ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

its very hard to strike a balance between wanting to keep your kids media consumption under control and coming off as a well-digging barn-raising luddite, this is my experience.

this is v hard. we are two ppl who love the internet and ben likes any screen that he can get his eyes on and we're like NO BABY YOUR BRAIN CANT UNDERSTAND JUMP CUTS

also, what natural birthing class are you doing? we did bradley method and we hired our teacher as a doula, we loved her.

There's nothing wrong with a good barn-raising. Good food, good music, and a barn: what's not to like?

its not really a specific natural birthing class, i just think that nowadays all birthing classes sort of turn into that because everyone imagines that they will have a natural birth, or that they are supposed to do so.

also raising the barn sucks because it's outside of my wifi range so my spotify playlists dont work.

a funny tidbit though, we asked the nurse that runs it how often the natural birth plan people she has dealt with end up going in for the epidural, and she sorta paused and then mumbled "eh probably 70-80%"

yeah my anecdotal experience fits that -- I hear much more often "We wanted to do natural but wound up..." rather than "we did natural"

there were 4 couples in our class. two couples had natural births, 1 did not, other unknown but probably not bc they were pills. #anecdata

This nurses's anecdotal experience reflects that walking onto L&D with a 5-page birth plan, doula and yoga ball thingy is the most surefire way to guarantee a 72-hour labor that ends in a c-section.

or not doing those things and just making a normal attempt at having natural birth, which is what happened to us

or going to a separate natural birth center and winding up needing to go to the hospital anyway, which happened to two couples we know

birth, it is unpredictable

i.e. I don't think being a caricature/strawman is the primary cause of natural birth not working out

No, but I think unrealistic expectations of what you can reasonably plan for can certainly contribute.

I don't think so

one good point she also made is that if you hit the point where labor has taken long enough that you are too tired to walk around and squat and do tub sits and w/e and are just going to end up lying in the birthing bed anyway being miserable, there's really no reason not to do the epidural.

hmm dunno about that. but it's a complicated issue.

actually nevermind, i agree with that point.

birth, it is unpredictable

having gone through two now (which were wildly different from one another), I am reminded of my dad's favorite saying "if you want to make God laugh, make a plan"

fwiw 1st = planned for a no drugs/no epidural natural birth, ended up with 36-hrs of labor + pitocin + epidural, which ended in a c-section anyway
2nd = planned for vbac, had 12 hr labor + epidural and everything went fine

wife was gonna go nat on #1 but yeah after pitocin & long labor with crashing blood sugar, went epidural & no c section
with #2 went for epidural right away
with #3 baby just kinda fell out, no drugs taken cos no time, guess the house got kinda bigger along the way if you know what I mean

lol

in london it's pretty cool, an NHS midwife team comes to your house if you want them to! baby #1 was at hospital, 14 hrs of labor, eventual epidural, ventouse, whole 9 yds. baby #2 was at home, 6 hrs from start to finish with no pain relief stronger than paracetemol (tylenol/acetominophen). after he was born, a sort of chief midwife came by, not sure why, maybe just to check on her flock, and sed, basically, with 1st babies, who the hell knows what's going to happen. i think i've mentioned her before, she was rad, showed me the placenta and its different parts (information which, like almost everything else that day, only exists as a tremendous blur)

My wife's water broke without labor starting. We waited about 24 hours and then started pitocin, and then when that didn't work we pretty much had to go with a c-section -- by that time I was so tired and anxious that the doula told me "don't faint!" (without a touch of humor) when I was on the way into the operating room. I had never actually been in a surgery room before, and the whole sensation was very surreal. I remember avoiding seeing my wife opened up, and I remember that I accidentally dropped my iphone and asked the doctor to pick it up and take a picture of us with the baby, and I think I felt more bewildered than anything else from the exhastion and nerves, even though I knew I was "supposed" to feel joy at that moment. Maybe a live birth is more "joyful" but maybe not.

Anyway, K loves the "fuzzy" chick in her farm animals book, and has now taken to calling me "fuzzy" which is THE sweetest thing

awwwww

I honestly can't even imagine watching the person you love be cut open, even when you know they can't feel a thing. I think when you're the laboring mother, your mind is on other things (if you're lucky), but being the other parent in the room seems unimaginably surreal.

Well, they do a pretty good job of not letting you see anything.

For H, they had me positioned behind and just to the left of Sunny's head, with a partition coming down across her chest. I was talking to her for most of it even though she was drugged up, and the time or two that I arched my head a little, all I could see was some really bright lights the doctor was using, pointed in our direction.

