Mothering › Mothering Discussion Forums › Pregnancy and Birth › Birth and Beyond › Homebirth › UC support thread #7, July '04
New Posts  All Forums:
 

UC support thread #7, July '04 - Page 2

post #21 of 185
Thread Starter 
Aw, Madrone, thanks! And the fact that the baby is still moving around so much is good reason not to worry about knowing position right now since obviously it's pointless.

Well my gosh, we are going to have a baby explosion around here soon! I was thinking how cool it would be if we could all get together, a red tent kind of thing, and luxuriate in our pregnant bodies and admire each other. That would make the last weeks so much easier than being surrounded by the "are we there yet?" mentality, as if the only valuable part of pregnancy is the end result! :
post #22 of 185
Quote:
Originally Posted by klothos
ARGH! and i haven't given anyone specific dates! i think everyone ELSE are more impatient than i am... their impatience is really rubbing off on me.
Oh my, I have to laugh because I can relate so well. And the bit about cleaning and cleaning and still not having the baby, I am sooooo sick of nesting, I already did that weeks ago. I'm ready to just relax with my baby! And now all the food I stocked up on is gone too! It is soothing to come here and know I am not the only one. Usually I do not participate in online discussion boards but I am seeing the bennefit of such support! Especially when we are talking UC. I lurk on the cbirth list and that is a great resource of info too. I wish I had not been specific about my due date being July 1st because some people are beginning to worry and it does rub off on me. Hanging in there though. I am starting to really connect with the baby and I am certain she is a girl and she is happy, just waiting.
post #23 of 185
i lost some of what i can only assume is my mucous plug today (pink gooeyness) and lots of cramps on and off.. dare I get excited?? hehehe.. yeah i can't help it.

baby still moving around lots. hasn't parked it yet

-Melissa
due NOW
post #24 of 185
Linda, that's such a wonderful thought.

Quote:
I'm ready to just relax with my baby! And now all the food I stocked up on is gone too!
omg, are you me?? i did that too! i stocked up a bunch of good food...... and now it's all gone because we ate it.

Melissa ~ good luck!! ~~~~~ baby vibes ~~~~~~
post #25 of 185
Aloha everyone,
I have to confess that I'm a lurker I'm a new midwife and so I read everything birth related. I'm also 14 weeks pregnant with my 3rd and having just tons of confusing thoughts.

I know from my last birth that too many people and talking around me doesn't work. The birth was great, as I was alone most of the time. But as soon as the house started filling (and this is few people), I had to fight to concentrate (I was already ready to push). My mw, whom I LOVE dearly did some things that I didn't like at all (perineal massage stuff, to be specific). I have the birth on video, so I can really see and remember those things.

I've been thinking about asking my mw (who has also been my teacher) to come to my upcoming birth more as my friend to the birth. To be there if I need her, but to just sit back. We have to talk deeply about this to see if she could really do that... she's a hands-on type of person- which the vast majority of her clients LOVE, but I don't think I need/ want that, but she's so special to me that I do want her there...... (just thinking aloud here)

So I've been reading Uc stories and also an old Midwifery Today mag about interventions and I've been thinking about how easy it is to intervene... and how things that aren't necessarily thought to be interventions could be perceived as such. So I had all of these ideas mulling about my brain and thinking about how I could more gently serve my upcoming due mamas, and I got called to assist at a birth yesterday.

This mama was sooooo not in touch with her body- was so needing "help" (her words).... what a shocker, after reading/ thinking about uc.... I told her to follow her body- to push if she felt the urge.... she could NOT follow that at all. It was so interesting and I felt deep sadness for her. Her baby was born just fine, but she wanted the mw fingers in her yoni (asked for it), and well, she just wanted all of that verbal and physical stuff that so many of you (and I) dislike. I guess it reminded me that an ideal for some is just not an ideal for others.

Sorry for my long rant... I have so many thoughts running through my head and I'm trying to sort them all out. I'm trying to figure out what my place is as a mw and how to serve the families. I'm breaking away (at least in thought) from what I was taught, so there's some scary aspect to this all....

I'm looking forward to reading all of the upcoming stories!

