I had 2 due dates March 12th and because of my wacky cycles that seemed to run longer my midwife also used March 15th incase I went past 42 weeks we had a 3 day cushion. The pregnancy was amazing. I made a huge effort to allow myself to be vulnerable and talk about my feelings and fears, I did a lot of fear clearing all the way up to my last appointment. I felt good! The end of pregnancy came and I felt huge! I made some friends with mamas excepting around the same time as myself and was getting jealous of all the beautiful babies being born and wanted mine. Through the pregnancy baby was a mystery, for a while we couldn’t tell if he was head down or butt down, finally we had an ultrasound and I was thrilled to see a head down baby. As we got closer to our due dates we made guesses as to when the baby would come. Those days came and went and in the final week TJ and I made a bet, if there was no labor or baby by 5pm on March 13th I’d get a massage, if baby did come before then or if labor started before then he would get a massage.

One due date number 1, March 12th we had a prenatal appointment with our wonderful ever affirming, reassuring, and birth trusting midwife Kathryn. I was measuring 2 weeks ahead, barely dialated, and barely effaced. I was a little disappointed that I didn’t have more freebie dialation or effacement to work with but was ok. I could go into labor that second or it could be another week or two! Still I was advised to walk, use evening primrose oil, and enjoy my husband TJ. After that prenatal we decided to take advantage of the beauitful weather and go for a walk, a mile long walk with our big boys. It was a wonderful day with my family. The next morning I really gave up, I had even shared my thoughts of “Pregnancy you won, you own my soul.” We went out for a bit but I was just too done to be out. TJ being the prince amoung men that he is took the kids out of the house and let me have a rest while wearing out our boys. When he got home it was about an hour to dinner time so we got the kids prepped for a movie night and dinner.

Since walking was on my to-do list and the weather still being gorgeous I was excited for dinner to end so TJ and I could go for a walk. My mom was going to keep on eye on the big boys while we went out. We left a little after 6pm, TJ lost the bet which we joked about during our long walk. I did some curb walking during our outing knowing it’s supposed to improve fetal positioning. That’s when you have one foot on the curb and one foot in the gutter. It really got the baby to descend and I had to squat, wiggle and waddle to accomadate the now lower baby in my pelvis. Then I had a contraction, I had to hold on to TJ and wiggle my hips. This curb walking must be doing something so I did it some more. A few blocks later another contraction, woohoo! Had to stop and hold onto TJ again. We were about 4 blocks from home when my mom called us, Kaleb wanted to know where we were. I had another contraction just before we got to the house. Had to stop again. As soon as I saw Kaleb and he jumped into my arms I let go of the thought of labor and the contractions seemed to stop. I was feeling so overwhelmed by pregnancy I was sure I’d be pregnant for ever.

So I took Kaleb down stairs. Now he was happy that I was home so he ran off to play. I decided to sit down at the computer and check on my other expecting March mamas. I noticed I was having these beauitful sensations. I could feel my uterus pull up on the lower uterine segment, when it would come to a peak my upper uterine segment would press down peak then both sensations faded together. It was such a glorious sensual sensation. They we coming every 2-5 minutes lasting 10seconds to 1 minute. I watched this for almost an hour before they started to get a bite to them. I expanded the screen to show TJ but he didn’t quite get it. “Contractions” he now knew we needed to get to work. I decided we should blow up the tub and prep the bed, just in case it was labor. I told TJ if I was still contracting after we finished getting our room prepped I would call Kathryn and let her know something was happening, or possibly nothing. At 8:30, after an hour and half of contractions, we were done with the room and I made the call. We both agreed a shower would be good for getting rest but I couldn’t stop moving and felt like I had to do a million things. We finally laid down around 10pm to unwind. We watched some TV and cuddle Kaleb, when we were all settled at 10:30 we turned the lights. I had no sensations during this time so I really relaxed and that’s when everything kicked in.

