The Countdown Is On!!!

32 weeks and counting...

So I'm in the 8th month of pregnancy, I'm 32 weeks + 3 days but who's counting :D As I'm nearing the homestretch of this experience I'm overwhelmed with an array of different emotions. I can't wait to feel more 'human' and like myself again, and I can't wait to meet this little baby. I'm also a little nervous about how this baby will impact the dynamic that I have with my 14 & 11 year old children and how they will respond to this. I know my husband will be an amazing father, and a huge help and support. I have no idea how our dog will react to no longer being the baby (fur baby) because there is someone smaller than him who has even more needs. I realize all of these emotions are very normal, and I know everything has a way of working out...but I think at times the hormones take over and I start to get a little anxious. I was early with both of my other pregnancies, but in the world of pregnancy & babies...there are NO rules or guarantees with delivery dates! My son graduates 8th grade on May 25th...which is literally one day after my due date, so that also creates a touch of anxiety. He said he understands if I can't be there, but honestly that's a huge day in a middle school kid's life, and I want to be there for it! And seriously this pregnancy brain is taking over, I had a hard time keeping track of my score at bunco last night!

Anyway, I know that everything will work out, and obviously most of these emotions are over things that are completely out of my control anyway. I know I felt a lot of the same emotions when I was pregnant with my daughter, and I was worried about how my son would respond to that changing dynamic. It seems funny now to have worried about it because it was such a natural progression once she was here.

 I do however, have a difficult time with my mind-body disconnect. What I mean by that is, I have tried to remain active, and for the most part I've continued doing everything I would normally do...but in these last few weeks, I have had to start modifying certain exercises, or ask for help with certain tasks. During my first two pregnancies, I didn't exercise, I continued for the most part with my daily activities, but I also gained 55-60 pounds. So, this round my goal as I've mentioned before was to remain active and really stay as fit and healthy as I can throughout this pregnancy. In doing so, a big part of my routine has been to exercise 3-5 times each week. So, I finally realized in recent weeks that a lot of my hip pain & soreness was related to some of the exercises I was doing. Now I have begun modifying those movements, which is difficult because in my head I'm thinking...I should be able to do this! I've come to the realization however, that I can't compare myself to women who are able to run or do box jumps up until the day before they give birth. I think that's amazing and I'm proud of those women & their accomplishments, but if I'm honest with myself, I am not in that category. However, that doesn't mean that I can't still get a good workout & push myself to work hard within my own capacity.

Our Home Birth Decision...

We also had an appointment with our midwife this week, which is ALWAYS exciting! We get to listen to the baby's heartbeat on the doppler and I just love that part. We are not finding out what the baby's gender is, mostly because my husband has never gone through this experience and he said he wants to be surprised. We had decided we wanted to have a homebirth experience actually a long while before we ever got married or pregnant. Now, depending on where you're from, or where you live, homebirth is either something well known, or something that sounds crazy to you, it seems there is no in between! Where we live in Sioux City, Iowa homebirth is not as well known, and midwives are not contracted in our hospitals & we don't have any birth centers. The biggest cities north & south of us have birth centers and hospitals with midwives in them, but they are about an hour and half travel time. 

I had my first two children in a hospital, with very different birth experiences. I was very young when I had my son, 19 at the time of delivery, and towards the end of that pregnancy I was very ready to just hold him in my arms and I was ready to be done being pregnant! I tried all sorts of old wives tales to try and get labor started around mother's day that year, although my due date was technically June 2. What I remember most vividly was drinking castor oil (because it was absolutely disgusting!) a couple of people told me they swore by it that it helped their labor start. Well, my water broke on May 15th in the middle of the night, but no labor started. So, I checked into the hospital around 9 a.m. the morning of May 15th, and still nothing had started on it's own. They admitted me & started me right away on a pitocin drip and re-broke my water with a pretty long scary looking needle. I was not in a room at this time but out in the hall in a makeshift room because the hospital was so busy with deliveries that day. I was rolled into a room about an hour later and I labored all day with no real significance. I had my mind set that I'd like to deliver my son without any pain medicine or epidural. After about 8 1/2 hours of labor, I didn't think I could take it anymore, the contractions were right on top of each other, and the doctor said there was no telling how much longer it might be before the baby was here. I was exhausted, scared, and reaching my breaking point, I ended up opting for an epidural. I can't remember exactly what they told me, just that because of how far I had progressed the epidural could still be administered, just not a full dosage or something to that effect. They gave me the epidural around 5:30 p.m. or so, I calmed down a little and was much more relaxed and breathing through the contractions and I couldn't feel them much at all. Around 6:00 p.m. I felt a sudden urge to have to 'push'. I was told to wait until the doctor could come back into the room to check me, and then we could see if I was ready to push or not. She came into the room, and I was given the green light to start pushing. I pushed for about 20-25 minutes, at some point I felt the 'ring of fire', I had an episiotomy, and Keaton was born at 6:27 p.m. I had stitches, they used a syringe in each of my thighs to give me something although I have no recollection of being asked or told what it was, and then a nurse started to 'massage' (more like do handstand on) my uterus to get it to start contracting down. His APGAR score was fantastic, he was wrapped up like a burrito and they handed him to me. I looked down at this tiny little human & my whole world changed, I was absolutely without a doubt unconditionally in love. About twenty minutes later they were moving me to a regular room, no longer the delivery room, and I told them I was going to be sick, I threw up about three times before they got me to the recovery room. I felt sick the rest of the night. The nurses kept bringing Keaton in to breastfeed, but he wouldn't latch on, or if he did he'd fall asleep almost immediately. I had a very difficult time in the first few days trying to get him to nurse. Finally after contacting the La Leche League, questioning every nurse, and my mom, miraculously Keaton got hungry enough to figure out that he needed to eat, and on day 8 of his life, he had it figured out! 

