I Want To Be A Part Of It...

Soon wifey will be in NYC. Far away from active toddlers, pregnant wives in wheelchairs and loads of laundry needing to be done.

And she really deserves it. And I really do hope she has a lovely time with her friends.

I just wish I could be a part of it.

Or, as I told wifey in the car, going home from the midsummer party at her relatives house; there you will stand. With a starbucks coffee in your hand and the wind of freedom blowing your hair.

Don't you think you're exaggerating a bit? Wifey asked. And prehaps I am. But perhaps not. Not after being pregnant/breastfeeding for almost 3 years now.

Only, I would not be holding a coffee, but rather a glass of pink champagne.

As If It's Not Enough...

..to be pregnant, allergic, asthmatic, low on iron and having an underactive thyroid. I go and dive off the back porch on our first night in our country house and sprain my ankle so badly I end up in a wheelchair. (Crutches won't do, I just keep falling over due to my loose pregnancy joints).
At least I did not break any bones. And hopefully baby survived the ex-ray of my foot under the led-sheat I wore at the hospital.

It does however put a damper on my new exercise regime. I did 2 5k walks for 2 days before I did the dying swan dive off the porch and landed on the side of my ankel.

I still can't put any weight on my foot, but hopefully it will get better soon. Atleast I did not land on baby. And a sprained ankel is better than broken bones. And def. better than a sprained baby.

The Exciting Lesbian Couple

As wifey and I have ventured outside of our safe little haven of our lesbian midwife at our lesbian oriented maternity clinic and our rainbow parenting groups, we have encountered a new phenomena.
One would not think this really existed in the capital of one of the gay friendliest countries in the world in the year 2013. Especially not in the area we live in.
But. It does.

When e-mailing and calling around to look for hypnobirthing classes, homebirth midwives etc, I have sometimes forgotten to use our standard phrase; hello, we are a LESBIAN couple.
When forgotten, I have 9 times out of 10 gotten the reply that "you and your husband" this or that.

When I actually have remembered to provide this otherwise unthinkable information that we are a LESBIAN couple I have been met with; oh how EXCITING, I have never met/worked with/dealt with a lesbian couple before. Or, how INTERESTING; are you the one having the baby (yes, lady I just told you I'm pregnant, and no, we are not pregnant at the same time, though obviously that could be a possibility too).

I mean, really people? Get over it. It's not that exciting, rare or exotic. Wifey and I truly love each other, but other than that we are your regular, monogamous, getting-cranky-over-the-dishes, next door couple.

We don't cheat, we don't drink, we don't do stand up, we don't wear spectacular clothing, we're not the life of any party - since we are toddler parents and mostly just want to go to bed.

When we have a night off due to toddler J falling asleep early we watch tv-series or go really wild and crazy and play a board game and eat chocolate.

I think the thing that has really startled me in all this is that all of the sudden, I realize that people view us as DIFFERENT. Even if they try to phrase it in a positive way, it is obvious that this is nothing they have encountered before and that they need to vocalize that.
To make me feel what? Excited too? Aware that according to them I am outside the norm, outside what is considered normal or expected?

It's not like I go around thinking on an average day how lesbian I am and how exciting and different that is. I'm just a regular person in a regular life, with a regular marriage with ups and downs.

Most of my friends are in straight relationships, most people at work are straight or in straight relationships. And except the odd elderly co-worker here or there passing homophobic remarks, I have never encountered the "how EXCITING" response before.

If we loved our (lesbian) midwife before, we are now clinging to her like a lifesaver after all the "excited" people we have encountered.

If I really liked our maternity clinic before I absolutely love it now!

I went by for a doctors appointment the other week and as I was leaving I overheard a female couple coming in the door, wondering where to go. They were obviously there for a first appointment on their way to starting a family. I didn't start singing "we are family". But I felt both sentimental, protective and proud. This was our place. For us. Where we are not "exciting lesbians", but just normal people, having normal relationships and wanting normal things.
Like starting a family with the love of your life.

