Thoughts of a Lady in Waiting

Waiting on a baby, that is.

Thought I'd put a few thoughts down for later before I forget them. I'm always surprised at how fast some details and menories get lost in my brain, especially those regarding labor and birth.

I should have never, ever assumed that just because my other two babies came two weeks early, that this baby would be early too. In retrospect, I see that their early births could have been attributed to other variables, like the doctor who may have stripped my membranes on my first cervical check with Jamie and I was so terribly sick with a cold with Leah I could have coughed her out. Waiting these two weeks for this baby to officially be post-date has been tough. Wondering if every little tightening could be the start of labor. Worrying that the OB overseeing my midwives would press for an induction because of my Gestational diabetes, something they've been remarkably patient about as these things go.

I had enough pre-labor and Braxton Hicks contractions earlier in my pregnancy to make me concerned about preterm labor. Then, for weeks 38-39 I had so few contractions that I could nearly forget I was pregnant except for the large belly I was sporting. I did insane amounts of walking to try to move things along and work the baby down lower. Too chicken to try castor oil, I began drinking prune juice. I initiated sex with my husband for the sole purpose of it's supposed labor inducing effects, something that is about on par with the castor oil in comfort at this point. I half-heartedly took a few doses of blue cohosh, but was worried enough about it's safety to really utilize this herb. I ate spicy food. I threw aside my gestational diabetes diet aside a few times to indulge in pineapple, something that is supposed to help stimulate labor and is delicious and certainly safe.

Hubby was convinced that I was too uptight to go into labor so he ran me a bubble bath one night and lit a bunch of candles. I alternate between trying to get this labor going with lots of activity versus just trying to rest up and relax. Last Wednesday I was walking at the Y and started contracting weakly every 3 minutes. So I kept walking, hoping they'd get stronger. They didn't. After 3 hours I was too tired to walk and they fizzled out fairly fast. The next day, I met with a midwife who said said that if I didn't have this baby by Monday, we'd have to talk about induction. I did have her check me, something I wouldn't let them do with my 2nd baby until I was in labor. Sunday night, they started up again, still pretty weak but persistent and lasted all night. I knew they were too weak to count even if they were coming 3-4 minutes apart, but I figured they'd want to induce me on Monday, and I was so tired I might just let them.

On Monday, after being up all night with those annoying, weak contractions, they fizzled out as we headed up to the midwives' office. Figures. Then we get there and the ultrasound tech was sick and they wanted to reschedule for Tuesday. There wasn't even a midwife there to check me or follow up on the other midwife's threat of induction. So we left and wandered around town, wondering what to do. I called their OB nurse to tell her about my contractions, being post date, and of cours, all I get is her voice mail. We headed home so I could get some sleep and just as I unpacked my pillow and CPAP machine (I thought they'd be sending me to the hospital monday) the nurse calls and says I needed to get to the hospital to be checked.

Off we go to the hospital (the kids were still at a wonderful friend's). After being monitored, checked, and ultrasounded, I was given the option to have my membranes stripped. This is something that I feared had been the starting point for a horrible inductionwith my first baby and had made me paranoid to even be checked with my second baby. But once I was over due, supposedly with a fairly large baby, was sooooo terribly tired, sick of foisting the kids off for my appointments and trips to the hospital, and just ready to have it over and done with I had the midwife strip them. She said she wouldn't do it if she didn't think my cervix was ripe enough, but it was. And I was sent home. By the time we made it home, I was having stronger contractions though they were still pretty irregular.

There was a message from the midwife that she had talked with the OB and said that due to my gestational diabetes, that we needed to see about inducing me either Wednesday when she was on call (one of my favorite midwives at the practice) or Thursday. I picked Wednesday, hoping that the stronger contractions might bring on labor before then. Then hubby went back to work and I took a short nap and picked up the kiddos. After getting them to bed, I was still having irregular contractions, but I was so tired that I went to bedand was able to sleep through them this time. In the morning (today), there was very little contracting going on, so off I went to the Y to walk, but it did little good.