I told TJ “nope I can’t lay down” and tried to get in the shower while telling him to call Kathryn now. I was feeling nauseous as I got into the hot shower. I started trembling for some reason this made me decide I wanted the tub filled so I turned off the shower and TJ came with Kathryn on the phone to check on me. As I went to step out I released some pink fluid, my water broke(or so I thought). Kathryn wanted to talk to me. I couldn’t focus so I don’t remember what was said, other than “well I’m shaking” and that I had bad reception on my phone. She asked me to give the phone back to TJ.

I still wanted the tub filled so I called my mom to come down and take care of it. In a blur I got my robe on, my birthing necklace on (bead sent from my fellow March mamas), got candles put up, had TJ light them, got my birth ball, and got to work. Every few minutes I had to get on my hands and knees and rock against the ball while vocalizing. “Yes baby!” “I love you baby!” “Oooopen” was my mantra during the contractions “yes baby, I love you baby, oopen” while crying with joy every few contractions, all the positive words kept the contractions painless but they were very intense. The room was suddenly empty but I couldn’t resisit the pool any longer and I got in. I felt so womanly.

Finally TJ came back I made him get the camera so he could take pictures, he made me smile for a picture. Around this time I realized that our clock was 15 minutes fast and asked TJ to change it to the right time since we’d need it for the time. It was 11pm. I was suddenly fustrated with my hair and asked him for a hair tie, it took him a minute but he found one. I got my hair put up, tried to sit down but another contractions, a different kind of contraction. I wanted to poop! I immediately told TJ “I need to poop” I told him to call Kathryn. He asked if I needed permission to poop, I smiled to myself at his silly question but just said “yes” because I knew it wasn’t a bowel movement, it was the urge to push. All the trembling and nausea had been transition

He got Kathryn on the phone, so I knew I was safe I had the mental back up on the phone. One of the fears we had discussed was pushing and waiting until I had to push. At first I said “no,no,no” when I realized that I wouldn’t be able to not push, the first and last time the whole labor when anything hurt was with those negative words. Right then TJ was reminding me to breathe just keep breathing, slowly, while on the phone with Kathryn. This is exactly what I needed. I grunted and groweled, and beared down. TJ tried to give me the phone but I couldn’t pay attention. I could feel my belly with my hands and feel how low baby was. I reached down to feel and the bag of water was coming down. I could feel baby’s hairy head inside the bag of water. I grunted and growled again. I kept feeling, I could feel where the outer bag had broken but the inner bag was intact, I grunted again and his head was out still in the bag of water ( he was born in the caul!), I ripped the bag away from around his head and face. Then Kathryn asked TJ if he could see the baby while I asked for someone to catch the baby. I grunted and beared down for the 4th time and he was out, I lifted my leg over him and sat to grab my baby. He was gorgeous and COVERED in vernix. I was in love, I was thrilled. I just had a homebirth, an unassisted home water birth! Bram Xavier arrived at 11:08pm The midwives were almost there and Kathryn was having me stimulate the baby to get him making noise. He wasn’t quite ready he seemed to have slept through everything, but pinked up in just a short few moments.

Once he was pink and wrapped in a towel I got out of the tub to the bed and onto a chux pad. Kathryn was having us watch for the placenta. It came out half way after a big contraction and I pulled it out the rest of the way with my hands. I plopped it in a bowl, it was huge and gorgeous. Shortly after we got it out Janelle, the midwife assisting Kathryn, arrived. She hugged us and told us how fantastic we all were, everything was just so perfect and calm she jumped into the clean up. Kathryn arrived not too long after. I was quickly examined for tears, and nothing not even a skid mark, a perfectly intact perineum. While everyone was busy baby and I cuddled and I was given some recharge and brought apples and peanut butter. We were ready to cut the cord, TJ happily got to do that his third baby and first time getting to cut the cord. He finally got to hold his new baby boy while Kathryn and I did the post partum bathroom trip which was smooth sailing. When I got back and settled in bed we did the newborn exam on the perfect baby. Covered in hair, weighing 7lbs 15oz, 20.5 inches long(the only length I grow my babies ), 14 inch head circumference.

Everything was done and settled, I was set with a placenta smoothie, and our midwives sang us a beautiful birthing day song and left around 2am. It was the most empowering, trusting, love surrounded birth I could have dreamed of. I cannot believe I only had 40 minutes of “active” labor.

