once and for all?

By the way, one of the ways the midwife determined the baby's position for sure was by using a pinard, which was really cool and made me think of Rhea. See, when listening for the baby's heartbeat via Doppler, you can get echoes and so you can't be sure how baby is positioned. With the low-tech pinard, however, you can't hear the heartbeat unless you are directly over baby's heart. Voila, you can pinpoint exactly where baby is situated! So cool! Also, the midwife guided my hands to just above my pelvic bone so I could feel my daughter's head. That was pretty much the coolest thing ever. Chris was too squicked out to try, though.

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I was asked recently if my pregnancy had been normal thus far. I hadn't thought about it in those terms, but yes, it has - and that makes me really happy. No blood pressure issues, no placenta problems, no gestational diabetes or abnormal test results. All the unfun stuff I went through (and still go through) - vomiting, soreness, fatigue, moodiness, bizarre appetite - is still unfun, but it's also completely, blissfully normal. There's no reason to believe the next few weeks, and the labour and birth, will vary from this. This makes me feel really good!


(KNOCK. ON. WOOD.)


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Pregnancy is funny. Things you took for granted before, little niceties, suddenly become impossible. I said to Chris last night, "Honey, love of my life, prince among men," (he always knows I am building up to asking for a favour, I am not subtle). "There's something I'd really like you to do for me. It's the sort of thing I would normally do myself, but this gigantic and wonderful belly of mine just makes it impossible. I feel sort of awkward about it, but it really needs to be done..." I think he was getting nervous about what this task might be! I guess I paved the way pretty well because when I finally got to the point (Can you please remove the toenail polish from last December's pedicure) he was relieved enough to agree. One can only imagine the sort of intimate, personal task he was dreading me to ask ...

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My mom came to town for a business meeting and spent the night at our place. Our pre-natal class for that night ended up being cancelled, so we went shopping - no big surprise, my mom loves to shop and I love to shop for my baby! We spent another $200 on baby/nursery stuff, half of which my mom paid for. We bought some adorable clothes, but more importantly a bunch of important layette stuff - diaper rash ointment, lotion, talcum powder, baby facecloths, a couple soothers, and so on. Even bought a package of newborn-sized disposable diapers in case we are too knackered to deal with cloth diapers right off the bat. (Many people have given me that advice.)

Purely by virtue of having to figure it out, for the first time in my life I am starting to understand baby clothing sizes. My mom pointed out that they are sized by months (ie, 0-3 months is newborn size) but in actuality they are all about the weight of the baby (in this case, newborn size is 5-10 pounds). So she cautioned me against buying stackloads of stuff in newborn sizes, since it's likely Baby B will be on the large side, and thus will only fit newborn clothing for a very brief time. Any outfits I find too adorable to resist, therefore, should be purchased in the 3-6 month size, so there's a fighting chance she'll get to wear them more than once. Very wise advice!

Dear Gestating Baby - 30 weeks

Oh, my dear baby girl. How did this happen? There are only 10 weeks left until we meet. Ten weeks! I can't believe it. Although the days sometimes stretched on for what seemed like weeks, the months of this pregnancy have gone by SO fast. They tell me that's what motherhood will be like.


You have been kicking and moving a lot lately. Well, to be more specific, your kicks and punches are getting a lot stronger. In fact, as I typed that you just kicked me again, up under my ribs (I think you're currently in the head-down position, which makes me really happy, but I try to remember that you could still change position in the next few weeks). Gone are the days when I had to be absolutely still and silent in order to feel your little swooshy movements. Now it's more like an insistent demand, no matter where I am or what I am doing, that I pay ATTENTION! RIGHT NOW! I think motherhood will be like that a lot, too.


The other night at our Birthing From Within class your dad and I were asked about what qualities we wanted you to inherit from each of us. I said I wanted you to inherit your dad's patience and my ability to focus and finish what I start. Your dad said he wanted you to inherit his empathy and my memory. If you get all those things, you will be a wonderful, amazing person. Actually, I think you will be a wonderful, amazing person no matter what, but I might be just a wee bit biased.


We have started the process of getting our home ready for you, and specifically getting your room ready. Yesterday your dad moved the cradle into our room to see how it fit and if we needed to rearrange any furniture. It was certainly quite an awakening to see that cradle next to our bed. As poignant as the image is, I don't know for certain if that's where the cradle will stay. The real advantage to it, the bonus of being able to reach in, pick you up, and bring you into our bed for midnight feedings without getting up or even reaching a state of full wakefulness, may be unattainable as the sides of the cradle are quite a lot higher than our bed. Plus, I can't imagine feeding you next to your dad without waking him up, though perhaps sleep deprivation will change him from the light sleeper he currently is. So many things are still up in the air, and though I try to plan and prepare, I know I can't fully know how things will be until you are actually here with us.