So now, I'm still having infrequent contractions but I've resigned myself to the induction and figure that instead of staying up most of the night and trying to get these contractions going stronger, I'm going to bed. My midwife assures me that we can start off with a prostaglandin
gel, which will allow me to still be mobile and may be just enough to get me into labor. I'm hoping that these contractions I've been having have dilated me since yesterday when I was 3cm and 50% effaced. I plan on putting off pitocin as long as possible and want to keep my membranes intact until they go on their own, or I am in real strong labor. Because once those things are ruptured, there's no going back or stopping. If I'm lucky, I won't need the pitocin or maybe I can have it stopped once my body cooperates.

I have to be real careful of my sugar levels right now, because if I let them get high, after the baby is born and is no longer getting extra sugar in his system from me, he can develop hypoglycemia or too low blood sugar. I asked one of my midwives what I could eat in early labor, since most will let you eat jello, popsicles, juice etc. in early labor. She said I can have diet soda and sugar free jello----yeah, that should give me the nutritious energy I need to see me through labor. Not. I'm going to take my own low carb yogurt and sugarfree pudding. Possibly some broth.

My poor hubby will be working late tonight and we have to get up by 5:30 am to get to the hospital, so I pray that he will not be a zombie in the morning. Because I'm pretty certain that I don't want to hear about him being tired when I am in labor.

Now I'm going to bed and praying that when I wake up I will be in labor and won't need an induction. What ever happens tomorrow, I hope I have the baby early enough that the kids don't have to spend the night at my friend's house. She's a wonderful sitter and I trust her completely, but my kids have never yet spent the night elsewhere, and since they won't be able to visit me at the hospital (flu concerns and policies) it'd be nice to have them be with their daddy at night even if they can't be with me.

I can't believe that I'm looking forward to this induction. I've spent alot of time learning about natural childbirth and avoiding unneccessary interventions and now I'm ready to be interfered with. Just goes to show you that situations change and new plans develop. Is it perfect? No. But will it work for my family and current situation? I think so. I don't want my desire for a wonderful drug free birth similar to my second birth to jeapordize my older children's needs, nor, honestly, do I want to push out a 10#+ baby. No matter what happens, it is ultimately in God's hands and I trust Him.

Preschooler Craft Organization Idea

A new month, a new post, but no new baby yet. Sigh...

We have some big mats that we use for painting and I keep losing them in my craft closet. See here for a picture of the closet I store our craft stuff in. And don't think for a minute that it currently looks this neat! I'd take a current picture, but it's too messy, and I'm too hugely pregnant and lazy to bother.

These mats are perfect for painting with Do-a-dot paints. To see exactly what we use and perhaps get some for yourself, go to your local Advanced Auto Parts store and look at the mats that are on the checkout counter. Seriously! My hubby works for the company that prints these things and he brought home some extras. They have current sales stuff on them and they are tossed out quite regularly at the stores. They're plastic on top, and a non-skid foam stuff on the bottom.

Anyway, as useful as they are, they don't store well in my closet. Until today when I had a duh moment and came up with a solution. I grabbed a clothes hanger that is used for pants- the kind with clamps on them- and hung the mats up on the closet rod. No more searching the floor for where they've slowly curled up and been buried under preschooler detritus.

Now, I hope to finish cooking dinner and see if these intermittent contractions I've been having will resolve into the real deal.

Double Minded

Allow me a little leeway in paraphrasing from the bible and suffice it to say that I am double-minded woman, unstable in all my ways.

Right now I have two competing forces inside of me: The not-always-logical but thinking part of me and what seems to be the primal physical body part of me. Though not completely accurate, I will refer to these parts as the mind and the body.

