ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

thanks all. yeah, the translation is "Lonely. Wish I could have a better family! Katie :)" given that we're talking about a kindergartener, it scores for me on pathos, lols, and drama scales. the mystery is in the %s.

my sister's immediate response was "that's exactly how i felt growning up in our house!"

Oh bless!

JS, out of the mothers at the baby group I went to with Aidan I was the only one who gave birth in the birth centre and I was the only one who had no intervention whatsoever. The others varied from induction, forceps/ventouse, through to C-section. Yes there are women alive now who would have died in childbirth without modern medical intervention but that's only a tiny minority, and a birth centre/homebirth doesn't mean you can't get that support if you need it. When things go wrong at birth it's either over a long period of time and a well trained midwife will know about it and seek help, or it's so quick that not even being in a hospital would make a difference.

Sounds like you've got a fabulous midwife!

I thought you might have meant "snacking"!

We had a homebirth the second time around and it was like night and day. For #1 we were in the hospital, hooked up to machines, eventually she went with an epidural, couldn't feel a goddamn thing, ventouse action eventually produced a result. Total exhaustion and never really feeling like we knew WTH was happening or what we should do.

For #2 we did a homebirth and, uh, I will admit that we dabbled in "hypnobirthing".. which is frankly an oversell of what it is. There are things the partner reads to the mother-to-be, touchy feely stuff with a lot of repetition, intended really to just help her get relaxed. A lot of light massage. She was a little apprehensive about the whole birth, given the suboptimal experience the first time around, and it really helped. In the event it all went really well. We had a pool but she gave birth before I could even get it filled up. After about four hours of contractions things suddenly got a lot more intense and she was like "I think we should go to the hospital" and the midwives were like, you're doing great, you don't need to go, and afterwards they told me that was the sign that they knew she was ready to start pushing. Less than 10 minutes later she'd given birth!

my 5-yo niece surprised my sister last week by asking if she'd ever been married before. (Yes.) Haven't gotten a report on the answer.

pardon the pop-in.

The information on the Vitamin K shot it a little baffling!

We figured, no one knows what a newborn's level should be, it's mother nature's 'yeah some babies may die after a traumatic birth but most will be fine' Vs modern medcines 'a tiny % of newborns would die without so we're going to inject this without actually knowing if it has any ill effect as it's impossible to tell' Birth was straight forward so we figured 'mother nature' was probably the right choice for us. http://aims.org.uk/Journal/Vol13No2/vitk.htm I'd decided against the injection definitely but was unsure about whether to give it orally or not.

Basically we were like "whatever u midwives say is our gospel" on that subject and every other

One cool thing about the homebirth was that the head midwife asked me if I wanted to check out the placenta! I was like... uh YEAH?! It's not like there will be many more chances. It was in a bucket. We took it up to the kitchen, spread it out on a plastic bag, and she showed me all the parts of it and explained what they do. Which I've remembered every detail of, obviously.

Wow! I would like to plant a tree the day after Baby August is born and place the placenta under the roots of the tree.

Wish I knew what happened to daughter no.1 placenta - the midwife said it was the biggest she'd ever seen. We had a home birth then and it was great - in our dining room, in an inflatable pool, v chill midwife tag team, all very cool. But post-birth we were sent to hospital for stitches - this was 1am or so. Were left in a waiting room for 4 or 5 hours, waiting for a free surgeon as there was some emergency rush on. Around 6am, sleepless, I had to go home and deal with the birthing pool before mother-in-law arrived. The term "blood bath" suddenly felt horribly literal. :/

D:

Even just dealing with cleaning up the non-birthed-in pool was a massive thing. I sort of wonder how worth it they are. Though people do say they're great.

I have been very impressed with our mid-wife. So far I have no fears and really don't expect to, but I did have a thought pop up that could have been a psychological block. I read that such things could impede labor so I brought it up with her and she pretty much counseled us (me) successfully. I appreciate the homework. She does work but we have work to do as well, it is our birth after all.