Thanks for listening!
Karen
post #26 of 185
Mamajaza, thanks for the congratulations and the same to you! I just read your birth story and am so happy that everything went so well for you guys
I will definitely be at the next LLL meeting Maple Ridge (Aug 9), pm closer to then if you want directions or more info... And yes, uc was definitely the way to go! I am so happy with our birth experience and our family feels so close and bonded

Enjoying our babymoon

Jen
post #27 of 185
Hi all

Congratulations gr8ful mom!! Welcome to Lucas :

I'm wishing all of you close to the end, very peaceful birthing vibes and patience. The end is so hard. And I encourage you all to change the msg on your machine. Our last pregnancy, we (stupidly ) told people our due date, and before I was even due the calls started. I changed the msg to: "If you are calling to see if we had the baby yet, and you HAVEN'T received a call from us yet, that would mean, we haven't had the baby yet. Everyone else, feel free to leave a msg." It was very snarky, but it STOPPED the calls. In fact, I received quite a few sympathetic msgs from bill collectors, paper delivery people and so on :LOL I also told my family that my due date for this pregnancy is New Year's while I am due on 12/7. Hopefully that will buy me enough time. We are seeing my uncle next weekend, and as a father of 4, he was the worst one w/the calls. I am telling them I am not due until beginning of January. : Next pregnancy, we are seriously not telling anyone about the pregnancy until the baby is born, so we'll see how that goes.

Update on me, I spoke last week about bleeding after sex, and my mw wanted me to get an u/s, which I really wanted to avoid. But, I am RH- and this is my 2nd child and I want to have more, so I could not aford to risk possible sensitization. Anyway, I do have a low lying placenta (not covering the os), and at 20 weeks, it will very likely move up--so no real concerns. But, I am going for some rhogam tomorrow, which I also wanted to avoid if at all possible. What can you do.

ALSO, and this is potentially pissing me off. I told the tech that under no circumstance did I want to know the sex of this baby. When talking about it, he called it a "he" and while talking to the OB, she also said "he". I'm hoping that is what they call all babies, and while I will be thrilled w/a healthy boy, I will be seriously pissed if they slipped.

Oh, also, my mw came down for the u/s and such and afterwards the 4 of us (me, hubby, 2 yr old, and mw) went out for breakfast. We were talking about birth and such and we were talking again about how much I want an unassisted birth and how I plan to rent her some movies and get her some snack food so she can leave me alone :LOL I told her that all I want her there for is to make sure baby is okay after the birth. (My son was transferred to the NICU shortly after birth, and honestly, I'm scared to death and do not want that responsibility---I just want to birth and have her do well baby stuff). As always, she was very receptive to this. Oh, she is also going to make me a placenta smoothie :LOL , as hubby will not do this. In fact, he wants to buy a new blender after the fact :

I think that is it, some nice productive hugs to those who want them!
Amy
post #28 of 185
Congratulations Jen! Welcome to the world baby Lucas! :

and... to all you 40+ weeks mamas!! I look forward to reading all your soon to be birth stories!!
post #29 of 185
jen- : congrats on a beautiful birth! sounds like lucas really wanted a uc! i'm so glad your mw was so supportive. welcome to the world lucas! i can't wait to read your birth story.

blueviolet- i 2nd madrone's compliments of you! your eloquence has been really helpful to me. i was actually wondering last night when *your* book is going to be written. it seems like your take on it and way of explaining it would be helpful to lots of people. uc and being preg is so new to me that i'm doing it intuitively. your explanations of things have given me words to explain my thinking to dh and friends. thanks.

madrone- after i posted about the birth affirmations, i went home and started writing them out for myself (thanks for reminding me that i'd wanted to do that! ) i'd meant to bring them to the computer next time i came, but alas, my mind is a sieve these days. i'll get them to you next time i get to a computer. i'm leaving town sat., so it will be either tomorrow, or i'll next be around a computer the 1st week in aug. i know you're counting down the weeks now, so i'll get to it as soon as i can. the ones i found in laura shanley's book got me started making my own. i just looked in the index under 'affirmations' or 'birth affirmations'. maybe other women have some they'd like to share?

to all you due date liars :LOL - i'm with you! i figure that there's like a 9 week window when uc-ers are birthing, so what is a due date anyway? just an over-rated formula for *average*? i'm actually asking, b/c i don't know : i'm just picking the season and expanding it a *bit*. i think i'm due in march, i haven't actually counted, but we're saying late spring/early summer (god willing, it won't be early summer : ). i figure that's plenty of exaggeration to give us peace as we near the birth! at this point only my mom and 3 friends know, so by the time we tell dh's family and our other friends, they won't be able to calculate that may/june is way late!!:LOL i just wonder if they'll catch onto our trick when the next pg comes around?

klothos, luna13mama, & thebabyvirus- sending you patient, beautiful completion of pregnancy vibes and gentle blissful ecstatic birthing vibes! your babes are sooo lucky to have such heartful wise mamas who are willing to let them finish getting ready for the outside world.
post #30 of 185
Thread Starter 
Malama, welcome to the UC thread!