And steam. I do remember the steam.

^^ Yeah, that's what it always looks like when you see them done in videos. The partner is always up by the head and holding hands etc so that they don't see the actually cutting part.

xps to many, a natural birth is possible and possibly joyful! f bison went into labor in the afternoon (tho her water never broke). we labored at home for a while, called our doula at about midnight and we went to the hospital at about 3 am.

my memory is a hazy of many particulars, but there were roughly two phases: (1) it is dark outside and we are trying to get fully dilated to be able to push (2) the sun is out and she is now pushing. she pushed for 5 hours and our seemingly-monstrous-sized son was finally born 20 hours after the start of labor. we were both tired (she much moreso than i obv!) but we were both alert and fawning over our lil boy. as soon as he was born, he immediately went to his mom skin-to-skin and started nursing. now, there was some bullshit after he was born (we are going to take him for a bath...ok where is he...oh u didnt know? he's in the nicu...WHAT??) but the birth itself was p close to what we had planned and wanted. my wife was def in a lot of pain during labor, but she was p committed to natural birth, and i think she wanted to prove the haters wrong who said she couldn't do it (her mom, friends and coworkers who looked at her like her hair was on fire when she said she wanted a natural birth...not a lot of birth hippies in south texas). and she did it!

we were delivered by a certified nurse midwife after bad experiences with an OBGYN during pregnancy (long story available upon request). they were in the same practice, so it was kind of a lateral shift in terms of paperwork. but the group of CNMs were so supportive and listened to her concerns which is nice after being told OH NOES UR BABBY IS TOO BIG CUT CUT CUT U OPEN NOW *brandishes scalpel*.

yeah that's how it was for me xp, except I think maybe they brought me in a little bit late so I had to kind of walk around her and not look in order to get to the shielded part

fwiw, while the c-section may have made the first few days more challenging, I saw no evidence of "failure to bond" or any other supposed negative effects

This may be a bit personal on sunny's part, but I'd almost say she bonded more with H after the C than she did with Beeps.

Because of the C-section, she had to stay in the hospital longer. I wasn't up there every minute like I was with Beeps because, well, now I had Beeps. Sunny had a more developed maternal instinct the second time than she did for the first.

We'd go up there to visit, and those two would be fast asleep, him lying on her chest. I don't think she ever had a moment to do that the first go-round.

We'd go up there to visit, and those two would be fast asleep, him lying on her chest.

Awwwww.

And steam. I do remember the steam.

omg this, yes. so bizarre. I didn't look

I thought they were using a soldering iron at first.

i have no idea what you guys are talking about!

median temperature of the human body is 96.7 degrees F. average operating room temperature is a good deal lower.

also humans are made of water

98.6 but whatever you get the idea

i dont look at ilx for two days and youre telling them about the steam. dude.

I didn't want a c-section but have had surgeries in the past so I wasn't scared of surgery. I was scared of the epidural. While on the table I was aware of every tug, pull, pressure etc and it was like sticking your hand in your purse and knowing what everything is by touch...I could tell what was going on [I thought] without looking and was pretty amazed. I was also anxious to meet August and waiting for her cry and anxious to see her. I felt super aware at the time. Once I saw her and kissed her and had some seconds with her, they stared stitching me up. It was the same thing, felt all the tugging, pressure etc....it was my third major surgery. I was put completely under for the first two surgeries.

August latched on as soon as she was placed in my arms. We're pretty close. Since I had prior surgeries, I don't know, I think it helped me with the healing process. I healed faster than my friends who had natural births which surprised me. You just never know.

Had our last ultrasound yesterday, and little dude is basically exactly where he is supposed to be, 51% percentile on weight and length, practicing breathing and yawning (both of which are super cool
To watch on an ultrasound). Dumb "terrify the parents for no reason" bilateral cysts are completely gone.

He is also super hairy and spent a good deal of the time trying to kick himself in the head for fun, so he is obv my kid.

hahahahaha

yay!

hooray!

AWWWWWW so cute!!!!

So the boy isv out if school for the summer. When I reached into three laundry pile to grab an undershirt this morning, I unknowingly grabbed his smock from art class (which, news to me, was one of my white undershirts. Wow it under a thin white dress short this morning. When I got to work and looked in the bathroom mirror, I could see JOSEPH written across my chest.

that is brilliant

ahahaa