And pictures, only the first 10 are labor/post partum http://www.facebook.com/album.php?ai…5&l=5de1c16a8a

I read the book Taking Charge of Your Fertility over 2 years ago, and I had no idea how much it changed my life. I read recently about tubal ligation regrets, I read all these adverse effects of so many birth control option and it’s scary. The male medical model trying to control the intricate, sensitive, glorious female body. Control, it didn’t give us freedom it gave the male medical model control!

Women are naturally able to control conception. We can observe our fertility, our cycles, the ebb and flow of our cervical fluid, the changes in postion and closing to opening to closing of our cervix, and we can prevent pregnancy! Without hormones, without intrauterine devices, with a harsh abbrasive detergent aka spermicide, without permanetly altering our PERFECT bodies. Incredible.

To me it’s not a shocking story. Infact it’s pretty darn close to what I experienced with my first. The story isn’t what bothers me (not that it doesn’t bother me but we’ll discuss that more later) it’s the comments from several of the readers.

There seems to be a giant void in understanding childbirth and how it works, rather that IT DOES WORK. Not only does it work, it works UNHINDERED! What a novel thought.

I suffered undiagnosed PTSD from Tatum’s birth, heck I’m having issues with it THIS pregnancy. What happened for me, I was without control. Now all childbirth requires that you somewhat lose control. There’s a difference though. When you’re birthing normally; labor begins on it’s own, labor progresses at it’s own rate, no interventions are used, no drugs are used, baby is born into the hands of it’s parents, baby nurses, placenta is expelled; well it requires that you lose control over your civilized self and get primal. There is nothing wrong with this, rather I feel there is something so beautiful and glorious about it.

My birth I lost control in a different way. I wasn’t allowed to have labor continue the way it was supossed to. 

Issue 1.) Prodromal labor

There’s this funny thing that doctors don’t tell you about. Prodromal labor. It’s a beast but it’s normal. Doctor’s like to call it “false labor” but that’s a bunch of crap! There is no such thing. Prodromal works in many ways prepping your body  and your baby for birth.  I went in with prodromal labor and being anxious my blood pressure was up so the hospital decided to “keep me”

Issue 2.) Pitocin

Since I was being kept (another loss of control! not part of the decision making process) that meant my prodromal labor was going to be augmented instead of left to fizzle out like it would have if I stayed home. Augmented labor, labor that starts then pitocin is added. (different from induced labor where labor has NOT started and pitocin is used to start it) So my body lays there no longer an active part of the process just the thing the uterus sits in being pumped full of a synthetic hormone. A hormone that causes the uterus to contract with great force against an unopened cervix. Doctors don’t warn of the risks of pitocin, things like hyperstimulation of the uterus and  fetal distress.

Pitocin contractions are nothing like the rhythmic contractions that oxytocin create in a woman’s body. Oxytocin in a woman’s body makes these lovely almost wave like contractions that hug the baby down, draw the cervix up, and allow a woman to birth. Pitocin is the whole uterus cramping, like a vicious leg cramp, oxygen is cut off, it hurts. It’s NOT NORMAL.

So another loss of control, I was told by my providers that my body didn’t know what to do but they did so they go to be incontrol of my uterus and dictate it’s future.

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So there I was pumped full of a synthetic hormone, which made my uterus feel liek it was crushing my baby. I wanted away. I wanted it to end so the next step was drugs! Woo.

Some sort of narcotic added to the IV and a wait for the epidural. The epidural that was misplaced despite my pleas that it was too far to the left. This meant that it works primarily on my left side. More accurately it worked on my left leg. Well you see my uterus isn’t and wasn’t in my left leg so this didn’t help. Control was once again lost. I had lost control in the ability to move my body on my own.

Having an epidural also means having a catheter. For me that means I’ll have a urinary tract infection in no time, sure enough I was treated for a UTI before baby was 1 month old.

