Simplicity (thoughts on being “post-dates”)

I’m 41 weeks pregnant. Here’s an incredibly simple webpage (I didn’t make it up, but it’s a gem) that answers the question that comes at me from all directions these days:

Have you had that baby yet?

–Christina

Been there, done that. . . or not: second pregnancy thoughts

I sort of thought that, well, I’ve done this all already, it’s somewhat anticlimactic, etc., about this (my second) pregnancy. But of course that’s not true at all–everything is different, in part just because the context is (I have a preschooler now, I’m working full time right up until the end of my pregnancy this time) and in part because of the randomness involved in pregnancy.

With my son I had an anterior placenta and felt very muffled movement even toward the end, but my placenta is definitely not anterior this time, and the movement difference is astounding.

This baby was also breech for about two weeks in the 33-35 week period, so I got to use some of the advice at SpinningBabies which I’d only read about, not had reason to implement, with my son. So, this time around, I bought an ironing board specifically to do the breech tilt against the couch, even though my husband laughed at me; I had acupuncture done; I went to a chiropractor trained in the Webster technique; I listened to the Hypnobabies track to flip a breech baby, and by 35 weeks my baby was back head-down, indeed. It was actually an amazing experience–I had never tried acupuncture or chiro before, and this pregnancy I was so busy it had been hard to find time to explicitly talk to and bond with this baby until I gave myself the assignment of needing to in order to encourage baby to flip around.

I also had professional maternity portraits done and henna belly art, at a blessingway–more new experiences for me.

I love that there are special things about this pregnancy, now, and that this baby will forever be associated, for me, with all these new experiences. I don’t know what his/her birth will be like, but even though it will be another homebirth with the same midwife, I know it won’t be exactly the same as my son’s birth, and that’s okay. Different. . . is good? Wow, never thought I’d say that.

–Christina

Love for my birth ball

How is it so comfortable? I sit for half an hour in the morning at a cafe on campus, check my email, get some papers in order for the day, file away any small recently-graded assignments, and have a mug of steamed milk, but oh my, that cafe chair kills me–my feet feel heavy and leaden for several hours afterward!

I come home from school, sit on my birth ball/yoga ball for half an hour to get organized while my son has a snack, before I make dinner, and wow, I feel the difference!

I used the ball in my first pregnancy, but now that I’m a tad bit busier in my third trimester with this pregnancy, boy do I appreciate it all the more.

–Christina

Nursing through pregnancy, and super gentle weaning

My son is three years and three months old. He’s still nursing, nominally, even though my milk is, as far as I can tell, entirely gone. If there’s colostrum there already, he doesn’t seem to notice it. Basically, he’ll ask to nurse every 1-3 days these days–this has actually been the pattern for the past 4-5 weeks, so he’s been pretty stable now for awhile–and latch on, but with a confused look on his face. He sort of stays still on the breast for a few seconds, then comes off and tries again to get back on, and then almost seems as though he can’t quite remember what to do. He gives a few sucks, and maybe stays there latched on for another 5-10 seconds because he unlatches and seems satisfied and finished. It’s a super gentle step toward weaning, I guess–I’ve even stopped wearing nursing shirts every single day because he is almost certain not to ask to nurse unless I’m putting him to bed or comforting him on my lap at home after a head bump or tantrum, etc. It’s funny–I don’t know if he’ll keep this up for another four weeks (i.e., until my new baby arrives and milk comes back) or if he’ll wean entirely before then, or what. It’s like one of those universe clocks, sort of–such a slow, slow process, with almost imperceptible steps. Whatever happens, I’m really glad he’s in control of it.

–Christina

High-protein snacks for pregnancy and beyond

I guess I’m nesting (at 38 weeks along).

I’ve stashed ziploc baggies of raw almonds around the house, near my bed and favorite nursing chair, and I I just made 6 dozen high-protein pancakes and stuck them in the freezer for the next couple weeks, and beyond. These pancakes are packed with cooked quinoa, instead of flour, and have about twice as many eggs as a typical panckae recipe. I just ate some for lunch, topped with Greek-style (thick) plain yogurt. My toddler thought yogurt on pancakes was a crazy idea, so he just ate the plain pancakes.

I made sure we have a supply of peanut butter, and, even easier to eat during labor or afterward, what my toddler calls “a pean’ butter squeeze in my mouth snack”–also known as Barney’s Almond Butter in individual packets.

Next I’m going to go hard boil a dozen eggs to snack on.

What’s your favorite high-protein snack for pregnancy, labor, or after baby arrives?

–Christina

Book review: Cynthia Gabriel’s _Natural Hospital Birth_

Cynthia Gabriel, Natural Hospital Birth: The Best of Both Worlds (Harvard Common Press, 2011).

“Everything goes in cycles in medicine and in health care, just as in life. Cynthia Gabriel’s new book comes at a fortuitous ‘sweet spot’ when obstetric birth practices in the United States are again changing [and]. . . liberalizing” (vi). So writes Timothy Johnson, an Ob-Gyn, in the forward to this volume by medical anthropologist and birth doula Gabriel. Johnson may be a bit overly optimistic, in my personal view, but the perspective is a useful one. Gabriel cites her doula experience as key in helping her articulate her position in this book: “Doulas notice different things about birth than medical care providers do. When I read a book about natural birth authored by a physician, I realized that certain aspects of the hospital experience are invisible to her. . . she has never observed a woman fighting for a natural birth with an unsupportive caregiver,” etc., she notes (xiii).

