who says?

Who says I'm going to have a baby in about 10 weeks? Because who ever said that is out of their mind. I am not prepared to have a baby!

This pregnancy has flown by. I don't know if it's because I work every day or if it's because I have Bean (probably a little bit of both) but I didn't realize that the end is very near, regardless if I'm prepared or not. So I better kick my butt into gear.

This list is to serve as my 'To-Do'

May 9- 15

• Buy a dresser for the nursery (used)
• If it isn't the color I want it to be, paint it

May 16-22

• Put all baby clothes away (including Bean's)
• Print out photos for frames
• Spray paint frames and hang them

May 29- June 5

• Buy large pillow at Joanns for the chair
• Buy fabric to cover pillow
• Sew pillow case for pillow

June 6-12

• Buy fabric for curtains 
• Make curtains
• Buy night stand table

June 13-19

• Sign up to rent breast pump from hospital
• Purchase infant car seat
• Purchase Moby wrap
• Purchase bare minimum for pumping supplies (cool packs, storage containers)

June 20-26

• Buy comfy clothes for hospital stay
• Buy snacks for hospital stay
• Pack hospital bag
• Get infant swing from mom

June 27-July 3

• Buy two boxes of diapers for the new baby and Bean
• Buy two boxes of wipes
• Stock up on diaper creams and powder

July 4-10

• Pack a mock diaper bag and see if the bag is big enough for two kids
• If bag isn't big enough for two kids purchase a new diaper bag
• Ask family and friends for name ideas
• Narrow down name ideas to 4- pack list in hospital bag

July 11-17

• Make a food menu for the week we come home from hospital
• Install car seat

July 18-22

• Charge batteries for cameras and video camera
• Write posts for blog
• Pack laptop with hospital bag
• Buy food for menu
• Make meals and freeze them
• Clean the car

re-framing

A while a go I wrote a long post about wanting to have a vaginal birth with our son. After Bean's birth I felt cheated and so sad that I had been ignorant about birth which I believe led me to have a c-section. I meant every single thing I said in that post and so it made the decision not to have a vaginal birth harder.

Here are some reasons we chose to have another c-section:

Planning
It saddens me that we don't have the luxury of having a spontaneous birth. For several reasons we have decided that my mom will need to be with Bean during our stay in the hospital, regardless of our birth choice. I read several blogs of women who recently gave birth who had readily available mothers for the care of their first child. Not only did I glow green with envy, but I felt sad and somewhat cheated that we didn't have that option. My mother isn't able to receive a call any day to come and help us. Because of her work and life obligations her arrival and time to stay with us had to be scheduled.

We also didn't feel comfortable putting the burden on the few friends we have here. The two women that I could see helping us keep Bean will have newborns and it isn't fair for them to be burdened with a tricky 1 year old when they are just trying to figure out their own life's transition.

Bean could go to daycare but that wasn't an option we wanted. If I happened to go into labor at night she would have to come with us. But that would mean, because of her age, she and TP would have to wait in the waiting room until after I gave birth. She could go to the daycare during the day but that would mean TP would have to leave me, pick her up, and be home with her at night while I staid in the hospital. Knowing how helpful he was with my last recovery, that isn't an option.

So unfortunately, the c-section for our son provides us with the optimal arrangement for our family.

Uterine Rupture

I know that the chance of uterine rupture is 1% for vaginal births after cesarian (VBAC) but after a long conversation with TP, I decided that I couldn't live with myself if I happened to fall into that 1%. After all, someone has to, right? I don't think I could live with the death of a child because of the birth choice I consciously made. I know that infant death during birth (even with c-section) happens but I felt more comfortable knowing that I was choosing something with my child's best interest in mind, not just my selfish wants.

C-section anyway

I had an appointment with a doctor in my area that does VBACs and after that meeting I felt extremely defeated and sad. I got into my car, called my husband, and was on the verge of tears. I had about 20 questions for him, one of them being "At what weight prediction would you not consider giving me a VBAC?". He thought for a moment and said "9 pounds." My heart sank. Bean was 9 pounds 2 ounces and I'm expecting this baby to be just as big or bigger. So after all the preparation to have a vaginal birth  I wouldn't find this out until the few weeks before my due date if it were possible. Too much time, preparation, and high hopes only to be flushed down the drain by a prediction (that is often wrong).

Hospital Stay

When the doctor told me that I may end up with a c-section anyway I then thought about the hospital he delivers out of. It is the biggest in our area, has a very large staff, doesn't provide private rooms, and doesn't guarantee space for TP during overnight stays. So not only would the chance of a c-section be very real for me, I would be doing it in a hospital that doesn't really cater to individual needs. After the great experience I had at a smaller hospital with Bean, I knew that I didn't want this option.

