35 weeks and Hypno-what?

At this point in my pregnancy with Owen, I had a 2-day-old baby in the Providence NICU. He was born at 34 weeks and 5 days. As soon as my water broke with Owen (while getting a pedicure), I knew he was on his way, and I felt ready, prepared, and unafraid (until I got to the hospital, at least). However, the thought of this baby arriving NOW has thrown me into a total panic. I'm not ready! She's not ready! Luckily there are no signs of her making an appearance any time soon. An appointment Thursday morning will hopefully confirm that for us. (And truth be told, she probably actually IS ready, and would do fine if born tomorrow).

One of the reasons I don't feel fully ready yet is that I've not been so diligent with practicing my relaxation and breathing techniques that I hope to use for the birth. With Owen we had just finished our whole HypnoBirthing class, so I felt very confident in the methods and what was to come. The second time around we haven't taken any classes (nor do we think we need to). But I have not been so great about putting in the time to practice, which is critical to the success of the HypnoBirthing program.

I think HypnoBirthing gets a bad rap or often gets laughed off as a joke because people associate it with "stage hypnosis" - live shows where a "hypnotist" puts audience members into a hypnotic state and makes them do embarrassing things like quack like a duck or kiss the stranger sitting next to them. This kind of "hypnosis" has nothing to do with HypnoBirthing.

The practice of HypnoBirthing, when done successfully, does relax the mother into a self-hypnosis-type-state. But she is still alert, awake, and totally in control of her actions, emotions and thoughts. Its more about being able to put yourself into a state of total relaxation than it is about being "hypnotized."

The philosophy behind HypnoBirthing is that natural childbirth doesn't have to be the agonizing, scary and dangerous event that it is often made out to be. The premise is both physiological and psychological, and is based on the theory that in the absence of fear (and/or some modern medical interventions/ideas), women's bodies are totally capable of birthing babies calmly and with little-to-no pain. A quote from a Dr. Jonathan Dye (from 1891) that is used in the book states:

"According to physiological law, all natural, normal functions of the body are achieved without peril or pain. Birth is a natural, normal physiological function for normal, healthy women and their healthy babies. It can, therefore, be inferred that healthy women, carrying healthy babies, can safely birth without peril or pain."

The book states that "our bodies instinctively know how to birth, just as they know how to conceive and nurture the development of the babies they are carrying." Which, to me at least, makes so much sense! One of the goals of the HypnoBirthing program is to help mothers embrace their body's innate knowledge of birthing, and to help her relax into the birthing process and work with her body and her baby, instead of against it.

I did have a natural birth with Owen, but I will not even begin to claim that it was pain-free. I honestly and sincerely feel that the seriousness of the situation (his arrival 6 weeks early) set in as soon as I walked into the hospital at Providence, and most of what I had learned in my HypnoBirthing class went out the window. I was terrified. But I still managed to "get through it" as naturally as possible.

But it hurt. Real bad. However, I do think that the HypnoBirthing class and breathing and relaxation techniques were at least a great coping mechanism for me. As was all of the stored knowledge about childbirth being a normal, natural process that I knew my body was capable of handling.

With this soon-to-arrive baby I'm currently cooking we are hoping things will be even better. A few factors that are easing my mind:

1. Henry Ford's system of midwife care. Regardless of when or how I go into labor, a midwife is AT the hospital of all times. And since we met all of the midwives at the hospital tour, I know that the woman caring for me and the baby will be a face I recognize and someone I have spoken with. When I was triaged with Owen, I had to deal with residents and OBs who I'd never meet/seen/spoken to before, which added to my stress level (as did all of the questions they kept asking me, disregarding my birth plan completely).

2. The hospital is totally HypnoBirthing and natural-birth friendly. Not just the midwives, but it appears that the nurses and the rest of the staff are open to the idea and to the mother's requests.

3. We've kept a real close eye on this baby. I think a lot of the fear and anxiety I felt when in labor with Owen was heightened by having very few, scattered appointments with a bunch of different doctors throughout the pregnancy. Being a natural-born-worrier, it has helped me tremendously to keep such a close and watchful eye on this baby girl (ultrasounds every 2 weeks for the majority of the pregnancy), so I know she is healthy (maybe too healthy - I still have a minor fear that she's going to be huge). (Also, I'm aware that all of the extensive prenatal care and tests and ultrasounds are contradictory to a "natural" pregnancy experience, but it helped me, nonetheless).