Dancing Baby

Yesterday I watched a dance program. On my laptop with headphones as Toddler J was sleeping and I didn't want to wake him. Baby moved the entire 90 min show.
She does move a lot over all. But not constantly like she did yesterday. She obviously didn't hear the music. But perhaps she felt the dance,as I did.
My body might be tired, heavy and out of (dance)shape. But my mind and heart starts moving with the dancers when I watch, and it is the closest I can get to dancing myself at the moment. Perhaps it made baby dance too.
Def. need to watch more dance as it obviously makes baby (and mama) happy.

Pollen Season...

...seems to never end. I'm usually not that sensitive to grass pollen. But when I'm pregnant I seem to be super sensitive to everything. Still, I'm going to try to go for a 5K walk. Will be very interesting to see how long it takes me, as I get contractions when I walk too briskly.
I'm not really worried, the contractions are mild, doesn't hurt, but still makes it impossible to strech out in a long, good power walk. Any walking is preferable to just being sendentary though.

And I must admit I do enjoy walking extra much when concidering that I could instead be exhausted in my office on an uncomfortable chair, trying to get work done while just wanting to cry. I.e. last pregnancy.

So much is different this time. I have no aches and pains as I did last time. I get to rest when ever I need, which makes the fatigue easy to handle. My asthma is bothersome some days, but since I don't need to stress, keep a schedule or exert myself, it's not really a problem either.

Lesson learned. When listening to the body and meeting it's needs, even medical problems (such as allergies/asthma/fatigue) becomes minor distractions.

Wifey and Toddler J have started going out to our country house for whole days. Which also gives me unlimited time off. The sort of time I haven't had since... God knows, probably before we started to search for a donor, or perhaps even before I met wifey.

I noticed that this morning when they left, my first impuls was not to crash on the sofa and take a nap/watch TV. But I actually have some energy to go do something. There fore the idea of the 5K walk.

I'm also hoping that it might be allergy season drawing to an end, giving me more energy.

A wonderful schedule would be to walk 5K every day and do prenatal yoga atleast every other day. I've signed on to fitocracy.com to give me some motivation and accountability. I don't care if I crawl around 5K and it takes me 2 hrs (instead of the 45 min it takes me when not pregnant). I just want to get moving to get ready for birth.

I had coffee w a friend the other day. She said that all I could do was prepare as best I could for my birth and the just let things happen the way they would.
I agree, ofcourse, since preparing until exhaustion is my usual strategy in life. But... it also made me reflect on my own behavior.
Being very active can sometimes be a negative behavior. If my goal is to be relaxed and focused come child birth. Perhaps the best way to reach that goal is NOT to do a million things to "prepare" and have a high tempo in live. Perhaps it is much more constructive to play w Toddler J, clear the strawberry patch from weed, bake a raw food snack for afternoon tea etc

When watching the Birth Story documentary I noted that the women giving birth naturally did not take a zillion classes, educated themselves to exhaustion on every possible angle of child birth, did not even have prenatal yoga classes.

That, in combination with the hypnobirthing woman backing out of our agreed course w 4 days notice, made me change my perspective.

What happened with the hypnobirthing dissappearing was a bit of shock actually. I had counted on working through my birth trauma with hypnosis, and having the hypnobirthing tools for my next child birth as an important part of my birth plan. After crying for a week, I just let it go.

It was not a very professional thing to do. The hypnobirthing instructor asked me to describe my birth trauma via e-mail (as she said; so she could do a hypnosis treatment based on it), and then she just back out last minute. Saying she could not work on the trauma since I was pregnant. She knew I was pregnant from the start. I really don't understand.
What I do understand however is that I am better off without having to waste any more time or any money on this person.

It is too late to book anyone else now. Summer is here and everyone is on vacation.

I will just have to do this on my own.

And, so what. Women have given birth for the entire history of mankind without classes and "preparations".

And when my friend said that thing of being prepared I thought.
Well. My job is to keep calm, confident and deliver the baby. The midwifes job is to over look the birth for any signs of things not progressing normally. I don't have to worry. I don't HAVE to do a million things to prepare for every imaginable scenario.

I just have to give birth to my baby. And that, I know, I can do.

Until then, I will do things that makes me feel relaxed and strong, such as walking, swimming, yoga, eating well, resting and enjoying life.

Too bad I didn't get to do the hypnobirthing course. But I have my cd's and will just have to use them as a way of practicing relaxation without any additional course material. It will be fine. I think all those years of dance training and body awareness will probably be a better resource than any 3-day course.

