weo, bé's head has dropped. this means that bé's head has descended into the pelvic region & sitting on top of my cervix (this is also called lightening not to be confused with lightning, though it does feel electrifying at times). i've been carrying low for a few weeks now, but wasn't quite ready on any level. bé and i have been in conversation about that; i let bé know i needed a few weeks to get ready. respecting my wishes, bé would yo-yo down for a brief touch & go but not linger for longer than my startled gasp before nestling her/his butt under my ribs again.
i've been doing prenatal chiro (specifically network chiro & webster technique) which has been a major blessing in terms of alleviating my chronic pain and adjusting my pelvis & uterus. last week, chiro told me that my pubic symphisis was torqued & stuck. i wasn't surprised, i've been dealing with that off and on for the last 7 years. sometimes it's been so bad my left leg had been shorter by more than an inch. what made this significant now is that meant that the pregnancy relaxin hormone wasn't getting into that joint and it wasn't loosening up like it's sposed to for birth. i wonder for how many other women have had trauma/injury that's impacted their hips & pelvic joints and don't get prenatal chiro treatment during pregnancy and unknowingly get misdiagnosed with cephalopelvic disorder (meaning baby's head is sposedly too big to fit through the pelvis) resulting in unnecessary C-section. (the US has double the rate of cesareans than what is globally considered safe; 80% of doctors admitted they will perform a cesarean to avoid liability and i'm betting the other 20% do it because they have a golf game in Kauai scheduled.) how many cesareans could be prevented with prenatal chiropractic treatment? anyways, my uterus is finally relatively symmetrical as well. it's funny how your cells & organs have these habitual holding patterns that they like to revert to and it takes a lot of encouragement and de-stressing for them to change for the better. my midwife also had me take evening primrose oil to help soften the joint. and after two painful adjustment sessions last week (fortunately though humans are hardwired to forget pain), my pelvis has been loosening as it should.
last night, T. and i practiced labor exercises and found what works for us both. T. lead me through different relaxation techniques and guided meditation. now that we have the birth tub and our birth team is in place (midwife, midwife's assistant, doula & her assistant), i told bé that it was okay to go deeper into my pelvis now, to start practicing, that we are a team and i need his/her help to get through labor; s/he knows what s/he is sposed to do. immediately, and i do mean immediately, bé went deep. every time i gasped at the electrifying sensation bé would pull back a little until i learned not to greet her/him with such chagrin. and got used to the sensation of a head on my cervix. i'm still getting used to not having a little butt lodged under my ribcage. it rather feels like a tennis ball is lodged in my left pelvis. now i know where the preggo-waddle comes from.
bé stayed down there all night. i could feel her/him in my pelvis every time i got up to go pee or eat. i even had a couple of real contractions last night, not the braxton-hicks uterine tightening, but the uterine menstrual kind.
so, we're getting closer. of course we still have to wait for T. to start parental leave and my mom to get here on the 25th before we'll truly be ready.
the funny thing is that after ignoring me for all of the second trimester, týtý has usurped rồngtý on my lap (what little space there is with a huge belly in the way), is the first to greet me in the mornings (and sometimes when i do my wee hours of the morning wee breaks), gotten even more wily about darting into the bedroom especially in the wee hours, and is generally following me around more than usual. maybe she can sense what's up and is asserting her feminine prerogative to be my midwife. (factoid: feral sister cats will midwife each other and co-raise their kittens together. neat huh! i mean lionesses do it, so its not entirely alien behavior to the genus.) there is something about the energy of birth that transcends species. i've attended two animal births by the mamma's persistent insistence (one was our chowchow Ling-Ling, one was my ex's aunty's cat whose name i forget. she was so appreciative, she tried to give me one of the newborn kittens but i told it needed her more). it remains to be seen how our cats will react to homebirth. they will either go completely spastic and turbo around the house and up the walls which they already do 2-3 times a day (in which case they will be banished to the back bedroom), or they will try to reassure us in their feline fashion as they are wont to do when i'm deep breathing through a braxton. as long as they stay out of the birth tub, we're good.
Showing posts with label midwifery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label midwifery. Show all posts
Friday, February 15, 2008
Sunday, February 3, 2008
36 weeks
36 is the magic number. means we are out of preemie range and baby can come any time now. we are conversating with baby asking for at least 3 weeks grace. we still have a few things to be ready. i'm in good spirits, though easily fatigued. we did an Ikea run last sunday. what did i get? irritable. belligerent. somewhat violent. costco makes me that way too. i've gained somewhere along 30 lbs; got abdominal stretchmarks (it's hereditary folks. all the cocoa butter in the world ain't gonna change your genes); navel has not popped; no swelling or shoe size changes; just a gnarly charley horse just in my left calf. i'm back to back sleeping because sleeping on my sides aggravates my herniated disk/pre-existing sciataca and still having lots of braxtons from doing too much. in these last couple of weeks i'm bumping up the prenatal chiro. it helps that T.'s
supplemental insurance covers it where my own doesn't. (random good news, my PPO is partially reimbursing us for the homebirth! yay! and for the birthtub! y'know it costs $250 to rent a birth tub from local entrepeneurs. but it costs just $185 to buy one from the Waterbirth non-profit--ok $285 if you buy the accessories kit b/c are you really going to blow it up with your mouth?. so we're buying the hospital grade one which is $300 + kit, getting partially reimbursed and then donating it to our midwife.)
i started maternity leave on friday. it's fantastic! on my last day of work, i was as giddy as a 13 year old after having consumed pixie sticks, pica, and fundip washed down with some pineapple nehi soda. i actually managed to finish editing, laying out & formatting the annual report. or at least as much of it as had actually been turned in to me prior to me leaving. i didn't finish a myriad of other tasks, but i don't seem to care.
of course this meant that i was 35 minutes late to my own "surprise" workplace baby shower. typical. seem like i am always on some deadline minutes before a party in my honor. it was a "surprise" because i hadn't really expected anything (trung lied well for once. should i be concerned at his new ability?) and because it was a combo farewell party for Chanda who left the organization so i didn't it had anything to do with me until Chanda called me that pm to say she was running late from her new job and btw what kind of dessert did i want her to pick up for my party.
friday dawned blue and clear if a trifle crisp. one of the rare clear days of the year thus far. it's been record-breaking storms for the last month interspersed with occasional patches of sun.
a perfect day to begin maternity leave. had my prenatal chiro, ran costco errand with Chanda's help in preparation for the community baby shower. got some great cotton fleece at Stonemountain for a baby blanket, reusable flannel baby wipes, and a co-sleeping pad (why pay $200 for the retail version when mom is gonna help me make one for $50?). this markup on baby products is outrageous for eco-conscious parents on a tiiiight budget. an organic baby blanket can cost in the range of $100. i found the softest organic cotton fleece for $25/yd. slap on some trim and voila. it's a homemade organic blanket for less than $30 plus labor. but that's love so you can't really put a price on that.
of course, i haven't taken my sewing machine out of the storage closet yet. so i'll let you know how i feel about DIY parenting when i'm tangled in interlock thread.
for the crafty among you. here are my upcoming baby projects:
*reusable flannel baby wipes (just need to cut & serge the edges)
*two-sided flannel receiving blanket. still deciding if i should use trim.