J. and I were talking about the spiritual air we encounter and just overall good feelings at her center but sans any new age vibe.

Planning on a water birth.

I read Birthing from Within and in the book they explained the different ways the placenta is used. I skipped over that part but went back and read it and thought that I might want to bury it with a tree. It isn't what I thought I would want to do because it all seems so "earthy" and I was the most non-earthy person there was but pregnancy has changed all that. So yeah, I want a placenta fruit tree now.

Placenta fruit tree is nothin' compared to what this lady did with hers:

http://www.momlogic.com/2009/04/i_ate_the_placenta.php

One of my good friends was vehemently against the medicalization of birth and had planned a home water birth (in the UK which is, as Vicky pointed out diff to the US in terms of attitudes about these things). Unfortunately she wound up being in labor for 5 days and having an emergency c-section. She was pretty devastated that things hadn't gone according to her plan in a way that makes me think it's pretty important to always bear in mind that anything can happen/change during the process. She recently had her second baby which was planned for a birth center delivery but it all happened so quickly that she had her in her bedroom before the paramedics even got to the house!

Tera - have you seen http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0995061/plotsummary? I thought it was pretty great.

Oh I meant to write out the title too. It's "The Business of Being Born".

I would like to be open minded enough to eat the Placenta, but I'm just not. I dunno, I just dunno

Yeah I heard about that....not quite THAT earthy. The first mid-wife I interviewed had on her website that she also offered placental encapsulation. I didn't know what that was and when I searched found this:

Placentophagy, or consumption of the placenta, has been reported for decades to help stop the baby blues and diminish postpartum fatigue. Some women have cooked the placenta in a stew, mixed it into a smoothie, or even taken it raw to tap into its powerful effects. For many who feel squeamish about this or want to reap the benefits of placenta for more than just a day or two, there is another option: encapsulation. Powdered placenta has been used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for centuries. In the postpartum period, placenta capsules can be used to

balance your hormones
enhance your milk supply
increase your energy
Although current research on human placentophagy does not exist, what we do know is that women who take placenta capsules report fewer emotional issues, have more energy and tend to enjoy a faster, more pleasant postpartum recovery. The first few days and weeks with your new baby are precious. Give yourself the best chance to fully enjoy your “babymoon” with placenta capsules.

I watched The Business of Being Born...I don't remember that part at all....

Oh, that was a real story about my friend which just makes me think it's important to bear in mind that plans sometimes have to change at the last minute and that that's OK too. The movie thing was just a separate thought because it occurred to me you might like it if you hadn't already seen it.

I would like to be open minded enough to eat the Placenta, but I'm just not. I dunno, I just dunno

― JacobSanders, Friday, March 9, 2012 6:28 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Totally with you on that tbh. I just . . . yeah. The encapsulation thing would be easier to swallow (har har) but again, I just don't know.

Never mind, I understand. Thought you meant there was placenta feasting in the documentary.

Yes, I did watch that doc and liked it very much. It did make me even more afraid of hospitals though. I am not afraid of hospitals in general, had my share of visits for surgery and out patient procedures over the years. I think it has a place but just not into birthing there.

It would be cool if there were just birthing centers where you could pick whatever birth you wanted from water birth to a typical hospital birth but all that went on there was birthing. I don't like the mixing of sick people with newborn babies and birthing moms.

The hospital is just down the street from our birthing center should we need it.

feel like w/placentophagy (and natural birth etc) that there is most definitely a time and place for it but that orthonatalism (i made that up) inre the best most appropriate way to have a baby is as corrosive to the idea of women's health as say banning birth control (may have overstated that a bit but u get the idea)

that is, if a lady wants to have her baby at home but can't, or is worried, or w/e, then ok! we'll do it at the hospital, you still take a baby home, a winner is you

nb this is directed at no one in particular

GBX I think I get and agree with what you're saying. My friend I was talking about in earlier wound up being really stressed out about things not going the way she'd planned at home and thinks that mental state prob contributed negatively to the whole experience. I will probably end up going either the home birth or midwife led birthing center route myself one day but recognize that sometimes things wind up happening not where or how we expect them too and think that those situations should be entered into with as open a mind as possible should they occur.

