[maybe i should apologize prefacing this entry with a lyric about death, but hey, that's what i'm listening to.] yesterday i realized – with an alarming lack of alarm – that we were a couple of days past term and didn’t have a lot of the stuff we needed for the birth, so today i got on that. the only predictable things that were still keeping a hospital birth on the table were the results of my GBS swab, which came back negative yesterday, and the fact that i could go into preterm labor (we’d also go if there’s meconium in my water when it breaks, but obviously we can’t know that until it happens). now if i go into labor in five minutes, we’ll be fine, so i just went to the drugstore and the dollar store to get most of our supplies. i still need to get a bunch of those big waterproof hospital pads, a bag of frozen peas, and a bottle of wine. our tub-o-birthing supplies makes me laugh.

the benedryl is for paisley – we have the vet’s approval to give her a pill to calm her down, and more to totally knock her out if need be. we already had most of the appropriate bedding and towels – just had to get a few more washcloths. the trays are so nicole and carmen can easily transport their stuff from room to room if i’m doing a lot of wandering. the plastic tablecloth is for making up the bed – old sheet on top of plastic on top of clean sheet so the top two can be stripped away and we won’t have to remake the bed after the birth. extension cords for a small lamp, olive oil (and frozen peas) for perineal attention / baby skincare, hot water bottle for wherever i need it… please make this baby roll over so i don’t have back labor! we’re still spine to spine – not totally, but almost.

so, homebirth: i know a lot of you are probably worried. no one has admitted this, but i’m sure there are worried people. i remember when i was young and my mom explained that ben and i were born by c-section, i told her that’s what i wanted to do because it sounded so easy and painless. she said – a little bit harshly for her because she’s NEVER harsh – that no i most definitely would not… that it’s dangerous and no one would ever have one just because it seemed convenient (ha – and look where we are today)… that birth is completely normal and natural unless something is going wrong to make it complicated (i was a footling, and VBACs were unheard of then, i suppose, so that’s how ben got to make his arrival as well). tv and movie depictions of births never seemed normal to me – the screaming women and stirrups and all of the hospitaley stuff, which in reality is NOT sterile, and for a normal birth, are no safer than home. sometime at the beginning of high school i watched an episode of a baby story on TLC at my grandma’s house and it was a woman having a homebirth in a birthing tub. that made WAY more sense to me. hospitals never did – except when i was six or whatever and wanted a c-section. i’m not afraid of hospitals even though i’ve never had to stay in one – i realize that sometimes they are good and necessary when you are sick, but i’m not sick. it’s not to avoid the temptation of an epidural (although that’s definitely a perk) or because i’m a martyr or a big hippie or hate american maternity care (which i do, but a lot of those things are not a problem here)… it just makes more sense to me, if you have a normal pregnancy, to have your baby at home with midwives like most of the world does. i know that doesn’t make sense for a lot of women in my position of privilege and that’s fine, but it makes sense to us so that’s what we’re going to do. luckily i married a guy who, although he has normal worries about birth in general and all of the weird things that are going to come out of / happen to my body, homebirth fits into his ideas about life in general. i didn’t have to “convince” him – he had all of the same questions for our midwives that i did, and after we’d gathered enough information it went from being a strong possibility to the plan, as long as a few things went right – no breech, no GBS, no pre-term labor.

i figured it might be good to let you know what will happen and what our midwives will do if “common” complications occur (which aren’t all that common). now that we are at term with the baby’s head locked into my pelvis and negative for GBS, we will only end up at the hospital if something happens to require it. here is a map:

 