*doubleknit big bad baby blanket in alpaca & silk yarn. first i have to finish the blanket for Le-Anh (it's gorgeous btw, Trang)
*co-sleeping pad (mom's helping me with this.)
i will update about my mother's blessingway and the coed baby shower later, when we've uploaded the photos.
suffice to say i feel very blessed to entering the community of mothers. and my girlfriends are amazing. Dr. Tuyen hooked me up with a gorgeous quilt with collective contributions from my gals. 3 weeks, 10 hour days. that's love.
supplemental insurance covers it where my own doesn't. (random good news, my PPO is partially reimbursing us for the homebirth! yay! and for the birthtub! y'know it costs $250 to rent a birth tub from local entrepeneurs. but it costs just $185 to buy one from the Waterbirth non-profit--ok $285 if you buy the accessories kit b/c are you really going to blow it up with your mouth?. so we're buying the hospital grade one which is $300 + kit, getting partially reimbursed and then donating it to our midwife.)i started maternity leave on friday. it's fantastic! on my last day of work, i was as giddy as a 13 year old after having consumed pixie sticks, pica, and fundip washed down with some pineapple nehi soda. i actually managed to finish editing, laying out & formatting the annual report. or at least as much of it as had actually been turned in to me prior to me leaving. i didn't finish a myriad of other tasks, but i don't seem to care.
of course this meant that i was 35 minutes late to my own "surprise" workplace baby shower. typical. seem like i am always on some deadline minutes before a party in my honor. it was a "surprise" because i hadn't really expected anything (trung lied well for once. should i be concerned at his new ability?) and because it was a combo farewell party for Chanda who left the organization so i didn't it had anything to do with me until Chanda called me that pm to say she was running late from her new job and btw what kind of dessert did i want her to pick up for my party.
friday dawned blue and clear if a trifle crisp. one of the rare clear days of the year thus far. it's been record-breaking storms for the last month interspersed with occasional patches of sun.
a perfect day to begin maternity leave. had my prenatal chiro, ran costco errand with Chanda's help in preparation for the community baby shower. got some great cotton fleece at Stonemountain for a baby blanket, reusable flannel baby wipes, and a co-sleeping pad (why pay $200 for the retail version when mom is gonna help me make one for $50?). this markup on baby products is outrageous for eco-conscious parents on a tiiiight budget. an organic baby blanket can cost in the range of $100. i found the softest organic cotton fleece for $25/yd. slap on some trim and voila. it's a homemade organic blanket for less than $30 plus labor. but that's love so you can't really put a price on that.
of course, i haven't taken my sewing machine out of the storage closet yet. so i'll let you know how i feel about DIY parenting when i'm tangled in interlock thread.
for the crafty among you. here are my upcoming baby projects:
*reusable flannel baby wipes (just need to cut & serge the edges)
*two-sided flannel receiving blanket. still deciding if i should use trim.
*doubleknit big bad baby blanket in alpaca & silk yarn. first i have to finish the blanket for Le-Anh (it's gorgeous btw, Trang)
*co-sleeping pad (mom's helping me with this.)
i will update about my mother's blessingway and the coed baby shower later, when we've uploaded the photos.
suffice to say i feel very blessed to entering the community of mothers. and my girlfriends are amazing. Dr. Tuyen hooked me up with a gorgeous quilt with collective contributions from my gals. 3 weeks, 10 hour days. that's love.
Friday, January 25, 2008
the politics of malpractice
a friend o'mine was concerned about the fact that homebirth midwives do not have malpractice liability insurance. we talked about the financial barriers--most insurance companies refuse to cover midwives or at astronomically unaffordable rates. and i later wrote this to her:
i read this article about malpractice in southwest magazine (i think. pregnancy brain.) a couple of years ago about malpractice and accountability/ethics. the point of having malpractice insurance is in case you get sued. the ethical part of the question comes in when you look at why or when people sue. so the article was saying that its not just having an undesired outcome that makes people sue, but that the majority of malpractice lawsuits occur when they have an undesired outcome and they are dis-informed or ignored by their care provider afterwards when the patient/family try to understand why/what happened and get closure (usually because the care provider is afraid of getting sued, they don't trust their patient, they clam up usually and this is a fairly universal hospital policy/protocol too). the lack of accountability and violation of their trust rightly infuriates people and they sue to get access to the information not primarily for money nor to "reverse" the outcome. they see the monetary damages as a way to teach the hospital/doctor that it should give the information/closure to patients in the first place. and so now, a few hospitals are now trying a new mediating approach where care providers talk to the families after an undesired outcome, give them what information they have, and admit any mistakes and apologize if necessary. the result--the family gets closure & does not pursue a malpractice lawsuit.
from my perspective, insurance in general is designed to financially protect your assets (whether life, car or home); malpractice insurance is really a way for the medical establishment to avoid accountability and to protect their financial assets. its sort of a moot point for most midwives because of the mutual trust building, the ethics of empowering the client/family particularly with information, and accountability to the client. if midwives had to get malpractice insurance, they would go out of business b/c of the expense & barriers. and if they got sued (regardless of insurance or no), they would go out of business. and that's also one of the reasons why many hospitals are reluctant to grant midwives hospital privileges b/c the hospital would be liable in the event of a lawsuit. what makes it moot is that because of the empowerment, trust and relationship, midwives aren't as likely to be in a situation where a family feels like its only recourse to getting closure about an undesired outcome is to sue. really overwhelmingly midwives are sued/persecuted with criminal charges by doctors and hospitals more than you see midwives sued by clients. so that's the larger context. and from my experience, when my niece died at birth last year, the nurse midwife (similar to CNMs in the East Bay, had hospital privileges) came and talked to my sister soon after. and my sister got the closure she needed around how Anabelle died. it didn't change the outcome or her grief, but she understood why/how it happened even as she disagreed with the standard medical procedure to resuscitate.
malpractice insurance doesn't prevent undesired outcomes. that's a part of the package when we choose to have a homebirth. we are informed about risk, outcomes and prevention and empowered to make choices. and thats part of the very small risk we accept to have a normal and safe birth.
malpractice insurance doesnt protect the patient; it protects the doctor.
i read this article about malpractice in southwest magazine (i think. pregnancy brain.) a couple of years ago about malpractice and accountability/ethics. the point of having malpractice insurance is in case you get sued. the ethical part of the question comes in when you look at why or when people sue. so the article was saying that its not just having an undesired outcome that makes people sue, but that the majority of malpractice lawsuits occur when they have an undesired outcome and they are dis-informed or ignored by their care provider afterwards when the patient/family try to understand why/what happened and get closure (usually because the care provider is afraid of getting sued, they don't trust their patient, they clam up usually and this is a fairly universal hospital policy/protocol too). the lack of accountability and violation of their trust rightly infuriates people and they sue to get access to the information not primarily for money nor to "reverse" the outcome. they see the monetary damages as a way to teach the hospital/doctor that it should give the information/closure to patients in the first place. and so now, a few hospitals are now trying a new mediating approach where care providers talk to the families after an undesired outcome, give them what information they have, and admit any mistakes and apologize if necessary. the result--the family gets closure & does not pursue a malpractice lawsuit.
