UC Support Thread - Page 2

[KariM]

Hi there!

I'm Kari and I mostly lurk here. I've been thinking about UC since my DD's birth. I realized during her HBAC that I prefer to be alone when laboring. I even wanted my DH in a different room!

I had some fears and insecurities related to my DS's c-section birth that prompted me to want a midwife, but now I'm wondering if I might do better solo.

This pregnancy I'm still planning to use my midwife for prenatal, but am wondering if I want to be alone during birth.

I also have this feeling that a situation might present itself where I might not be able to have a midwife. I don't know what it would be, but I feel almost compelled to learn more about UC in case it becomes absolutely necessary (in addition to being a preference, if that makes sense).

[mamamilkbar]

Hello I'm Heidi, pregnant with my 3rd i think i'm due end of april early may.. Planning on having a UC as i cannot have a midwife there I am a little nervous but not too bad.. I think i will be OK, my cousin is due any day now and is having a UC so i believe that will help me with whatever 'fears' i have.. I am still reading and researching a lot but I know this is what is best for me,my kids and my situation... I am going to the DR for prenatal care only because the baby's father..but I won't be doing any of the routine stuff.. My OB is really supportive of my choosing and will support me with my homebirth..

[NightWalker]

I am almost 42 weeks along (come on baby!!) Originally I had planned a MW birth, but neither Dh or I felt comfortable with the midwives that were interviewed or hired--and it was actually his suggestion that we do a UC--I had never heard of or even thought of it before But it felt right to both of us--we were very at peace with our decision even though it was made after 30 weeks.......
We have had a UP as well---I have never been fond of the amount of appts and poking/proding (that I have felt completely useless), so this was a no brainer for me. I have had 2 U/S's, for dating and then to see fingers and toes, but otherwise the only 'professional' I have been seeing is me (and who knows me better?!) :
This pregnancy has been really tough, a complete and utter difference from my first. Right now I am covered in the PPPUPS rash, ezcema (I look horrible), but worse I can hardly sleep because I am so itchy. It is crazy! I have been seeing a chiro for SPD, and I broke my foot several weeks back, it has kind of been one thing after another. AND I have had prodromal labor for about 6 weeks, talk about getting your hopes up!
We currently have family staying with us (driving me crazy) and I am hoping baby comes very very soon
I haven't been posting too much (I feel like I am just so whiney, who wants to read that all day?!) but also with family and my other kids can't log on as often as I would like.

Please send me labor vibes!

[PreggieUBA2C]

Hello mamas!

I'm at week...ummm...I think it's somewhere around 31... not completely sure- I haven't been keeping track. I am planning a secret UC in a remote community. I am actually hoping to be alone to labour and birth in a La Bassine in our basement (the finished rooms) and have been UP this whole pg. This will be my second UC after 2 c-sections with ds1 and ds2. I am healthy so far, and this baby is unusually responsive even for our babes, which is remarkable! I love getting to know the littles in the womb; it's such an amazing experience- it's so nice to have a private pregnancy and birth. I can't wait! How many mothers do you know who actually look forward to labour and birth? If you have a list, then count me in! We're expecting this babe anytime between October and December (my last pg was 44+2, so accounting for the possibility of 37 weeks and also 44- 45 makes it a big stretch).

My only concerns are about the community's response if there is any need for me to leave our home for a few weeks because here, pg mamas have to leave town 3 weeks prior to edd and then don't typically return for a few weeks following the actual birth. I am glad the birth will be happening during the winter because people aren't out and about when it's -40 and -50 for a few months in a row. I'm counting on the deep-freeze buffer to keep things quiet and safe for us. Otherwise, there is a great possibility of having cps visit- which I'm not too concerned about with there being over 200 children on the wait list for foster care here, some living in motel rooms with workers even. They're so overloaded that they can only remove those children who are literally on the verge of death, so while a freebirth may be just interesting enough to warrant a visit, not much else would be likely to happen. My issue is that I just don't want to deal with that at all.

Otherwise, I feel safe and confident; ready, except for our dire lack of supplies currently. I have to get on that! OH! And if we have a girl, she'll be dressed in truck and dinosaur motifs for a while .

[Romana]

Hi everyone,

I hope I can post here, but please let me know if I can't. I had a UC/hospital transfer w/dd and because of that experience, for a lot of reasons, we have decided on attended homebirth for this one. I still feel deeply drawn to UC and may choose UC in the future. I also know that because my midwife lives pretty far from me and I might not realize labor is "it" until transition or thereabouts that she may well arrive after the baby. I know it isn't planned UC, but I feel like this board is my home on MDC and I'd love to be a part of this thread. I had a difficult time choosing what to do for this birth (I'm due in March) and am hoping to develop some trust with the midwives since I felt there was no trust in my relationship with my doctor from my first pregnancy (he was a family MD who did homebirths - just stopped this year because he couldn't get malpractice insurance).