 

when i go into labor, it will be awhile until midwife time, unless things are super speedy. we’ll call nicole whenever we feel the need and call our moms, who have emphatically stated that they want to know everything IMMEDIATELY (both in giant, bold, red letters via email), even though it could be three more days. she will keep checking in until i can’t talk through my contractions, which is their intensity indicator. hopefully up until that point i can sleep a little or at least just lay on the couch and watch seinfeld reruns (this is where doctors, OBs, and midwives all recommend a glass of wine) and be able to eat quite a bit, since i will need the energy. when contractions have been happening every five minutes for an hour, lasting at least one minute each, then i am officially in “established” labor (as opposed to pre-labor that can come and go for days, sometimes) and she will come to our apartment. this is probably when we’ll have ella come over, but unless i’m having a REALLY fast labor there is still no rush… it will most likely still be hours before i start pushing, if i push at all. somewhere in there we’ll sedate our spaz of a dog and let security know what’s going on so no one calls the cops on us. when i’m pretty well dilated – i.e., when we’d go to the hospital if that were the plan – we’ll call carmen, who’s the backup midwife doing all the baby stuff. i’ll still have a little while to go at this point (again, unless i’m having a quick labor) but the hardest part is over – i always thought pushing the thing out was the hardest part, but most moms say that the actual pushing is easy compared to the transition phase. so that’s it, the baby’s head will find it’s way around my pelvic bone and start to come down, and sometime in that half hour – two hours i will have a baby in my arms. easy, right? except the very possible moments where i’ll think i’m going to die, of course.

so the most common thing that can go “wrong” is a lack of progression. this is most common in first time moms and is really only a problem because you have completely exhausted yourself (must rest and eat early in labor!) and it can start to stress the baby. if the baby’s heartrate gets too high (they check it every fifteen minutes), they will assume it’s because of a contraction – normal for your heart to speed up when you are being squished from all sides - wait a few minutes and then check again. if it’s still to high, they might have me walk around or change positions, give me some oxygen, then check again in a couple of more minutes. if it’s still too high during the third check they start talking hospital (when less than ten minutes have passed) - they really aren’t very risky midwives that we have here and will not hesitate to call for an ambulance. if we did go for that reason, we’d have a fetal heart monitor but no IVs or anything at that point unless it was needed. if it didn’t get back on track after monitoring for a few minutes they would consult with an OB, but things would have to go very wrong before a transfer of care (i.e. – we’d be totally in the hands of a doctor with our midwives standing by & helping us make decisions – this would basically only happen if i needed a c-section). other than that, the complications that can occur are very rare – of course there are tons of them, home or hospital.

they will have oxygen for me and a tiny oxygen tank for the baby (they can’t intibate an infant, but have enough oxygen to keep things under control until the EMTs arrive if something happens). they will have the same shot of meds that the hospital would give me if i was bleeding too much. they have a shot they can give me to help deliver the placenta if my uterus is totally conked out after the birth and doesn’t finish its job. they can do an episiotomy if the baby is just completely stuck for that reason or if i’m tearing at the ”wrong” end to make healing easier (shudder – this is the ONLY, literally only, thing i’m afraid of). they can’t give me any medicinal pain relief – that’s also another “common” reason that women go to the hospital… they need an epidural. hopefully i can hack it even if the kid doesn’t roll over. if the baby is presenting in a weird way (i’m not talking breech, which is highly unlikely now that the baby has dropped & is fixed in position - but presenting face-up or something like that) they have things they can try. they have all kinds of things to try to help my progression along if it has seemed to stall out and i know some things that i can do. they have lots and lots of pain management techniques and i know why this or that pain is going to happen – i’m confident that i’ll be able to tell what sensations are normal and what ones are not even though i’ve obviously never done this before. we are completely confident in their ability AND mine… but we will also not take any risks and neither will they. beyond the one huge risk we have obviously set ourselves up for – giving birth, period.