So, we had a baby shower for one of the PIs at work recently and were gabbing over some cake when the topic of water births came up because one of the women there (who happens to be English) had had two. The three doctors I was sitting next to (all pediatricians and women and mothers) were all completely horrified by the idea and started saying some pretty ill-informed things about non-traditional births but it wasn't really the time or place to get into it so I just sort of sat there and was perplexed and slightly annoyed for a while.

I like choices. I was really bummed out when it looked like we didn't have any and I was going to have to birth at one of the hospitals around here. Then when we found a mid-wife who did home births, the idea of birthing at home while preferred was not ideal to me. The logistics of where to put the birthing pool, privacy. Then she was the only mid-wife and I didn't really click with her at all, I didn't feel I could have complete faith in her. So finding the birthing center we are using and loving the mid-wife was pretty amazing for us. The center is new, they had a birth there already and all went well.

In my family there is a long tradition of home birthing. My great-aunt was a preemie, born at home swaddled in wool and surrounded by water bottles for several weeks. This was in the early 40's. She survived. My grandfather and a cousin of my grandmother's delivered my dad. I don't know why there wasn't a mid-wife or doctor. My grandmother tore and didn't even know it. Several weeks later she saw a physician and was repaired. She said there was no real pain, just discomfort. I went EEK! But I tend to follow her high pain threshold so in a way, it became an inspiring story of sorts.

I have found that being pregnant seems to be a green light for hearing any birthing story anyone should happen to want to tell. In Baltimore a really friendly woman sat next to us at a restaurant and said twice,"My son was so big he almost tore my asshole!" It's been interesting, I have heard all sorts of stories both hospital and home birth. I try and practice non-focused awareness. Yes, I am aware that unexpected and unplanned things can happen but my focus is on what I want first and foremost. Should something out of the plan arise then I'll deal with it.

hmm, yeah, placentas and the hippy things you can do with them. I had placenta smoothies after Molly. I read all the things about how it can really help with vitamins, iron etc. and that humans are about the only mammal that doesn't eat it's own placenta. I spoke to the midwife who was completely unphased by it and got one of her colleagues to forward me a placenta smoothie recipe. She even prepared the placenta for me getting rid of the yukky bits you can't use and left it in the fridge in a disposable kidney bowl. I was a little grossed out about the texture but that was all. Chris refused to have anything to do with it so I had to prepare them all myself.

GBX, I totally agree with you. Birth whatever way you're comfortable with, I just wish it was easier for women to be completely informed about birth, rather than having barriers put in the way. Actually I don't think you can really force someone to have a natural birth if they don't want one, the fear factor etc. that inhibits natural births would kick in and interventions would be needed. I guess there's always the fast labours where things happen too quickly but that happens anyway.

Tera, sounds like you've got a very good philosophy for birth. I purposely didn't write a birth plan with Aidan's birth as I didn't want to count my chickens, get hung up on anything and then get upset and angry if it didn't go that way. I wanted as hands off as possible but was willing to go with the flow. The midwife was keen for me to work with her on a birth plan second time round and I was a bit resistant until I realised that she just wanted to know what I wanted in an ideal world, so that she knew what she needed to do or not do in advance.

i think childbirth is one of the major breakdowns in a social medicine society. my sister-in-law was literally mocked and degraded by the nurses because she was having trouble and a lot of pain trying to breastfeed. Stuff like "oh look shes crying. Stop being such a wimp.' I can def see why people go with midwives. My sis-in-law paid for a private hospital for her second kiddo.

