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.