so after the baby is born (s)he will immediately be put on my stomach or chest or in my arms (it’s hard to tell what position i’ll be in!). they will do all of their immediate checks for proper breathing and pinking up and things like that while we have the baby. as long as the cord is not around the baby’s neck (if it is during the birth and it’s too tight to either unwrap it or birth the baby through it, they will cut it immediately) it will be cut by them or us when it stops pulsing. carmen will gradually clean the baby up a little bit while (s)he is in my arms, no taking the baby away for a scrub-down. we will be totally fixated on the kiddo, and nicole will be tending to the last stage – delivering the placenta (which will go in our freezer until trash day or until my mom takes it home to bury it, in case you were wondering), stitching me up if needed. sometimes babies start working their way to a feeding very quickly and some don’t – if the canadian wants food right away fine, if not we’ll try to get him/her to feed pretty soon after. whenever it’s convenient, and within the first hour, carmen will do her newborn exam. we’ll get to keep the baby with us while she explains everything she’s doing – she will check all of the little parts, reflexes, everything that would happen at a hospital. vitamin K shot, a bit of antibiotic ointment on the eyes that they will immediately wipe away – it’s an old law that is still on the books, and not necessary because i have no STDs, but they don’t like to break the law and we told them that we were fine with that.

after all of that baby exam stuff has been taken care of and i’ve been taken care of, after the baby has latched on properly and eaten and we’ve dealt with any of the immediate breastfeeding issues that might arise, and after i have peed and my bleeding has slowed to a normal amount, they will leave us alone with this brand new baby, one bag of garbage and one bag of laundry (and a fresh placenta in our freezer!) - usually about three hours after the birth. they will come back within 24 hours to check everything all over again and help us with whatever we need, be in contact by phone the next day, visit again the day after that, then i think two days of phone and another visit… i forget all of those details. it’s a lot of visiting and phoning. ella and darren will be at the birth if they are able (ella will be in chicago the first weekend of november, so tc really needs to plan his/her arrival around that) and we’re not going to call darren out of a mass or anything, but we’ll have at least one non-midwife with us to tend to paisley, make food, put the laundry in, whatever. my parents will come whenever we ask them to - we think a few days after the birth when we’ve settled in a little bit, but if i freak out at 6:17 tonight my mom would get in the car and start driving.

i haven’t had the least bit of anxiety. i haven’t had any of those sudden “oh my god it’s so soon” thoughts that send a little burst of adrenaline through your body. i’m completely calm about this. i’m not nervous. i think i’ve educated myself enough that i can handle it with the help of my awesome husband and midwives, and what i don’t know my body does so i’m not worried about what i don’t know. i’m only worried about tearing (which i know isn’t even as bad as i think it is) and about paisley having a heart attack. i’m not worried about the birth or that something bad will happen or that something will be wrong with the baby because there is no point in any of that, i’m worried about the DOG. because sometimes when i cry she freezes and stares at the wall and it’s very unnerving. she can’t handle distress, and i can’t explain it to her, so i’m just going to drug her. i’m a good mom.

if we do end up at the hospital for whatever reason, but the birth goes normally anyway, we will be home in the time it would take for nicole & carmen to leave us after a homebirth – we’d have to pass all the same “tests”. no staying in the hospital “to rest” because it’s not a restful place – in and out as soon as we can be.

so, that’s it i guess. if you read that entire essay & are still wondering things, fire away.

 

listening: the stanley brothers
reading: the glass castle

23 weeks – one day early since tomorrow at the usually belly-photo time i will be in michigan.

i still have some stuff to get done before mikey & i can watch the original house on haunted hill, which has to happen before i can go to bed, which has to happen before i can get up and leave in the morning. so instead of blogging i will leave you with the funniest story you’ll hear all day, via jenn:

There has been a very amusing mix-up with your target registry that I must tell you about.This morning, as I was leaving for work my 21 year old cousin and next door neighbor Jessica yelled “Jennifer!”I wheeled around as she charged out of her front door and she said “When is the last time you looked at my Target registry?”  Now, to explain, Jessica is getting married next month and her bridal shower is this Sunday.  “Yesterday” I replied.

*jenn, you are not the only one to make this request. i’ll try to make it happen later on. 

22 weeks looks less fat that 21… although this photo was taken pre-supper for once.

no one wished me a happy fourth of july today. prime chance for all of the jokes about my americanism that my coworkers love to dump on me, but no one said a word. after dating letters all morning it finally occured to me at lunchtime that my family is all home from work, getting ready for a cookout, probably having fun with cheap explosives and hoping that all ten of my dad’s fingers will survive one more year. the canadian will someday be very impressed when (s)he watches grandpa let lit rockets go from his bare hands.

i know we aren’t the only ones wrecking the planet and offing its inhabitants like it’s this year’s pogs, but we’re definitely the dumbest branch of the family tree and anything celebrating america just makes me pretty sad. even sadder that THIS is what’s being handed over to the hundred and forty-seven babies that everyone i know is popping out this year.

