ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

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."

I mean IDK, maybe developmentally 20 mos really is too young to *get it*?

i think they're fine. and kind of necessary to allow a cooling off period. it can be hard for anybody to think straight in the middle of a whine-tantrum fest.

"just stops asking for the thing she was asking for"

hey, problem solved..

i think i can be good to let the kid chill out on his/her own sometimes -- we haven't had to do it too often though. But it can be literally just a minute and our daughter will do a complete 180 mood-wise. i don't know whether she "gets" it necessarily (she's 2 1/2 now), but it helps the situation.

Cruel? I'm still trying to figure out time-outs are punishment in the first place.

Beeps has to sit on the stairs while we count off her minutes (all FIVE of them) with this multi-colored light thing that looks like it fell out of some roadside assistance kit. I've told her, "In my day, we had to stand in the CORNER." and she's all "How did you get to the corner when all your toys were in the way?"

lol

n/a: I agree, a birthing center within a hospital is the best of both worlds.

pplains: hahahaha

My friend had a weird situation when her daughter picked up the following phrase at daycare:"How sad, how saaaaaaaaaad, you make bad choices."

She walked into her daughter's room one day because she was so quiet and the three year old had moved all her toys to one side of the room and left a lonely stuffed animal frog in a corner and was pointing at "Frog" saying,"How sad, Frog, how saaaaaaaaaaaad, you make bad choices." She called me at work all freaked out to ask if I thought she should have a conference. I said, by all means, that sounded creepy. So she did and everyone at the daycare denied ever teaching anything remotely like that.

My friend is extremely thorough so for weeks she worked hard to unravel the mystery. Meanwhile, her child was pretty much policing herself by repeating the phrase before she'd do something wrong. Then she started inserting it into her parent's conversations. When my friend said she forgot to pick up snacks at the grocery store, phrase was repeated, when her dad said he should have cut the grass because he found out rain was predicted for days, phrase repeated. Drove everyone nuts, but worked for her. She was very well behaved. My friend ended up hearing another child at the daycare say this and it turned out one of the student workers who was very Christian had been saying this to the children.

"How sad, Frog, how saaaaaaaaaaaad, you make bad choices."

Holy crap that is the cutest thing in the world. A little creepy maybe but also really freaking cute.

Teehee...

so my grandma is 101, has pneumonia and is probably not gonna live for much longer - family (some of whom have not been together in the same room for 20+ years) are all gathering. my daughter is 4. taking her to the hospital to visit with everybody would probably be too heavy/weird... right?

i think it would be good. you don't have to stay too long. it will be heavy and weird but i think that's good to see, so she can understand why people get all serious when they talk about your grandma. i mean, i don't know, but that's my first instinct.

she might be confused by it, but it's kind of inevitable that a four-year-old will experience some things she is confused by

Tough call. I probably wouldn't have taken my daughter at that age, but it's YMMV territory.

I was there the other night and my grandma's not hooked up to any machines, no tubes, she's in a private room, etc. so it's not as crazy as it could be. otoh she is 101, and really sick and looks it.

She is definitely aware that people and things die, but we haven't really had the big discussion about death yet.

I dunno, I'm of two minds about it.

my only real reference is being taken to the hospital to visit a dying neighbor (an old woman who had always been very nice to me) when I was 12. And that was a really heavy but positive experience - otoh 12 is very different from 4.

My parents kept us out of my grandmother's sickness and eventual death from cancer as much as possible. Even at her funeral, we were put into the church nursery to play until the adults were done, and I was...8 years old? So I have no memory of losing her, just that there was a person in my life for a while and then she stopped being in it, but I don't remember feeling any sadness or loss or marking the occasion.

So from my point of view, take her, give her the memories, let her see some amount of grieving responses, because, I don't know, it seems honest?

it's not the grieving I'm concerned about really. and it's not even the hospital per se (she loves hospitals! lol) ... I guess really my only concern is that she'll be freaked out by how my grandma actually looks right now, on the edge of death after a really long life. like visually she mind find it alarming/scary. I dunno.

Was she close to her? If not, she might be a little confused but in a way that would eventually be positive.

I would do it with my five-year-old if the relative was distant. If she was seeing someone she had been close to so near to death, maybe it would be a different story.

close = eh, not really. I mean by the time she could walk/talk my grandma was already nearing 100 and fairly senile. We've taken her for brief visits and she knows who her great grandmother is and where she lives etc but no I don't think there's a real emotional bond there.

My parents always seemed to think we would find things scary, like knowing the dog was sick, or seeing an ailing relative who was already jaundiced or dying or w/e. But it was never the things they expected that freaked us out? You just can't know, I guess. Still would take her?

also kinda wonder if I will be taking shit from my relatives for bringing a 4 yo, tbh. Like I might be okay with it, some of them might think I'm being a terrible parent. But whatever, that's a minor concern.

xp Agree I think it's hard to know what's going to freak out a child at four (or for that matter eight). I'm inclined to think it'd be okay either way, but I don't think you would be sheltering her terribly if you didn't take her. She'll get plenty of opportunity to learn about mortality ya know.

tbf I do have all those bodies stashed in the basement

there is that.

okay well looks like we're going over this afternoon if my wife can find a sub at the co-op