Boob psychology

I'm still thinking about breastfeeding, given the week that's in it. (Actually, August is National Breastfeeding Awareness Month in the US, so I can go on and on with this.)

I've always wondered why the Irish have such terrible breastfeeding rates. Because we really do. According to the ERSI, just over half of mothers (56 per cent) currently initiate breastfeeding in Ireland, compared to 81 per cent in the UK and over 90 per cent in Scandinavian states.* Only 22% of babies are still breastfed at 3 months, with that number dropping below 10% by 6 months. In the USA, by contrast, almost half of babies are still breastfed at 6 months** - no small feat considering how many of those mothers had to go back to work and start pumping milk from as soon as six weeks post-partum.

In the wonderful personal accounts the Irish Parenting Bloggers have been sharing this week, one thing has stood out in my mind: the lack of support they've suffered from many of the health professionals involved in their babies' births. But associated with that is the way several of those mothers found it hard to speak up when faced with terrible treatment, because they didn't want to be a bother to anyone, and because the nurses they encountered - mostly nurses, it seems - made them feel that they were causing trouble. Causing trouble by asking for pain medication. By asking for help with latching the baby on. By asking to have their crying baby picked up and given to them after a c-section.

I understand this mentality, I really do. I don't like bothering people. If I'm a patient, I want to be a model patient. I want to be the one who is no trouble. (Look how proud I was of actually asking questions, way back in my first pregnancy.) I want to get the answers right, so that the doctor/nurse/professional I'm talking to approves of me and decides I'm a nice girl.

What the hell? Who worries about being a nice girl when she's having a baby - which is pretty hard and important work, ya know? Well, apparently I do, and I don't think I'm the only one. Did my mother make me this way? Was it mentally beaten into me, and into her, and her mother before her, that good girls didn't make trouble? I would go so far as to say that, though of course there are people of every level of assertiveness all over the world, in Ireland we perhaps have more non-assertive people/women than in other countries.

Perhaps we even like the martyrdom, just a tiny bit. It feels good for your soul, doesn't it? Hedonism is definitely bad, so putting up with hardship and not whining about it must be good, right? Oh dear, this is getting awfully Catholic.

Whatever - my pop psychology is based on no actual research. But the fact stands that given the vulnerable situation of a mother at the exact time when breastfeeding begins, in the midst of pain and unfamiliarity and at the mercy of the "professionals," the Irish tendency to "offer it up" works against many people.

Maybe, just maybe, this aspect of the Irish national psyche has something to do with the low rates of breastfeeding. Maybe many mothers who really wanted to try to breastfeed were sabotaged not just by the system but by their own innate disinclination to speak up for themselves, because they didn't want to make trouble.

(A doula is really helpful here. One major job of a doula is to advocate for her client when her client is in a vulnerable and unfamiliar state. A doula knows what's going on and how the system works, as well as what the mother wants. If you are pregnant in Ireland, I would strongly advise you to look into getting a doula.)

The thing is, I know that every single mama can and will advocate for her child. Every mama, Irish or otherwise, is a mother bear, a lioness, a spitting, snarling tiger mother if you threaten her child, or fail to help her child, or let her child be in pain.

So I would say to you, expectant mothers of Ireland who are planning to breastfeed (and anywhere else they like to breed nice girls): find that righteous anger, access your deep but vast recesses of self-assurance RIGHT NOW. Use it for yourself right at the start of your child's life, to ensure that you get what you need to begin breastfeeding the way you wanted to, the way you know will work best because you've done the research even if the person talking to you has not. Advocate for your baby. Because breastfeeding isn't just about us, it's about our children.

This isn't the first time I've tried to get to the root of the Irish breastfeeding problem. This is what I wrote four years ago. 

*Source: http://www.esri.ie/news_events/latest_press_releases/breastfeeding_in_ireland_/
** Source: http://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/data/reportcard.htm#Indicators

Mind, body, baby

Your head is connected to your body.

This is something that apparently didn't occur to me when I had my first baby. I decided to try believing it for my second, and it turned out to be true. Stop the presses.

To be fair, we're not used to thinking about things this way. When you fall off your bike and scrape your knee as a child, you can't stop the bleeding with the power of your mind. When you slice into the top of your thumb cutting a bagel, no matter how hard you concentrate you're still going to need a band-aid. And because we're conditioned to think of giving birth as a medical situation - because, you know, it happens in hospital, attended by doctors - we assume that we can't just think the baby out either.

Okay, so you can't actually, necessarily, think the baby out. There are a lot of factors you have no control over in the great rollercoaster ride of giving birth, but there are also elements where your mind has more influence than you might understand. It's just that birth has become so medicalized, so much treated as an illness - a great hurdle with which a woman's body cannot cope unless aided by drugs, interventions, surgeons perhaps - that the fact that you do actually have some influence over your own body is often forgotten.

Worse than that, even, I had the vague impression that anyone who told me my mind could help me give birth was in league with the hippies. You know, the hippies. The crazy women who want to paint their feelings and eat placenta paté and wear their hair in a centre parting and probably give birth naked.

Well, I'm a civilised modern woman and there's no reason not to use the drugs that the good Lord got the doctors to invent for us and I'll certainly be keeping my clothes respectably on when I give bir.... oh.

You have to take your clothes off to have a baby. At least, the ones you're most used to keeping on. You may as well divest yourself of all your other preconceptions, while you're at it. Giving birth, as I have mentioned before, is an elemental, visceral, down deep and dirty business, and you have to get in touch with your inner cavewoman.*

Your inner cavewoman is a hippie. Of course.

So remember what the hippies say, and believe it with all your heart, because it's true:

• A woman's body is designed to give birth. If this was not the case, the human race would never have made it this far.
• Once labour has started, your state of mind has an effect on your cervix. It really does. 
• Visualization and verbal affirmations do make a difference. Because your mind is connected to the rest of your body, and just as I can tell my fingers to type these words, I can control what's happening inside. The problem is simply that we're not used to telling our cervix what to do, and we can't see the results in front of us, so we suspect that it's all just crazy touchy-feely claptrap.

If you're pregnant, read Ina May Gaskin's Guide to Childbirth. Disregard the 80's-esque photos and let the words sink in. Read the birth stories and remember that these are real stories of real women who simply chose to believe in their own bodies. Look into something like Birthing from Within or HypnoBirthing or (if you're in Ireland) GentleBirth. They are not as kooky as you might think. In fact, they might not be kooky at all.

Read happy birth stories and stop watching all those TV shows where women give birth lying on their backs strapped to monitors in hospital beds, screaming in agony and finally, probably, being wheeled off for an emergency c-section.

Giving birth for the first time is a totally alien experience for most of us in the modern world, where birth tends to be hidden away from all but those immediately involved. It's scary and weird and like nothing you've ever experienced before: a new human is about to burst forth from your nether regions, after all. Hire a doula, if you possibly can. No matter how well prepared you are, having someone who knows what's going on - with your body, with the environment, with the medical professionals - who's there solely for your benefit, is like having a GPS where previously you had only a candle.

 Trust your body. It's trying to bring this baby into the world. Work with it, not against it.

Baby Dash, just born or thereabouts

PS: No, I'm not contemplating another birth of my own. A friend had a baby and it made me think, again, that's all.

PPS: Of course, you can do all these things and believe in your body and be the biggest hippie on the block and still need intervention, and then isn't it wonderful that modern medicine exists for just these times? I'm not advocating that you run off to the backwoods to have your baby beyond ken of mortal midwife, because that's not terribly sensible. I'm just airing some thoughts and discoveries that I wish someone had stuffed down my own gullet the first time I was pregnant.


