I also gave in and bought my first pair of maternity pants
and got an awesome black maternity jacket (I don’t go anywhere without a basic
black thin jacket and my pre-pregnancy one was looking pretty crazy). It feels good to have some clothes that fit
and are comfy and I don’t have to continually adjust everywhere I go.
In addition to productive time, I am also reading books on
pregnancy/labor. I read Ina May Gaskin’s
book and I also read the pregnancy and labor portion of the book Women’s
Bodies: Women’s Wisdom, by Dr. Christiane Northrup. Both had surprisingly similar takes on
labor. It was really interesting and
inspiring to read these powerful women talk about how effective the female body
is. Ina May says that if people take one
thing away from her book, she hopes it is that they realize their bodies aren’t
lemons and they are meant to do this. I
think it is so tempting to give into the societal message about labor being
“too much to handle,” and fun to hear some encouraging language and inspiring
stories. Society is obsessed with horror
stories and telling people how hard things are.
Honestly, lots of things are hard, but encouraging words mean a lot more
than a reminder about how hard it will be!
Tara warned me that Ina May’s book is very one-sided, but
that I would learn a lot. I have to say
that although Ina May is certainly anti-hospital, it wasn’t as bad as I thought
and I learned even more than I expected about the labor process and your
body. I have read the book the hospital
gave me and although I thought it had a lot of info, it focused on what medical
interventions can do and very little on what your body can do on its own. Of course, things with my labor may not go
exactly as I want, but I am really glad to be well educated on the risks of
induction (and various methods) and other interventions. Sometimes you really need medical
intervention, but I need to communicate with my doctors how I feel about
interventions so that we don’t end up doing something just because we can. I flipped to a TLC show the other day on
labor and a woman was just told point blank from her doctor “oh, we are
breaking your water now and starting pitcoin.”
No discussion of the effects of both of those and her other options,
just a statement of fact. I want my
doctor to be looking out for me and my babies best interest, but I don’t think
that is always through immediate intervention and would like to have an open
dialogue every step of the way (also one of the reason’s we have the doula!).
I am excited for my personalized labor class on October 7th
with my Doula and my good friend from high-school Kira, who is a hypnobirthing
teacher. I can’t wait to learn more!
The baby has been really active the last few days. Yesterday was sort of an odd transition day
where he went from periodic kicks to almost 8 hours of continuous kicking. Today I am already noticing it is easier to
ignore so I can sleep or focus on work.
I still enjoy thinking about him, but unlike before where they were so infrequent
that it was a fun distraction, I think the kicking/moving is going to be a
constant presence from here on out.
This weekend I am really hoping to finish up most of our
cleaning in the two rooms and tomorrow I finally have someone coming to give a
bid to de-bird-ify our attic. The closer
I get to having everything ready the more excited I get to see the baby room
and everything all put together.
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