I sometimes wonder how much clients really love the hands-on approach, and how much they just believe that it's just the way it's supposed to be, and so adjust their expectations sub-consciously. For my first birth I had a very hands-on midwife. She guided me and coached me every step of the way, doing dilation checks (I even asked for one) and perineal massage. The labor pain was so overwhelming to me, and the midwife sent me the distinct vibe that I could make it better if only I would do exactly what she was wanted. I had the feeling that she must know better than me (after all she had attended 1500 births) and that I could not possibly know anything of value (although my instincts were trying to tell me differently.) So I basically gave up my own initiative and relied on her to tell me what to do. At one point I didn't think I could make it without her, even though she was doing things that I didn't like. A couple of months after the birth, I wrote her a note thanking her for "all she does for women." It wasn't until several months later (through a gradual process) that I realized that in fact I was quite unhappy with how the birth was managed, how intrusive and overbearing she was, and the very clear tacit message she was sending me that I couldn't do it without her to tell me what to do. All of this, I believe, contributed to the birth being harder than it had to be and interfered with my instincts. But this didn't become clear to me until I had a lot of time to mull it over and essentially pull myself out of the conditioning that was so deeply ingrained in me.

Anyway... I relate to your desire to have the midwife sit back and just let you do your thing. I found a different midwife for my second birth who was comfortable doing that, and it was a (comparatively) great birth. But I still decided to go UC for my third (and now fourth) because frankly even just the presence of the midwife was intrusive and distracting and felt wrong from an emotional/spiritual perspective.
post #31 of 185
Here is a link to my birth story...

Lucas's birth

Jen
post #32 of 185
A quick question - do any of you use a fetoscope? How early did it work for you? I'm getting nervous not having felt any movement at 17 weeks. I was pretty handy with a stethoscope while we were doing body function sounds (I was premed for a while...) - I really just need to know if it would be worth my while to get one, and where I could get one.

Oh, and for those of you doing UP, are you charting weight, fundal height, etc? I've been roughly paying attention but not recording, plus I haven't been actually measuring fundal height, since I'm confused - I have a severe abdominal muscle separation, and on the sides of my abdomen, where the muscles are still in place, the measurement is a good inch larger than in the middle, where I can essentially just reach down and feel my uterus.
post #33 of 185
niki ~ at this point we are doing a UP... i'm not keeping any charts but i am staying aware of temperature, fundal height, weight, any prescence of swelling (none so far ), fetal movement, etc. my SO listens for the baby's heartbeat (by placing his belly against my ear ) and we're familiar enough with the rhythm that he knows it's still ok.

i think really your intuition will be the best indicator for you if something is wrong or not. just be aware of how you feel day to day, and note any changes.
post #34 of 185
First of all, welcome to the Earth little Lucas!! Great job Momma!!

We are UP'ers and we chart nothing. I just eat a healthy diet, make sure I am listening to my body.....I'll check my blood pressure at the pharmacy if I am headachy for a few days (which I was.....upping my iron intake fixed that)

Now for my pregnant bitchiness LOL I have felt icky all day....crampy, crabby, and nauseous....I'm not ready to have a baby, yet. My house isn't clean. I keep wanting to know stuff....know something. And then I realize I really don't care if I know anything, I just desparately am trying to pass the time. THat has been the hardest part of going UP....it's like pregnancy lasts FOREVER....no every month, every two weeks, every week.....It's almost become a ritual of sorts, and pregnancy is feeling very weird without it. I never let anyone do ANYTHING anyway, so it's very silly that I'm so gloomy about not getting an "update" every week. blah blah blah

I'm rambling. And I know this sounds horrible, but I am so afraid that I'll have another boy. We aren't having anymore children after this babe(this is our fourth).....so if I don't have a daughter, I never will. I would love another son, but I really want a daughter with ever beat of my heart. I so desparately feel like I'm having a girl, but what if my intuition is nothing but desire? And I've just been a fool?? How unfair to my baby son is that? I am carrying so differently this time--but I must have the "boy" carry look....everyone asks if I'm having a boy. It makes me angry. I guess the penises on my other 3 sons are figments of our collective imagination?? I'm so sorry my pregnnat belly with them was watermelony, and not a ball. BLAH!

I'm still rambling....thanks for listening. I promise not to complain again for at least 1 whole week.
post #35 of 185
you know, this whole time i've been worried about cleaning the house and getting it spotless before the birth, but i realized something: if i was planning on giving birth at a birth center or hospital, i wouldn't bother cleaning so much, so the mess would still be there when we got home. and is there really that much of a difference?