* I don't think I came up with the inner cavewoman thing, but I can't remember where I read it. If you know, and especially if it was you, please tell me and I'll put in an appropriate link.

Being weird

A friend sent me a link to this Irish Times article about extended breastfeeding in Ireland. (I would probably have happened across it myself anyway, but she has far-reaching connections in the breastfeeding world and knew my interest in both the country and the subject.) It led me to a great Irish blog called andmybaby, and from there it was as if I could suddenly survey a whole country - mine - where people actually do the same sort of things I ended up doing.

I mean, I know in theory that many Irish mothers must breastfeed, co-sleep, baby-wear, and even continue nursing past the first year, but none I knew had done all that. Or none who talked about it, at least. Which is not surprising in a country like Ireland where things are swept under rugs all the time - and we are way more prudish than the stereotypical No Sex Please, We're British.

It makes perfect sense that blogland is the place to find all this hidden information, because the Irish do love to talk, and love to write, and love their kids, and just need an acceptable outlet for all this stuff so that it doesn't turn out you mortally offended your next-door-neighbour's mother who told her cousin who told your mother who was mortified to hear that you're telling all and sundry your private business.

Being an ex-pat was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to me from a parenting point of view. It gave me the freedom to work things out for myself. I lacked an on-the-spot support system, but I had friends inside the computer and I could let instinct, informed by what I read, tell me how I should parent. Peer pressure was not an issue. I knew what I'd heard about friends and friends of friends who had babies back home - they were almost always stories of past-dates, inductions, emergency c-sections, then bleeding nipples, failed breastfeeding, thriving on formula. All these things happen, of course, but the fact that I didn't seem to know anyone at home they hadn't happened to (from my admittedly small sample circle) was a bit disturbing. I was sure that wasn't how it was meant to go.

When it came to breastfeeding, and once things were going well, I saw no reason to stop. Around twelve months I assumed the baby would helpfully "wean himself," but that didn't seem to be what the baby intended. So we went on. If I was weird to the Americans I encountered, they could comfort themselves that I was, after all, European. If the folks at home wondered where I got my strange notions, they could of course blame those crazy hippie Americans for influencing me.

In truth, I learned to trust my own judgement and followed my heart. I decided that what had worked for the cavewoman - co-sleeping, babywearing, extended nursing - would probably be pretty good for my babies too.

I'll have what she's having

Having a baby is quite a lot like having sex.

No, I'm not one of those crazy women who find that labour is just one long wonderful orgasm, who I wouldn't believe exist in real life except that I know Davina McCall is one (go and look her up on Wikipedia, Americans) and I believe anything she says. But my sister-in-law said to me in some surprise after she had her baby, "It's very earthy, isn't it?" (or something like that; apologies if I'm misquoting anyone who might be reading). And that's the thing. It doesn't get much more gritty and realistic than having an actual human baby come out of you.

We modern people are so enamoured of our clean, sanitary, technology-enhanced lives that sometimes it's a bit of a shock to discover that some things just can't be made to be shiny and simple no matter how many European design specialists* you might employ. When you discover that about sex, it's pretty exciting - this elemental thing that connects you and your chosen one with the rest of humanity in a down and dirty sort of way. It's sweaty and you contort your face in funny expressions and things happen that you're not necessarily expecting and sometimes it goes on way too long and finally you lie there, panting and fulfilled. Just like childbirth. (See?)

Of course, with sex, you understand that this is a secret thing, to be shared only with your loved one (by which I mean the one you're with), probably in the dark and under the covers (in Ireland, hot sweaty over-the-covers sex is something that only happens about once a year; the rest of the time you only take all your clothes off because you don't want to look like a prude, but honestly you'd much rather keep all parts not vitally involved nicely insulated from draughts). The shock comes when you have a baby - the same sort of primitive, animal process, but in a brightly lit room, exposed to the four winds (or at least the air conditioning), with a whole bunch of people you only met once before parading through and peering and poking at your most delicate and intimate parts, and then asking you to do things like pee on the table.

As a girl, I was once a bit horrified by a TV depiction of birth - all that screaming and writhing and calling for hot water - and my mother, to save all hope of the lineage continuing, told me comfortingly that it wasn't like that any more: it didn't hurt these days, thanks to the miracles of modern medicine. Of course, then I went and turned my back on modern medicine and decided to have my babies as close to the old-fashioned way as I could manage, but I'm willing to bet that even with an epidural or a c-section, giving birth turns out to be a lot more like having sex on a spotlit stage (but less titillating, if that sort of thing turns you on) than you ever imagined it would. And you can't even get drunk first.

I'm just warning you.


*When I moved here I was often amused to see things touted as being of "European design", as if that would make them better. Becuase at home, we tend to think that all the newest, shiniest, coolest stuff comes from America. (It should really be Japan, but never mind that.) I didn't think that something having been designed in, maybe, Ireland, would really be all that great. But after I while I came to understand that Americans like objects that come from places like Italy (strollers) or Denmark (furniture) and will pay much higher prices for something that says it was designed by Europeans. They don't mean Dubliners, unless it's Guinness.

Granola

I really like this town. It's just crunchy enough for an aspiring hippie like myself, without being overpoweringly hemp-and-tie-dye and I-can't-believe-you-vaccinate.

For example. At our regular Wednesday lunchtime playground session a month or two ago, there was a newcomer with her two-year-old and her burgeoning bump. She said they'd moved to the area fairly recently and, wanting a natural birth, she'd looked up midwives in the yellow pages (or Googled them, more probably) and found a place called Special Beginnings in Annapolis. She wondered if any of us had heard of it.

We looked around the table, did a quick headcount, and said, "Well, three out of the four of us had our babies there." The fourth had gone to a birthing center attached to a hospital nearby. She was delighted to find such good recommendations. I just thought it was amusing how many of us had had non-mainstream births.

That day wasn't particularly an anomaly, though there could easily have been others at the table who had gone the more "normal" route with a planned epidural or a c-section at a hospital; and of course those who despite hoping for a drug-free birth may have ended up with something else instead. No matter what your birth plan, you have to allow that the baby, or nature, sometimes has other ideas.

But "normal" in this context is such an odd word. If we were in The Netherlands or Germany, a normal birth would be at home, or less commonly in a birthing center. Even in Ireland, where I always assumed I would have my children, and where hospital births are the norm, they are mostly attended by midwives. Giving birth is not an illness or an injury: the notion that it should happen in a hospital has only been around since the 1950s or so, and even then, clearly not everywhere.

Mabel's birth was so quick and "easy" - that is, not remotely painless, but very straightforward - that I always said if I had a third I would do a home birth. The idea of being able to just lie back down in my own bed and go to sleep for the night with my new baby beside me, at home, is divine. Right now, the idea of a third is, while not off the table entirely, definitely mostly hypothetical. But a home birth would not be so easy to pull off, because technically such a thing is difficult (if not impossible) to do legally in this state. Ironically, it would be easier to have one in Ireland.

But if I was in Ireland, I suspect I'd qualify as a fully fledged crazy hippie, whereas here I'm just in the minor league.

Serendipity

Here I am with a quiet house, and I can't remember what I was going to say. Isn't it always the way?