So there I lay epidural, pitocin, catheter. What comes next? Well the bag of waters are in the way, and the baby monitor would work better if we had wires going through the vagina and screwed into the baby’s head. Great idea, lets increase the risk of infection. So I was told once again my body didn’t work, and now my baby is not safe in my body better break the water and physically harm my unborn.

So now I lay writhing in pain, contractions that feel like they’re ripping me in half. A wire, and pressure catheter going through my vagina into my uterus, and urinary catheter keeping my bladder empty, and epidural catheter flooding my nerves with numbing medication but only working on the nerves to my leg. This went on for hours.

After a while I felt the urge to push. My nurse check me and told me I can’t push. I couldn’t NOT push. Once again I was being told my body is wrong. After a while of this I was finally complete and allowed to push (theres that lack of control) so I did. I could feel my vagina and the urge to push just fine but the nurse felt it necessary to insert her unwanted fingers into my vagina and stretch my vagina to the point that it hurt and no matter how much I begged her to stop no matter how many times I said “NO!” she wouldn’t remove her hand from my vagina. I don’t know what got her to stop. It was like being sexually assualted all over again.

2 hours of this pushing on my back, 20 something hours without nourishment (another thing used for control, no food) and I collapsed. I started to black out inbetween contractions. MY vagina felt like it had already birthed a baby. So my doctor came in and decided to do the c-section.

Alone in a cold, bright room, blacking out inbetween contractions, in pain, defeated, proven that my body was incapable of childbirth, violated, and alone. They started cutting and brought my terrified husband back. Our grey/blue son was delivered. We was just as brutalized as I was. his head cut from the internal fetal monitors, his nose scraped against my pubic bone. How could a woman fail her precious perfect child like that?

I got to see what looked like a dead baby for a second while they got him started up, the fetal monitors never showed any distress. Then they showed me this face surrounded in blankets and handed him to my husband, I watched them leave while I gave in and checked out mentally until I was being wheeled to recovery.

More of the control was lost there. I begged my nurses for my baby they felt the gossip was far more important that bonding with my child, or feeding him, or you know getting to touch him or see him.

A woman shown that her body doesn’t work, is unsafe to create and birth life, then gutted, not allowed to touch her baby, and in the midst of it felt sexually violated. How could someone not have PTSD?

Valentine’s day is a commercial holiday. Just like mother’s day and father’s day. Why do we need a “holiday” to remind us to love each other, to appreciate each other. I certainly don’t feel any more loved because my husband picked up an over priced dying flower/s and candy.

I feel loved when my husband; kisses me in my sleep before he goes to work, does chores without my asking, plays with our kids, gets up in the middle of the night to soothe a child back to sleep, holds me close when I feel bad….the list goes on.

So this Valentine’s day I’m once again “not celebrating” like we haven’t since 2004. I have the most amazing husband in the world, he shows his love by leaps and bounds with every day I see him. 

As for what Feburary 14th is for us, it’s his mother’s birthday. The mother in law that I never got to meet. She would have been 58 this year and we will be thinking of her.

Yes, I’m a teen mom. I don’t fit in with the teen moms and have been rejected by them more than just a cold shoulder but actually told I wasn’t wanted around the other teen moms.

I’m an adult mom, I live the life of most adult mom. I stay at home with my young children while my husband works to provide for us and keep me at home. Again I don’t fit in, it’s just assumed that I must be irresponsible to have children at such a young age. 

So where does that leave me? A mom without community, an outsider. I guess when it comes right down to it I’m happy to be an outsider. I’m happy to not be the typical young mom. I’m happy to not have a typical marriage. I’m thankful that there have been a few women over the years to take the time to get to know me and find that I am more than meets the eye.

To the women who have opened their hearts to me and accepted me into the world of motherhood, and accepted me as a friend. If only the judgements could be pushed aside by all.

You know whats bad about giving? If you give too much, you won’t get back. I have learned that when you are there for everyone the chance that they’ll be there for you is unlikely. Not because they’re bad people but because they forget that those who give need as much as they give. It may not be the physical things they give but they need an emotional payback.

Being good is draining. Not because it’s a huge task to accomplish like climbing mount everest but because being good, helping, giving back comes with an emotional toll. It’s not a big one but several small tolls add up quickly. However the desire to be better than you are will make you push yourself farther.