Gabriel’s book hits a lot of the same cheerleading high-notes as Ricki Lake’s does (“So you want a natural birth. And, by choice or by circumstance, you will give birth in a hospital. You can do it!”) (3). Throughout, though, she emphasizes the enormous responsibility—for education and for advocacy—the women must take for themselves in such a position.

The bulk of the book is fairly blandly written in terms of style, and covers such topics as hiring a doula, deciding on a care provider, choosing who to accompany you to the birth, selecting better birthing positions, and avoiding fear and tension before and during labor. There’s much that’s useful here, though not much that’s new. In fact, a lot of it feels to me in some ways like a less-crunchy version of Penny Simkin’s classic The Birth Partner. Sadly, I’m not sure this book—considerably denser in appearance than What to Expect When You’re Expecting—will reach the full extent of its target audience, but it is certainly a positive addition to the birthing literature out there.

–Christina

Babies in carseats

I think a lot of parents have heard of positional asphyxia and the risk to newborns/young infants, but many don’t really connect what they’ve heard to the everyday basics of carseats–especially those so-called baby buckets. I’m on an online messageboard where parents (mainly moms, but some dads) post about questions or concerns about their children, and recently when someone complained that the mattress in her co-sleeper was somewhat hard, someone else recommended just putting the infant carseat into the co-sleeper and letting baby sleep in it there. I wasn’t able to post a response that didn’t sound snarky, honestly, so I didn’t write anything, but it’s been bothering me ever since.

The short story is that it’s not a good idea to let your baby sleep in a carseat overnight: For more reading, this article reports on one effort to educate parents about the dangers of leaving infants in carseats for extended periods of time, and this site provides some clear, comprehensive information.

–Christina

Inspirational novels for pregnancy?

When I was pregnant with my first child, I read a lot. I read the standard books on pregnancy and birth, and then their counter-cultural counterparts, and then all the things referenced in all of those, and then anything tangentially referenced in those, etc.

I also read and reread some novels, though, and I think the Sigrid Undset Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, which I’d read for the first time ten years before but reread in my last few weeks of pregnancy, was really inspirational to me. The heroine is a strong woman, strong in marriage and strong in pregnancy, and the books detail her (natural, given the time period–they are set in the Middle Ages, written in the 1920s) births and her breastfeeding and her co-sleeping, as well as her close relationship with her sons. Before having my son, I had no intention of co-sleeping, no plans for extended breastfeeding, and no idea how I would relate to a boy. I wouldn’t say I got all my ideas from those novels, but I do think the books had a big effect on me–and, importantly, a different kind of effect than when I read them straight out of grad school as a twenty-three-year-old new bride.

What should I read, or reread, this time around? Undset again, or someone else?

–Christina

A Dr. speaks: Spotlight on c-sections here in Massachusetts

This article came out in The Boston Globe Magazine just this week. Written by an OB, it’s a pretty amazing story of the Massachusetts c-section rate. Because the Globe online is now subscription-only, you might or might not be able to follow this link (or try to find the article yourself via another search; if so, it’s “The C-Section Boom,” by Adam Wolfberg). Still, I’ll leave you with these few paragraphs from near the end of the article.

[M]y patient’s cervix finally became fully dilated. With the next contraction, she pulled her legs back and pushed as hard as she could. But now the baby’s heart rate, which had concerned us throughout the labor, dipped again with each push. Research suggests that even the most worrisome heart rate pattern rarely predicts injury. Still, I had to make a decision.

In my gut, I believed that my patient’s baby would make it safely to delivery. But I couldn’t predict how long it would take: an hour, two? Forceps or a vacuum wasn’t an option – the baby’s head was still too high up within the pelvis. I’ll admit that it crossed my mind that when my shift ended in two hours, my colleague would be annoyed to take over responsibility for a patient pushing that long and with a less-than-perfect heart rate pattern.

I sat down in a chair beside my patient’s bed. “I’m not worried about your baby right this minute,” I told her. “However, you have a lot of pushing yet to do, and I’m concerned that your baby will not tolerate it. My recommendation is that we do a caesarean now. I think it’s the safest thing.”

Under bright lights, 20 minutes later, we delivered a little girl, who emerged screaming and pink. My patient and her husband were delighted and thanked me for guiding them to a safe delivery. I didn’t spend time second-guessing my decision: Everyone was healthy; the new family was content.

I sure hope there’s a healthy amount of irony around these words. The bold–emphasis added–above is mine, of course.

–Christina

Another parent vs. person identity crisis

Ever since my husband and I have been married, we’ve had an annual Halloween party. When we moved to our current place just one week before Halloween, we still pulled it off; when our son was just two months old one Halloween, ditto. Now, though, with more of our friends having toddlers, I’m in a mental quandary about how to think of this year’s party: is it a party for adults, at 7:00 or so in the evening, which kids are welcome to attend? Or is it a party for kids, at 5:00–if not earlier!–in the afternoon/evening, with some childless adults there (awkwardly?) as well? For me, personally, I didn’t see the conflict at first until our friends started RSVPing to this year’s party, saying “oh, that’s too late for so-and-so’s bedtime.” Barring work, we bring our son everywhere with us–we bring him to weddings (even black tie ones, assuming he’s invited), and hospitals to visit sick friends or relatives, and dinners out and other evening excursions. I don’t have in my mind a hard and fast division between my life as a person and my life as a parent–I see them as complementary and overlapping, almost exclusively so–but I am getting the impression that other people do. So, on the one hand, this throws me back to my dilemma about the Halloween party, but it also raises all these identity questions in my mind.

Thoughts?

–Christina