from my perspective, insurance in general is designed to financially protect your assets (whether life, car or home); malpractice insurance is really a way for the medical establishment to avoid accountability and to protect their financial assets. its sort of a moot point for most midwives because of the mutual trust building, the ethics of empowering the client/family particularly with information, and accountability to the client. if midwives had to get malpractice insurance, they would go out of business b/c of the expense & barriers. and if they got sued (regardless of insurance or no), they would go out of business. and that's also one of the reasons why many hospitals are reluctant to grant midwives hospital privileges b/c the hospital would be liable in the event of a lawsuit. what makes it moot is that because of the empowerment, trust and relationship, midwives aren't as likely to be in a situation where a family feels like its only recourse to getting closure about an undesired outcome is to sue. really overwhelmingly midwives are sued/persecuted with criminal charges by doctors and hospitals more than you see midwives sued by clients. so that's the larger context. and from my experience, when my niece died at birth last year, the nurse midwife (similar to CNMs in the East Bay, had hospital privileges) came and talked to my sister soon after. and my sister got the closure she needed around how Anabelle died. it didn't change the outcome or her grief, but she understood why/how it happened even as she disagreed with the standard medical procedure to resuscitate.
malpractice insurance doesn't prevent undesired outcomes. that's a part of the package when we choose to have a homebirth. we are informed about risk, outcomes and prevention and empowered to make choices. and thats part of the very small risk we accept to have a normal and safe birth.
malpractice insurance doesnt protect the patient; it protects the doctor.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
seven months
ok, so it's been a minute since i've posted. i've been meaning to put out a blog during month 6th but between one thing and another (mostly work and the decompressing afterwards) i havent gotten around to it.
around 24 weeks, i became visibly pregnant. not the "is she, isn't she, maybe i shouldn't assume, could be an all-you-can-eat buffet meal" kind of pregnant, but the "whoa nelly, where-the-heck-did-that-come-from?" kind of pregnant. no complaints. i've actually been enjoying it. in spite of the anti-reproduction/population control misanthropes out there, there's a great deal of social benefit to being visibly pregnant. i get doors opened for me; i've gone to the head of bathroom lines; i don't have to carry anything; i get good seating, a lot of smiles, eye contact, compliments. in other words, courtesy & consideration. behavior that is generally missing in daily social interactions at large.
now i do get the "you're so big" comments from folks i haven't seen in a while and even from folks i see everyday. curiously enough, though i have my own vanities & hang ups, that comment doesn't bother me. mainly because i am big and i am just as amazed as they are. its absolutely marvellous. there is a little Being inside of me growing day-by-day. i can feel lekkle paws testing the boundaries of his/her known world, responding to my voice, to T's voice, to our hands, to whatever i consume, to life itself. in a misogynistic culture where a woman's body is gauged by comparison to a man's body and found lacking, how can i be anything but pleased at the innate capability of my body to nurture this spark of life and love?
for whatever reason, whatever vibe i put out into the world, i haven't gotten the random strangers (or even friends) touching my belly. and the folks that have touched my belly have been in a familiar (as in they feel like family), non-threatening way. and baby usually gives them an exhibition of his/her shyness/kicking power.
i have to cut this post short because i worked 11 days straight on work deadlines and yesterday we had a full day at the farmer's market, walked halfway around Lake Merritt, had our prenatal appointment, and then off to the city to see The Color Purple at the Orpheum with free tickets that our neighbors Pablo & Suzette gave us since they weren't able to attend themselves. (like the movie & novel, it was amazingly good, powerful, moving, emotional without being sentimental, cliche or trite, and characters with depth and nuance (even the "mister" character). i loved the movie as a kid and i cried through the whole musical. it was even better than the movie... and it was nice to have a real date rather than our usual hot fri/saturday Tarzhay date. inevitably on date night, we find ourselves at Target.)
anyways, after so much activity & work (plus T's been painting the bedroom so there's been all that commotion & related chores), and the nutmeg OD, over the last week, i've been increasingly been having more & more braxton-hicks contractions so i'm kinda on bedrest now. midwife's orders. they're not painful, just uterus toning rock hard to prepare for labor & birth. yesterday mornin, i had 6 braxtons before getting out of bed at 10am and that's not counting the ones i had in my sleep. normally, you have less than six a day at this stage. in the short amount of time after we got off the Fruitvale BART and walked the 30 yards to the car near midnight, i had 4 braxtons back-to-back each one progressively slowing me down. so i'm mostly obeying. no early labor for us. luckily i was planning on taking comptime on monday (and some on tuesday) anyways so i kept my schedule clear of meetings. and what with the holidays and all, i'm mostly working 3-4 day weeks until i go on maternity leave on February 1st. so that's better, more sane.
good news, we're back on track with baby growth. measuring exactly 28 weeks as i should.* a month ago we had a blip where i was measuring 26 weeks when i should have been 24. so, this means (and we already knew intuitively and just by daily palpation), no twins. sigh. slightly disappointed, though relieved that i can have a homebirth after all. and this also means baby is not growing too fast.
ooh. here comes another braxton. i'm out.
oh one last thing, try the dark chocolate sea salt caramels at Trader Joes. i don't normally like caramel because of its cloying sweetness, but they are divine!
*midwife trick of the trade is that your uterus grows 1 cm for every week past 20 weeks so you measure from the pubic bone to the fundus and provided that you & baby are growing normally, it matches with your dates one-to-one exactly! 28 weeks = 28 centimeters. yet another reason why the inches/feet system makes no rational sense.
around 24 weeks, i became visibly pregnant. not the "is she, isn't she, maybe i shouldn't assume, could be an all-you-can-eat buffet meal" kind of pregnant, but the "whoa nelly, where-the-heck-did-that-come-from?" kind of pregnant. no complaints. i've actually been enjoying it. in spite of the anti-reproduction/population control misanthropes out there, there's a great deal of social benefit to being visibly pregnant. i get doors opened for me; i've gone to the head of bathroom lines; i don't have to carry anything; i get good seating, a lot of smiles, eye contact, compliments. in other words, courtesy & consideration. behavior that is generally missing in daily social interactions at large.
now i do get the "you're so big" comments from folks i haven't seen in a while and even from folks i see everyday. curiously enough, though i have my own vanities & hang ups, that comment doesn't bother me. mainly because i am big and i am just as amazed as they are. its absolutely marvellous. there is a little Being inside of me growing day-by-day. i can feel lekkle paws testing the boundaries of his/her known world, responding to my voice, to T's voice, to our hands, to whatever i consume, to life itself. in a misogynistic culture where a woman's body is gauged by comparison to a man's body and found lacking, how can i be anything but pleased at the innate capability of my body to nurture this spark of life and love?
for whatever reason, whatever vibe i put out into the world, i haven't gotten the random strangers (or even friends) touching my belly. and the folks that have touched my belly have been in a familiar (as in they feel like family), non-threatening way. and baby usually gives them an exhibition of his/her shyness/kicking power.
i have to cut this post short because i worked 11 days straight on work deadlines and yesterday we had a full day at the farmer's market, walked halfway around Lake Merritt, had our prenatal appointment, and then off to the city to see The Color Purple at the Orpheum with free tickets that our neighbors Pablo & Suzette gave us since they weren't able to attend themselves. (like the movie & novel, it was amazingly good, powerful, moving, emotional without being sentimental, cliche or trite, and characters with depth and nuance (even the "mister" character). i loved the movie as a kid and i cried through the whole musical. it was even better than the movie... and it was nice to have a real date rather than our usual hot fri/saturday Tarzhay date. inevitably on date night, we find ourselves at Target.)
anyways, after so much activity & work (plus T's been painting the bedroom so there's been all that commotion & related chores), and the nutmeg OD, over the last week, i've been increasingly been having more & more braxton-hicks contractions so i'm kinda on bedrest now. midwife's orders. they're not painful, just uterus toning rock hard to prepare for labor & birth. yesterday mornin, i had 6 braxtons before getting out of bed at 10am and that's not counting the ones i had in my sleep. normally, you have less than six a day at this stage. in the short amount of time after we got off the Fruitvale BART and walked the 30 yards to the car near midnight, i had 4 braxtons back-to-back each one progressively slowing me down. so i'm mostly obeying. no early labor for us. luckily i was planning on taking comptime on monday (and some on tuesday) anyways so i kept my schedule clear of meetings. and what with the holidays and all, i'm mostly working 3-4 day weeks until i go on maternity leave on February 1st. so that's better, more sane.
good news, we're back on track with baby growth. measuring exactly 28 weeks as i should.* a month ago we had a blip where i was measuring 26 weeks when i should have been 24. so, this means (and we already knew intuitively and just by daily palpation), no twins. sigh. slightly disappointed, though relieved that i can have a homebirth after all. and this also means baby is not growing too fast.
ooh. here comes another braxton. i'm out.
oh one last thing, try the dark chocolate sea salt caramels at Trader Joes. i don't normally like caramel because of its cloying sweetness, but they are divine!
