Where did you come from???

Okay, I know it's silly but sometimes I can't help but look at Ana in awe and wonder "Where did you come from??" Obviously I know where she came from, I was there for the whole process, but it still baffles me. Such a tiny perfect creation, she is all ours and I feel like we did nothing to deserve her. Her cheeks are so round and darling, her stretches are the most adorable thing I've ever seen EVERY TIME SHE DOES IT, her smiles are just too sweet to bear.

Right after my labor, I swore I would never have another baby. I was pretty sure nothing could be worth the pain I had felt. I didn't have that "mommy high" right after delivery because the medicine I was given made my head so foggy. I kinda just wanted this kid to leave me alone and let me recuperate from the most exhausting day of my life. I told my birth story in the last post but I skipped some important things so that I could properly emphasize them.

Labor was hard. 27 hours of contractions is a lot. There were times when I didn't think I could go on, I secretly hoped for a c-section once or twice just so it would be over. At those moments, Gary was my rock. He was gentle and understanding. He was so supportive. He did counter pressure for hours while I had back labor. When I was close to tears, he would reel me back in, reminding me why I was doing this. He told me over and over again that "it's almost over" and I believed him every time, never questioning that he'd been saying it for hours. When I squeezed his hand for 3 hours of pushing, he insisted that it didn't hurt at all.

I know that my husband is a strong man. I know that he loves me with all his heart. I know that he wants to care for me. But, until we went through labor together, I couldn't fathom how strong he was, how much he loved me, or how deeply he cared for me. I am still astonished and feel truly blessed by his incredible support during the birth of our daughter. I know that my labor would have been longer and I would have felt much more hopeless if Gary hadn't been with me.

Oh, the joy!

Today, I have the immeasurable pleasure of sunbathing with my daughter. I have been eagerly waiting for a day lovely enough for an outdoor adventure, so when the bank teller mentioned it could be 70 degrees today, I was stoked! I only saw it hit 60, but thats good enough for March!

We walked down toward my sisters apartment first, because she has some grass and we have none. We laid out for a little while and when Anastasia got tired of that I put on my Moby wrap and we took a little walk around the neighborhood. I love taking her outside! I hope she loves the sunshine as much as I do! She's a little sick right now so I'm hoping the fresh air will help her too. We only walked half a mile today, but I'm hoping that my post partum appointment on Wednesday will release me to do some ACTUAL exercise! I'm so anxious to try out her jogging stroller :)

Anastasia's debut!

Well, in two days Anastasia will be 5 weeks old! It's about time I write up my birth story, I suppose. Whether you are interested or not, that's fine, I just want to have this written down before I forget it! So, here's the story...

My mom flew into town on the 24th of January so she could be here for Ana's birth and to help me out afterwards. I had been having Braxton Hicks for about 17 weeks already so I was super confident that my baby was going to arrive early, or at least on time. Her due date came and nothing had happened. I had an appointment with one of my midwives that day (Mary) and they asked if I would liked them to check my dilation. I said "Of course!" Mostly because I wanted to be able to tell Anastasia in the future. Well, I was a pitiful 50% effaced and a "roomy" one flippin' centimeter. (If you don't speak the language, that means AIN'T NOTHING GOING ON.) I was unfortunately given the pleasure of seeing my least favorite midwife that day and when I asked her to do a standard procedure that has been medically, scientifically proven to help labor begin (sweeping/stripping membranes) she began to whine and said she didn't want to and that it never worked and basically it was a load of hooey. (She's a liar...) Being the stubborn person I am, I insisted anyway. :)

Gary and I went out to dinner that night and I kept feeling these weird feelings in my stomach. I told Gary they weren't contractions (I had no idea to be honest!) but he texted his parents anyway and got the whole world hyped up about labor! When we finished dinner and headed home, I realized that the pain was because the booth we were in didn't have room for my 40 week belly and it was being smashed! Anyway, nothing happened, totally disappointing. (This was Monday)

Jump forward a few days to Friday night. Gary and I had just settled down to sleep around midnight and an hour later I woke up in PAIN. It sucked! (I had been worried for weeks that I wouldn't recognize real labor contractions because I had had so many Braxton hicks, holy cow, let me tell ya, they are globally different! Braxton hicks doesn't prepare you for anything!) Anyway, I tried to ignore it and went back to sleep. They woke me up about once every half hour (so I didn't really sleep) and I finally told Gary around 7 am. I also let mom and Sophie know around then. Gary was supposed to work 12-close that night so we began to consider the idea that he wouldn't be going to work. I was so so nervous that it was false labor and our hospital was 40 miles away so I really didn't want to go out there and get sent back! This made me deny labor was happening for a long time. I distracted myself by making oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (which were really yummy!!), took a nap, and basically pretended it wasn't happening. (I think I was in denial. I kinda realized I was gonna have to push a baby out! Yikes!)