4. I've already had an epidural (when I had the cerlage placed at 18 weeks). I think I've mentioned several times that I'm generally more terrified of a needle in my spinal cord (or wherever they stick it) than I am about the birthing. And while I do NOT want to do that ever again, I do feel some comfort knowing that I've done it once, so if medically necessary, I know I could do it again.

5. I know what to expect (as much as one can). A lot of the "fear" of childbirth goes away once you've done it once! I understand what the surges (contractions) will feel like and how the breathing techniques will help me work with those surges instead of against them (pushing = not as helpful as one might think).

I think it's unfortunate that modern medicine (and modern television, for that matter) has convinced so many women that they need pain medication or to "schedule" their birth instead of letting things happen naturally as they were intended. When hearing that I had one natural birth and am planning for another, I have had women tell me that I must have a really high pain tolerance, or that my birthing must have been much easier than theirs because there's no way they could have done it without the drugs. And I would never deny any woman those thoughts or opinions, because I have only my own experiences to go on. That being said, I really do believe strongly in the power of the body to do it's thing without much intervention. Women have been birthing their own babies since the beginning of time without drugs or forceps or someone standing over them yelling at them to "push!"

And while I will continue to practice my breathing and relaxation techniques and preparing for the birthing experience that we want to have, I am, of course, keeping an open mind about how things will go on the actual day. You can plan for the exact birth that you want and do all of the necessary planning and preparation, but you just never know what will happen on the day of, so we're trying to keep an open mind.

Now if only I could get the curtains hung in the baby's room. Then I'd REALLY feel prepared. :)

Scary things: storms and kick counts.

So a storm rolled through metro-Detroit on Saturday. And basically a mini-tornado came down our little residential street. Eric and Owen were out of town, but my parents had just gotten to our house and were about to start painting upstairs. The wind shear that took down half the trees in our neighborhood came so fast and furious that my mom was still yelling at us to get in the basement when it had already blown past. Luckily we had no major house damage, but right after the storm, our front yard looked like this:

And here's how it looked in the morning. Pretty much the same, but without the crappy flash.

With Eric being out of town (and not having the time to deal with this even if he WAS in town), I decided we needed some professional help. What I couldn't capture in photos was all of the serious debris that was also hovering 50 feet in the air lodged in the tree that also needed to come down - clearly a job for a tree professional. Luckily within 24 hours I had 4 different tree service companies knocking on my door scavenging for work. The guys I chose (A.W.D. Tree out of Rochester, who we now highly recommend) gave a great quote and did a fantastic job. They were working on it Monday afternoon when Eric and Owen got home. Despite the loud noise from the chipper, Owen thought watching the climber drop the huge branches out of the tree was pretty cool.

And since we've been talking about having someone come and clean up the tree since we moved in (lots of dead wood and suckers weighing down some of the bigger branches), we decided to have these guys take care of that for us, too. It's amazing what a difference that has made - the whole tree looks healthier and lighter (and there's the bonus of not being so paranoid about it dropping big branches in storms anymore). We don't know how old the tree is, but it's definitely one of the biggest silver maples I've ever seen - we want to keep it healthy and happy!

Another scary thing in my life right now? Kick counts. I never really did them with Owen - I had just started them and went into labor a few days later. But I've been doing them with this baby for 2 weeks now. And despite her crazy and almost constant movements, she seems to really like freaking me out by being completely still whenever I sit down and try to focus on those movements and track the "kicks."

This, of course, throws me into a panic every single time. For the first few days I was getting 10 kicks within about 10 minutes. But since then it has taken 20, 30 and once even 45 minutes to get those same 10 kicks. Which is still totally normal (abnormal would be if all of a sudden it took 3 hours to get 10 kicks). But still. I feel like she's messing with me. Already. I'm pretty sure she's gonna be a stinker from the moment she's born - this is mostly due to a dream I had the other night that the minute she was born she started talking and telling me I had bought the wrong kind of formula (which is ironic, as I will be nursing just as I did with Owen).

Anyway... Owen and I are laying low this weekend while Eric runs his first (and I'm hoping last - cause it's just nutty) ultra-marathon on Saturday. That's 50 miles, folks. In ONE race. I don't get it. But we will be wishing him lots of luck and love - Run daddy, run!