Ah yes. So I was working the Nursery School booth on Saturday at the Labor Day Festible (as Monkey calls it) with a friend who lives down the road and has two boys just six months each behind my kids. She recently had the amazing experience of attending a birth, and was still buzzing with the adrenaline of it. (I've never been to any births where I wasn't the one doing the pushing, but I'd love to do so one day. It must be the most incredible thing to see life appear, just like that. (Further, less noble tangent: On the other hand, every time Monkey has a long and difficult session on the toilet, I feel like a midwife ushering these poos into the world, and I think again that it's just as well men aren't the ones who have to give birth because if this is any indication, they'd never manage it at all. Sorry. That is completely beside the point and a shocking generalisation.))

Anyway, she said she'd love to be a doula, but would have to sort out some sort of local and free childcare while doing the training and then to be able to dash off and attend births. Like a childcare swap. My mind whirred like a whirry thing and I diffidently said, "I could do it."

Lately, as you can see from the greater regularity of my blogging, I've been trying to kick things into a new gear, writing and/or career-wise. When Monkey was rising two, I felt like it was time to go back to work or get pregnant again; but I wasn't ready to contemplate work and I happily jumped the other way. I suppose I'm getting that sense again now - the stirrings of the two-year-post-partum brain - but this time I don't feel the need to procrastinate by pregnancy. I actually relish the thought of editing or even (shock horror) writing, and can begin to feel my way towards making it happen. I didn't think I'd be able to do anything concrete about it until next year, when Mabel will be at school three mornings a week, but when the universe drops an opportunity in your lap, it's rude to pass it up.

My friend is a warm and intelligent mother with a quietly wicked sense of humour, and a good person to boot, and someone I'd be more than happy to have watch my children on a regular basis. Moreover, I think the world, and this country in particular, needs more doulas - wonderful women who attend, support, coach, and empower mothers at a time when they need it most - and I'd be proud to help one more come into being. If I get some free time to write or edit or heck, clean my house, out of it, that's just powdered sugar on the funnel cake.

Birth story II part II

Everything, amazingly, went to plan. If I got up and walked around the contractions got harder, so mostly I just stayed put. They slowly got a bit closer together but not much longer - about 30 seconds each time. Monkey's bedtime came and he was put to bed with as much normality as possible, and no big promises of a baby tomorrow morning, though we did tell him that Alice might be here when he woke up. Alice arrived at 9pm with her daughter asleep over one shoulder, and we rang the birthing center to say we were on our way, even though the contractions weren't exactly as hard and fast as they should have been. I felt they'd ramp up once I was in the right place, and I wanted to get there and get things under way rather than hang around the house any longer.

It's a 30-minute drive, door to door, and by the time we arrived the contractions, while still there, were weaker. The midwife chatted to us, got our info, and then said frankly that I didn't look as if I was working all that hard, and maybe we'd have to go home and come back in the morning. We explained that our babysitter was in our bed, and we really didn't want to check into a hotel in Annapolis just for the sake of a few hours. I resolved that the baby was just going to have to hurry itself up and get the show on the road. The midwife said we'd give it an hour or so and sat down to do some paperwork. B installed himself in the kitchen with a fresh paperback. And I started walking the corridors of the empty birthing center, weaving in and out of the rooms, rubbing my nipples shamelessly (feeling a bit of a fool, but I knew there'd be more embarassing things to come if it worked) and thinking good thoughts about wide tunnels and open and down. Every time a contraction came, I tried to loosen my jaw and not clench anything, and think the baby down.

After maybe ten minutes, the contractions really did start to get long and painful. I'd lean over the bedstead or against the wall (where the midwife could see me so she'd know what was going on and banish any more silly notions of sending us away), and I began to wonder how I could possibly have even suggested that my sister-in-law, newly pregnant, should attempt a drug-free labour. It's one thing to do it to yourself, but to imply that someone else should take on this pain was apalling. I decided I needed to go to the bathroom, and was pleased to see that my body was getting everything out of the way in preparation for the big push - so that hopefully I wouldn't poop while pushing.
And then something wierd happened. I was still sitting there on the loo, unflushed and unwiped, even, and I realised that I was still pushing even though I'd finished what I thought I'd come there to do. And I couldn't stop it. And it hurt like the bejaysus.

The second time it happened, I think I managed to get a quick wipe in there, and I yelled in a strangulated sort of way for the midwife. My husband came and hovered outside the door - we're not open-door pee-ers in our family. I said "Come in" and "Get Meaghan" and saw the midwife walking calmly by pulling on some latex gloves. She probably thought that since I seemed to be definitely in labour it might be time to check how dilated I was (since my waters had broken, she hadn't checked me when I arrived as that would make me susceptible to infection if the labour didn't progress right then).

There I was, still trapped on the blasted toilet, in agony, and nobody seemed to realise what was happening. "I'm pushing!" I finally wailed, as it really seemed that this was not transition, as I had thought might account for the awful pain, but the actual real deal. This time both B and Meaghan looked down, where modesty had prevented them looking before, and there was a head, crowning.

"Scoot forward," said Meaghan, holding out her hands, I managed to move myself so that our daughter wasn't born straight into the porcelain, and with one almighty push she came out. Meaghan said "Lift up your shirt" - so much for the clothes I'd brought "to labour in" and the nightdresses I'd brought "for delivery" - I was still wearing the tracksuit bottoms and red shirt I'd shown up in, and I believe I still had my knickers round my ankles - and she put a pinky-grey, writhing, alive, slippy tiny baby on my tummy. "I think it's a girl" said B. "Is it a girl, really?", I asked, and Meaghan confirmed that it was.

I walked (hobbled?) from the bathroom to the bed holding my daughter to me, umbilical cord still attached, and we nursed. After a while, B got to cut the cord and my placenta was delivered with a little yank on the cord and a little push from me. They rubbed the vernix into the baby's soft, soft skin and put on the obligatory hat.

A little later on, while we three were cosying up in bed and discussing names (B had only made it to the B's in the girls' names side of the book) the midwife and the nurse looked in to tell us that John McCain had conceeded and Barack Obama was going to be the new president. We decided not to name the baby Obama, but were very pleased all the same.

We went home the same night, as per birthing center policy. They only keep you 4-6 hours after delivery, and she had been born at 10.22pm. It would have been nice to just go to sleep where we were, but the nurse wanted to get home too, and I was clearly recovering well and had no need of a longer stay. I had no tearing (hooray!) and my bleeding was very manageable, and the baby was just perfect. We turfed poor Alice out of our bed, climbed in, and Monkey got to wake up the next morning to find a new baby sister had sneaked in overnight.

The birthing center experience was wonderful for me - certainly helped by my ridiculously quick delivery, and we didn't even get to use the birthing pool we'd requested. The memory I'll always keep of my daughter's birth is that of the quiet house, with just us three in it, the calmness surrounding me as I worked on the contractions, and how lovely it was afterwards in contrast to the hustle and bustle of a hospital. Labouring at home earlier in the day was also wonderful - everyone who says "Stay at home as long as possible" is right. Next time, if there is one, I'd like to do the whole thing at home. I'll also be recommending Ina May Gaskin's visualization techniques to every pregnant woman I meet, just in case it was more than mere coincidence.



2:00 pm - 02 January 2009

Birth story II part I

You know what I keep not getting round to? Writing the new birth story. So right now, as Little Miss bleats from the bouncy seat where I put her down five seconds ago and whence I will no doubt have to pick her up two minutes hence, I will at least begin.