Also, I loved laboring alone (just with dh). It was a very intimate, private and joyful experience and I think that I would resent a lot of intrusion during labor, so I suspect that when I feel it's time to call the midwives it'll be later rather than sooner. I had regular (every 2-3 min) contractions for 21 hours with dd (entire labor, from start to finish), so I don't think I can use "ctx are 5 min apart" for any kind of indicator as to whether I'm in early or active labor. And I know they don't want to sit through 12 hours of early/early active labor, either!

Anyway, I would just like to hang out here, offer my support, and share pregnancy and birth joys. Thanks.

[lactivist]

Hi all! Thanks for starting this thread. It has been great getting to "meet" all of you. I am Wendi (38) and am currently pregnant with my fourth (37 weeks). I had two midwife attended births and then got my beautiful UC with my last. This is my second UP and will be second UC. I have been having a rough pregnancy due to throwing up the whole time and various other complaints but I am pretty healthy in spite of it all. This pregnancy is my last and I trying to just really be and enjoy these last weeks. I had a great mother blessing yesterday which left me feeling so loved and supported. I had 5 women friends and my 15yo dd there loving me and cheering me on. They all know I am having a UC and are all supportive, I feel so lucky. I have all my birth supplies and baby supplies, just need to sort newborn clothes and wash them. I have my birth pool ready. I am getting so excited about having a new baby. I am nervous about having two so close together (2 1/2 yrs) as my others are all very well spaced. Eavan seems excited about the new baby and transitioned into his own bed (in our room) last week with ease. Phew! I really struggled in the first 2 trimesters being ill and being depressed. Right now I feel better than I have all pregnancy. I am big and tired but feel beautiful and full and excited about the next chapter of my life. I am so grateful I have this board to come to and share with so many others that truly understand. I will be cheering you all on as you progress through your pregnancies.
Wendi

[Marlet]

Originally Posted by PreggieUBA2C

My only concerns are about the community's response if there is any need for me to leave our home for a few weeks because here, pg mamas have to leave town 3 weeks prior to edd and then don't typically return for a few weeks following the actual birth.

WHERE do you live!?

[rajahkat]

must be an island.

[AugustineM]

Originally Posted by rajahkat

must be an island.

I'm guessing far north inland Canada since she mentioned such COLD temperatures!!

I've been lurking on this board since my DD was born 15 months ago. I was planning a midwife attended vbac but it went entirely haywire and I had a second cesearean. My emotional backlash from that has sent me straight down the UC path, wanting to avoid ever stepping foot in a hospital while pregnant again!

Though my DH and I aren't planning on TTC for another year or so, I'm already mentally planning my UC. Not sure if I'll UP yet, but definitely UC.

to all you pregnant mamas -- can't wait to read your birth stories.

[2bluefish]

Hi everybody, I'm currently 31/32 weekish. Baby feels substantial; BHs feel massive. I'm a nomad right now - we are spending a week at my in laws before moving to a new place. After a late term move to a new house with #1, I swore I would *never* move while pregnant again. But a good job offer came up for dh, so I compromised - we are going to be living in a furnished apartment/corporate housing for 3 months, and won't do the full move until after our baby is born. I'm really excited about it and treating it as a kind of vacation. Our expenses will be completely paid for, including groceries (Whole Foods here I come!!) and we will have a house cleaning service that will come 2X a month. So I'm planning to chill, knit, crochet, read and watch cable TV while I wait for the baby to come. If past performance is predictor of future performance, I expect alot of prodrominal labor probably starting up the last week in Sept. Maybe not, but I wouldn't be surprised.

[ScarletBegonias]

update

wow, there's been a lot of posts here since yesterday! how awesome!

so i met with the cnm today. she came to my house and we had a lovely 2 1/2 hour conversation. she is a wonderful lady and i feel *completely* at ease with her. mw is not her main thing right now. she is a lady of many talents, i was really impressed. she's getting a workshop together to educate parents about the effects of their emotional state of their child during pg and how it shapes their childs' view of the world and their personality. which i totally believe in and have seen first hand. amazing woman.

she has had a uc herself and believes in the whole concept. that's one reason why she doesn't have a practice now. we talked about how many women who hire mw's actually want the mw to do all the work for them. "that's what i'm paying you for!" mentality, and how ridiculous that is.

she is comfortable doing whatever we need. she said to think about it and let her know. if we just want to meet up when i'm in labor that's fine too. it's such a relief to know i have a new friend and source of support. dh is disappointed we're not hiring the other mw's, but he's left it my hands (finally!) the only thing i dread now is calling the other mw's to cancel my appt because they really were nice ladies.

[Romana]

she is comfortable doing whatever we need. she said to think about it and let her know. if we just want to meet up when i'm in labor that's fine too. it's such a relief to know i have a new friend and source of support.