What will they say – assuming there are any left to be saying – in five centuries about us nice folks who managed to bequeath the solar system a second Mercury where a green and fertile planet once stood, just so we could party a little longer?  I’m not sure, but I don’t think it will be pretty.  And I don’t think it will be, “Well, sure, they weren’t perfect.  And, true, they wrecked the whole planet.  But at least they kept boys from marrying other boys.”

well hey, i think i settled on the stroller that we don’t even need to get until next spring, so that’s something productive.

 

listening: andrew in my head
reading: b is for bluegrass, because that is where uncle andy lives and we found a brand new copy for one dollar and ninety cents; before that (on wednesday, on our anniversary) we found our new favorite toronto indian restaurant, which is better than my favorite place in little india, neither of which is as good as the indian place in motown… which i will never not find ironic

WE’RE HAVING A GIRL!!!…….

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…reading back through the past couple of months, that i never told about the night we found out we were pregnant. it was very amusing. i told mikey on monday that i was suspecting i might be, and every time he’d say “how do you feel?” and i’d say “um, pregnant”, he’d whimper. on wednesday i felt so awful that i called off of work, and was so excited at the prospect of a baby i was afraid i’d be hugely disappointed if i let myself think that i was pregnant any longer and then it ended up negative, so i bought a test. mikey begged me to wait as long as possible so he could finish his schoolwork for the day, as he was preparing for a huge talk and knew his concentration would be completely blown if it was positive. i put on a movie, and by 8:30 i couldn’t hold my pee any longer. i told him i had to go, but i’d put the stick on a shelf and we could look when he was ready. as soon as i started peeing two lines appeared IMMEDIATELY, and i had to tell myself about 332473892479 times that the directions said they could fade in and out even with a negative, and to wait ten whole minutes. approximtely 47 seconds later he came in and asked if it was time. we waited a few more minutes, then peered at two lines. i think he muttered “oh god”, and we both cried a little, and he said to paisley, “i’m not even used to you yet!”. then we called our moms. his mom was blown away – first two grandbabies in one month. my mom was not surprised, as i’d called her as soon as i started wondering and she laughed knowingly when i told her that my boobs hurt. other than mikey, my mom, and kelly, not a single soul knew that we even thought we might be. we sat and stared at each other for awhile, vowed not to tell another soul until we’d had a blood test to be sure, then went to bluegrass. we picked up sarah, and i remember the car ride was very awkard because he and i were just staring out the windshield in shock - i think she thought she’d come into the middle of a fight. scott & alex were already there, and we were at a weird table that we NEVER sit at because it was busy, and i got a glass of water. as soon as julia and ella got there, ella took one look at me, blurted out “why do you look so tired and why are you drinking water?”… and before she even finished her thought her eyes were widening and she was biting her lip. she stared at me. i stared at her, and i think i nodded a little, and she suppressed a scream while they dragged me out of my chair and towards the washrooms. if i didn’t already know i had good friends here, i should have known then. it took them 2.5 seconds to figure out something they shouldn’t have even suspected. a doula from tennessee overheard our conversation in the washroom and gave me a huge hug and her phone number. i don’t remember music. it was freezing cold, we were really close to the door. ella kept putting her huge down coat over my uterus area because she was afraid the baby would get cold. after they left, mikey whispered “should we tell scott and alex?”, and i said sure. i forget what he said. alex yelled “i knew it!!” and we all swore not to tell anyone else. we started to leave early, but rob had just gotten there to play fiddle or dobro, couldn’t tell you which, and whined at us so we stayed for a couple of songs with him. that’s all i remember. i was exhausted. the next day people at work knew, and the canadian was immediately assumed to be a girl who would marry coworker quentin’s new baby boy… immediately nicknamed “olive”, which later in the day became “olive schesnuik” (bride of matthew). everyone said it would be such a nice catholic wedding. the next day was a doctor visit, going to mikey’s work to order a book and getting a blessing from the archbishop of toronto. that’s about all i remember for the next two or three weeks, except some of the phonecalls we made. mary and kelly cried; mikey’s dad laughed; my grandma did a superb job of pretending that she had no clue and that my dad hadn’t already spilled the beans even though i told him not to; colleen asked for quilt color preferences; i forget what andy said to mikey but it was LOUD; my brother said “yeah, i know” in his unimpressed, monotone drawl; mario asked what i thought of wednesday night’s episode of lost, and when i thought nothing of it and started to answer him, he yelled “I’M JUST KIDDING, congratulations!”; dallas said “so ya’ got a bun in ya’”, not a question, a statement; dougie said “that’s awesome… we’re trying to have an accident of our own”.

