Gametes In Love

My last day of work (pre- my maternity leave) was yesterday. It was kind of exciting and sad to walk away from my desk.

I was telling S this morning that now every day until G arrives will feel like Sunday. He looked at me and asked “Don’t you mean Saturday?” I responded “No, Sunday is like knowing you have one more day before you have to go back to work. We wait for labor, knowing that each day could be the last day.” It’s a bitter-sweet feeling.

So how did I celebrate my first day off?

• Brunch and baby talk with A & B
• Yet another trip to Babies R Us (I think they just need to assign me my own parking spot there)
• Running a few chores at a few more stores
• Nap! Yep, I came home, put my feet up and proceeded to nap for a good hour.

Now, let’s see how long I’ll manage being at home before I get bored enough to want to self-induce labor 🙂

Our birth-prep course instructor and OB have encouraged us to create a list of “birth preferences”. For those unfamiliar to the term, this document is a wish list of the types of things you would like to have happen during/after labor. It’s “preferences” over “plan” because although most births are pretty uneventful, you can’t predict exactly how they’ll go, so sticking to a plan might not be reasonable if you could be endangering either the baby or the mom.

I wanted ours to be very short and note the things that were important to me. Although there are lots of other things I’d like, they’re on my “nice to have” list or I don’t have that much of a preference one way or another. I’m hoping that with it being short, it would be easier for the nurses caring for us to actually read it all the way through.

What was interesting (and a little unexpected on my part) was the discussion that this piece of paper sparked between S and I. Although we’re on the same page, the language in my initial draft brought out his “contract reading eyes” where he was reviewing how each phrase could be interpreted. I hadn’t seen him get this emotional in awhile, so this was a serious talk we needed to have. I did my best to let him talk, and try to reiterate his point of view to make sure I understood him correctly, before I proceeded to tell him my thinking. Go “Marriage Prep 101”! Those two days in seminar do pay off! At the end of it all, this list is what we both want in addition to understanding the “unstated” limits of each item.

So here goes. S & A’s birth preferences… (although it is written in the first person)

Thank you very much for attending to our family over the next few days! I look forward to sharing this experience with you!

Although I realize that my birthing journey can have many unexpected turns, I would like to share my birthing preferences with you. Ultimately my goal is to deliver our child safely, but it is my hope that you will assist me in having an unmedicated, natural childbirth experience as close to my requests below as possible.

Medication:

• I would prefer that epidural (or other pain relief) medication is NOT offered to me, although I would like that it be available should I request it.
• Unless my child displays fetal distress, please do not administer induction medication (such as Pitocin) or strip my amniotic membranes. I would prefer that non-chemical methods be tried first.

Labor:

• I would like to be given the opportunity to walk and move around throughout labor. If an IV is necessary, please allow me the opportunity to move it with me.
• If a squat bar is available, please allow me to use it.

Monitoring:

• Unless required by the condition of our child, I do not wish to have continuous fetal monitoring.

After Birth:

• I would like my child to be placed on my body and allowed to nurse before his cord is cut.
• Please ask my husband if he would like to cut the cord himself.
• If a program is available, I would prefer to donate the umbilical cord blood.
• Our son will not be circumcised.
• Our child may NOT be given the Hep B vaccine.
• You may administer other procedures such as the Vitamin-K shot, eye prophylaxis and APGAR tests. If allowed, I would like my husband to be present during these procedures.
• I would like to meet with a lactation consultant as soon as they are available.

Thank you for your time and care!

Our OB has since reviewed the plan and found everything to be “very reasonable” — her words. She put it in my chart and will have it sent over to the hospital. Of course we’ll be making half a dozen of our own copies to hand out too.

As I was carrying a laundry basket to G’s room this morning I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror… and it hit me: My new job in a matter of weeks will be that of a laundress. With babies and our cloth diaper strategy apparently we’ll be doing laundry about every 2-3 days. Joy!!!

Yep, that was sarcasm.

I don’t mind sorting clothes (that part’s kinda fun). I don’t mind putting them in the machine or even moving them into the drier. But I HATE folding. Hate it, hate it, hate it! Even with my own clothes the basket they come out of is where they stay until I pull them out to re-wear them. This has been a constant strife w/ S, and we’ve reached a mutual compromise — I don’t have to fold my clothes, but my laundry basket of “clean” clothes will stay out of his sight. When I do take time to put clothes away I hang everything that can be remotely hung. If there were hangers for undies those would be hanging too.

But now w/ G arriving, and me being the stay-at-home care provider for the next few months I have no excuses to not fold his stuff. So here comes my new job!

I started the first set of laundry yesterday, and man is there a lot of it. Washing everything he’ll be in contact with produced 4 loads of stuff. Some of it (the clothes bit) looks like I’m getting ready to dress my dollies, but it does add up.

