January 27, 2008 at 8:46 am (birthing, medical, second trimester, third trimester)
Tags: midwives, pregnancy, second trimester, third trimester
Hard to believe the second trimester is up already! Suddenly I’m @ 28 weeks. How the frack did that happen?
Been really busy doing what? Learning, mostly. Reading a lot and building my birth team, which took forever but am positively thrilled by this wonderful combination of women: I am working with an awesome doula and midwife and I cannot overstate the importance of feeling like I totally trust and respect this team!!
I went to the midwife last week and was mightily impressed by how much she relied on her sense of touch to give her information about me and the bean. Touched my right shoulder, “you need to loosen here” – put her hands on my belly and felt me in the most holy combination of strength and sensitivity, “The baby’s head is down now” – and “you have good strong pelvis” – *poke poke* – “These joints here *poke* already loosening – will loosen and open during labor” – gave me a reality about this whole thing that was profoundly comforting.
“You will bring your husband next time” she says. Yes, its time to get him more into the nitty gritty of this stuff. I have enjoyed the more solo sojourns into a lot of aspects of this journey, so I can know my own strengths and limits, deepen my own wisdom and come up against my own shit. But she’s right – it’s time to involve C a lot more in this stuff.
Before I deliver, aside from all the obvious things like “take childbirthing classes” “work with C on final house decisions” and “quit work”, I want to:
1) Exercise at least 30 min each day. (buaha!)
2) Practice hypnobirthing – though the reviews of this have been mixed – I am really drawn to the practice of going into deep trance and have done it before – so I do think this will be a useful tool during labor.
3) Finish this languishing episode of this fictional serial I’ve been working on.
4) Finish reading Birthing From Within and do some of these amazing exercises.
5) Go on a sweet trip with C for a weekend.
6) Create a “Welcome to earth, little bean!” ceremony.
7) Sort out the last name issue with C.
DJ a kick ass set someplace!
Goodbye second trimester. Thanks for everything. Hello third! I’m all yours.
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January 14, 2008 at 9:55 pm (tips)
Tags: birthing books
Birthing from Within – Pam England & Rob Horowitz – Way woo-woo but sooo solid and smart ideas for preparing for childbirth. So many books/doctors etc talk about the symptoms and all the extranal data. This book talks about art projects to get you mentally, emotionally and spiritually prepared.
Body, Soul, and Baby – Tracy W Gaudet, M.D. -Apparently this woman was a protege of Dr. Andrew Weil. Her approach is a wonderful hybrid of traditional medicine and woo-woo called “Integrative Medicine” – gotta love how these two fields are coming together. This book has some wonderful exercises and tons of practical info, broken out by trimester, including what to freak out about and what not to freak out about. Highly recommended. 
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January 13, 2008 at 7:52 pm (Uncategorized)
how do couples make the transition from two to three?
please god let us get this one gracefully.
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January 11, 2008 at 7:53 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: transitions
It feels like I have been stretched in a million directions lately. I’ve been eating well and getting plenty of sleep, but have been more detached from myself than I’ve been for a while.
I suppose this is a natural outgrowth of having SO MUCH ENERGY and wanting to get so much stuff done before the bean arrives. Plus, I’ve been negotiating with work about going down to part time, and that has been stressful…more so than I expected.
Part of it is that the vibe there is soo crazy and fearful. But another part of it is my own ambivalence about seguing out of full time work. Part of me loves having something to do that’s defined every day, with people I love. Part of me is dying to have more time to read, meditate, do yoga, and de-stress.
And then, it occurs to me that at the root of it all is the terror I feel of being financially dependent on someone else. Even though C has totally agreed to support me financially, and even though I do have money saved of my own, it brings up a lot of feelings. What if something bad happens? What will it mean to be a full-time mom? What if I end up driving a mini-van?
Am I ready for this?
The physical stuff seems to be in place….after many phone calls and interviews, I’ve got a great birth team. I hope to be down to part time @ work by mid-Feb, and I’m feeling pretty good, physically, overall. So maybe now it’s time to reconnect with my soul. Hi, soul. How’s it goin?
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January 4, 2008 at 7:29 am (second trimester, tips)
Tags: tips
Somehow I thought things would chill out after the holidays. Alas, there is now a new found pressure around here because our house / remodel project is taking longer than expected. And with a baby due sometime in there, well, it’s not looking like the smoothest landing at the airport.
So with that, I offer these additional tips for surviving the second trimester:
1) If you are not operating on your internal clock by now, go now and do it. Listen to the cues in your body for stress, hunger, fatigue, etc, and do what it takes to address them.
2) Your mama bear instinct is kicking in. This RULES. Let it kick. Let it in.
3) Begin to cut out stresses wherever possible. Do not fight battles that don’t matter. DO fight the ones that do matter. (see 2, above)
4) Enjoy how incredibly grounded, beautiful and connected you feel. If only I could bottle this feeling and save it for later.
5) Get good bras. Your back will be eternally grateful. (I haven’t done this one yet — consider this one more of a to-do than a tip.)
6) Plan a welcoming ceremony for the baby. They used to have “showers” – but nowadays a lot of women are having more celebratory, intentional events with the shower part being secondary. This should be 2 months or so before due date, since you want to have the energy and presence of mind to enjoy it!
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