And no amount of courses or preparation can give you what you need the most. Which is faith in your bodys ability to birth normally.

Sleepless

And so you wake up from the baby kicking at the bladder, go to the bathroom and then can't go back to sleep. The joys of pregnancy. And tomorrow (well, today actually) is the only day of the entire week that I don't have a babysitter for toddler J. And coffee is not allowed. Hopefully toddler J will take a long nap midday and I might survive.

It is almost midsummer. Which means the sun hardly sets and the birds starts singing at 3 in the morning.

I don't know why I have a hard time getting back to sleep. Perhaps it is hormonal. It is def. not due to anxiety this time.

Saw my midwife today, was ofcourse super nervous of a high blood pressure. Since that's what got the circus going last time I get really worked up about it. It has become one of those trauma triggers for me.

Despite hardly breathing when the blood pressure was taken, I had 110/70. Excellent.

Am very relieved and grateful.

Also got to ask my midwife about the alledged pre eclampsia from my last birth. Got a thing or two sorted out. Apparently you don't even have pre-pre eclampsia, not even a tiniest bit of preeclampsia if your bloodtest doesn't show the liver or kidneys being affected.
I hadn't really understood that before.
From what they told me at the hospital before they let us go home, they had "debated" weather or not I had pre eclampsia and decided I didn't. It even says in an early note in my charts that I DO have pre eclampsia. But apparently I didn't and it's not up for discussion. If the liver and kidneys are not affected, you don't have it.

I was really surprised to hear that. And my midwife said "they probably wanted you to have pre eclampsia to justify their interventions".

Oh well. What can I say.

It doesn't make anything less traumatic, BUT it makes me feel less insecure. It makes the picture clearer. It was never me. It WAS them.

And ofcourse, I can understand that you can suspect something, like pre eclampsia, and act on it, without being certain. But there is just no excuse for the scare tactics and bullying. Not even if I HAD had full blown pre eclampsia.

I do feel stronger knowing that it was nothing wrong with me. That the midwife who called me from the hospital, told me my birth was completely normal and that medically forcing it was completley unneccessary was not just being nice. But truthful.

I HAD a normal birth. Until they destroyed it.

Had I had a calm and loving environment I might even have had a super easy birth. Baby J was in the best and easiest position to give birth. I never even experience "the ring of fire" when pushing him out. It honestly didn't hurt a bit. He was a perfect, average size with a perfect average sized head.
I think my very loose joints and all those years of dance training of being body concious and relaxing certain muscles while others are working payed off.
That I didn't tear badly and was surprised to find that 2 days later it was as if I had never given birth at all, also makes me believe that physically, birth really is not a big deal to the body type I have.

I never had pre eclampsia. My blood pressure was on the high side, but never got out of hand until the strated pumping me full of drugs.

So really.
How difficult can it be to give birth with out all the stress, drama and interventions?

It will be very interesting to see if my blood pressure will be on the high end at all this time. When I get to rest as much as I need through out pregnancy and don't push myself beyond my limits.

An insecurity I had the first time was all the birth stories I heard and read from other people. I felt like since I hadn't actually experienced birth I had no say in the matter. How could I even dare to think that birth could be easy and pain free?

Now that I actually have been through it I feel more entitled to my own opinion. I have experienced it. Take the horrid syntocinon (pictocin) out of the picture and I'm certain my birth would have been completley different.

This time I feel entitled to believe and am excited to find out how wonderful a normal birth can be.

Finally!

We have decided on a home birth midwife.
A ton of anxiety has lifted off my shoulders and I almost believe the dream of a peaceful birth at home will come true. There seem to be nothing that stands in the way of a home birth, after the initial interview anyway.

She didn't say a word about my asthma, which other midwives has warned me will be the reason the OB you need to see in w 35 will say no to a home birth. We will see I guess, but the dream seems within my reach, which is closer than it has seemed before.

Now I can put a lot of anxiety behind me and go on to cultivate my garden, as Voltaire suggested.

I'm just waiting for the last of the pollen to get the blooming done with, and then we're moving out in our country house and I'm going to focus on my strawberry garden.

Just hope we get to the berries before the slugs do.