Why one should (not?) read birthing books before bed.

I've been reading through my Hypnobirthing book (this is the method we also used when Owen was born, more on Hypnobirthing in a later post) before I go to bed each night. Along with the reading comes a lot of practice with different types of breathing and a lot of visualization and relaxation exercises. Which, obviously, really gets you thinking about the actual event of giving birth.

So I guess I shouldn't be surprised when last night I had a very vivid dream about the birthing of this baby. On the one hand, this is a great thing, as it was a really good dream, and hopefully a sign that some of what I'm reading and practicing is coming back to me and will really help me out on the birth day. On the other hand, I woke up this morning feeling... like I'd just had a baby. I was exhausted. And emotional.

But I also woke up with a new excitement that I haven't felt just yet in this pregnancy. Eric and I were talking yesterday about the fact that this is actually going to happen. It's no longer just about getting the house in order, and getting the baby's room ready and getting through these last 2 months of bed rest. The past months have been so full of thoughts of keeping this baby IN, that it's seriously a major switch to start thinking of her actually coming out in less than 8 weeks.

Good thing Eric and Owen are out of town all weekend so I can spend all this free time painting and doing laundry and shopping for the baby. Just kidding. Although mom and I may make a trip to Babies R Us tomorrow (more electric scooter shopping!) to pick up a few key essentials (like a mattress for the crib) that we have yet to get. I think I'll feel much more relaxed once I know I have everything I need in the house. Actually, I probably won't feel relaxed until the baby is in the house, safe and sound.

Ooh, I also wanted to share that as of this week there have been more than 5,000 pageviews of this little blog of mine. Given that this is the 59th post, I'm happy to know that people are actually reading about this crazy summer we've had. I know many blogs get twice that many hits in a single day, but that wasn't ever really my goal. Even if all of my readers are my family and friends just wanting to catch up on how we're doing, I'm glad that it has served that purpose!

A contributing member of society (or at least of this family).

I might have, over the course of the last few months, watched about 2 seasons worth of HGTV's Clean House on Hulu (thank GOD for Hulu). It's like a much-scaled-back version of Hoarders, where a team of pretty obnoxious TV personalities go in and clean the overwhelming clutter out of people's houses and leave them totally organized. I've decided that I would love to do this for people. I love getting rid of JUNK. It's the organizing part that I sometimes skimp out on in our house.

Until now.

When we moved out of the old house we took probably 2 full carloads of stuff (well, friends Kristie and Larry ended up actually hauling most of it for us!) to Salvation Army to donate. And a great deal of that haul was clothes we no longer wore/needed. My task this past week has been to finally clean the master bedroom upstairs ("clean" meaning sit on the floor and go through a few boxes a day of clothes we deposited there when we moved and haven't touched since). And after emptying out all of the boxes and putting clothes in dressers and closets (finally!), we filled FOUR more boxes of clothes to donate over the past few days. Where is all this clothing coming from? Props to my husband for finally giving up probably 40 old race t-shirts that he never wore, and some out-of-style dress shirts and pants. But it doesn't explain the 2 boxes that I contributed after what I had already weeded out before the move. Or the fact that my closet and giant dresser and cedar chest are all still FULL of clothes. Yikes.

And while I am unable to lift boxes, paint, haul things up and down the stairs, etc. I am able to sit around and do this:

A big shout out to the Real Simple line of closet organizers at Bed Bath and Beyond. They hold a TON of stuff and appear to actually be durable and well-made. And yeah, the one hanging on the right is actually full top to bottom with scarves. I like scarves. A lot.

I mean. They're so PRETTY.

Uh, anyway. It is nice to feel like I accomplished something over the past week. Eric is cranking away on the baby's room (crib is put together! Chandelier and dimmer are installed! Antique dresser is in the garage with 2 coats of primer and awaiting a coat of paint!), and making the minor repairs to the walls upstairs so we can get started painting up there. I am hoping to recruit some parent/sibling assistance in painting up there this weekend while Eric is at Cross Country camp. He is in desperate need of a break from painting. Like. We might be bordering on painting-induced-nervous-breakdown. The up-side is that he's gotten REALLY good at patching and spackle-ing (how in the heck do you spell that?). The bad news is that he's probably never going to want to do it again. Ever. I hope he knows how grateful I am for all of his hard work on his "summer vacation" this year! xoxo.