it’s 11pm. i could have gone to bed at 8:30. oops.

today i let our midwife extract five tubes of blood from my arm, and in exchange she let us listen to the baby’s heartbeat! it sounded like a washing machine, and the heartrate was spot on. mine was pretty low, which explains why i got super dizzy two days ago. after some deliberation she decided to keep the duedate at the 25th of october even though the ultrasound indicated more like the 20th. i’m roughly certain of the first day of my last period, and sure within two days of the conception date, and both of those say the 25th, so we are going with that. my uterus is also still pretty low and it took awhile to find the heartbeat, so we’re just barely to week eleven.

i also found out that one of my weird, nonsensical pregnancy dreams from a few days ago has come true. that’s cuz i’m an INFJ. our “director of staff care” does the meyers-briggs personality test on every new hire, and then sits you down to talk about yourself and who else at the mission is like you. he’s fascinated by it. a few weeks ago we finally got around to meeting about my personality – he said “you guys are the weird ones. i don’t understand you and you know freaky things.”

listening: the band lingering in my head from dog walk; bluegrass soon!!!

ultrasound today! we have one very, very wiggly baby. it’s weird to think that there is so much leg kicking and arm waving going on my very own uterus and i can’t feel a thing. we saw all the little limbs right away, the face and ears, tongue sticking out for a second (got a photo of that one – the canadian is a ham), legs crossed at the ankles from below. i did not cry – we were both amused and laughed a lot. i don’t think mikey expected to be able to immediately see an actual tiny human squirming around, and i know i didn’t – i thought i’d have to squint and decipher for a bit. the heartbeat was perfect, everything else looked good, and based on the size of the head we are almost a week further along than we thought – roughly 9 weeks, almost 10 (we thought we were in week 8 based on bloodwork). this makes our “due date” october 20th. my mom insists that it will be born on the 26th – my bub & great-grandmother’s birthday. she is right about most everything. i am not counting on october 20th, but who knows. maybe our child will be a conformist. we won’t have another one until the end of may, when they check all the organs and such, and that will probably be it if everything progresses normally. we still need to decide if we want to know the sex. i’m on the fence – i really don’t care either way. surprises are good, but knowing would be good too.

mikey returned safely last night with lots of morningstar veggie burgers, whole AND spear pickles, sazon seasoning, wv beer that i can’t drink, a onesie and tiny wv socks from grandma jan – i was equally excited about the socks and pickles. three jars should last me until may when we go home. if i gorge myself, i can have clint and kelly bring reinforcements WHEN THEY VISIT IN LESS THAN THREE WEEKS! whee! he also had a whole pile of new appalachia books which i will actually read an enjoy, as opposed to most of his books, which i don’t understand or care about.

tomorrow i will scan a printout at work so you can see the obligatory fuzzy black and white blob photo. our scanner is hooked up to the computer that is currently in intensive care. also tomorrow: i get to sleep for an extra hour. an extra hour has never sounded so wonderful.

listening: sebadoh
movie of the night: because i watch a movie almost EVERY NIGHT instead of napping, fargo
pickles consumed today: two

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