*midwife trick of the trade is that your uterus grows 1 cm for every week past 20 weeks so you measure from the pubic bone to the fundus and provided that you & baby are growing normally, it matches with your dates one-to-one exactly! 28 weeks = 28 centimeters. yet another reason why the inches/feet system makes no rational sense.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
fifteen
i was a trifle disconcerted last month by the idea, but discussing with our midwife Selena my moon cycle journal, LMP, spin, factoring in my bà ngoại's stroke, the womb blessing, my emotional/spiritual state at the probable times of ovulation & conception, and the location of my fundus (top of the uterus), i'm not as far along as previously thought. it had thrown me for a loop earlier because i had gotten so invested in the progressive week-by-week pregnancy/baby descriptions. i surprised myself how much of the pregnancy i was still externalizing to some western "authoritative" scientific text in spite of eschewing at least some of the unnecessary interventions of technology. shows you how much we internalize the western production of knowledge and the cartesian body-mind binary. i do have a cerebral tendency. earlier this year, i saw my sister's acupuncturist-chiropractor Dr. Dawn and she diagnosed my pulse and told me that i live in my head too much. she also surmised that i was the youngest child, and independent/headstrong/slightly rebellious. that wasn't from my pulse though, that was from the tattoos.
so now we collectively estimate that i'm 15 weeks along, making our due date March 1st. (this means Liz, that i wasn't pregnant yet when we saw you at Yan's 100 days.) Selena suggested i consider continuing hypnotherapy with Nancy (herself a former midwife) since emotional state profoundly influences birth and Anabelle's anniversary may jumpstart or stall labor. but between my out-of-pocket costs--prenatal bellydancing, tai chi class, going to chiro, childbirth preparation class, baby CPR certification, acupuncture co-pays, maternity clothes (!) and compensating the midwife (who is worth so much more than we can afford)--we can't afford it.
though my Uterus has obligingly cooperated by moving to the center of my abdomen, off of my herniated disk/sciatic nerve, she still is tilted way back. Selena palpated and faintly heard/felt bé's heartbeat with a fetascope. i couldn't hear it for my own pulse and T. thought he might have heard/felt it too. so Selena lent us the fetascope to try at home til we hear it since i don't want to use the doppler (a smaller portable ultrasound device).
we met Sarah, our midwife's assistant and our childbirth prep instructor, and her 6 month old daughter Samaya and her husband Daoud (sp?), who is Cham Vietnamese. as it turns out, his sister works for a sister-organization of mine. small small world. have i mentioned how loving our midwife is? our birth team is coming together and it's comforting to feel the relationship is grounded in community.
last night, we hung out with T's family (ba mẹ mợ 2 má 4--just got here from VN again--anh chị họ) and i was happy to confirm that chị Trinh, his cousin Hoàng's spouse, is very close to me in pregnancy. yay! somemama to share with! she's 17 weeks along and her due date is mid-February. we traded some pregnancy stories. they recently moved from Union City to down the block from Trung's parents. in addition to having more family in walking distance, it helps to normalize pregnancy with his parents. there haven't been many babies in this generation just yet, just T's mini-me who is 10 now. so it was a happy time. and i got to hear lots of T. & siblings' babyhood stories and discovered the origins of his affiinity for thịt kho chuối chín|pork stew with ripe bananas. and má 4 kept squeezing my forearm in the way vinamese female elders do she was so happy. we introduced the idea that we have a doctor (sorta) and a bà đỡ đễ or bà mụ|midwife (also means the Goddess believed to give shape to and protect babies. cool!). we haven't decided yet how much to reveal, though i'd like to avoid more anxiety on their part, i'm disinclined to lie. at least, so far my má who will be there for the homebirth has been accepting of all our decisions especially b/c i take care to ground them in our cultural-historical context and her own experience with natural birth (bro & sis) and medicated birth (me)--though she did scoff a little about going diaperless at least in the US context. it seems that his parents would be receptive and their thinking isn't all that far off from our own, but doctors have a social significance and it may be hard for them to accept that we aren't going that route... we'll see.
apparently the acceptable mốt|môde for Vinamese pregnancies is the muumuu or the empire-waisted muumuu that btw is hella not flattering and makes you look far larger (which is what chị Trinh was wearing, so she looked way bigger than me for all that she is only 2 weeks ahead). and it makes sense that in the tropics you would want to wear something very loose fitting since you are generating your own thermal nuclear source of heat. but we're not in the tropics and the weather has turned cool at night. and, i don't own any muumuus except for the A-line housedress my mama just gave me. [ i recently tried it on for the first time. it's a muumuu. sigh.] so everyone except mợ 2 & má 4 commented on my fitted tshirt & pants. (fitted clothes have the optical illusion of making you seem smaller than the empire waisted loose waist ones.) so i had to show each one of them the elastic waistband to convince them that it was maternity and comfortable. and still they felt i should really be wearing a muumuu. later chị Trinh asked me where i got my pants. so at least the other bà bầu doesn't think muumuus are de rigeur.
i know. this blog has become less sardonic, ironic, pop culture-tinged commentary and more pregnancy journal. at least i'm still sardonic & ironic about the whole thing.
so now we collectively estimate that i'm 15 weeks along, making our due date March 1st. (this means Liz, that i wasn't pregnant yet when we saw you at Yan's 100 days.) Selena suggested i consider continuing hypnotherapy with Nancy (herself a former midwife) since emotional state profoundly influences birth and Anabelle's anniversary may jumpstart or stall labor. but between my out-of-pocket costs--prenatal bellydancing, tai chi class, going to chiro, childbirth preparation class, baby CPR certification, acupuncture co-pays, maternity clothes (!) and compensating the midwife (who is worth so much more than we can afford)--we can't afford it.
though my Uterus has obligingly cooperated by moving to the center of my abdomen, off of my herniated disk/sciatic nerve, she still is tilted way back. Selena palpated and faintly heard/felt bé's heartbeat with a fetascope. i couldn't hear it for my own pulse and T. thought he might have heard/felt it too. so Selena lent us the fetascope to try at home til we hear it since i don't want to use the doppler (a smaller portable ultrasound device).
we met Sarah, our midwife's assistant and our childbirth prep instructor, and her 6 month old daughter Samaya and her husband Daoud (sp?), who is Cham Vietnamese. as it turns out, his sister works for a sister-organization of mine. small small world. have i mentioned how loving our midwife is? our birth team is coming together and it's comforting to feel the relationship is grounded in community.