There we were, Monkey and I, one afternoon in November, two weeks and two days before my due date. It was election day, actually. Monkey was up from his nap and we were lolling on the sofa having some "side" (ie nursing) before getting round to going out for our usual afternoon jaunt to Safeway or wherever. And suddenly, "flub," went something wetly in my pants. "Oh wow," quoth I, because I knew where this was going. Yes, even though only something like 15% of labours actually begin with the melodramatic "and then my waters broke and there was fluid everywhere", both mine have done.

Actually, let me back up a little. That morning, something else a mite portentous had happened. I had lost my mucous plug. I don't remember this happening with my first labour, but this time I was pretty sure what that yellow blob in the loo was. I looked up "mucous plug" images on the web, just to be sure. That was a nice thing to do before breakfast. Anyway, I knew that meant very little beyond that I would have a baby in the next week or two, which I sort of knew anyway, but it was, um, interesting. It led to my prevaricating when I happened to be on the phone later in the morning to my sister-in-law, who was then able to claim that she knew I was in labour before I did, because I sounded funny on the phone. I just hadn't wanted to treat her to a blow-by-blow account of what was going on in my ladyparts.

So. Back to the sofa. I told Monkey that something had happened and it meant the baby was going to come soon, probably today or tonight. Then I got up and did the same pointless flapping around looking for a pad and a large towel to sit on that I'd done the previous time, except at least it wasn't two in the morning, and my husband was on the far side of the K-Mart car park at work, not in Houston. Yay. (He doesn't work in K-Mart. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I just just mean that there's hardly anything between home and his workplace other than that particular car park.) I gave him a ring and mentioned that he might want to pack up and come home and tell them he wouldn't be back in for two weeks or so. Not that I was having contractions, but I thought they'd probably start soon enough. I also called the birthing center and the midwife said to wait till I was contracting hard, five minutes apart for five minutes each, and then ring again. I also rang my wonderful friend, Alice, who was on babysitting notice for when the baby would be coming. Luckily, it was a Tuesday so she wasn't at work and wouldn't have to work the next day either, so she was free to come over with her daughter and hang out and watch Monkey whenever we'd need her.

Then I repaired to the sofa. Monkey was looking worried and ominously quiet. I asked him was he okay, and he said, "Giant coming." He'd been having nightmares about giants lately, and I think it was his psyche manifesting the prospect of the baby as something big and scary. (He's so clever, my boy, to be able to verbalise such a thing.) I tried to comfort him and sound as normal as possible. I didn't really want to nurse him much more in case it made the contractions come too fast, but I did nurse him a bit. We'd cut right back to only mornings, but with so little of my pregnancy left I'd relinquished a bit and let him nurse after his nap or before dinner some times, feeling like it was the last time he'd get uninterrupted side so he may as well make the most of it.

So B came home and made tea or whatever one does in these situations, and I had some cereal and drank some water and made sure everything was in my bag, and went to bed for a couple of hours. I didn't sleep, and the contractions started coming slowly but surely, but the rest was good. Still, I didn't want them to go away entirely, so I got up after a while. I languished on the sofa with B's fancy running watch that has a stopwatch in it, trying to time the contractions - I never had to do that last time, since we were in hospital hooked up to the infernal machine; this was much better - and leafing through my Ina May Gaskin Midwifery book from the library to get me into the right frame of mind. I didn't think too much about what was going on, because I wanted to try and string things out till after Monkey's bedtime, if possible, rather than asking Alice to put him to bed. I told a bunch of strangers on the Internet that I was in labour but hardly anyone in real life, in case it turned out to be a false alarm.

Plans

Today I am six weeks pregnant and we're going for a tour of the birthing center I hope to use. It's been recommended strongly by at least three friends, and having done the hospital thing and had a straightforward vaginal delivery, I think I'm in a good place to know what I want and choose a birthing center. Anyway, they're right around the corner from a perfectly good hospital, should the need arise.

I'd love the opportunity to have a water birth, or at least try labouring in water, and to be not hooked up to an IV and monitors (no matter how much I tried to avoid it, once you're in hospital it's par for the course, especially if your waters have broken, as mine had) would be so nice. And they do have pain relief available, so I wouldn't be committing to totally natural birth - though I'd like to give it a shot because I'm still unclear about how much of Monkey's sleepiness (and therefore not eating and possibly being dehydrated, though I think the doctor was just being a drama queen) in the early days could have been due to the narcotic I was given. I could probably ask them about that too. And they have a good lactation consultant so I might just run things by her in terms of how much we're still nursing and my plans (hah) for weaning.

Birth Story Part III: The Action

B arrived, after a short delay with the second flight, at 12.30, just as I was coming to the end of the last Home & Garden. At this point the contractions were still very manageable and I would concentrate on relaxing as many muscles as I could find during each one and breathing from my diaphragm. I have no idea if it worked, but I felt virtuous about doing it for as long as I could. I tried to visualize Dr Grantly Dick-Read’s little diagram of the muscles running across the uterus that interfere with the muscles going downwards if you’re tense and afraid, and to see them relaxing. That bit probably didn’t work at all, because despite all his talk of “surges”, the contractions were pains to me. They felt just like fairly bad period pains, but with a slight edge of something different that I couldn’t put my finger on.

There was more bouncing, and as the contractions were getting stronger it felt good to move with them, to be doing something gravity-enhancing and hip-opening. By about 1.30 I had to close my eyes and stop talking with each contraction. Some time between 2.00 and 4.00 pm all the zen breathing and focusing went out the window and I was just making it through each contraction as best I could, sitting up on the bed and leaning forward into them. Vivienne came back from the other hospital, where she’d just delivered two babies, announced that I was 100% effaced and “four, almost five centimetres” and said that if I liked, we could talk about my pain relief options soon. Aha, I thought. The conversation she had kept avoiding every time I tried to ask her about it during my prenatal appointments. “So, talk to me about my pain relief options,” I said. She suggested Nubain, a narcotic, that they would put in my IV for immediate effect and also inject under my skin for relief that would last up to six hours. It would help me relax so that I could save my strength between contractions. I was a bit distressed that I was only 4 to 5 cm at this point (“almost five”, she said), and worried about transition, which is the magic 7 to 10 cm and allegedly by far the toughest part. I said I’d like some Nubain please. I knew narcotics can pass through to the baby, but mostly I trusted Vivienne, was pleased not to be screaming for an epidural around now, and admittedly was somewhat too distracted by the contractions to try and remember what it was the book had said about Nubain.

I think the Nubain started around 4.30 pm. The next contraction didn’t seem any easier; I’d been hoping that some “edge” would be taken off them and it didn’t seem to be happening. I nearly complained about it, but I thought that would be rude. Then somehow it turned out that in between each contraction my eyes would close, I’d hear the conversation going on around my head, but I’d practically doze off until the next pain started up.

Around now I suppose my memory of time all starts to get crunched a bit. The contractions came and went, as did the people in the room and the chatter and the instructions, some to me and some to others. At one point Vivienne said “She’s not in hard labour yet; she’s not sweating”; and then later B was mopping my brow with a damp cloth and it was noted that I was indeed in hard labour. With each contraction I’d grip the side of the bed and at some stage I registered that I was making noises of a groaning variety, and didn’t really care what anyone thought about it. They put B sitting on a stool beside me so he could hold my hand, and I tried not to crush his as hard as I was gripping the bedstead. Later on I discovered that putting out my hand on the other side and pushing out against both sides of the bed helped get through each pain. B described this as my “crucifixion pose” and said he’d been worried about the bed holding up to such mistreatment.