Yesterday I reached 35 weeks of pregnancy and next week starts the insanity of twice weekly visits to the midwifery/OB practice for a weekly ultrasound, followed later in the week by a non-stress test and midwife appointment. This is due mostly to my having gestational diabetes, but is also influenced by my loss of my mucous plug 2 weeks ago and periodic bouts of contractions.

My brain is telling me I have a lot to do before this baby is born and I better get busy and suck up any discomfort and fatigue. The body is telling me I just need to go lay down, rest, and the important stuff will all get done somehow eventually. The body is also making me get very inwardly focused whenever I have any contractions. There is a very small part of my brain that is telling me to listen to my body so that I won't have this baby too early. The rest of my brain is in complete denial, telling me I need to get up and get busy, that I am a mother of two other children and that I just can't have the luxury of 'going within myself' when ever I am tired or contracting, and that this baby won't come for another 3-4 weeks.

I guess until I reach 37 weeks I do need to take it as easy as I can so this baby doesn't come too soon, so the body is winning for now. But it is also the body that sent me off to the church nursery in search of some food this morning, right before communion. If I had had any cash, I would have actually left to go to the nearby McDonald's for a sausage McMuffin, hold everything but the sausage and muffin.

Am I totally nuts? Or does anyone else feel this way during the last 3-4 weeks (hopefully) of pregnancy? The body tells me I need to humble myself and ask for some help here too, but the mind is certain that what needs to get done, can get done by myself or my hubby. With my first baby, I was busy working the farm until a week before birth and the second seemed to go pretty fast too especially as I was confident that going into labor 2 weeks early wasn't going to happen again (It did). Having lost my mucous plug at 33 weeks and having plenty of contractions, I'm pretty certain I'll go early this time--though another small bit of my brain says that since I'm planning on it, it won't happen.

Argghhhh!!!!!!

Cart Before the Horse Homeschooling for Life

I liked what Lady of Virture at Large Family Mothering had to write about the focus for education in real life: http://ladyofvirtue.blogspot.com/2009/09/cart-before-horse.html

She talks about being 'educated' but being ignorant of the skills needed to live a life, and how teaching these skills to her children incorporates many of the academic subjects we do need to teach them.

Our Version of Circle Time

So I mentioned here that I was doing our own version of circle time now with my now 3 year old and nearly 5 year old. I'm keeping it very informal and at times, flying by the seat of my pants, but it seems to be working for us. You can find a lot more about circle times and how others do it here, and by doing a search on-line for circle time (you may want to specify homeschool circle time, as the idea is used for daycare, and early grades in schools).

My goals are: to more formally teach the bible, our beliefs, and character traits; to get a little more reading aloud time in, since I've slacked off reading at night because I'm so tired; get the kids used to 'doing school' together; teach my daughter her alphabet and numbers; and as a venue for later introducing other subjects like history, nature/science, art, and music that I'll probably teach them jointly.

My hubby works second shift, well, more like part of first, all of second and part of third at times. So we have decided to "do school" after he leaves for work at 1:30. We start off with a short prayer, but then the order changes from day to day. We've been using a hand-me-down Character training book that I hope to replace with something else eventually, a hymnal from which we sing 3 or 4 hymns (I love to sing and the kids do too), we usually sing a few bible verses that we've learned from the Pearl's ABC bible verses CD (already memorized so we don't use the CD except in the car), we do a few read-alouds (currently library books including AA Milne's When We Were Very Young) and usually one alphabet book (A is for apple, etc. especially for my 3 y.o.). We'll usually sing an alphabet song and a number song. Sometimes we do an activity with numbers or letters, very simple and informally, just to familiarize my youngest with numbers and letters. When I've got my act together, I'll have each child do a page or two from one of the Kumon workbooks I've got for coloring, cutting and pasting, or something similar. I've got two each of 3 of these workbooks so they can do the same activity.