32 weeks and a mostly reassuring appointment.

This week is my 14th week of bed rest. And the 32nd week of this pregnancy. It's also already the middle of August and we have so much planning and preparation still to do! This third trimester really snuck up on us - back at 18 weeks when I was taken off work and put on bed rest it seemed like the fall would never get here. But today I am wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and the air conditioning is off, with a nice breeze blowing through the house. So I am feeling more and more like fall is just around the corner (although I'm sure we're still in for many more days of sweltering heat yet this summer, as it is still August in Michigan).

At today's appointment with Dr. Murphy (the maternal/fetal specialist) I was really hoping for some reassurance that my level of activity in the last month hasn't changed anything in terms of, well, my cervix. Turns out that after 30 weeks, they don't even measure cervical length (talk about a weird thing to be disappointed about - most people probably don't actually want that particular kind of invasive ultrasound). Mostly because it's hard to get an accurate measurement at this point, but also because even if it was looking like I was at risk for going into labor - at this point there's not much they would do other than send me home and keep me on bed rest, which is what I'm doing anyway.

Baby girl looked great today, though. Everything is measuring perfectly - she weighs about 4 1/2 pounds and heart rate and all bone/head/heart measurements were right on track. Which is always nice to hear. The bad news is that she's getting so big that I can absolutely no longer lie on my back. I nearly passed out again during the ultrasound due to her compressing that big vena cava vein and cutting off my circulation to the point of sweating, light-headed dizziness. Fun. But Jori the tech was, as always, really great and did the rest of the ultrasound with me laying on my side with a damp cloth on my forehead, and everything was fine. Here's a 3D photo of today's scan. I seriously hope she grows into that McMillan nose.

If you're not used to looking at 3D images of babies in the womb (apparently this is not something most people see as regularly as we do) what you're looking at is the baby's face on the top half with her little hand sideways across her mouth and the bottom of her face. She refused to move that hand for the few minutes we were trying to get a photo, so this was the best we could do.

I was glad to hear that Dr. Murphy wasn't super concerned about the lower back pain and cramping I've had off and on (mostly Tuesday night and Wednesday morning). But she did very clearly tell me that if it comes back and lasts for more than 2 hours to go to Labor and Delivery to be checked out. So we will be keeping an eye on that.

I also now officially have an appointment, exactly 4 weeks from today, to get the cerclage removed! I am both thrilled and terrified at the prospect. Thrilled because it means we're that much closer to meeting this baby girl, and terrified because of the off chance that it could mean another epidural and OR procedure. Turns out most of the time it can be done outpatient with a couple hours of monitoring afterwards (she described it as usually feeling like a REALLY uncomfortable pap smear). But sometimes tissue can grow around the stitch, making it impossible to easily remove, requiring the whole epidural, all-day in the hospital, operational-procedure-gig to get it out. Lord. I do NOT want to go through that again. Is it bad that I'm more afraid of that than labor? Cause I am.

In the meantime I am making lots of lists. A list for my brother of all the baby things I've lent him for his son that I'm going to need back. A list for some resale or mom-to-mom shopping once the stitch comes out. A list for Babies R Us for those items that you just need NEW when you have a new baby. And the ever-growing list of things I'd ideally like to have done around here before the baby arrives. Eric is checking off one right now by getting the first coat of paint in the kitchen. Fingers crossed we can crank out painting our room and bathroom upstairs within the next month so we can actually move into our room before baby gets here!

Single-parenting on a busy weekend.

This weekend was our annual camping trip with our friends, where we tube down the Rifle River consuming copious amounts of cheap beer and junk food along the way. I would have killed to be there this year. A totally mindless, fun-filled weekend of camping with friends I feel like I never see anymore would have been a nice reprieve from life on the couch. Next year - sign me up Jon, I'm totally there.

But my being on bed rest shouldn't deny Eric the opportunity to spend the weekend on the river. He has worked his skinny ass off this summer, and he deserved a couple days away from home improvement and childcare duties. Which meant that I was single-parenting for the weekend. Only I wasn't really. Owen and I ended up staying with my parents Friday and Saturday nights. And we spent most of the day Saturday over at Jan's for cousin Lindsey's (home visiting from Taiwan!) party, which means Owen had about 20 people following him around and loving him all day Saturday (attention which he happily ate right up).