After x amount of time, where x is actually about an hour, maybe, though we can’t really be sure even though I wrote down the timeline as close as we could get it only a couple of days later, I heard Vivienne say that I was at 10, and ask if I felt the urge to push. I must have been in a lucid between-contraction state, because I asked, “I know this is a silly question, but how will I know if I feel the urge?” She explained, as I knew in theory, that the baby would be down so far that it was pressing on my, um, whatever places it is that bowel movements press on when they need to come out, so it would feel like I needed to go to the bathroom. Okay, I thought. That’s clear. I just need to wait for that. After another contraction or two I was sick of waiting, so I decided that I probably did feel the urge to push. Probably I wasn’t making it up, but mostly I just didn’t want to be there all day having contractions and not getting this darned baby out.

So the pushing started. B sat beside me – he’d been moved to the other side so that they could do something on my left – and whispered useful exhortations like “Push, push, push” and “You’re doing great”, and mopped my brow, and Vivienne told me to blow each breath out through my mouth. It all helped, and I did every time I remembered, until I forgot and somebody would remind me again, blowing out for me. Vivienne put me on my side with one leg up for me to grab with my top arm.

Clearly, any semblance of modesty was past at this point, and I just kept my eyes shut and tried not to think about what sort of view anyone coming into the room would be greeted by. With each contraction I’d muster all my energy to tell them that I was going to push, or that one was coming – evidently the Nubain was still having an effect – and then I’d breathe in, hold it, and push for as long as I could. They made me push twice with each contraction, or even three times if it lasted long enough. It never felt particularly like I had to do it - I could probably have let a contraction or three pass without pushing at all – but I was impatient to get it all over with.

I think I was under the impression that there would be less pushing involved than there actually was, so every time, I thought this might nearly be it. Lying on my side didn’t feel particularly intuitive gravity-wise, but it’s Vivienne’s patented method for getting the baby where it needs to be, and it obviously works. Half way through she turned me over to the other side, which is what makes the baby twist just where it needs to in the birth canal, and then she turned me back, like a pancake to be got just right. I know I was on my left side when they started exclaiming that they could see the head appear and disappear with each push, and then with an extra big push the head didn’t go back up any more. I could feel it myself now, a thing, there, in my vagina. It was good to feel concrete proof of my progress, since I didn’t get to see anything myself. B was encouraged to look and see – my eyes were still tightly shut, but I imagined him steeling himself for the gory sight and peering over to look. He said afterwards the whole thing wasn’t as … “Gross?” “Well, yes, I was looking for a nicer word” … as he had imagined it might be. Then everyone went to action stations around me, I felt my inner thighs and everything in the middle swabbed down with what I assume was iodine and it was clear that something was going to happen. The thing inside moved with every push, getting bigger, and I heard Vivienne say I had a little tear, but I couldn’t feel anything. On the final contraction, I pushed as hard as I could and felt the proverbial ring of fire – it felt like I split all the way up to my clitoris, and I thought regretfully of it and whether I would ever get to use it again. And people said, “Open your eyes!” and I looked and saw this huge round head, with hair on it, welling up from somewhere between my thighs and I couldn’t believe it. Another push and I felt a jumble of slippery limbs come after, and then it was all over bar the shouting. I considered my options and decided that “Jesus Christ! Did that come out of me?” would be appropriate, and thus my one profanity of the labour was uttered. (I think of it more as an invocation than a profanity, though. I really did feel it was quite reasonable given everything I’d just done.)

They cleaned up the baby and put him – it was a boy, of course, and everyone laughed at the inevitability of it – on my chest. He sucked away like a champion, both sides, for quite a while and they left him as long as I wanted before they took him away to make tiny footprints and prick his heel and whatever else they did. Meanwhile the placenta was delivered and my uterus was palpated and it’s all a bit of a blur, to be honest. Vivienne sewed up my tear and wouldn’t tell me how many stitches I had, since they’d melt away on their own anyway. She said it wasn’t a bad one – it didn’t go into the muscle or back too far; though on my hospital discharge sheet it says it’s second degree, which sounds quite bad to me. She anesthetised the area, though it didn’t seem to take on the left hand side and I could feel the pricks, but given the lack of contractions and the presence of a baby, nothing was too bad. At one point I was shaking uncontrollably, at another they poured what felt like a bucket of warm water over my bits and it felt wonderful. Really, what happened afterwards just isn’t important. They left the three of us together and we whispered to each other that we had made a baby, and that was the only thing that mattered.

I could write chapters more; chapters with titles like “Over-cautious paediatricians and why I dislike them”, “Nipplegate: the ouchening”, or “Jaundice and how to barbecue your baby”, but I think you’ll live without hearing those stories. Every day brings a new one – or two or three - but when my little alien baby gazes into my eyes – or somewhere in the region of my eyes, because I’m not sure he’s really focusing yet – with his big dark grey almond-shaped ones, and regards me with wonder because my face is the one he’s learning best of all, I forget how I need to get some sleep and just have to gaze back at him and wonder where on earth he could possibly have come from.

Birth Story Part II: The Waiting

So there I was in the hospital, ushered into a room where I looked around and tried to believe that this is where it would all happen. I changed into one of their lovely gowns, as directed, with nothing kept on but my stripy blue Penney’s socks, which are now my lucky giving-birth socks. (Except that I have two pairs and nothing to distinguish the one pair from the pair that stayed at home and missed all the excitement.) I had brought two pairs of fluffy socks especially for the hospital, because for some reason socks are always on the list of things to bring, but I never used them. The ones I had on did just fine and I became more and more attached to them as the day went on. Genuine Irish socks, I thought, to have my Texan baby in.

The night-shift nurses were nice but not hugely competent. They said that since my membranes had ruptured, they had to start an IV to give me antibiotics to prevent infection. I knew this was fairly spurious, but also par for the course given the hospital, so I tried to ask for a heparin lock, which would enable them to take out the IV if it wasn’t needed. I think they agreed, but it didn’t seem to happen that way. The sweet but very young second nurse blew out two of my veins trying to get a decent IV site before the first nurse came back and saved the third place, on my right wrist. That was almost more painful than the labour. Almost. Someone checked me and said I was 90% effaced and 1cm dilated. I’d been 70% effaced at my regular appointment earlier in the week, so that wasn’t too surprising. And I was told that Dr T was on his way, though it wasn’t till around 5.00 am that he showed up. He breezed in, told me that they’d start me on Pitocin at 6am so that I could give birth within 24 hours of the membrane rupture, and tried to breeze straight out again.

“I really was hoping to avoid the Pitocin,” I said, mustering all my diplomatic skills.
“You’re from Ireland, aren’t you?” he said. “This came from there, you know.” He was talking about active management of labour, the brainchild of Dublin doctors in the 70s, and bane of the lives of midwives and other natural childbirth proponents.
“That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea,” I parried weakly as he disappeared into the far reaches of the hospital corridors. Given my insider knowledge of Dublin traffic and Dublin weather and Dublin house prices, I think I’m well qualified to say that its provenance doesn’t guarantee its efficiency.

Happily, that was the last I saw of the good Dr T, who is perfectly nice but not the person I had chosen to see me through childbirth, though he’d examined me a couple of times when Vivienne missed an appointment due to some other inconsiderate woman going into labour just when I was meant to be seen by her. At 6.00 am Nurse A was about to hook up the Pit and I was asking whether Dr T hadn’t said 6.30. Nurse B bustled in and said that Vivienne had just rung and said I could have any clear liquids I wanted, could get up and move around at will, and wasn’t to be put on anything till she got there and spoke to me. Hooray – a reprieve! I broke out the blue Gatorade in celebration.