last night, we hung out with T's family (ba mẹ mợ 2 má 4--just got here from VN again--anh chị họ) and i was happy to confirm that chị Trinh, his cousin Hoàng's spouse, is very close to me in pregnancy. yay! somemama to share with! she's 17 weeks along and her due date is mid-February. we traded some pregnancy stories. they recently moved from Union City to down the block from Trung's parents. in addition to having more family in walking distance, it helps to normalize pregnancy with his parents. there haven't been many babies in this generation just yet, just T's mini-me who is 10 now. so it was a happy time. and i got to hear lots of T. & siblings' babyhood stories and discovered the origins of his affiinity for thịt kho chuối chín|pork stew with ripe bananas. and má 4 kept squeezing my forearm in the way vinamese female elders do she was so happy. we introduced the idea that we have a doctor (sorta) and a bà đỡ đễ or bà mụ|midwife (also means the Goddess believed to give shape to and protect babies. cool!). we haven't decided yet how much to reveal, though i'd like to avoid more anxiety on their part, i'm disinclined to lie. at least, so far my má who will be there for the homebirth has been accepting of all our decisions especially b/c i take care to ground them in our cultural-historical context and her own experience with natural birth (bro & sis) and medicated birth (me)--though she did scoff a little about going diaperless at least in the US context. it seems that his parents would be receptive and their thinking isn't all that far off from our own, but doctors have a social significance and it may be hard for them to accept that we aren't going that route... we'll see.
apparently the acceptable mốt|môde for Vinamese pregnancies is the muumuu or the empire-waisted muumuu that btw is hella not flattering and makes you look far larger (which is what chị Trinh was wearing, so she looked way bigger than me for all that she is only 2 weeks ahead). and it makes sense that in the tropics you would want to wear something very loose fitting since you are generating your own thermal nuclear source of heat. but we're not in the tropics and the weather has turned cool at night. and, i don't own any muumuus except for the A-line housedress my mama just gave me. [ i recently tried it on for the first time. it's a muumuu. sigh.] so everyone except mợ 2 & má 4 commented on my fitted tshirt & pants. (fitted clothes have the optical illusion of making you seem smaller than the empire waisted loose waist ones.) so i had to show each one of them the elastic waistband to convince them that it was maternity and comfortable. and still they felt i should really be wearing a muumuu. later chị Trinh asked me where i got my pants. so at least the other bà bầu doesn't think muumuus are de rigeur.
i know. this blog has become less sardonic, ironic, pop culture-tinged commentary and more pregnancy journal. at least i'm still sardonic & ironic about the whole thing.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
prenatals
we had our first medical prenatal yesterday. the experience was very different from our previous prenatal with our midwife.
WAITING ROOM
Selena, midwife--couch, play area for kids, water cooler, birth artwork
Dr. Chan, ob/gyn--chairs, magazines, pee on demand in a sterile cup, lovely baby & mama b&w glamor shots
WAIT TIME
midwife--5 minutes
ob--1.5 hours (approx one hour spent naked in a hospital gown and a tissue paper sheet.) medical assistant takes blood pressure and weighs me. i've gained about 5 pounds.
INITIAL CONSULTATION
midwife--2+hours: big hugs, trung next to me on the couch or bed, conversation about medical history, emotional process, experiences, parenting approach, cultural expectations, nutritional counseling (and some negotiation on getting optimal nutrients from food), expectations of the midwife's role, family involvement, snacks & water for the hungry pregnant lady, something to put my feet up on, pee when i need to in a dixie cup, assessment of our bé|baby's golden-orange aura & spirit, journalling assignments, drawing birth visualization exercise, lie on a bed fully clothed, blood pressure & heartrate, fetascope and gentle palpation on my abdomen, more big hugs, lots of reassurance of normality. no internal exams til 36 weeks.
ob--30 minutes: succinct clinical monotone apology for being one and a half hours late, made trung move his chair 3 feet away from me to make room for the ultrasound equipment, medical history intake, breast exam, crazy transformer dental chair that converts to spread eagled prone position with stirrups and my ass hanging over the edge (the less engagement from patients the better huh? keep 'em passive. though i was mind-numbed from the wait time, at least i wasn't strapped down), pap smear (yugh! do you know how sensitive my cervix is right now? she bleeds if you just look at her sideways), explanation of the practice while conducting an ambush bimanual internal exam (no warning! why do doctors think ambush & distraction is the best policy for unpleasant procedures?), ghost ultrasound and some hokey measurement, mentioning all the ways bé can have birth defects and the standard tests i can take with no explanation of risks, insistence on prenatal vitamins regardless of diet (i can already see her classifying me as non-compliant), no snacks or water (did i mention how hungry i was after 1.5 hours of mindless waiting?), handshake. not cold, but not warm. weo, neither were we.
anyways so after explaining to me that ultrasounds after the first trimester are not accurate in dating me being in the 14th week and all, she plops jelly on my belly and ultrasounds me on the pap smear chair-cum-table (seat came back up) with no where to put my feet. despite having seen my cervix and bimanually felt me up, she still had no idea where my uterus was and kept the device in the middle to no avail. so i finally had to tell her um, my uterus is on the left. and boom, there was the ghost of our bé (ok, maybe not like boom, all we saw were grey & black blurs. and its all grey and grainy like something out of The Ring, but not freaky scary. not bathed in golden light. just grey and ghostly. okay, so on the one hand, here's confirmation that bé has a head, arms & legs and a little chirping heart. a little more real. not just a figment of our imaginations. on the other hand, it's a ghost on a grey-black monitor being controlled, measured and assessed by some stranger who is insisting that according to her admittedly inaccurate ultrasound measurement, baby is only 11 weeks 5 days along and that therefore my due date is in March. and that just does not sound right to me. but then again, the delicate choreograph of menstruation, ovulation and conception responsive to mood, mentality and moon is not exactly science. and flying down to San D that last week of May thinking bà ngoại wasn't gonna make it, maybe that disturbed my biorhythm more than i thought. and maybe that post-bday womb blessing loosened up more than i thought. we'll see...
Dr. Chan didnt seem to believe me when i mentioned that we'll know dates for sure at 20 weeks because the fundus (top of my uterus) will be at navel level (a midwife truism and a universal for all pregnant women). and i forgot to point out that she herself said that ultrasounds were not accurate for dates after the 12th week. i refused the vaginal ultrasound. i don't need a phallic device emitting ultrasonic cellular mutation in or around my already scraped up cervix.
already this medical prenatal had T. worried about folic acid, birth defects, and the normalcy of our bé. bé would let me know if anything was wrong. and though i'm generally a bit of a worrier with some hypochondriac tendencies, i feel content and a sense of well-being. no worries. so T. said he would trust me and bé and not let the doctor/medical establishment control our experience or deny us our rights through manipulating our ignorance.
in this life, this society, either you make informed choices or someone else, someone in a position of power, makes them for you. of course, most of the vaunted "freedom of choice" boils down to consumer decisions like about whether to support government-subsidized, eco-cidal, genetically-modified, irradiating, toxin polluting industrial agriculture corporation or pay the real cost of producing food to a small organic family farmer while trying to balance your own precarious budget. because in this society, money = power. we're trying our best to be engaged and not give our power away without exuding smug about it. it's a thin line. at least we won't be mistaken for those angry hippies in Berkeley Bowl. they need to take another bongh!t or drop a lil more acid cuz their mellow groove has become rude, entitled smuginess.