We decided Gary and Sophie should both go to work and mom would stay with me and we would call them if the midwife said anything (I still was putting off calling the midwife). Around 4 pm I gave in and called the midwife. My contractions were about 3-5 minutes apart but weren't a consistent amount of time apart so I kept telling myself I was in false labor. She suggested a bath and if they stayed that frequent to call her back in an hour. Well, an hour later, they were still close, still strong, and still FREAKING ME OUT. She told me to come in so I called Sophie and Gary to come get us. By the time they left work and got home it was about 5:45. I don't remember much about the car ride, but I do remember that right before we left the house, I was pretty sure Gary was taking WAY TOO LONG to walk out the door to the car!!

Once we arrived at the hospital, we started signing in and I was still totally certain that I wouldn't be dilated enough to stay. I was very relieved when the nurse signing us in paged someone and said "This woman is having back-to-back contractions, I need someone out here NOW"! I was also relieved that the midwife I really really loved, Vicki, was the one on call! And when she checked me, I was almost 5 cm dilated! (Enough to staaayyyyy!!) And then Vicki said "my shift ends in about 30 minutes and Mary will be here (booooo!) and then I'll be back at 7am. Hopefully you'll have had a baby by then!" Let me tell ya, I really don't like Mary. I was honestly hoping I would still be in labor at 7 am the next morning cause I didn't want Mary at my birth!! Anyway, that's a side note.

They wheeled me into the delivery room and by this time I was BEGGING for my birth pool. The pain was getting really bad! It felt like it took a half a million years for it to get set up! I finally got in and I was freezing. They kept running hot water into it but my adrenaline was causing my temperature to drop so I just couldn't stay warm. Anyway, the people who call water birth the "aqua-dural" and equate it to similar pain relief as an epidural... They are lying through their teeth. I would say the pool brought my pain level down about half a point which was very disappointing and truthfully very scary for me. I was having back labor and during contractions it hurt so bad my mind was just totally numb. After about 2 hours, I asked for an epidural. The nurses knew I had asked for no epidural in my birth plan, so they suggested an IV drug, Staydol. I had no idea what that was but I was pleased that they wanted to help me stick to my plan and also that there were other pain management options that they could offer!

After they finally got me the Staydol, things get really hazy. I remember asking several times when the medicine would kick in and cut the pain and I couldn't really get an answer. My mom finally told me that it was working and it wasn't going to help the pain. Turns out that Staydol just lets you relax between contractions! I think I got mad about that because I had asked for pain relief, not something that would relax me between contractions and I could still feel every little bit of pain. I know I screamed/yelled a lot during the 5 hours between beginning Staydol and Ana's delivery. I would be "asleep" and wake up to myself yelling to ease the pain of the contraction (totally works!!). I have a very foggy memory of this part of delivery, thanks to the medicine, I really only have a few snapshot moments in my head.

One snapshot was just after a contraction, I was wondering where the heck my midwife was and as I looked around the room I discovered her leaning against a counter, totally disinterested, not even looking at me.

The next snapshot was the midwife asking if she could break my water. All I could remember was Lamaze class and the cascade if interventions and I kept thinking that if they broke my water I would have to have a cesarean and Anastasia would die. (The medicine was really messing me up!) I said no and went back to bring miserable. Sometime later she asked again, I have no idea how long, and my mom said I really needed to let her do it. I was so grateful for that because I just could NOT think for myself on that medicine!

A third snapshot was me holding and squeezing Gary's hand and thinking I was pretty sure I was going to hurt him!!

At midnight, I finally began to feel that "need to push" pressure, so we started the pushing process. And pushed and pushed and pushed. This was hands down the most horrible, terrible, painful, awful thing I have ever experienced. The midwife had me flat on my back, legs in stirrups, pushing. That was exactly WHY I had chosen a midwife, to AVOID that position! I pushed laying back, I pushed kneeling, I pushed squatting, I pushed on my side, for 2 and a half hours, I pushed. This was the only time I was aware of the clock because I knew they would only let me push so long before I had to have a cesarean. Finally at about 2:30, I think my midwife got sick of me. She told me that I had to push Anastasia out on the next push and that if I stopped pushing with just her head out that she would die.