At 7.00 the nurses changed shifts and my new nurse turned out to be the lovely Linda, who I’d met when I’d been admitted for pre-term labour with cramps at 35 weeks. Vivienne arrived around then too, and the dynamic of nurses and midwife versus hospital policy and the doctors was really interesting to observe over the rest of the morning. Vivienne said that they’d wait and see if my contractions strengthened on their own before starting the tiniest bit of Pitocin they could get away with, just to keep the doctors happy. I got up to use the bathroom and, since I was unhooked and relatively free, I took the chance to spend some time bouncing on the birthing ball, given that I’d gone to the trouble of bringing it and all.

I tried B’s phone but got no answer, and assumed correctly this was because he was on a plane and hadn’t wanted to wake me by ringing earlier. Vivienne checked me again later, I suppose around 9am before they started the Pit, and said that the bouncing was definitely bringing the baby down. I resolved to do some more in a while. They put on “just a whiff” of Pit so that they could tell Dr T I was on it if he asked, but they were anxious that nothing start moving too fast before B got there. I didn’t think there was any chance of that, since the contractions were still really mild. He rang at 10.00 or so to say that he was in Houston, on his way to the second flight and that he should be with me by 11.30.

Vivienne brought me some Home & Garden magazines, because the one thing I hadn’t remembered to bring was a book, and I didn’t want to turn on the TV. She said she was remodelling her house and had lots of recent issues. They weren’t very interesting, but I flicked through the pages and it passed the time. I asked was there any chance I could have some breakfast, thinking that if I had to go all day on no food I might just get weak and wobbly, which would hardly help with the pushing. Again, I knew this was strictly against hospital policy, which said nothing but ice chips for labouring mothers, but Vivienne and Linda put in a request for a “non-solids” meal for me, in the hopes that I might get some oatmeal. By the time it arrived, though, it was the lunch menu rather than breakfast (of course, in hospital lunch happens at 11.00), so it was some fairly nasty and only vaguely warm creamy chicken soup, juice of some sort, and an over-sweet vanilla pudding thing. Still, I ate as much of it as I could manage because I knew the calories would stand me in good stead.

And so it went on through the morning, with the bouncing and the sitting in bed and the getting up to use the loo, and the machines intermittently bleeping and constantly thumping the baby’s heartbeat, and the feeling fairly trapped by the lines to the IV and the monitors, but that was just how it was. When I was sitting on the ball I could watch the numbers on the machine and see what my contractions were doing, but the numbers really didn’t seem to bear much relation to the strength of the contractions, so I ignored them after a while. The good thing about the monitor was that I didn’t have to time my contractions. The bad thing was the hooked-up-ness and the way the top one pressed into my tummy and was uncomfortable. The baby’s heartbeat was perfect the whole time – Linda said it was magnificent and that if all the babies were like mine her job would be a lot less stressful. I smiled smugly because of course our baby was perfect.

Birth Story Part I: The Flood

My nine-day old son (my son!) is asleep in the other room, wrapped up like a little parcel in a blue blanket, wearing the hat with the pom-pom that they gave us in the hospital. His eyes are scrunched up and a tiny wrinkle persists at the top of his nose, and it’s time for me to start telling this story. Every day the story grows with the boy, and if I don’t start soon I’ll have a book’s worth: the same book that every new mother would write, but it’s all new to me.

The weekend before last I was 38 weeks pregnant and my husband, B, was at a conference in Dallas, a mere two-flight hop away and within reach of any emergency phone calls. Of course there wouldn’t be any emergencies and he’d be back on Monday evening to the loving arms of his still-pregnant wife and the orderly home of the pre-baby era. I had a friend and neighbour lined up to be on call just in case anything should happen, and I spent the weekend alternately being efficient and taking it easy. On Saturday I treated myself to my long-awaited end-of-pregnancy pedicure. My little fat feet were so swollen that all the girls in the salon exclaimed over them. The colour I picked for my toenails looked funny on, and the lovely lady did them all over again with a nicer, deeper pink, and said she’d pray for me and my baby. Everyone marvelled at our self-restraint in not finding out the sex of our baby beforehand. Like most of Brownsville, they assessed my all-out-in-front shape and decided it was a boy anyway.

On Sunday morning I hung out on the sofa and re-read a Dick Francis. I admired the pink toenails on my little fat feet and got all domesticated making banana bread. Later I took a quick trip to the supermarket to get the last of the things on the baby list – using various coupons to buy a selection of newborn-size nappies, and some baby bath wash - and bought eggs so I could make that chocolate-chip cookie recipe again. There was a brief moment when I thought perhaps I really was nesting, as I got out the swiffer to do the kitchen and bathroom floors and then took an old toothbrush to the grout at the base of the bath, but really, it was quite gross. I don’t know why it hadn’t bothered me before. Then I decided that, having done so little all day, I should take some exercise in order to sleep well that night, so I went to the pool and did twenty lengths. (They’re very short lengths. Really.) There was a family in the pool – mother, father and a baby who was about a year old, having a great time with a beach ball. As I emerged the mother said in surprise, “Oh, you’re pregnant”, and I basked in the glow of my nice maternity swimming togs. At least I got two swims out of them. And so, some hours later and after a spousal phonecall assuring B that yes, I was still perfectly pregnant, to bed. It’s funny how you never know things are last times until afterwards. In retrospect, it all looks so obvious.
At 2.00 am a “flub” of liquid in my nether regions woke me. I knew what it was straight away – this was no ambiguous trickle – and cursed the gods of irony, or hubris, or whatever it was that had led me to think I’d get away with sending my husband to a conference at T minus two weeks. (T? What does T stand for? B, let’s say.) I jumped up to try to save the mattress, ran to the bathroom and ministered to myself as much as I could, given that it just kept coming. I had already stocked up on jumbo-size pads for after the birth, and while woefully inadequate, it was the best I could do. All hyped up and wishing I hadn’t gone for that swim because I might be needing the wantonly expended energy, I draped a towel over the chair beside the phone, sat down, and rang my midwife, Vivienne.

Vivienne’s phone went to voicemail. I left a message and then had to ring back with another to leave my mobile phone number, which I can never remember. I thought it was a fairly calm and collected message, all things considered. I knew she’d been away for the weekend too, in San Antonio, but was pretty sure she had come back the previous evening. Small mercies. Next to call was the clinic – I was certain they’d tell me to go straight to the hospital, but I had to ring and find out. The person on call said they’d get Dr T to ring me back. Okay. I knew I had plenty of time, really, except for all the messiness emanating from me, so I left the calls at that for the time being.

(This next bit might sound ridiculous, but in the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit to it. I had washed my hair after my swim but not done anything to it, so it was all fluffy and curly and annoying. I looked in the mirror and thought “I’m not having a baby with bad hair; it’ll drive me nuts”, so I plugged in the straightening tongs and straightened my hair while I waited for Dr T to be woken up. I didn’t do a very good job, but on the whole I think it was the right decision. It made me that much more comfortable in the hospital later on, to know that my hair wasn’t as bad as it might have been.)
I hopped around the apartment putting the rest of the things I needed to take into my bag. I showed remarkable presence of mind by sticking the chicken I’d bought for Monday night’s dinner into the freezer so we wouldn’t be under pressure to use it up. The clinic rang back:
“Has Dr T spoken to you?”
“No.”
“Okay, we’ll call him again.”