It’s hard to have this desire to give and give. You can’t give all of yourself all of the time to everyone and to do that would be death. So how do I find a place of peace in not being Mother Theresa?

I think we’re all born with a feeling that were are something that we want to be special that there is a reason for us to be here. Not everyone takes advantage of that, and some people even get lost along the way. As you get older, you have to come to grips with how unspecial you are, how insignificant you are. It’s terribly depressing, but maybe that feeling just comes from doing nothing.

So I’m doing something. I’m going for my dream, to change things to make this a better world to help those around me and still be able to get back and refil my emotional piggy banks. I’m also doing something sacrifical. I’m shaving my head. I’m a woman, I’m pregnant and when I’m 39 weeks pregnant I will shave my head for children’s cancer research.

In the future I look forward to talk about my dream, what I want to change and how I think that change will effect everything else that should be changed.

It makes me so sad to see that human beings are less than humane to one another. To see people treat others terribly. It takes your breathe away when you see an honest act of kindness. They say charity starts at home, so Ill start at home. Emotional goal #1 I won’t say anything if I don’t have something good or helpful to say #2 I will show the same kindness to all those I speak with that I would like to be treated with # I will let of the small stuff  #4 I’ll remember to laugh it off.

One day I’ll be a better person, a good person even. Maybe I’ll even be labeled as a good mama.

I need an outlet. I recently discovered, much to my thrill and joy, that we are expecting a little boy. Sounds fabulous right? The thing is, this is my third child. Not so bad right? My older 2 children, are boys. I know, I know the shock has overwhelmed you so much that you have literally keeled over in disbelief!

I’m holding a moment of silence for you right now

…

Ok once you’ve regained yourself my guess is you’re either thinking or saying something like this…

“Oh you’re so brave”

“Aww, no girls?”

“Well you can try for a girl next time”

None of these are acceptable and if you ever think of saying any of the above to another pregnant woman I hope that you eat liver, raw, for being so darn inconsiderate. The only appropriate response to a woman’s 2 or 18th same sexed child in a row is “I’m so happy for you” “Congrats on the boy/girl” or something equally positive.

The thing about have same sexed children is you either love it, you dread it, you secretly desire the opposite sex, don’t care, or have some sort of combination of the above. So this brings me to gender disappointment. There is actually a forum about the subject, it’s a bit extreme can be depressing to read, but has an amazing group of people that can actually help you over come negative feeling.

What it comes down to though is when you don’t get what you want it hurts. Not because of what you do get, but because of what is lost. Being pregnant can be terribly scary and challenging. Through sickness, emotional muck, fatigue, vicious heartburn, vivid dreams, and your body expanding women bond with the baby they’re growing. They grow attached to an idea of the baby they want, the fall in love with the baby they want, they pick out names, look at clothes, think about their future, and then when they find out that the baby they do get to have isn’t the one imagined it breaks their heart.

Have I suffered from gender disappointment? Yes, when I found out I was expecting boy #2 I was devastated. Now I wouldn’t trade that wonderful little boy for a million girls. For pregnancy and baby number 3 though I knew I was having a boy and I fell in love the minute I knew we were expecting again. Gender Disappointment isn’t about the baby at hand it’s about the baby that will never in mama’s hands.

What makes it worse is when you see those getting the opposite sex from their previous child/children being showered with gifts and love because of their child’s genitals. Ridiculous when you think about it. Why would you shower one child with gifts because it has a penis as opposed to a vagina?

There is also a sociaital pressure to have the perfect family. One boy, and one girl. As a pregnant woman with her emotions going wild thanks to hormones this pressure can be cripling. I failed, because I did not make a little girl.

So where does this leave me? A house full of penises and filled with failure. Flip the coin though and I have 3 perfect children, surrounded in love, toys, and joy. For anyone that reads this remember whenever a woman tells you they’re expecting congratulate her on the baby she’s growing, wish her ease and grace into motherhood, wish her love, wish her health for her and her unborn, and if you are able be an ear to listen. Ultimately this is what matters.