Vicky - did you notice a difference in healing or energy levels after with the 2nd baby and placenta eating as compared to the first? I find it totally fascinating and I just don't know if I could bring myself to do it.

my umbilical cord and placenta were squirreled away by someone or other to store the stem cells deep underground in Florida.

Is that cord blood banking?

Vicky, did benefit from eating your placenta in all the ways they said?

E, yes.

I watched The Business of Being Born and am all for natural birth where possible, but one thing that I think gets unfairly left out of the "medicalization of childbirth" narrative is that mothers and babies almost never die in childbirth anymore as a result. I mean you know, institutionalized medicine is evil until we need it.

Hurting, I think the whole backlash against medicalised birth is that the medics get so obsessed about the statistics of saving lives that they don't look at the implications for the people who have uncomplicated births. It doesn't have to be either/or, and I'd hope that no natural birth supporters would feel that appropriate medicalisation of birth to save a life shouldn't be offered/given, but for the small % of lives saved there is an awful lot of knock on effect to everyone else and it doesn't have to be like that.

e.g. going overdue - there is a small chance that the placenta becomes less efficient once a woman goes 2 weeks past her due date. This can be monitored to ensure that placenta and baby are fine and induction can be offered to the mother. Unfortunately in many places this has turned into a policy not of monitoring but of not letting mothers get to two weeks past their due dates and almost forcing induction on them, which increases the probability of interventions hugely. Babies are born before they're ready, mothers go through brutal labours because of high levels of artificial hormones, forceps, ventouse, c-sections are commonplace following inductions, all of which have implications on breastfeeding, mother and baby's well being, but it's all fine in the medics eyes because everyone's alive.

Sorry for the rant, especially when you're all for natural birth, it's something I feel very strongly about.

Anyway, placentas! It's really hard to say whether it made a difference. I definitely didn't feel worse after Molly, I had a few weepy moments but then hormones are totally all over the place. I don't think I felt as blue as after Aidan but I did have to stay in hospital for 4 days after he was born as he needed IV antibiotics. I think it might have helped with iron levels definitely. I wasn't anemic during A's pregnancy but was with Molly. Post partum I look much more healthy in pics after Molly, in photos a couple of days after A I looked grey but I seemed to have more energy and definitely had better colour after Molly.

Tera, I'm sure your midwife has mentioned it but have you read up on delayed cord clamping and natural third stages?

Vicky, I have been reading up on it... have not discussed it yet, next visit.

Well our experience went like this: wife's water broke but labor wasn't starting. We basically had the option of waiting the night before starting pitocin. We waited a few hours, nothing was happening and we decided to go with pitocin, knowing that there wasn't a very strong chance labor was going to progress fast enough on its own at that point. After 24 hours she was only at 5cm and something was keeping the baby from descending further, and she was also running a fever, and at that point it's pretty much policy that they do a c-section. We weren't happy about this of course - it was the last thing we wanted. But it turned out that the baby's cord had been wrapped around its neck twice, and while that wouldn't necessarily have made natural birth impossible, it would have made it much more difficult and dangerous.

The recovery was, of course, harder than from a regular birth. But my wife was still able to breastfeed fine with a little effort, and, I am quite sure she and the baby bonded.

I guess what I am saying is that after the experience I came away a little more glad that medical childbirth exists as an option and a little less suspicious of it.

We have had a couple of friends who prepared home births and wound up with c-sections as well. One of them told us about how she told her husband "I'm so disappointed" and he said "I'm not, because if this wasn't available, you and the baby might have died."

I mean we're very lucky really, because we can have the best of both worlds, and I absolutely agree you should do everything you can to have a natural birth as long as you're not high-risk. We hope to do whatever we can not to repeat our experience. But even if you're not high-risk, things often don't go according to plan no matter how much you do to try to make it work. And if something does go wrong, you're lucky to have medicalized childbirth as a backup.