so on our journey to becoming parents we make the first of many parenting decisions... we're minimizing tetragenic exposure to alcohol, drugs, synthetic/toxic chemicals and ultrasounds. we prioritize good nutrition as the most important factor for the health of our bé. and along with that, we're not doing any of the genetic testing. we oppose eugenicism as a system of oppression, domination & genocide and we're not going to be tricked into it by medical prenatal propaganda about knowing the baby's health.
previously, we received a week-by-week glossy of a baby's development process in 4D. and it just seemed freaky invasive, exploitative and really just pornographic to me like those old National Geographics (or colonial postcards) with exotic naked natives and no captions about who they were, their family, no names, no context, no humanity. what's up with the patriarchal desire for panopticon omniscience and the need to know (and control) the mystery of creation?
so we didnt keep a printout of the ultrasound. i prefer to look within and commune with our bé bathed in the golden light of its spirit and our love, not bond with some externally-generated technology-produced paparazzi ghost image adulated object. we choose to walk the spiritual route, not the material.
smug check! weo, at least we don't drive a hybrid. yet.
still waiting on the hybrid minivan to make its way here from Japan where it's been on the market since 2001. as TLC puts it, "It takes courage to drive a mini-van."
WAITING ROOM
Selena, midwife--couch, play area for kids, water cooler, birth artwork
Dr. Chan, ob/gyn--chairs, magazines, pee on demand in a sterile cup, lovely baby & mama b&w glamor shots
WAIT TIME
midwife--5 minutes
ob--1.5 hours (approx one hour spent naked in a hospital gown and a tissue paper sheet.) medical assistant takes blood pressure and weighs me. i've gained about 5 pounds.
INITIAL CONSULTATION
midwife--2+hours: big hugs, trung next to me on the couch or bed, conversation about medical history, emotional process, experiences, parenting approach, cultural expectations, nutritional counseling (and some negotiation on getting optimal nutrients from food), expectations of the midwife's role, family involvement, snacks & water for the hungry pregnant lady, something to put my feet up on, pee when i need to in a dixie cup, assessment of our bé|baby's golden-orange aura & spirit, journalling assignments, drawing birth visualization exercise, lie on a bed fully clothed, blood pressure & heartrate, fetascope and gentle palpation on my abdomen, more big hugs, lots of reassurance of normality. no internal exams til 36 weeks.
ob--30 minutes: succinct clinical monotone apology for being one and a half hours late, made trung move his chair 3 feet away from me to make room for the ultrasound equipment, medical history intake, breast exam, crazy transformer dental chair that converts to spread eagled prone position with stirrups and my ass hanging over the edge (the less engagement from patients the better huh? keep 'em passive. though i was mind-numbed from the wait time, at least i wasn't strapped down), pap smear (yugh! do you know how sensitive my cervix is right now? she bleeds if you just look at her sideways), explanation of the practice while conducting an ambush bimanual internal exam (no warning! why do doctors think ambush & distraction is the best policy for unpleasant procedures?), ghost ultrasound and some hokey measurement, mentioning all the ways bé can have birth defects and the standard tests i can take with no explanation of risks, insistence on prenatal vitamins regardless of diet (i can already see her classifying me as non-compliant), no snacks or water (did i mention how hungry i was after 1.5 hours of mindless waiting?), handshake. not cold, but not warm. weo, neither were we.
anyways so after explaining to me that ultrasounds after the first trimester are not accurate in dating me being in the 14th week and all, she plops jelly on my belly and ultrasounds me on the pap smear chair-cum-table (seat came back up) with no where to put my feet. despite having seen my cervix and bimanually felt me up, she still had no idea where my uterus was and kept the device in the middle to no avail. so i finally had to tell her um, my uterus is on the left. and boom, there was the ghost of our bé (ok, maybe not like boom, all we saw were grey & black blurs. and its all grey and grainy like something out of The Ring, but not freaky scary. not bathed in golden light. just grey and ghostly. okay, so on the one hand, here's confirmation that bé has a head, arms & legs and a little chirping heart. a little more real. not just a figment of our imaginations. on the other hand, it's a ghost on a grey-black monitor being controlled, measured and assessed by some stranger who is insisting that according to her admittedly inaccurate ultrasound measurement, baby is only 11 weeks 5 days along and that therefore my due date is in March. and that just does not sound right to me. but then again, the delicate choreograph of menstruation, ovulation and conception responsive to mood, mentality and moon is not exactly science. and flying down to San D that last week of May thinking bà ngoại wasn't gonna make it, maybe that disturbed my biorhythm more than i thought. and maybe that post-bday womb blessing loosened up more than i thought. we'll see...
Dr. Chan didnt seem to believe me when i mentioned that we'll know dates for sure at 20 weeks because the fundus (top of my uterus) will be at navel level (a midwife truism and a universal for all pregnant women). and i forgot to point out that she herself said that ultrasounds were not accurate for dates after the 12th week. i refused the vaginal ultrasound. i don't need a phallic device emitting ultrasonic cellular mutation in or around my already scraped up cervix.
already this medical prenatal had T. worried about folic acid, birth defects, and the normalcy of our bé. bé would let me know if anything was wrong. and though i'm generally a bit of a worrier with some hypochondriac tendencies, i feel content and a sense of well-being. no worries. so T. said he would trust me and bé and not let the doctor/medical establishment control our experience or deny us our rights through manipulating our ignorance.
in this life, this society, either you make informed choices or someone else, someone in a position of power, makes them for you. of course, most of the vaunted "freedom of choice" boils down to consumer decisions like about whether to support government-subsidized, eco-cidal, genetically-modified, irradiating, toxin polluting industrial agriculture corporation or pay the real cost of producing food to a small organic family farmer while trying to balance your own precarious budget. because in this society, money = power. we're trying our best to be engaged and not give our power away without exuding smug about it. it's a thin line. at least we won't be mistaken for those angry hippies in Berkeley Bowl. they need to take another bongh!t or drop a lil more acid cuz their mellow groove has become rude, entitled smuginess.
so on our journey to becoming parents we make the first of many parenting decisions... we're minimizing tetragenic exposure to alcohol, drugs, synthetic/toxic chemicals and ultrasounds. we prioritize good nutrition as the most important factor for the health of our bé. and along with that, we're not doing any of the genetic testing. we oppose eugenicism as a system of oppression, domination & genocide and we're not going to be tricked into it by medical prenatal propaganda about knowing the baby's health.
previously, we received a week-by-week glossy of a baby's development process in 4D. and it just seemed freaky invasive, exploitative and really just pornographic to me like those old National Geographics (or colonial postcards) with exotic naked natives and no captions about who they were, their family, no names, no context, no humanity. what's up with the patriarchal desire for panopticon omniscience and the need to know (and control) the mystery of creation?
so we didnt keep a printout of the ultrasound. i prefer to look within and commune with our bé bathed in the golden light of its spirit and our love, not bond with some externally-generated technology-produced paparazzi ghost image adulated object. we choose to walk the spiritual route, not the material.
smug check! weo, at least we don't drive a hybrid. yet.
still waiting on the hybrid minivan to make its way here from Japan where it's been on the market since 2001. as TLC puts it, "It takes courage to drive a mini-van."
