Super Mother Nature

Baby is here! A wonderful, amazing, exhausting, intense homebirth later. From 5 cm to a baby born with her hands on her head in 1 hr and 15 min.
I will never again have to worry that my body is not able to labour fast enough or have powerful enough contractions. What ever they told me last time at the hospital to justify their interventions has obviously NOTHING to do with the way my body works when birthing a child.

Yes, it was painful, yes I felt like I'd been in the ring with that Russian guy from Rocky IV afterwards. But my God what an amazing experience!!!

I gave birth to my baby. I felt like super mother nature afterwards. And for days have just been high on hormones, love and the power of child birth.

And.
When I looked in the mirror afterwards. I saw myself again for the first time since that last birth.
The trauma of that hospital birth took everything from me. But now I have regained it ten fold.

What a beautiful October day it was. Such a beautiful, beautiful birthing of my amazing baby.

Like one of our midwives said later, you need a new birth to heal a traumatic birth.

And I did.

Far Away, So Close...

...not only the title of an 90's movie which for years was my favorite movie as a teenager. Not only the lyrics to a U2 song I listened to over and over in the tiny room in the appartment my mother had to move into after the divorce.
But also what I think of when I think of Russia.

I haven't blogged for quite a while and pretty much expected the statistics for my blog resembling those flat lines that you see in hospital series when someone dies.

But, I had a bunch of surfers/possibly readers, from Russia visiting my blog lately.

And I do think of Russia. How close, how far away.

How I sit here, in the last week/s of pregnancy. With my family sleeping peacfully in the other room. Balcony door open out into the dark September night. Air sweet and fresh after the rain that just washed the streets and buildings clean.

And so close, just across the sea, a different reality. Where the state itself would hunt us and steal our children from us. Persecute us. Perhaps even murder us.

And how this madness can be allowed without the entire world speaking up and defending the basic human rights that are being violated is beyond me.

Russia, if you read me; I think of you. And I hope that this horrific nightmare will come to an end sooner than later. Love will conquer all. It must. It has no choice.

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.