Let me just stop here and say, even in my drug-induced haze, I knew that was a lie. It is pretty normal for women to push out the head and with the next contraction push out the shoulders and body. So, whatever.

I was totally exhausted and really wanted it to be over. With the next contraction, I pushed until I thought my face was gonna burst from the pressure. I had been wanting to yell while pushing and they kept telling me that I couldn't, that I had to focus that energy into pushing. Well, on that contraction, I screamed for all I was worth (I'm sure all of Greensboro heard me..) and there she was! :) At 2:43 am on February 3rd, they put her on my belly and i heard my baby's first cry. Her cord was so short that she couldn't reach to my chest and I was gripping her so tight so she wouldn't fall but my limbs were barely under my control! (The nurse had ahold too, thankfully!) I realized that the midwife was calling Gary to cut the cord and I stopped her and reminded her that we were delaying the clamping and cutting until pulsing stopped. (This was in my birth plan which she had asked for and read prior to delivery!) She laughed as she told me that she had already clamped it. This was MAYBE 30 seconds after birth, so I wasn't laughing at all. So, whatever, no take backs. Gary cut the cord, it was pretty cool :)

They realized quickly that Anastasia was having some problems, her blood oxygen level was low (no duh, you clamped off her blood supply when 1/3 of her blood was outside of her body!!) This was a really sad moment for me because as they were trying to get her oxygen level regulated they had her across the room on the baby warmer and there was a timer above her head counting the seconds of her life. I wanted to breastfeed her immediately after birth and she was so far away from me and I kept watching that clock thinking "My baby is 5 minutes old and I'm not holding her. My baby is 10 minute old and I haven't hugged her. My baby is 15 minutes old and she's not in my arms." Finally at 17 and a half minutes, they brought her to me. I was so angry because my eyes wouldn't focus on her (Again, thanks, Staydol). With some help i was finally able to put her to my breast and nurse her. Totally magical. I vaguely remember commanding Sophie to take a picture lol.

Now, all the pain did not go away instantly. I was not blissfully unaware of the rest of the world as my baby and I cuddles for the first time. I was not overjoyed, because, lets face it, she was a total stranger and by the time the nurses left me alone in my recovery room it was 6 am and I had been awake for 29 hours and I was completely exhausted. Birth wasn't delightful. It wasn't empowering. It was scary and painful and made me realize what a ridiculous optimist I am. (I was really expecting mind-over-matter to work!)

All in all, birth sucked, but the baby is awesome. :D

Another side note, yelling really did help the pain, but I think I have permanently damaged my voice, so if you're gonna do that, just be aware...

Laziness

I don't know about other pregnancy blogs, but this one includes pregnant rants and things that annoy me even more now that I'm pregnant. The number one thing is laziness. I understand having a lax day once in a while, but to be honest, even my lazy days aren't lazy. I cannot stand being lazy! There are so many things to do!

Anyway, what I really am peeved about at this moment is people who are lazy readers. They glance at a word and assume it is whatever they want it to be instead of actually READING IT. This is not a new trend. I have found this annoying for some time now. When I was a kid and I would be lazy about reading (usually aloud) my parents would correct me because ITS NOT OKAY TO BE LAZY! When I would do my math work, I would often try to guess a logical answer instead of doing the work, because I was being lazy. I clearly remember my dad telling me "Stop guessing! You're being lazy!" It's not okay to do something halfway, nor is it okay to read something halfway. If you don't learn to do it the right way, you'll always do it the wrong way.

I get LOADS of this in my line of work because people stand in front of me all day and read the menu. But few people actually read it properly. The words that are most butchered are always the words with hyphens in them. Hyphens are not that complicated folks! AND the order of your words makes all the difference. For example, at Chick-fil-A, we have a Chick-N-Strip salad. Today, a woman ordered a Strip-N-Chick salad. Say that out loud. What?? A stripping chick salad?? Lady, this is a family restaurant, we don't have strippers.

Another prime culprit is the Chargrilled anything. I can't even tell you how many variants of that word I have heard! The most common would be "Charcoal". You want a Charcoal chicken sandwich? You want your sandwich burnt until it resembles charcoal? Other options include charbroiled (you're not broiling right if its charring your food), charcoal-grilled, and just plain "charred". Oh my.