This seems like a lot once I've written it down, but it goes quite quickly and simply. Depending on the kids' cooperation and attention span, we finish in about 30 minutes to an hour. After this, my daughter goes to her room for her nap/quiet time while I do a reading lesson and a math or handwriting activity with my son. Then he goes to his room to play quietly and I do something around the house for about 30 minutes and then go to my room for a rest.

If at anytime the kids start misbehaving during circle time, I just stop. They hate for me to stop. So far, it's been going quite well. My weekend project has been to paint an old wooden bin to hold all of the books that I use for circle time to make it easier to keep all of them together. Since the weather has cooled off a bit, we've moved circle time out to the table on the porch. I'm hoping that this will help incorporate nature study as time goes by. And at this stage, when I say nature study, I simply mean pointing out different organisms (trees, birds, etc) and identifying them and talking about them and talking about God's creation.

The most important thing is to keep it simple, relatively fun and stress-free as we start out on our homeschooling journey.

33 Weeks and Counting...

A little pregnancy recap, possible TMI alert (Too much information)

Monday and Tuesday of this week I apparently passed part of my mucous plug and began getting pretty frequent and strong Braxton Hicks contractions and a lot of downward pressure. If I were at 36+ weeks or so I don't think this would be worrisome at all, just an indicator of my body getting ready for birth. At 32, going on 33 weeks today, I was a bit concerned.

Talked to my midwife Tuesday night, and she was very reassuring that all was OK. Since this is my 3rd baby, she mentioned that I already may be dilating 1 or 2 cm and may stay that way for a while. I was admonished to limit my activity if it brings on more than 5 contractions per hour, which pretty much means no more walking at the Y.

Yesterday, I saw the new midwife at the practice and I really like her. I still have to meet one of the midwives, and my next appointment will be with her. The practice has 4 midwives and one doctor. So far I love the midwife there that delivered my daughter, this new one is pretty good so far, and the other one I met seems a bit more medically minded, but nice.

The new midwife actually loved my glucose numbers and really praised me for them, which I really needed to hear. Especially since one of the midwives (and another who has since left) kept saying that while my numbers looked good, I'd probably need to go on Glyburide towards the end of my pregnancy. I hate it when they want to go all worst-case-senario on you. Fear of lawsuits I guess, scare you enough of the possibilities so that you will be happy with a better outcome. It was so reassuring to hear that my numbers looked so good since I've been working so hard at keeping my sugar levels controlled with diet alone.

She also says baby is breech. But says I have plenty of time for him to turn head down. I mentioned that there are some days when I feel incredibly full and uncomfortable, and some days I don't feel very big at all, and speculated that this could be due to his changing positions. She agreed and did say that she could be wrong about his position, having only checked by doppler, but said that 9 times out of 10, when she finds the heartbeat above the belly button, that they are breech.

Now that it is cooler, I realise that I have no decent maternity pants, but I am resigned to making do with what I have (hello again, baggy fat pants) until the baby is born. A few weeks after the baby is born, I fully intend to go clothes shopping, as I became pregnant after dropping 30 pounds and have gained only one pound so far. So I'm guessing that I will lose 10-15 pounds with the birth.

Now if I can just keep from gaining that back after the baby is born!

Interlibrary Loan Fees

I've been thinking on ordering some books on-line to add to our collection (some pretty picture books for my daughter and some homeschooling stuff) but I don't want to spend much money right now. Just this morning, I decided that I would make a list and try to get them first through interlibrary loan and making sure I really wanted to purchase them.

Then while at the Y this afternoon, I opened the local paper to see that our local library system will now be charging a one dollar fee for each interlibrary loan in order to help cover their costs in this tough economic time. Apparently, the fee is fairly small compared to the postage costs the library does pay and certainly one dollar is cheaper than buying the book, but...sigh.

If I buy used, it'll probably be worth it to me to buy the book instead of just borrowing it for 2 weeks for a dollar. Apparently these fees are common across the country, but I'd never heard of it before now.