HMM.

congrats and welcome(s) to the new little ones.
post #36 of 185
LOL klothos, you are so right.....but I've only had babies at home, and it's always started off clean before a birth. Then I don't clean again for two months. LOL

but then, just as in the birthing center, I don't plan on cleaning my own house either this time. THat's what my dh is for! LOL Actually, I am paying for someone to come deep-clean on Monday. So does that mean I'm hiring a nesting agent? LOL I think I'm delerious!
post #37 of 185
I think I'm going to buy a fetoscope, mostly because the girls and I like to hear the babes heart, it's fun for them to hear it. I do have an inexpensive ($16 at Sam's Club) manual blood pressure monitor (the stethoscope is attached to the cuff, so you can take your BP with one hand). My blood pressure has been great, but I like to check sometimes just reassure myself. Sometimes I check fundal height, but it doesn't really concern me seeing as how my belly is growing at it's normal rate (it's my 5th babe after all). I'm just so excited about this pregnancy, and so looking forward to UC. I may see a local midwife once or twice after we move, just in case there should need to be a transfer (I've already got an established relationship with the midwife where I am now), but we'll see, I'm really thinking it's not necessary. It's probably been discussed in the previous threads, but what are everyone's thoughts on seeing a midwife once or twice (assuming you can find an UC friendly one) just in case of a true emergency? I'm really leaning towards it not being necessary. Oh, and I was also wondering, if having a UC subforum will happen? It would be so much easier to read through than the 7 UC threads!! Especially when looking for a certain subject/issue. Just a thought.
post #38 of 185
oshunmama,

I know where you are coming from

I've always wanted a daughter, in fact, before my son was born I dreamed about having 4 girls. (Which, in hindsight, might make me a little :LOL , but anyway..) We are at a point, where, financially, this might be our last child I would love so much for it to be a girl, but honestly, I'm having boy vibes and thinking that I'm having a boy. Which is absolutely wonderful, as you'll agree, but sad as well. I want a healthy daughter more than anything.

I've also gotten looks whenever I talk about it IRL, so I get to keep it inside and talk to hubby about it. Which sucks, and usually it always moms who have a daughter already.

I don't know, I feel like I'm rambling

But on another note, you being really cranky and crabby is a good sign! I know my level of irritableness increased 100 fold, before I started labor w/my son. Man, I was so freakin' irritable, depressed, apathetic--oh, what a fun time. You're getting ready mama.

Amy
post #39 of 185
Hi All
I am new to the UC board, my name is Jennie and I am a sahm to 4 kids, Ethan (hospital), Jared (bonus son), Xander (hospital), Rory (UP/UC) and #5 due in March.

I had planned for another UP/UC with this pregnancy but my husband ha sinsisted for a midwife. Reasons aren't b/c he is worried something will go wrong (he already knows we can do it!) but he is military and currently the LPO of his division as an instructor at the subschool. He doesn't want to risk his career which I conpletly understand. The command here is extremely strict and wouldn't hesitate to court martial him. So for that I am agreeable on a midwife.

Our first UC took place in HI, where his command was much more laid back and relaxed, much like the rest of Hawaii! But here in CT its just so different. I did meet the midwife Wed and she is great. Fits the typical homebirth midwife stereotype, non shaving birk wearing hippy lol She did assure me she would be as hands off as I want and understands my desire to UC. My one big issue is the # of prenanatl visits they recquire (its the normal OB schedule). Personally I think its too many. I am low risk and see no need to have anymore than 6 prenatal visits, if that many! And really I only see the need for those just to get a good report going with the midwife.

Rachel, congrats on your pg--I don't know if you remember me but I was Jenniebug on the delphi forums and mommyshelpers on the FF forums. I think a UC subforum would be excellent. Have you joined the CBIRTH group on yahoo?
post #40 of 185
Hi Jennie!

I'm doing a homebirth, although not UC (dh isn't comfortable with the idea, and that's ok because I LOVE my midwife, and she will sit quietly in the next room if we want her to. LOL! She and I keep joking about it basically being UC, except she'll be in the house.) Anyway, I couldn't find any hb mw's in CT, so how did you find yours?!

I'm using the same mw as with dd, and she's based out of Nyack, NY.
New Posts  All Forums:
 
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Homebirth
Mothering › Mothering Discussion Forums › Pregnancy and Birth › Birth and Beyond › Homebirth › UC support thread #7, July '04