"Well our experience went like this: wife's water broke but labor wasn't starting. We basically had the option of waiting the night before starting pitocin. We waited a few hours, nothing was happening and we decided to go with pitocin, knowing that there wasn't a very strong chance labor was going to progress fast enough on its own at that point. After 24 hours she was only at 5cm and something was keeping the baby from descending further, and she was also running a fever, and at that point it's pretty much policy that they do a c-section. We weren't happy about this of course - it was the last thing we wanted. But it turned out that the baby's cord had been wrapped around its neck twice, and while that wouldn't necessarily have made natural birth impossible, it would have made it much more difficult and dangerous.
"

Hurting this is EXACTLY what happened when I Henry. I'm about 90% sure he wouldn't have made it vaginally.

Hurting otm in general, I think.

When my mom had me the cord was wrapped around my neck too. Not sure what they wound up doing but she didn't have to have a c-sec in the end. I think they cut it from around my neck while I was still making my way out? Hmmm. That doesn't sound right but I'm sure that's what she said.

An acquaintance of mine lost her baby at a birthing center last year.

Fortunately Texas is among the strictest in the country when it comes to licensing mid-wives. That could be why there are only two in this area.

The truth is, babies do not always make it at birthing centers or hospitals.

I was born at a hospital, placenta previa and the doctor was not arriving. My mother almost died and so did I. My sister was a c-section because she was 9lbs but my mother was in the hospital for a week and a half after due to an infection unrelated to birthing, just caught while at the hospital. There were successful home births on my dad's side of the family. This has all influenced my decision.

our kid was born at a midwifery center within a hospital, really seemed like the best of both worlds. the birth was completely done/overseen by the midwives but there were doctors/nurses around in case of an emergency which made me feel a little more secure.

xpost yeah we had a friend lose a baby in a normal hospital birth too -- a cord situation that just wasn't foreseeable I guess. There are always risks. I guess I just think (1) the degree to which medicalized childbirths has saved lives outweighs the harm it has done and (2) I'm also glad that there's now a pushback against the harm it has done, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, as it were.

my only real issue with all of this is the lack of education about options re: natural childbirth. like my wife is really into researching things so she read tons of books/articles/etc and was curious enough about the midwife option that we looked into it, but most people who don't take the initiative are going to be pushed into the medicalized birth scenario without knowing about any other options. i guess it's on them to do the work and educate themselves but i do wish that it was more of a default that all of the various possibilities and the pros and cons of each were explained to everyone.

a midwifery center within a hospital-This would be ideal! But when we asked about it here, the doctor looked at us like we were crazy. He just said we don't offer anything like that in a tone that suggested he thought it was silly for us to even ask.

That existed at our hospital, but we sort of botched applying for it because how to do it was unclear (you had to find a practitioner/midwife who worked with them FIRST, and like way in advance).

Anyway, it wouldn't have mattered, obv.

our kid was born at a midwifery center within a hospital, really seemed like the best of both worlds. the birth was completely done/overseen by the midwives but there were doctors/nurses around in case of an emergency which made me feel a little more secure.

― congratulations (n/a), Wednesday, March 14, 2012 10:38 AM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There is a really famous and supposedly great one at one of the hospitals here in Boston. I really wanted to work there actually. I do find that model of care really appealing for a lot of reasons including the ones that N/A mentioned.

if i can shift to a different topic: as mentioned above, we've been having trouble getting the kid (almost 20 months now) to say "please." she uses it occasionally but usually, when we ask her to say please, she either gets mad or just stops asking for the thing she was asking for. the other day she was throwing a fit about it so my wife put her in a time-out. later she was posting on a different parenting-focused message board about her frustration with the situation and people were very critical, saying kids her age are too young to learn from disciplining and so it's cruel to use time-outs on them. this seems weird to me, because i'm not sure what else we're supposed to do when she's misbehaving. these are very brief time-outs, like a few minutes, and my judgement is that she is smart enough to understand the concept, but maybe i'm wrong?

I cannot fucking understand the thinking behind the idea that time-outs are "cruel."