If I were to schedule a c-section I could do it with the doctor's office that I felt comfortable with and have my stay in a small setting with great staff and a private room.


So I know that the above reasons may not be acceptable to some people but it was the thought process that we had when deciding to have another c-section. A part of me is mourning a birth that I wont' have with our son but the other half keeps me in perspective.

On July 22, 2011 we will have our son and I am trying to find peace with our choices.

-M

frumpy mommy

I do not want to be a frumpy mommy. I may be overweight and pregnant (and soon to be just overweight) but I believe in women looking good. I want to look good and gosh darn it, I can feel myself slipping.

Right now my shirts are pulled out of shape, faded, and just plain old. I bought a few new shirts from Old Navy but I am no longer buying my clothes there. Their clothes feel so cheap, last one or two washes, and aren't flattering on me. I can't shop at the Salvation Army or thrift stores (although you can find great quality finds) because I am overweight. They don't have a large selection of plus size clothing and the ones I do find are from the 80's. So I have come to the conclusion that I must look to other places and that means venturing online.

I'm kicking off my new initiative by buying a new outfit for Mother's Day.

I don't know what I'll be doing exactly that day (TP always plans it, last year we spent it this way and went to an amazing restaurant that served Louisiana food) but whatever it is, I'll be cute.

Here's what I purchased:

Dress 1:

Dress 2:

Dress 3:

Sandal 1 (to go with Dress 3, maybe)

Sandal 2 (to go with Dress 3, maybe)

 Sandal 3 (to go with Dress 1 & 2)

I feel good about these purchases but I'm a little nervous to see if they will fit my kind of sloppy pregnant belly (I do not have a cute round traditional pregnant belly) but I have ordered from this store before and returning items is so easy. I'm confident that if I like one or more of these dresses they will be great to run me through my pregnancy and even afterward. Perhaps even into next season (depending on tailoring costs, because I will be thinner next summer).


-M

my birth experience

It has taken me a year to realize that I cheated myself out of a birth experience I wanted.

Though I wrote a long post about B's birth, I realize now that the way I brought my daughter into the world wasn't what I wanted. At that time I thought it was but I've done some soul searching and discovered that I had been lying to myself. I thought, at the time, I was making an educated choice but I realize now, I was selfish and had no idea what I was doing.

My ignorance was because I felt overwhemled during that pregnancy. I was half way across the country away from family, a newlywed,  in graduate school, and I was overwhelmed by the amount of information on the Internet. So overwhelmed that I gathered what information I could and then stopped. I stopped researching, stopped educating myself, and probably stopped caring because I thought I knew enough.

I'm not sure if we ever know enough about anything, but I am sure now that I didn't know anything then.

I do have regrets about the way Bean was born and the majority of those regrets are because I did not give birth to my child the way I wanted to. I didn't know how I wanted to give birth to her but a year later I feel empty. I don't blame the doctor who delivered our daughter or the hospital. I blame myself. After obtaining two degrees that promote self advocacy and education, I'm ashamed that I didn't do it.

Once a woman has a c-section, she will always have to give birth this way- That is a myth and unfortunately I was letting my ignorance threaten another delivery. I was told by two practices (the one I left because of their horrible service and my current practice) that having a vaginal birth after c-section (VBAC) wasn't an option for me. At first I blindly accepted that fact. It seemed like the choices I made a year ago were going to leave me empty again if I didn't educate myself.

You have the right to experience your feminity and bring our child into the world as natural as possible- TP

After doing research that debunked many reasons why women supposedly aren't able to have VBACs I called my husband and broke down crying. I couldn't believe that I was doing it again. I was allowing my birth experience to be stolen. I was letting a group of people make decisions about my body and my baby without taking a moment to question that.

But something in me screamed. In a country that is supposed to be free, why was I being pigeon holed into a false choice? Not anymore and never again.

Yesterday we decided that we were going to have our cake and eat it too.

My name is Meg and I'm going to give birth to my son vaginally.

fit pregnancy

I don't want to lie and say that I have the best eating habits or that I exercise a lot. In fact I will be the first to grab double cheese burger and watch endless hours of TV rather than a salad and taking a walk. I would rather stuff my face full of chewy fruity candy than grapes and I would rather comment on how fat people are on the Biggest Loser than get my own lardy behind up and move it.

It's just the way it is and I'm working on it...but heck, I am only human. I am faulty and I am hypocritical and I know what I should be doing, ignore it, and do what I want.