We also have a seasonal soup at CFA, the Chicken Tortilla Soup. Now folks, this is not an uncommon soup. You can buy it in cans at Walmart. You can order it at Panera or Newks, or any number of places. Also, considering we living in the south, the word "Tortilla" should be in your vocabulary. I know not everyone took Spanish in high school, but it should be common knowledge that the double L makes a y sound! But anyway, that falls under ignorance, not laziness. When we sell this soup, I am asked at least half a dozen times in a day for the "Chicken Tortellini Soup". I'm never sure if I should correct people. If they're expecting tortellinis in their soup, they will be gravely disappointed, but if they're just being lazy, I don't want to be a jerk and point it out! (Well, maybe I do, but it's not my place)

To sum it all up, sometimes I just want to smack people and tell them to stop being lazy when they read! Please, for the same of my pregnant sanity, READ the words, don't just guess at them!!

You are dismissed.

Will Power vs. Self-Discipline

I've been thinking about this post for a while. As i feel Anastasia kick me this morning, it makes me think about what she will fight for in life, and what I want her to fight for. I talked (ranted) about laziness in the last post which leads fairly easily into the topic of discipline. My parents were firm believers in physical discipline! My mom likes to tell people about when they switched me from a crib to a bed. I think I was 3 years old and she said I got out of bed 42 times that night! And you know what she did? Spanked me each time and put me back!
That may sound harsh to some of you, but I am convinced that regular, expected, physical discipline from my parents taught me to be a self-disciplined adult. It taught me that there are measurable consequences for my actions!
When people start talking about doing difficult things (losing weight, giving up tobacco, quitting a habit) I often hear the comment "Oh, I just don't have the will power" which is an excuse I've used a few times in the past as well. What is the difference between will power and self discipline? I would argue that the only distinction is attitude.
Will power is that thing we blame when we want to be weak. "Oh, I wish I could (insert difficult thing here), but I just don't have the will power..." If you know you should, but you don't really want to, will power comes to the rescue and let's you off the hook, like a genetic predisposition.
Self-discipline is exactly what it sounds like. Hard, annoying, and not fun. But, it is not an excuse. Self discipline says "I am the only person who can make myself do this, so I will." When I lived in my parents home, I let them discipline me. Now that I have my own home, I am grateful that their discipline taught me to BE disciplined! I don't need someone to tell me to wash the dishes or my laundry or to "Pick up that sock instead of stepping over it again!!" I do it on my own because I know there will be a consequence if I don't.
Foresight is a big part of self-discipline. If I am unaware of the future, I don't know about the consequences and thus don't act to prevent them. I must ask myself "If I leave that food sitting there, what will happen eventually?" Well, bugs will come, my house will get infested, I'll be evicted for destroying our apartment, and then we'll be homeless with a precious baby.
Okay, that's a bit extreme. What I I don't write that paper? It's only 20% of my grade. But, unless I'm doing very well, 20% will cause me to fail the class. If I fail, I can't retake that class for 3 years, which means I definitely can't graduate in May.
I know that Anastasia will fight me sometimes. I know that she won't enjoy being disciplined (I sure didn't!!) But I also know that if she is disciplined as a child, she will be self-disciplined as an adult. I hope that she will see the benefit of self-discipline as much as I do. I hope that she will fight laziness and apathy and will instead welcome in the idea that actions bring consequences!

Level of "Crunch"

I plan on being a pretty "crunchy" mom. (If you are unfamiliar with this term, it basically means "natural".) Some of that comes from the way I was raised. My mom stayed at home with us all of our lives and I've always wanted to do that. We were homeschooled all 12 years (and if you just asked yourself "What about kindegarten?" you're obviously not a homeschooler. It doesn't count, that's just life. Why pay for curriculum to teach a kid colors and shapes that they've known since 3 years old??) For me, crunchy also means my children will be vaccine free. I am so grateful that God blessed me with a husband who, unbeknownst to me, is as opposed to vaccinating as I am. When I was a kid, my sisters and I all had a round of booster shots that left myself and my older sister bed bound for weeks. A lot of other kids in the area who received vaccinations from that same batch had even worse reactions. By the grace of God, Kate and I recovered without any physical damage to our bodies, but since then my parents refused all vaccinations for us and Gary and I intend to refuse all vaccinations for our sweet baby too.