Lately there's been a definite shift in our thinking, as we start to realize that this pregnancy is going to end, and that you are going to arrive. Instead of preparing for labour and birth, we are preparing for your presence, the post-partum period where we adjust to being parents and try to figure out how to share our homes, our lives, and our depleted energies with a new little person. The time when we'll figure out how to be a family. It's a little bit scary to think about, but at the same time so exciting. Since I saw your sweet little face on the ultrasound last week, I am more eager and impatient than ever to meet you for real. It can be frustrating, the fact that you are inside me and with me all the time and yet I can't touch you or kiss you. I am so excited about your birth, about tickling your tiny toes and smelling your sweet skin.

See you in 10 weeks, little wonder.

Love,
Mama

Taming Tigers (sorry, very long)

Our Birthing From Within class on Wednesday was (in part) about taming tigers. "Tigers" is their term for the fears that may become obstacles in our birth experience. The analogy is: imagine a prehistoric woman, Lucy, who is pregnant. She has no clocks or calendars; instead, she has the phases of the moon and the changing of the seasons. One day something changes in her body. She is leaking. What might she do?

Chris answered that she might go to a haven, a safe place she might have arranged previously, to be alone and protected from predators. (This is something that most mammals do, so it makes sense.) So Lucy's in her cave. Her body is contracting rhythmically. And suddenly she thinks she sees a tiger pass by the entrance to the cave.

How does she react?

My answer was that she would tense up, perhaps even enough to stop her contractions. Adrenaline would come into play and interfere with oxytocin, the hormone that makes the uterus contract. Instead of her body's processes concentrating on making the uterus contract, the resources would be re-directed to the "fight or flight" reflex.

Of course, Lucy wouldn't know any of this. She would just know that she was afraid - for herself, and more specifically, for her child.

There were many points about this exercise that I found fascinating. The fact that imagined tigers have just as strong a physiological effect on us as actual tigers, for example. It's true: you know that feeling you get when you are sure someone's walking behind you or staring at you? The hairs on the back of your neck stand up, your stomach clenches, your palms sweat, your breathing becomes shallow - you turn around, and there's no one there. But your body reacted as if there were. If our brains give the signals for fear and adrenaline, it doesn't matter if there is a basis for that fear or not - the physiological responses will happen. And in terms of birth, those responses can stop labour.

So, the teacher guided us through a long visualization exercise in which we were to confront and tame one of our tigers. I chose forceps. (I have a few labour-related fears - caesarean birth and forceps are at the top of the list.) I am sad to say that in class, I didn't make much progress with taming my tiger. I couldn't think of any resources or coping mechanisms that would help me accept that the first thing my daughter would feel, her first sensation from this world, would be not gentle caring hands but the cold unyielding pressure of metal. On her tiny, perfect, soft head. It was just too cruel to imagine.

The teacher invited me to spend some further time on it, to work through it some more on my own or with Chris. She told us that "taming one tiger often tames them all" and that the effort would be really worthwhile. As a way to start doing that work, she asked me about a time in my past when something happened that I was unhappy about. "You don't have to share that experience with us, but just reflect on it for a moment. What helped you cope, when that happened? What actions did you take to try and deal with it?" Of course, the thing that leaped to mind was the miscarriage, and my answers were that I talked to people around me (Chris, Sara, and close friends), I journalled a lot, and mostly the passage of time helped me deal with it. She asked me to think about how I could use those things to help me deal with an unwanted tiger at my birth.

Last night at yoga, I think I reached some answers, or at least got very close. The result for me has been that I can now vividly visualize a forceps birth without feeling fear or anxiety - just peace and acceptance. What follows is a navel-gazing account of how I got there.

I had asked Chris to do a role-play with me, in which he would tell me that forceps were necessary for the baby to be born and I would react to this. He agreed, but we didn't even have time to do it before I had to go out to yoga. While there, I couldn't help but spend my meditative time imagining how this role-play might go, and trying to access the resources that would help me deal with an unwanted birth intervention. I imagined the following:

Chris: Honey, Lillian says that we are going to need to use forceps to get the baby out. She is stuck and in distress and can't be born without help.
Me: I feel scared. I feel like everything is going out of our control.

It was that phrase, out of control, that was the key for me. Of course, I am afraid of the birthing process being out of our [my] control. And of course, it is pretty much guaranteed that it will be out of our control. That's my true fear - that's my tiger. Any intervention I am afraid of is really a fear of not being in control of the situation.

As soon as I understood this, I instinctively and immediately let go of the desire to be in control. Being in control of the birth is not the end goal - a healthy baby is the end goal, with a side of positive birth experience. As I shared all this with Chris later, I said, "Of course we want a positive birth experience, but if our picture of what that looks like isn't matching up with the reality of how things are happening, which one of those can we affect? We can affect some aspects of reality, but ultimately, what needs to change is our picture of what a positive birth experience looks like."