Monday, August 6, 2007
musings on 42
my sister Uyên just called me out on my lack of "substantive" posts of late. substantive being relative since we all know how i like to ramble on, usually in mid-thought, about esoteric things that pop into my head (like klingon love letters. i can't believe you lost them, Trung! batlh bIHeghjaj! bortaS bIr jablu'DI' reH QaQqu' nay'.) low brain to mouth filter. blame it on the drugs my mom took during labor.
my bloglite excuse is -- weo, how to delicately say -- i am with child|có bàu. yes, T. & i have borg'ed ourselves the old-fashioned way and we are now nguyễn3 (can chú Bình claim credit for taking us to Bải Bàu in Qui Nhơn in april? or the hokey new age-y womb-blessing on my birthday?) as of tomorrow i will be 13 weeks along and almost officially out of my first trimester. par-tay! because it is damn fatiguing to generate a human being!
Uyên made the request for belly shots. for you undomesticated non-breeding folks, that is not cheap tequila drunk from the pierced navel of some young thing who probably doesn't have good hygiene; belly shots would be a progressive montage of the alien being gestating in my womb until it emerges gnashing and clawing from my abdomen to dominate the world. just kidding. yes, yes, children are blessings and a woman's ability to give Life, to Birth, is Sacred. without this, our survival as a species would end. blahblah. how alienated are we from women's reproductive capacity that the major pop culture reference for pregnancy is parasitic and destructive? the misogyny of society. makes you understand why the cesarean rate in the U.S. is almost 28% and voluntary cesareans (that is major abdominal surgery) is on the rise. fear of vaginas.
theoretical physicist stephen j. hawking comments, "I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image." he is a genius, an expansive intellectual contemplating the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything (the Deep Thought answer to which is 42, leaving us to ponder, what is the Ultimate Question?), and yet that is an incredibly stupid thing to say. as my bà ngoại|maternal grandmother often rebukes my aunties & uncles with her folk wisdom aphorism "mày nghĩ mày khôn quá hả mày chui ra đít tao!|you think you're so smart, you crawled out of my pussy!" put you in your place, punk! (now you understand where i learned how to curse.) women have been creating Life in our own image from the beginning of human time. it doesn't take a PhD or an MD to accomplish that.
so for the belly shots, weo, i'm not cutely pregnant yet (when if ever does that happen pray tell?). i'm slightly bloated, a beer belly of sorts late in the day. my clothes fit wierdly and why are all the clothes in my existing wardrobe so form fitting & cropped? i do glow though, for the record. absolutely luminous. T. has been documenting the process on the monthly (and sometimes weekly) basis. i might be persuaded to post the belly pix, but that requires bribery. food bribery (see the FAQs below).
for the curious, now that we are pregnant, you no longer have to refrain from asking me about my reproductive status or sex life. now commences the pregnancy phase and the ensuing, mostly welcome questions. for your curious pleasure:
my bloglite excuse is -- weo, how to delicately say -- i am with child|có bàu. yes, T. & i have borg'ed ourselves the old-fashioned way and we are now nguyễn3 (can chú Bình claim credit for taking us to Bải Bàu in Qui Nhơn in april? or the hokey new age-y womb-blessing on my birthday?) as of tomorrow i will be 13 weeks along and almost officially out of my first trimester. par-tay! because it is damn fatiguing to generate a human being!Uyên made the request for belly shots. for you undomesticated non-breeding folks, that is not cheap tequila drunk from the pierced navel of some young thing who probably doesn't have good hygiene; belly shots would be a progressive montage of the alien being gestating in my womb until it emerges gnashing and clawing from my abdomen to dominate the world. just kidding. yes, yes, children are blessings and a woman's ability to give Life, to Birth, is Sacred. without this, our survival as a species would end. blahblah. how alienated are we from women's reproductive capacity that the major pop culture reference for pregnancy is parasitic and destructive? the misogyny of society. makes you understand why the cesarean rate in the U.S. is almost 28% and voluntary cesareans (that is major abdominal surgery) is on the rise. fear of vaginas.
theoretical physicist stephen j. hawking comments, "I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image." he is a genius, an expansive intellectual contemplating the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything (the Deep Thought answer to which is 42, leaving us to ponder, what is the Ultimate Question?), and yet that is an incredibly stupid thing to say. as my bà ngoại|maternal grandmother often rebukes my aunties & uncles with her folk wisdom aphorism "mày nghĩ mày khôn quá hả mày chui ra đít tao!|you think you're so smart, you crawled out of my pussy!" put you in your place, punk! (now you understand where i learned how to curse.) women have been creating Life in our own image from the beginning of human time. it doesn't take a PhD or an MD to accomplish that.
so for the belly shots, weo, i'm not cutely pregnant yet (when if ever does that happen pray tell?). i'm slightly bloated, a beer belly of sorts late in the day. my clothes fit wierdly and why are all the clothes in my existing wardrobe so form fitting & cropped? i do glow though, for the record. absolutely luminous. T. has been documenting the process on the monthly (and sometimes weekly) basis. i might be persuaded to post the belly pix, but that requires bribery. food bribery (see the FAQs below).
for the curious, now that we are pregnant, you no longer have to refrain from asking me about my reproductive status or sex life. now commences the pregnancy phase and the ensuing, mostly welcome questions. for your curious pleasure:
MY PREGNANCY FAQS
- are you showing yet?
i am not showing. unless you count my distended intestines that get more compacted as the day wears on. so don't bother touching my belly because you're really just feeling up the detritus and effluvia of my digestion. my Uterus happens to be electric-slide tipped back and to the far left. if you see me rubbing my belly, i am not at this point touchingly bonding with my unborn child, i am really just encouraging some gas to pass. when i lay down and palpate my abdomen (i'm curious too), i can just barely feel her edge (my Uterus is a She btw) tucked deep into my left pelvis. my Uterus and i are in conversation right now trying to reach consensus agreement. i would like her to be upfront and center so that i can avoid having anal internal exams during my prenatals. you read that right. midwife has got to do bi-manual internal exams and palpate to assess baby's growth someway.
- have you seen your doctor yet?
meet my midwife Selena. she's a grandmother, been a doula for many years, owns a birth center, and practices 2nd degree reiki (i'm not really sure what that means either).
we're old-fashioned DIY-ers and we're choosing the safest birth choice possible. we're planning a normal, safe homebirth. babies everywhere else in the world have been born this way since time immemorial. don't see why we should pay an ob-gyn $10K for less than 15 minutes of care and loads of medical interventions. i've seen all the doctor TV shows, i know doctors think of childbirth as a mortally dangerous disease best performed strapped down on her back in a drug-resistant-staph-ridden hospital amongst the ill, the suffering and the dying. not subjecting myself or our child to that. shudder. i'm not that crazy.
- have you seen your baby yet?
ultrasounds have never been monitored for long term risks from exposure. they are a known unknown non-empirical technology. ultrasound machines are not monitored by any safety board, there is no standardized calibration, and technicians receive no training in the technology or its use which is why fools like Tom Cruise can buy one online to use on his cloned spawn. what is known is that there is known cellular mutation with exposure and babies get very agitated in the womb when exposed to ultrasound. there is no safe amount of exposure to ultrasound and one should limit exposure unless medically necessary. that said, we are having one ultrasound later this month. mainly to rule out twins which run in my paternal family. midwives say it skips a generation though.
on a humanistic level, this thinker dude (blanking on the name) commented that the two images that have profoundly changed humanity's paradigm of thinking is the picture of the earth from outer space and the ultrasound image of the unborn. prior to those two images, we could never imagine mother earth as something separate from ourselves, nor could we imagine the baby separate from the mother. when those images were published we furthered our alienation from self, motherhood, nature, etc. which puts us square in this current situation of rampant ecological destruction and fear of vaginas/vulvas-cum-compartmentalized maternity/pediatric healthcare. anyways, ultrasound pictures of babies just look like freaky aliens to me. they don't really generate warm fuzzy "awwww"s from me. its not like i want to bond with an alien. i mean i've watched plenny sci-fi movies. got no love for extra-terrestrials.