The problem with having cousins who are more like sisters and who I hardly ever see because three of them live in Taiwan, Philadelphia and New York, is that when all THREE are in town at the same time, I can't really stay on my couch all weekend (don't tell my midwife). There was a manicure in there. Pool time Friday afternoon. Drinks (Vernors for me) at Nana's Friday night. And of course hanging out at the party all day Saturday. And while all I did at all these events was sit, I was still so totally exhausted Sunday afternoon that when Owen went down for his nap, we ALL went down for a nap, and it ranks up there as one of the best naps of my life.

I'm going to behave myself the rest of this week until my check-in with the specialist on Thursday morning, where they'll do a big ultrasound and check all the baby's measurements again and make sure the stitch still looks good. I can't WAIT. After seeing her and being reassured every 2 weeks, this last month stretch of no ultrasound seems so long!

So, thanks to my cousins for a fantastic weekend, I miss and love you all. And thanks to my parents (from both Eric and I) for taking care of Owen (and me) all weekend. Their summer has been impacted more than most this year with all the extra hours/days/weeks they've put in helping us with the house and with Owen, and we are more grateful than we could ever say.

Happy Monday!

The time I passed out at the doctor's office.

My appointment with Trish the midwife went great yesterday. She might have estimated that the baby already weighs over 4 pounds. I'm going to try not to dwell on that fact (or the fact that at 6 weeks preterm, Owen already weighed 6 lbs 6 oz when he was born), because I'm slightly terrified of giving birth to an 11 pound baby.

Heartbeat was great. My measurements are great. She even had a good chuckle when she lifted up my shirt and could clearly see the giant bulge on my right side. Some days it's more noticeable than others. Yesterday it was ridiculous.

The appointment went downhill when it was time for my progesterone injection. I actually took Owen up to school this morning so Eric could get a jump start on the baby's room. And I didn't eat before I left the house, so I grabbed a chocolate chip muffin and a decaf soy latte from Bigby on my way home (insert joke about why baby is so huge here). Well apparently there wasn't enough in that muffin to sustain me as well as my usual oatmeal with blueberries and walnuts does (shocking).

Top that off with the fact that it was a new nurse giving me the injection (my usual lady wasn't in the office today). Top THAT off with the fact that this injection is already notorious for being gruesome (large needle, painful serum), which this new nurse made sure to tell me more than once (as if this was my first time).

I mean, she was a real nice lady. But this injection is just a bear. And for whatever reason it took a loooong time - much longer than usual. And it hurt much more than usual. And I felt like she was sort-of... jamming the needle around a bit. So towards the end of it I got all hot and sweaty and lightheaded and basically slumped over on the table (they have you lean/brace yourself on the exam table as it is while they give it).

So I basically passed out. They made me sit there for a good 20 minutes while they gave me some water, and took my blood pressure several times. It was still pretty low when I left, but I think I convinced them through my good-humored attitude and my ability to walk down the hall without falling down that I was, in fact, fine to drive myself home.

So. I will be sticking with Brenda the nurse for all future injections. I'll also be sure to eat a better breakfast on days I have to go in for this (and all days, I know, a fatty muffin is not a healthy breakfast), as my probably pretty low blood sugar was likely a major contributing factor.

Latest Obsession:

We cannot stop drinking Whole Foods' (or as we lovingly call it: Whole Paycheck's) "all natural" sodas. I mean. They're still full of sugar. But it's at least cane sugar not high fructose corn syrup. And they're all caffeine free with natural flavors so I feel okay about having one a day as a sweet treat. The Orange Creme Soda and Cherry Vanilla Creme Soda are the current favorites. Delicious!

Sneak Peek!

Eric hung the chandelier in the baby's room today. He was less-than-thrilled about the project, as it entailed lots of dainty little pieces being meticulously strung up from the already-hanging chandelier. This is just the beginning of the project - note the really "super-excited-to-be-doing-this" look on his face.

But I can tell you that now that it's up and completed that it is FANTASTIC. I wish it was in the dining room it's so pretty! We'll put up nursery photos once it's all pulled together... Hopefully in about a week or two...

We also purchased some awesome new pieces from an Oxford woman that refinishes old furniture last night... More on these new cool additions once we get them in the house tonight!