I’m halfway done. Off I go to do the rest… and fold. Hmn… Maybe this will be my incentive to train Neko how to fold. He’s very keen in getting into the laundry basket. Now if I can only convince him to do something useful while he’s there…

Q: How do you get a 8.5 mo pregnant woman to go into hyperventilation when she’s not ready to go into labor?
A: You say “Hon, turn so I can see your profile! It looks like you’ve dropped!”

Yeah, not a fun moment.

Luckily my OB appointment was today, and although G’s is in place and my cervix is very soft (yeah, you really wanted that detail didn’t you), it’s also closed up and the OB said that the chances of me going into labor over the next week are low. Of course she prefaced it with a “that can change”, but I’ll take it.

I have some things that have to get done next week, two of which include having the cleaning crew over (I’m off-loading the “nesting” to someone else) and a veterinarian appointment for Neko. Yeah, stop laughing at me — I realize I shouldn’t be making big plans here, but I can’t plan to just stay at home and just wait around for contractions to start either.

In other news: my feet have grown!!! Apparently the belly is not the only thing gaining in size here. I finally grew from a 6 to a size 7 two years ago, which was super exciting for me — I graduated from having to shop at the little girls isle. You know how hard it is to find cute high heeled shoes that don’t come in pink patten leather? Now I’ve gained another 1/2 a size. I know this by spending the whole day in shoes yesterday that clearly didn’t fit me. I mentioned this to my sister today and now she’s convinced that she doesn’t want to be pregnant — for fear that pregnancy will also have her (already sizeable) feet also grow.

Oh… and speaking of belly, here’s glorious me last Saturday at 37w.

Ok, you’ve seen some pieces here and there of our nursery. Well – here are the final pics.

[far & back walls. The only thing missing are our pregnancy shoot photos.]

[door wall]

[closet & back walls]

[wet bottoms go here & yes, I enjoy our label-maker a bit too much]

My sis’ work came out amazing! Looking at it makes me smile.

In general, my “nesting” has been focused 100% on this room. I don’t seem to care about having the rest of the house spotless, but for some reason having this room be ready for G has been where my energy wants to go.

Even Neko (our four-legged, meowing kid) approves of the room. The other day he even walked me there just to hang out in it together. He’s figured out that our glider is really comfy after watching me sit (and nap) in it as often as I do. He finally got up in it and proceeded to take a nap while my mom and I were folding and putting away baby clothes. Whenever I got close, he’d open a sleepy eye and give me this look like “You didn’t want me to move, did ya’? ‘Cuz I won’t!”

So hopefully G will take lots of good, comfy naps in here… preferably ones that last all through the night 🙂

P.S. Enjoy the crib bumper while it lasts. G won’t be! He’ll be getting a breathable (and not quite as fashionable) crib bumper instead.

Posted by S

Three years ago today A and I spent a fantastic day at Nestldown for our wedding. It was an amazing day and one that I think about often. Given that our family is growing, I just can’t help but to think back about the events that led to our relationship. It’s these same thoughts that went into our wedding vows, it was actually the entire script to our wedding ceremony.

A and I agonized over every word in our wedding ceremony. We wanted the words to reflect our true thoughts and philosophy of our relationship. We didn’t craft these words solely on our own. We pulled from other wedding ceremonies – some found online, some from friends (I know they recognize the lines we pulled), some from quotes, and some are our own words. By piecing these together we made something unique – like a great DJ who mixes samples to create a new song or a mash-up video artist that takes pieces of videos/songs to create a new video. In the end, it’s something special.

Each year I go back and read our ceremony (I’m glad they are still on our wedding site). This year they’ve taken a different shading for me given that our family is now at 2.9 (with 1 month left until Baby G is a full member of the family I give him a .9). The lines that hit me this year are (with bolding to emphasize the part that stands out to me):

do you now choose, A to be your wife, to share your life openly with her, to speak truthfully and lovingly to her, to accept her fully as she is and delight in who she is becoming, to respect her uniqueness, encourage her fulfillment, and compassionately support her so long as love and life shall endure?

I will love you enough to risk being hurt, trust you when I don’t understand, weep with you in heartache, and celebrate life with you in joy.

These circles [the rings] are the completeness of a promise to stand by one another’s side, the vow to grow together, laugh together, and love together.

Marriage is serious business and hard work. It’s not just becoming roommates, it’s becoming soul mates; it’s not just signing a license, it’s sharing a life. Now that you’ve exchanged your vows, you can only imagine what they will really mean, what hills and valleys stretch out in front of you in the years ahead. There’s only the future, unlimited and unknowable, and the promise to make the journey together.

Marriage is not self-sustaining; it requires nonstop nurturing.

Together, you will half your sorrows and double your joys!
You may now seal your vows with a kiss.