- are you having morning sickness?
nope. blessed be! both our moms had easy pregnancies and no vomiting. i have not worshipped the porcelain god this trimester. so i glow. really. it's the increased circulation and extra hormones.
no constipation either. except when our sewer line bust last week and all i had was a bucket for my midnight/early am pregnancy pees.
- are you having any cravings?
i am having a liking for certain things under certain circumstances, but nothing i would call a craving (though ms. Lily says otherwise). but i'm not upset or disappointed if i don't get it, nor am i demanding T. obtain it at odd hours. in general, cravings are your body's way of asking for missing nutrients. so the typical preggers craving for ice cream & pickles is really your body asking for more protein & calcium, and the sour/vinegar to help facilitate the absorption of the calcium. our brains just interpret that in simplistic ways accessible in our modern fast food nation reality. as a rule, T & i eat very healthy and balanced, whole foods, no junk food, not too much processed/fast foods because of my sensitivity to chemicals and allergens. so i'm not having much in the way of cravings. though i will say, i am not desiring sweets, in fact they kinda repulse me. too much sugar, nutritionally empty calories makes me want to hurl. and my lactose intolerance has gotten worse. since i cut wheat and dairy out for a mucus-free diet a few months ago, my allergies have improved immensely. this last weekend, subjected to work retreat and poor lunch menu planning, i had to eat alot of crappy phonebook fast food--pizza & cantonese. bleck. allergies came back in spades both skin rashes and sneezing at nothing. just goes to show food is medicinal. you eat crap, you feel like crap.
we've been getting our nutrients from food so i've been able to stay off the prenatal supplements that generally make one vomit. fyi seaweed is a miracle food in terms of both iron and folic acid and similar minerals content as your own blood. we all came from the ocean at some point.
our biggest challenge is that i've noticed uncooked/unprepared/greasy foods sorta gross me out too as does repetition. by extension, the whole "raw foods" food trend is just blah to me (sorry, Chanda but that was not doing it for me. left me so hungry-tired that i slept 12 hours that night.) which means that i don't want to eat anything in our refrigerator. we're having to do multiple runs to the grocery store in week so it's a good thing we live within blocks of three grocery stores!
so if i crave anything, it's variety. also, i still can't eat anything i didn't like BP (Before Pregnant) like raw onions or dairy but in addition, chicken breast and salmon repel me. and unfortunately i seem to have reached a limit on lao sausage. i'm hoping that just means not for three meals in a row...
simple and mouthwateringly good high end restaurant food really really appeals to me like egg sandwich but a gourmet egg sandwich that is the best i've ever had!!! i'm still waiting for food to taste extra delicious. so the food channel is very dangerous. i just want tasty, nutritious food, my parents' homecooking, meal variety and i don't want to cook. poor T. (many thanx to Lily for rescuing him for 2 nights in a row). so that's why i'm going to SanD at the end of the month, i want bánh giò|banana leaf wrapped glutinous rice flour stuffed with pork & woodear fungus, cua rang muối|crispy salt & pepper crab, canh chua|tamarind fish soup, at least two varieties of xôi|sticky rice--savory & sweet, any kind of gỏi, canh|brothy vegetable soups, chạo tôm|shrimp paste on sugar cane, etc. sigh, heaven. who says you can never go home again?
- is it a boy or a girl?
we're not going to find out. there are so few moments of genuine delight & surprise in life. this is going to be one of them. this also means that we don't want a bunch of pink & blue crap. we like colors--primary colors, bright colors, the whole rainbow of colors, black even. pastels are... okay and in moderation. and then there is the ultrasound issue. and yes, Uyên, it's T's decision too. mr. boy scout likes to be impulsive sometimes too. in a planned and defined manner. we have a workplan and a budget.
- do you want a boy or a girl?
we would love either. personally i loved (and hated) having an older brother who looked out for me and would write gruesome death threats to kids who bullied me. he would also torment me, really TORMENT me, endlessly though with personalized insult songs, so it's a tough choice. i also loved having an older sister (mostly). so yeah, really, i loved being the youngest. and you can't really determine that for your first child. so, we leave it up to the goddesses & ancestors to decide. and yeah sposedly T's sperm. like he has any control over that. our midwife who is also a second-degree reiki practitioner says that its a spirit familiar to us and she also told us what gender energy she was getting from the baby's gold-orange aura and my mom with her maternal psychic intuition has a prediction, but we're not telling. flip a coin.
- what are you going to name her/him?
that's for us to know and you to mis-pronounce. just kidding. we haven't decided. it'll be a vinamese name. no surprise there. so if you would like to contribute to our kids' future therapy fund, please send us a check.
- how many kids do you want?
ideally, four. so they can pair up and no one gets left out. however T. says for every pet we have, that's one less child. we already have two cats and i really want two mini donkeys (because any animal deprived of contact with its own species is going to be mal-adjusted, neurotic and co-dependent) so... its still under negotiation. i say, put the donkeys to work. get them to keep our quarter acre yard trim and rent them out to the neighbors for their lawn & kiddie parties. they don't have to be useless pets, they can be revenue generating!
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Anabelle Grace
my sister birthed anabelle grace in the wee hours on feb 20th at 36 weeks (one month early). anabelle wasn't breathing and had no heartbeat. the neonatologist was able to resuscitate her after 20 minutes and lifeflighted her to NICU at the children's hospital nearby.
life's serendipity
what a mysterious sequence of events. just days before my sis received a late term diagnosis of polyhydramnios, transferred care provider from midwife to ob/gyn, due to mistaken referral missed the perinatologist appointment, and waters broke on the day of her specialist appointment, all events that prefigured emergency C-section on the horizon contrary to her nautral birth plan. and yet the way the universe unfolded, my sister had an easy recovery after blessedly delivering naturally with her midwife present after all, no perineal tears, an unmedicated vaginal delivery of a breech even as they were prepping her for an emergency C. because of the quick recovery from natural birth she was able to check out of the hospital in the afternoon to be with anabelle and her husband in a matter of hours rather than days if she had a cesarean birth or medicated birth. i flew in to san diego to be with them, our parents, our aunties and family friends.
how to express our heartbreak and struggling to breathe and grieve as our loss washes over us in waves of sorrow. four-and-a-half year old lily struggles with the meaning of Death. oh she misses her baby sister and wants God to make anabelle better and give her back to us...
life's serendipity
grace
anabelle had birdswing eyes like her mother and her big sister lily. the same round round face and apple cheeks. she also had many congenital complications and down's syndrome. she was beautiful. in the afternoon, after no brain activity, they took her off life support. in the bosom of her mother, her big sister lily and her father, surrounded by all her loved ones, anabelle grace died.how to express our heartbreak and struggling to breathe and grieve as our loss washes over us in waves of sorrow. four-and-a-half year old lily struggles with the meaning of Death. oh she misses her baby sister and wants God to make anabelle better and give her back to us...
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