About five minutes later I heard from the man himself, who said yes, I should go to the hospital. That was that, and Maria - friend, neighbour, husband’s co-worker extraordinaire - was summoned. On the first ring her phone disconnected, and as I re-dialled my mind played over a brief scenario where I called a taxi, or even an ambulance, because (a) I wasn’t sure which apartment number was hers, even though it was a thirty-second walk away, and (b) she wouldn’t hear my knocking from her bedroom anyway – none of the apartments have doorbells. The second time she answered, sounding alert and prepared for anything – especially exactly what I said: “Maria, I’m really sorry to wake you but my waters have broken and I have to go to the hospital.” She was on the doorstep in about a minute.
In the meantime I made my final call. I’d let B sleep as long as I could and it was time to wake him up. I knew that once I did he’d never go back to sleep, out there in an anonymous hotel room in the far-off metropolis of Dallas, but on the other hand, I couldn’t exactly not tell him. He answered his phone sleepily.

“Hello?”
“Guess what? My waters have broken.”

He was incredulous, and I was giddy. He said he’d get straight on to finding new flights as early as possible, we exchanged mutual “Oh wow”s, and then Maria was at the door, picking up my bag full of new pyjamas I didn’t get to use, ridiculously tiny white (gender-neutral, of course) baby clothes, sundry massage implements, and a big blue bottle of Gatorade; the “birthing” ball (otherwise known as a plain old rubber exercise ball); and my waterproof-pillow-cased extra pillow.

Later I found out that, as I suspected, Vivienne would probably have told me to stay put and not go to the hospital till morning. She apologised profusely for having switched off her phone, the quicker to charge it when she got back from her weekend away, and said she’d have asked me about the colour of the fluid – to make sure there was no meconium in it – and whether I felt anything in my vagina which could have been a prolapsed umbilical cord, and assuming that was all okay – which it would have been, she would have said to stay at home, try to sleep, have a nice digestible breakfast of oatmeal or cereal, and come in when the daytime nurses had started their shift. However, on the whole and given the absence of spouse, I was happy enough to go in straight away and mess up someone else’s sheets instead of my own.

As we bowled down the empty highway at 2.45 or so, Maria apologised for having cut me off the first time I rang. She’d set the alarm on her phone to wake her at 7.30. When it rang the first time, she sleepily looked at the time, thought “Stupid phone,” and turned it off. Then, deep in the recesses of her mind, something registered that it had been the phone ring not the alarm sound, and that there was, just possibly, one person who might be calling her at this time of the morning. Luckily for me. She regaled me with tales of her daughter’s birth in Ecuador 14 years ago, when she started having labour pains during a bullfight. We were both giggly with excitement and missed sleep, I think, and I was only having the mildest of cramps, every now and then - nothing I would have thought twice about without the incontrovertible sign of the wetness that was even now seeping through my tracksuit bottoms, into the towel I was sitting on, and hopefully not onto Maria’s passenger seat.

We drew up to the Emergency entrance, where I knew I had to go to get into Labour & Delivery after hours, and trailed in, bag, ball, pillow, pregnant tummy, wet trousers, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. I think it was fairly obvious what I was there for, and I looked with pity at the people in the waiting room, who presumably had much less happy reasons for being in hospital in the middle of the night. A nice security guard took us to the L&D admittance window, and phoned the woman who should have been sitting behind the glass. After an age, she showed up and made me fill in yet more forms, despite the fact that I’d already pre-registered and had my little pink card with me to prove it. Eventually she said “Follow me through the doors”, and I hugged Maria and thanked her profusely and told her to go home and get some sleep. There was no point her waiting, as they were obviously going to keep me in now I was in their clutches.

It’s remarkably easy to talk nonsense to a baby, or even to sing nonsense to a baby, even if you were never much of a nonsense-talker before. I just thought I’d mention that. He’s on my lap now, trying to wake up for one of our regular nipple-torture sessions. I changed him and he immediately produced a lovely stream of bubbling dottle (as I like to call it) in the new nappy. I think I’ll take my chances and wait for Daddy to come back and change this one. In the meantime I’ve just put his blanket over the cushion, the easier to be washed if the elasticated sides of the Huggies don’t hold up. We’re undecided as yet in our nappy try-outs, and we still have the packet of Luvs to open. The rest of the story will have to wait for another chapter.

(Names have been changed for Google-proofing purposes.)

The news

So hey, since the last time I was here I had a baby. The next three entries are the birth story, in installments for easier consumption. If you're squeamish or related to me, you may want to skip the more graphic passages.

Midwives and girly girls

Gosh, it's been ages. Sorry. Still pregnant, just lazy. Still hungry, not really nauseated much. All good, I hope.

I finally met the midwife on Monday, and she's lovely, and exactly what I wanted. Which is a great relief. I had to wait because at the time of my appointment she was at the hospital delivering her sixth baby of the day, but they called her and she said she could come over if I would hang around a bit. So I did my best to ignore the tummy rumbles and wished I'd thought to bring a wee snack, and eventually she showed up and all was fine. She's very much the midwife school of "childbirth is a perfectly natural process that your body is built for, and women have been doing it for thousands of years" rather than having the OB viewpoint of birth as a surgical procedure. She announced, "I don't like sewing," which was her way of telling me that she won't give me an episiotomy and will try to avoid my tearing at all. I likes the sound of that. But it's still a hospital birth and I can have an epidural if I want one. At the next visit, I'll ask her about rooming-in and lactation consultants and the like. I might even bring yer man, because it occurred to me that it would be nice if he met her at some time before I'm spreadeagled in a hospital with an alien trying to get out of me.

Next Monday marks the end of the twelfth week, as far as I'm concerned. (The doctors have me a few days behind my own calculations, as the seven-week sonogram measured small.) Which should mean we can tell people. We're going to hold off telling them at home for a little longer, mostly due to logistics and people we want to tell first being in Vietnam just now, but I might tell them at work next week. Mostly becuase I keep sodding off early for this and that and it's very unlike me. And last time I tried to submit a sick-leave notification for the three-quarters of an hour I took off to get to my OB appointment, my boss said "Point seven five of an hour? Pah. Don't waste my ink," and pot-shotted it into his bin. Which was very sweet, but I don't really want him to think I'm taking advantage - and I'm clearly not sick. Also, one of the advantages to working in a university that has a lot of medical-type students is that I can get a free ultrasound any time I like. So I've booked one for next Tuesday, just to make ultra sure that everything's going on as it should before we tell the famblies and my parents go into madly excited grandparent mode. (And they will be. I'm an only child. Of older parents. The heir is much anticipated but they've been very good and never mention it. Well, just the once.) On the other side, it's the eighth grandchild so not so much of a ruckus, except everyone will still be excited that their baby brother is grown up enough to produce one of his own.

So I might tell my boss next week, before I sod off early once more. It seems only fair, even if perhaps it's a bit odd to tell one's boss that one is pregnant before telling one's parents. But I have already told my best friend, because I am after all a girly girl.

The invisible midwife and other stories

Yesterday I had my first meeting with my midwife ... except that she wasn't there, because she was at the hospital delivering a baby. Which I suppose is fair enough, and when I'm the one in the hospital I'll be happy if she stays with me instead of going to meet people who are only a little bit pregnant. But it did make the whole thing feel a bit futile, and all I can say is I hope I like her when I finally meet her, because I think I'm pretty much committed to this practice now. I mean, they have my blood and everything.

Anyway, so I saw a nice man-doctor instead, who wasn't offended that I wanted to go the midwife route and hadn't chosen him and didn't really want to see him. He answered my questions and was nice and helpful. In return, I let him feel me up. Ahem.