As we stand at the point in time with 3 years of marriage behind us, it’s clear that 3 years is such a tiny fraction of time compared to the years that lie in our future.

A – Happy Anniversary. “I choose you to be my wife, my friend, my love.”

A few months ago we saw this great cartoon of an expectant couple on their way to birthing class. The guy was wearing a racing helmet as his wife was trying to explain the difference between Lamaze and Lemans.

So now on the way to our birthing classes S likes to drop some references to said cartoon.

Sadly for him, we’re not taking Lamaze classes. We’re taking Bradley classes.

For those unfamiliar with the program, Bradley method is a birthing methodology. It stresses natural & un-medicated childbirth. The courses also offer dedicated sections on breast-feeding and infant care. It’s (typically) conducted over a period of 12 weeks, but our instructor teaches it in 9. We liked the longer, spaced out period better than the single day 8+ hr cram session at our hospital. I’ll be frank with you – I can barely do anything beyond 2 hours these days, so asking me to sit in a chair/floor/anything for 8 hours just ain’t gonna happen.

Today was our 3rd class. Well, sorta. Technically it’s our 6th class. We had to split up the sessions, since we’d be due right before class #6. So we took the last 3 classes first (which focused on infant care, breast-feeding, minimizing intervention), and are now doing the first 6 sessions.

Today was our first class on actual labor. I’ve been waiting for this class a long time. We went over the 4 stages of labor, discussed the anatomical process and watched a video. Yep. I am no longer ignorant. It was a bizarre experience. It’s like you want to watch and not both at the same time. The lady in the video seemed to be enjoying herself waaaay too much. After the first 3 minutes, I had to ask “Is she in labor, or is she having an orgasm?” Seriously. Way too much happy groaning going on there! If we didn’t get the preface that this was an un-medicated birth I would have assumed that she got something really good from either the doc, or self-medicated before getting to the hospital… “naturally”, if you get my drift. I know that birth is not likely to reflect what my experience will be.

I might have nightmares about said video, or more specifically on some of the close-ups. It’s strange to be in a class about birthing and wanting to turn away from the birthing video. Would that be inappropriate?
Alas there are more videos to watch. My innocence is receding quickly.

In other news, my latest OB appointment was today. I’ve gained 2 lbs over the previous week, but in my defense I swear a pound of it has got to be water weight! I feel good, but really swollen up: my feet; my hands; my face – I swear I’m a smaller version of the Michelin man. The witch from Hansel and Gretel drools and fires up her ovens when she sees me walk by.

Looking for a way to get out of jury duty? Being in labor, I think should be a good excuse.

I just received my first jury duty summons and in typical jury duty fashion, I was requested for an aptly inappropriate date for my court appearance: 9/11. Aside from the interesting date choice, I have no idea if I will be:

• with a 1 week old child
• overdue and waiting to go into labor
• in labor
• in the hospital post-delivery

Either way, my OB wrote me a nice excuse note today, so I get to defer jury duty.

I would actually like to be a jury… just preferably not while I’m also battling contractions… or post-labor hormones. I would imagine any defendant would appreciate a non-hormonal-raging/contraction-free juror too.

“Labor” day is 30 days away now and G’s temporary home looks like this:

I still marvel at how much my belly can grow.

S has been urging me to go to the community pool, especially while I’m on my maternity leave. As lovely as the idea sounds, I don’t quite feel comfortable wearing a bikini in front of strangers. Don’t get me wrong — I think I look very good for an 8 month pregnant lady, but I’m worried that some poor child is going to see me and start crying. I can just hear that conversation now:

[Child’s parent]: Don’t cry kiddo. It’s just a baby inside her belly!

[Child, while sniffling]: Did that lady eat it?

Ah, yes — no bikini for me.

In preparation for labor, S and I signed up for a Bradley birthing class. (Bradley, like Lamaze is a birthing approach.) One of the core principles of Bradley is the coach assisted child-birth. S, of course, in this journey, has the role of coach. I, in turn, will take the role of the pregnant woman going through labor.

A second principle of the Bradley method, is that birth should be regarded as an athletic event and that the mother’s body should be conditioned (mentally and physically) for the challenge ahead. What this means is that there are a series of exercises that should be done every day, and as the pregnant person does them, the coach should assist and encourage.

So last night, S in his most encouraging tone, reminded me it was time for some exercises. This on its own makes me give him a dirty look: when you’re comfy in bed the last thing you want to do is get up and do some squats and pelvic tilts.

I begrudgingly get up. As I do this, S moves over to my side of the bed and proceeds to tell me that in the Bradley book he is reading, the coach is encouraged to take over the lady’s side of the bed “and keep it warm for her” while she exercises. So there is S, laptop in lap, lounging on my perfectly positioned pillows while I have to get down on all fours. The only thing he was missing was a bag of Cheetos!

Thanx coach!!!