With my daughter the experience was very different. I was just as anxious to be done with the pregnancy and move onto having this new baby, but my labor started on its own. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect because my body hadn't naturally gone through the labor process on it's own before, and I didn't know when I would need to go to the hospital. I didn't want to go too early & get stuck lying in a bed if nothing was progressing, but I didn't want to wait too long and deliver my daughter in the car either! I decided to head to the hospital when my contractions were regular, about 4 minutes apart, and to the point where I would have to stop doing what I was doing to take a little break and breathe through the contraction. I was admitted to the hospital around 10:30 a.m. on January 5, 2005, and went right to a room. I had the sweetest nurse and she kept asking me how I felt. I told her I felt fine, as soon as I had sat down in bed the contractions were very manageable still, and easy to breathe through. I told her my birth plan was to deliver this baby without any pain medication. The protocol at the Las Colinas Hospital in Texas where we lived, was to get every patient set up with an IV in the event that they needed to administer meds or prep for surgery. So, they started me with a saline drip. I sat in bed and watched tv for a while, and then the contractions started to get more intense around noon. I was still doing fine with managing the pain on my own, and my nurse warned me that the window of time to have any pain medication was closing because of how my labor was progressing. I still felt very capable of managing the pain at that point. At around 12:30 I had an exorcist moment where the pain became very intense and I said maybe I might want some sort of pain meds. My nurse said I had passed the point of it being safe to administer and so I was left staring straight down the barrel of what felt like a loaded weapon as I assessed my options out of this predicament. I kept breathing and laboring and about 15 minutes later I said I felt like I needed to push. The doctor came in to check me and said I needed to wait a few minutes until he could get prepped. That felt like an eternity because every nerve ending in your body is on absolute edge and you feel like the only relief will come from pushing...and then you are told to wait! Finally I was given the 'ok' to push, and at 1:12 p.m. Reese was born! Immediately after she was born, I felt a rush of endorphins, the pain was over, and the contractions ceased. The nurses had to 'massage' my uterus like before, but this time I knew what I was in for and although it was uncomfortable, it seemed to go by faster. They laid Reese right on my chest so I could meet her, wiped her down, then cut the cord, checked her APGAR, and finally gave her back to me. She had no trouble at all latching on and was nursing within the first half an hour after delivery. I felt really good too, a little sore, but more so I was wide awake, felt ALIVE, and I was ravenously hungry! 

It is my personal assessment with reading various studies, talking to other professionals, hearing other women's stories, and speaking with my midwife that these differences in labor & delivery are very common given the cascade of events. A lot of babies born via c-section, or with the mom being induced & given an epidural have trouble nursing in the first few days to weeks of life, when compared to a normal unmedicated vaginal delivery. Why? It comes down to biology, the hormone released naturally by the body during labor is oxytocin, and it starts an entire cascade of other interactions and hormone releases between mom & baby that forms a bonding process, milk let down, and uterine contractions postpartum, just to name a few. When women are induced during labor they are given pitocin which is synthetic drug designed to mimic the naturally produced hormone oxytocin, and while it is very good at producing uterine contractions, it doesn't have all of the same effects on the body. Also, the induced contractions from pitocin are often harder, longer, and more intense than those naturally built up during labor that is brought on with oxytocin. Pitocin can statistically triple the chance of needing a c-section, and at the least can cause more stress to mom & baby during labor that it leads to other medical intervention. ***Disclaimer*** I'm not saying one is more 'right' than the other because every situation and circumstance is different, I'm merely pointing out the differences as to how they affect the body during labor & delivery.

For me, I had a much better experience with my daughter's birth, when compared to my son's. Both labors had their own pain and difficult stages, but the biggest difference to me was the personal recovery time, and the ease of breastfeeding with my daughter compared to my son. This is largely part of the reason that I have chosen to go through a homebirth. I also feel comfortable with my ability to manage the pain, I feel very comfortable with my midwife Sarah and her professional experience, as well as being in the comfort of my own home environment during the whole experience. No interns coming in to watch, no strangers wandering into the wrong room, no beeping and prodding and uncomfortable hospital beds. My husband will be right there with me, and once the baby is delivered and Sarah has done an exam on the baby and made sure all is well, we'll get tucked into our own bed and she'll check on us once more a few hours later. If something should go wrong, or not progress correctly and she thinks we need to go to the hospital, she will make that call and we only live about 3 minutes away from the nearest hospital. My nurse practitioner/midwife lives in Sioux City, and I'll attach the link to her website here: http://serenityhomebirth.com/ in case anyone is interested to learn more! 

This is my personal story and experience, everyone has their own, and no two are exactly alike! The most powerful thing is that women have been birthing babies since the beginning of time, it's what sets us apart from men because it's something they'll never be able to do. It's why being a mommy is so special, because it's such a huge role to bond with your baby from those first little movements you feel early in pregnancy, to those big movements that make your belly look like an alien is trying to escape, through labor & delivery, and every moment afterwards. I realize that many women have different birth stories, and everyone has their own preference. I'm not saying any 'one' kind is better than another, it is my opinion that each woman should be able to choose what her birth plan ultimately looks like. I have many friends who are terrified of the notion of home birth, I have family members and cousins who prefer hospitals, and then other women find our choice very empowering. Ultimately every woman needs to go with what she is comfortable with, or what her circumstances allow, because at the end of the day, no matter what you choose, you'll end up holding that precious little bundle in your arms and your entire world will be just a little brighter.

www.beachbodycoach.com/DRJENNCHICOINE