Thanks to my dear friend Rachel, crunchy for me also means I will be rear-facing our daughter in her car seat to the maximum weight limit (Probably 35 or 40 pounds, about 2.5 years old at minimum). It has been proven over and over again that children are LOADS safer when rear-faced in a collision. This is because their heads are either in or very close to the car's center of gravity. The impact on their bodies is much "gentler" and they are a good deal less likely to sustain permenant injury. But! That is another topic for another post, which I will eventually get to!

Another crunchy thing I'm doing is using a midwife instead of an obstetrician. If you've watched "The Business of Being Born" you are probably aware that most obstetricians never see a live birth until they have their M.D. and are the attending physician at one! If you've never seen that documentary, you may be shocked to know that obstetricians receive zero in delivering babies while they are in school, even though American's think that birth is as OB's #1 job. That is one of the reasons I chose a midwife, they have received a masters degree in nursing and then gone on to study labor and delivery as a profession in order to receive their CNM license. They know a great deal about a woman's body and what causes her to labor well and are more open to "long" labors than an obstetrician. It is unlikely that your midwife will start off pushing pitocin and an epidural. Now, if your labor has gone on for days, YES, she will probably recommend it in order to give you relief, but, that is what interventions are for! They are for women who's bodies need a little help, but it is important to realize that that is not most women, which is what a midwife does

Gary and I have looked into hiring a doula as well. "Doula" is a term I had never heard until I got pregnant. Basically, having a doula is like having a mom who has helped dozens of babies come into the world. She just encourages you, tells you what things mean, calms you down, and helps you interpret the signs your body is giving. It sounds like an AWESOME idea to me, especially since my mother is 700 miles away! We met with a doula today and talked with her for about 45 minutes and she was so cool! She said she would help me come up with a birth plan and give me direction in choosing a labor technique which is really nice too. Unfortunately, the going rate for a doula is about $600 for a birth, a reasonable price, but not an option for every budget. (Especially the dirt-poor budget!) We're planning on doing a water birth and most doulas rent birthing pools to their clients for lower-than-going-rate. This doula's was still about $150, which is, to be honest, what you can buy one for. So, since that discount isn't substantial, I think we'll be skipping the doula aspect for this birth.

The closer I'm getting to delivery (16 weeks!!) the more nervous I am! It's about time for us to tour the hospital, write a birth plan, pick out a full name!!!!, and now, find a birthing pool. It's come upon me so quickly! I'm thankful that I'm in school this semester because the weeks go by so quickly! It's coming close to the time to meet our sweet baby :) But first, we get to meet my sisters baby, Zoe Amanda! Hurry up, Zoe!!!

Newborn Photography

I'm really lucky that my husband and I have similar ideas on basically everything. For example, for the most part, we both think maternity pictures are creepy. This is great because if he really wanted me to have some taken, I might feel a little annoyed! It's not that I think pregnant women are ugly or unattractive, I just think that most of the poses pregnant women are placed in are creepy and the most of the ideas for maternity shoots are tacky. (With a few exceptions, of course, like this picture).  I don't know why it is so hard to simply take an attractive picture of a pregnant woman which showcases her growing belly without throwing in a creepy husband, photo-shopping a sonogram onto her stomach, or insisting on "tasteful nudity" (which is usually not tasteful). Please, stop being so weird, people.

On the other hand, we both place a high priority on newborn photos. We agreed before we were pregnant that we would much rather spend a few hundred dollars on a newborn photography session than getting pictures of me looking fat and uncomfortable. We both want precious pictures like this of our sweet baby girl that we can proudly hang on the walls, show to her boyfriends, and cry over when she get's married.

I started looking for a photographer about a week ago. I have seen plenty of pictures of baby's in unsafe positions (see below and to the right!) Obviously I want my baby to be safe, so I looked at photos from several local photographers before contacting any. I'm a pretty frugal person, so I was trying to find a photographer who took good pictures AND that I could afford! That meant, basically, that pictures were included in the cost. I found a lot of photographers who charged $150 per session, but most of the packages didn't include a single picture! (and they didn't have prices listed for prints!). I understand that photographers do a lot of work learning about photographer, as well as taking and editing pictures, but I still can't justify spending that much money just to have the pictures taken. What if I had the session done and then couldn't afford to purchase any of the photos? That would be a huge waste of money...

 
Anyway, the moral of the story is, keep looking and you'll find what you want (probably). I kept looking and eventually realized I already knew a photographer who charged a reasonable amount and included digital files in the price! AND her prints are very reasonable, so I'm thrilled to say we booked a session to photograph our precious baby and it won't include any of the miserable ideas down below.