I'm being scheduled for a sonogram, which will be exciting, and hopefully I'll see the midwife at my next appointment in four weeks' time.

After all that I had a bit of an existential moment last night, thinking about how terribly inexorable the whole thing is, and how I'm for it now, basically. And other stuff about love and commitment and hitching your bark to someone else's star and how in order to take the happiness on offer in this life you have to accept that some of it depends on another person, so you're no longer self-sufficient; and other drivel I happily can't remember today. And where the heck I picked up that phrase about barks.

Ham 'n' feta sandwich, anyone?

I keep catching myself thinking "I'll do that when I'm pregnant." Then I have to remind myself that I really am pregnant now and so I probably should be doing whatever that was - eating cottage cheese for extra protein or taking walks at lunchtime or playing Mozart while making dinner. (Okay, so that last one can wait a few months. Though it wouldn't hurt me to be more cultured either. But if the baby hears a lot of West Wing dialogue instead, it'll grow up to be a hotshot lawyer. Or a quality-viewing couch potato.)

I suppose it's starting to sink in a little more. I just ordered the Mayo Clinic pregnancy book from Amazon, because I should probably stop winging it and directing my pregnancy with no more information than what I've already read and what I glean from the Internet. I really don't want to read every book out there, either for pregnancy or child-raising, because that way madness lies. And I do basically believe that pregnancy's the easy part - all I have to do is sit here and the baby will do all the hard work. But I do need a basic reference source, and we don't have web access at home. Which is probably just as well.

I'm confused about whether it's okay to eat feta cheese (basically, the UK says it is, and the US says it's not), and then there's this new thing about deli meats being a source of food poisoning. What? No ham sandwiches for the entire pregnancy? You've got to be joking. That's going on the list of questions to ask the midwife.

Reading back, I see a few loose ends I should tie up. The queasiness came back yesterday for the first time - since I'm now at 6 weeks, counting doctor-style, I think I've had a pretty good run of it so far. Triscuits didn't really help and I felt icky on and off all day till dinnertime. Today it's much the same, but a bit milder. Maybe this is how it'll be from now on.

I did make an appointment with the midwife that was recommended to me by the lovely birth center, and cancelled the one my dodgy doctor had made for me. I'll know more after next Monday, when I meet her, but I'm hoping she'll be exactly what I'm looking for.

The doula never got back to me - maybe she doesn't check her e-mail, but it doesn't bode well. I never phoned her because I went the other route for advice instead. (Another dead end was when I called the number for the local La Leche League contact, since breastfeeding and natural birth seem to go hand in hand - why I don't really know, and I think it just adds to the negatively hippy image that breastfeeding seems to have acquired - so they might be able to point me in the right direction. A man answered and I hesitantly asked was that La Leche League. He said "Oh. My wife. She's in San Diego for a while," and put the phone down before I could ask anything about when she might be back. So much for that.)

Hope for a happy medium

Still pregnant, still in denial. All good, really.

On Monday (which was a day off, of course), I decided I really should do some pilates, even though I'd much rather loaf on the sofa and watch the cooking channel. So very reluctantly I started the DVD and assumed the positions. About ten minutes in, I had a pain in my tummy and decided God (or Alton Brown) wanted me to stop, so I did. That turned into what I think was my first official pregnancy queasiness - it lasted a couple of hours until I ate some crackers and felt miraculously better. I felt about the same the next morning before breakfast, but I've been fine ever since. Long may it continue; but I'm toting around a ziplock bag with a few triscuits in it now, lest I get caught short again.

I have a good lead on the OB front - I called the birth center that's about an hour away and admitted that while I wasn't up for a totally natural birth, I was looking for recommendations for an OB in the area who would be not-so-pro intervention. The lovely nurse I spoke to knew exactly what I meant, and gave me good advice and the name of a midwife who works in a hospital not too far away. She sounds perfect. So now I have the number for her agency (or practice or whatever you'd call it) and I will call as soon as the office empties out at lunchtime (or I can sneak off with my cellphone).

So there may be a happy medium available after all, which is really all I ever wanted. I'm very pleased about this, but I'll be pleaseder when it's settled and I've found a doctor I like and trust. Then I can just get on with watching the weeks go by and waiting to find out when I'll actually believe I really am pregnant.

In other news, I bought my first official maternity wear yesterday. A very modest purchase - just a black and a white t-shirt that were on sale at Tar-jay. Basics. Practical. How could I not?

From your guggle to your zatch

So I went to the doctor this morning. I'm really not enthused with this doctor - I chose her because she was just up the road from home, and female, because I was due a smear test at the time, and I kept her because I'm never sick so I don't need to see her often. And it's not that she's bad, it's just that she seems flaky and uninterested in me. This morning, for instance, she never called me by my name or gave any indication that she'd looked over my chart from last time, when I'd mentioned about trying to get pregnant later in the year.

Anyway, the point was merely to get a recommendation for an OB, and in case she had anything important to tell me. It says on the pregnancy test box that if you're pregnant you should see your doctor asap, so I was just being responsible. The most I got from her in the way of advice was "Eat healthy food and not too many fatty things." Duh. She couldn't even tell me whether to start taking prenatal vitamins or extra iron or anything - she said to keep taking the one-a-days I'm taking now and see what the OB says when I see them in two weeks.

And she drifted in and out of the room talking to me in between dispensing medecine to an old deaf Mexican lady whose husband didn't seem to have much English. And then charged me $25 for the privilege. Thanks a bunch: I could have just got your OB recommendations over the phone and made my own appointment, but I mistakenly thought you might have something useful to tell me. I suppose I now know that my blood pressure's okay, and that I'm half an inch taller than I thought I was (yay 5 foot 4 and a half).

Anyway. Gah. The most gah-ish thing is that I tried to ask her about how "interventionist" these OBs are - having read the scarily informative Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth, I think I'd like to try minimal intervention until the pain gets too awful and I scream for the epidural. I certainly want to find an OB who won't automatically hook me up to internal monitors and give me an episiotomy (slit from your guggle to your zatch, as I always think of it) and numb me from the first contraction and leave me labouring on a bed for hours. Or decide to induce me because I'm late according to his (or her) counting or because she (or he) wants to go on vacation. So I gingerly mentioned words like "birthing center" and "midwives" and "lactation consultants" and the doctor told me dismissively that such things were developed as "low-cost options" in this area - as if they were only for poor people with no insurance who couldn't afford real hospitals. She's an older lady, and I fear she's from the generation who thinks the more high-tech your birth can be, the better.

I'm not a big crunchy granola hippie, I'm really not. But I do want to know about my options and I don't want to be railroaded into doing this the way every one else does just because they're a veritable baby factory down here. This is our baby, and it's the first one we've made, and it's special.

Anyway, the possibly good news is that I thought of a better source to ask for information. I've been hearing about doulas since I started reading the baby threads, and they sound like a wonderful invention. A doula is employed by the expectant couple to act as the mother's advocate during the birth. She knows all about the process and isn't as emotionally invested as the father or some other person would be, so she adds to the help and leaves them free to comfort and not have to panic about what they should be doing. There's a registry of doulas and I looked it up for this area. There are none right here (quelle surprise) but there is one in the town about an hour and a half away. So I mailed her and explained my situation and asked if she could give me any recommendations or information about my options in this area or nearby. And that, if she works this far away, we might quite possibly want to employ her too. I don't think she'd be covered by our insurance, but by all accounts it's really worth it.

So we'll see if she gets back to me.