I will say that with my last pregnancy I walked everywhere. For the first 8 months TP and I didn't have a car so we'd walk and take public transportation. Walking to and from the light rail to get to work, walking to the grocery store, or a friends house wasn't uncommon for us and in fact, I have never walked so much in my entire life. The result of all that walking unfortunately did not give me a big round and toned booty, but as a consolation prize I gained minimal pregnancy weight. To me, walking was the best thing I could have done for myself during that pregnancy.

Now things are different. We have a car and we live in a city that isn't walking or public transit friendly so most of the time we are confined to our car. I do work at a school so I walk a lot while there but I can tell that it isn't enough. Unfortunately for me, I am not uber excited about trying different pregnancy work outs like prenatal yoga and if there was a way that I could stay fit by eating pounds of sugar cookie dough, I would.

But there isn't anything like that yet and so I have to come up with more particle ways to stay fit and to keep pregnancy gain at a minimum. To do that we signed up for the YMCA in our area. Our YMCAs have amazing programs for individuals, men, women, children, and families. 

What the YMCA allows me to do is to take an array of aquatic classes and the best part is: I also love how weightless the water makes me feel and I love that I will be taking my water aerobics class with older adults. They don't have prenatal swim classes so I decided to do a low intensity class to help seniors with arthritis. This should be really fun. Now all I need to is to purchase a prenatal swimsuit. 

Ugh, as if shopping for swimsuits isn't traumatic enough before pregnancy, now I have to purchase a suit in anticipation of getting bigger and more round.

-M

it's a.....

When it comes to life changing moments and having the perfect thing to say that will ring forever in history, I'm the best. After all, I say things like "fuck me" when I'm pregnant.

So after my horrible OB experience I went to the new practice and was really pleased, we both were. The staff was polite and knowledgeable and the doctor was able to answer these weird research based practice questions TP asked.

Being pregnant for the second time doesn't take away from the experience of an ultrasound. I still hold my breath while they search around for the heartbeat, I still can't understand what I'm looking at when everything is black and gray and a blob, and I still ask questions like "Does it have two sides to it's brain?" "How's the heart look?" "Is that a liver?", and of course I am always excited to know the gender.

So we found out the gender of our second baby and it went a little something like this:

Tech: "Do you want to know the gender?"
Us: "Yes, please"
Tech: "Okay let me just search around here...."
:tech searches between the baby's legs:
Me: "Oh my god. THAT is a BOY!"

There it was. A huge baby penis staring at me on the screen. There was no second guessing and as these words came out the tech and TP both laughed. I wish I would have said something more magical like "Oh honey, we're having a son!" or something. Instead all I could see was a baby penis and I couldn't help the words that followed.

I continued to rest back as she finished the appointment, astonished that I am going to be the mother of boy/a son/a man. I could feel the pride oozing off of TP as he sat back, probably stroking his own ego.

At that time all I could think about was how afraid I was to raise a decent man in a world that makes it so hard for them to think independently/feel/express themselves/love/cry/be hurt. With Bean I didn't have these thoughts. I knew that with the three generations of strong women in my life she'd be okay and I knew immediately what values I wanted to instill in her...but a BOY?! Oh.my.gosh.

As these thoughts raced through my mind, I remembered that I am married to a great man and have a great father and father in-law to help him navigate these waters and that made me feel a little better...Then I thought about all the hideous boy clothing. (Yes, I went from being that deep to that shallow in 10 minutes). And I whined and moaned some more.

I never expected to have a boy despite the 50/50 chance, I kind of expected and was looking forward to raising another girl but life is funny like that. After the few moments I had of mourning the baby girl that doesn't exist, I am ecstatic that I get the privilege and the responsibility of raising a man who will become great in his own right.

-M
ps. there are no ultrasound pictures of the baby penis because TP made me swear that I wouldn't put the "penis of [his] son" on the internet. Blah..men.

Bad OB care

I have recently, at 20wks pregnant, switched my OB care. At first I was switching because I found out that the doctors only deliver babies to the biggest labor and delivery department in my area. That meant that I would have to share a room with another woman, her baby, and family. With my four to six day stay due to my c-section I could have been spending my stay with two different families, possibly three. This complete lack of privacy and not being able to recover the way that I want without thinking of someone else's needs made me incredibly upset. I couldn't imagine, after my private room when I delivered Bean, sharing my space with someone else.
The other issue I had, which really put the nail in the coffin, was the labor and delivery unit policy: only if capacity wasn't at its max can the significant other of the delivering mother stay with her hours other than those designated for visitors. So if the unit is at it's max and it is inconvenient for the nurses to have another body in the room, my husband can't stay? I don't think so.