(All of that, by the way, is so unlike me. Motherhood is changing me already.)

At this point in my thinking, it became much less about the specific (forceps) and much more about the general (any intervention and/or straying from the path of my ideal birth experience). Like Regan said, you tame one tiger, you tame them all. So, in real-world terms, what coping strategies can I/we use to deal with an unwanted intervention?

I view this kind of in circles. I hope I can make sense of this.

Chris: Honey, Lillian is suggesting that we [use some kind of intervention].

In the case of forceps, one reason for their use is that the mother is unable (or, for medical reasons, should not continue) to push anymore. So the first thing I would do is examine my own resources and say, "No, it's okay, I can keep pushing, let me gather my strength." Or, "Yes, it's true, I am completely out of energy, I can't possibly do anymore." I would determine whether or not I could do anything to improve the situation.

Then I would widen the circle to include my support people - Chris and our doula. What can they do, what can they suggest? If the suggested intervention is an epidural, maybe they can suggest a different position, assist with a massage to help relieve the pain, etcetera.

Then the circle widens to include Lillian. Does she have any suggestions for avoiding this intervention? Are there any alternatives?

If all these things come back "No" and the intervention is absolutely required, it is time to adjust that picture of a positive birth experience. It's time to give up control, realizing I/we have done everything we could do to affect the situation, but for whatever reason my body and/or the baby needs more help to be born. In this case, I give up my own sense of control and trust that God is in control - trade my micromanaging for peace, acceptance, and faith.

As I said, since figuring this out I can visualize the scary interventions without getting anxious or worked up. It's hard to put it all into words, but I do feel that I've made some really great strides away from my control-freak self and towards the self I need to be in order to birth successfully.

Gestational Diabetes Part III: The Results

Yesterday was our appointment with the midwife. I had emailed her late last week, full of shame and sheepishness, letting her know that I thought I had screwed up the test and would have to take it again. I didn't hear anything back from her, so I was a bit squirmy about what might happen at the appointment - lectures, berating, etcetera.

Instead, she took out my test results and told me I'd passed with a level of 4.5. She said 7 or 8 was borderline, so I really had nothing to worry about.

Chris attributes this to a lifelong addiction to chocolate. He feels I have done a spectacular job of teaching my body how to digest sugars, and even two mini Kit-Kat bars hardly cause a spike.

I am so happily stunned! No diabetes for me!

Deep Thoughts at 29 weeks

Every time I have an ultrasound, it changes in some subtle yet significant way my feelings towards the baby. For example - after the miscarriage last spring Chris bought me a butterfly necklace from this site. It really helped me heal, but I became pretty obsessive about wearing it. Especially after I got pregnant again, I was irrationally convinced that if I took the necklace off it would somehow indicate my failure to be truly grateful for the current pregnancy, and would cause me to lose that one too. I spoke with a friend in early December about my concerns, wondering when I would feel okay about not wearing the necklace anymore. She assured me the time would come, and not to feel strange about it in the meantime. The time did come, just a few weeks later when we had the first ultrasound and heard the words "No Fetal Abnormalities". It suddenly felt okay to let go of what had happened before; not to forget, but to move on, to feel safe in the knowledge that there was no reason to believe it would happen again.

This second ultrasound also caused changes, but I don't know if I can adequately express them. All of a sudden my baby has a face, a personality - she is a real person to me now, and I am struck by the overwhelming love and responsibility I feel for her. Her little face is so trusting, so peaceful. The need to honour that trust, to protect her and teach her and give her the best life possible, is so intense. And she's not even here yet.

Chris and I talk about the baby every night now. We reminisce about how short a time it was since he could barely feel her kicks and swooshes - he is now amazed at the strength and force with which she moves and stretches! We ponder the fact that she is already so big and strong, and yet she is only a third of the size she will be at birth. We wonder about my ability to withstand the kicks and jabs as she continues to grow bigger and stronger.

We talk about parenting, too, and our hopes and goals for our daughter. We wonder who she will look like, whose nose she has, whose temperament she'll inherit. We talk about all the values we want to teach her: empathy, honesty, humour, kindness, a sense of adventure. We talk about the skills we hope she'll be interested in learning: reading, martial arts, music, creativity. And while we talk, she kicks and rolls in my belly, responding to our voices, doing her best to communicate with us.

They say that within a few weeks or months of baby's arrival, new parents become blissfully unable to remember what life was like "before". I can really understand that. Already, it seems like she is such a part of us, such an important part of our lives and of who we are as people. It feels like everything up to now has just been biding time, and real life is about to begin.