I was frantic when I heard this. Delivering in a big hospital, sharing a room, with random nursing staff just isn't for our family. Silly me, I actually thought mother's who pushed out or got sliced open to deliver a baby would be granted the small "luxury" of a private room.

Luckily I have a co-worker who has lived in my area for a long time who is also pregnant who told me about a smaller hospital, much like our first experience, and I did my homework. Private room, personal nursing staff, skin to skin time, and modern amenities. Perfect. So I searched around to find another OB practice that would take me. In the mean time I was told by my old OB office to still keep my latest ultrasound and OB appointment because I didn't know when I'd be scheduled at a new place and they didn't want too much time to lapse in between time. Great. No problem.

Well there was a problem on the day of my appointment. I go in and ask them why I'm being taken to the OB room when I should be going to the ultrasound room. They tell me that I didn't have a ultrasound scheduled. Not only does the nurse tell me that, she walks me up in front of the nurses station so that now there is five of them against me and my husband. I tell them that I spoke to someone a week before and then a day before this appointment and the woman confirmed that I had an ultrasound scheduled.

They checked their computer and say one was never scheduled. TP proceeds to tell them that isn't our problem and that we got verbal confirmation that we had an ultrasound. They look at him like he's speaking a different language. By this point I'm so pissed off. I can feel my face getting extremely red and I'm tired and I was really looking forward to making sure my baby had..a well..you know, working brain, heart, and other organs!? But again they tell me I must have made a mistake.

I wonder if they ever had a course in customer service or bedside manor because I wasn't getting the impression that they had. They then tell me I can come in on Monday and I tell all of them that I took off work early for my ultrasound appointment today and that I couldn't take off work early on Monday. They look like I've just said something horrible. I then wonder if I'm the only working mom they see or perhaps the only working mom that answers to a supervisor or has work obligations? I doubt it and decide they are rude and chose to blame the mistakes of their staff on their patients.

By this time I've had it. I loudly tell them that I am glad I am switching OB offices because this place has incompetent people working for it. I also, on my way walking out, tell them that I hope they didn't drop the ball on sending my records to the new office and that I would be calling and hopefully they don't blame their mistakes on me.

When I got to the car I was ready to cry out of anger. I couldn't imagine a place that would deny a woman her care. They say that ultrasounds are scheduled for an entire hour but I know that they only take about 20 minutes max. The "hour" is for billing purposes and so I refuse to believe that my appointment, scheduled three hours before closing, couldn't be fit in at some point that day. Especially since one of the nurses who looked at my file openly stated that I was "late" for my next ultrasound. Excuse me? You mean, my records show I should have had an ultrasound before this one? Who's fault is this? Not mine, because as a well educated mom I know the importance of prenatal screenings and would never miss out on an opportunity to see if my unborn child was developing correctly. I didn't even care that this ultrasound was also a gender screen. I just wanted to make sure my baby was functioning properly.

This is a long rant to say that I will never go back to CNY WOMEN'S HEALTH CARE ever again. I will tell all of my pregnant friends, co-workers, church family, or men who's significant other may be pregnant or trying to get pregnant never to go there.

Luckily I have been accepted at a new OB office and will be visiting them on Friday.

-M

this pregnancy is wanted

This is my second pregnancy and both times it has been a surprise. For whatever reason, God has decided to grant me and TP the privilege of being parents to two of his children. That's an amazing gift with scary responsibilities. How can I be trusted to raise decent human beings? People with morals, goals, and a love for life? That task is unbelievably hard and I am realizing it more when I think about how the days of simply changing diapers will no longer take up my time. That time will be replaced with guiding children and teaching them how to mend broken hearts, how to live life, and how to forgive. Some days, when my own problems get the best of me and I am judgmental and bitter, I wonder if I am even capable. But I also know that God doesn't give any of us more than we can handle.I take comfort in that fact.

This pregnancy, like the last, came with a few complications and at the beginning I found myself unattached and questioning if this pregnancy would produce an actual baby. Though it is still early and things may still happen, after seeing our babe at 15 weeks on a tiny black and gray screen, my heart is warm and I'm so hopeful. It feels more real now and will become more real as the weeks pass and I feel kicks and begin making plans. I have so many plans and not enough days. So many plans and not enough money. So many plans and enough love. I know that our family will be full of love and adding one more into the mix only adds to that. I believe love multiplies.

Sometimes, the days are long and really hard and I want to sit in a corner and cry. I wonder why I wasn't thoughtful enough, why my husband wasn't nice enough, and why my baby spits her food in my face. But days like today, where she came home smiling and laughing and my husband picked up pretty blue wool blankets for our bed and my stomach swells with new life- I am grateful.

-M