I'm glad you'll have this source of support if needed or desired. Congrats on finding someone who will fit into your plans.

[MamaSong]

Hi everyone! I used to lurk here all the time, but then the more serious I got about UC the more FREAKED out dh got, so I just let it rest for a while...now, I find that I'm drawn back here once again.

I had an ectopic in March - it was a crazy horrible experience. I was hoping for a UP/UC and ended up having multiple transvaginal ultrasounds, blood tests, and finally a surgery. Needless to say, it has affected both my courage and my trust in my own intuition ( I was SURE I was not having an ectopic!). So, I guess I'm back to be re-inspired by the trust and faith and beauty of the UP/UC experience.

[firecat]

Yay scarlet, so good to hear your situation is resolved

Hi everybody! I'm Cheryl, I am planning a uc in Feb. This is our first little one. Dh is not on board so I am seeing some midwives for prenatal care. I am hoping to slowly either convince dh of uc or at least prepare him enough so that when I refuse to get in the car and go to the hospital he will be able to deal
So while everything as far as he goes isn't settled, I am not that worried about it. I am pretty good at getting what I want (stubborn as hell, thats my taurus nature) if I am set on it!

This will be fun chatting with you all!

[zjande]

I have enjoyed reading this whole thread! You all help me feel more empowered. I go back & forth between feeling really nervous & questioning whether a UC would be a good thing at all, to feeling whole heartedly that it will be perfect! Good thing I'm only 23 weeks - plenty of time to work through my fears & research the heck out of everything.

I'm coming at this UC thing from kind of a weird angle- I'm not drawn to UC due to past bad birth experiences or because I really WANT to birth alone, but rather because I'm pretty positive my labor is going to be too fast for me to make it to the hospital. Or, even if we made it there I question whether it would be worth all the stress just to be pushing the baby out as the nurse is trying to get me into a gown & my poor kids are all frazzled from the crazy rush to the hospital... or worse yet, deliver in the car!

A homebirth midwife is out because there is no way we could afford to pay for one. Plus, if my labor's gonna be like 52 minutes or something, why bother forking over thousands of dollars for the midwife to just end up pulling into the driveway the moment of crowning?

Our insurance covers CNMs nearly 100%. I *could* see a CNM for my prenatal care & then try to convince DH to pay her out of pocket for the birth (since our insur. will not pay for homebirth), BUT, the nearest CNM that does homebirths is over an hour away.... SoooOOoooo..... : a UC is pretty much what I have left!!

This will be my 4th birth. My other 3 were all in hospitals & were natural & great, although I did suffer PPH after my last & was given Pit. My last labor was 90mins from 1st contraction to birth. We barely made it to the hosp, I was already 9cms & pushy, & we DIDN'T have a toddler to lug all the way there, AND now we live further from the hospital. My biggest fear that I'm trying to work through is mainly PPH. The 2nd is that dh won't make it in time to support me because he works over an hour's travel away. Here's to hoping labor will begin in the dead of night!

Anyway, thanks for allowing me to type out this big ol' post about all this here! It's funny, I haven't been able to actually say out loud that I am officially planning for a UC, but I sure have been making a lot of plans for one!!

[reducereuserecycle]

Flapjacks and Amy Jean

I prefer to be alone when laboring

me too!

Mamamilkbar-love your siggy

nightwalker-i'll listen to you whine sometimes whinning helps.

[shell024]

Yay, glad to "see all the new faces" It just inspires me to see how more and more women are empowering themselves. (That could be said in any forum here on MDC really, but I'm just feelin the empowerment love here : )

[quarteralien]

Hello, I'm Bronwyn. I've enjoyed reading this thread, and appreciate knowing there are people on all ends of the spectrum. I have 2 kids. DS, 3, was my birthrape in a hospital. I vowed with DD, 1.5, that things would be different, so I found a CNM I trusted and had a "natural" hospital birth. At the time I was thrilled, but just a few months later, I was looking back on it and questioning if that was really as good as it gets. I had told a few people when I first got pregnant with DS that my ideal birth would be to calmly walk out into the woods alone and return babe in arms. But I didn't know people actually did that until I literally stumbled onto some UC websites about a year ago. I was hooked! Everything clicked, it made so much sense. Why hadn't I trusted my body before? So now we're TTC #3, after a chemical pregnancy about a month ago, and I'm hoping for a UC, possibly UP, because I'm not excited about fighting every step of the way for what I believe. DH is apprehensive, as I'm sure most of you are familiar with, but he has come a long way in the last year-so have I, for that matter. I really feel like I've been on a journey, the likes of which make the phrase "paradigm shift" seem quaint. UC was the start of it all, and it led me to MDC, where I started questioning vaxes, started extended nursing (poor DS, not in time for him), started cloth diapering, eating better, considering home-schooling, I was already anti-circ, so this just fit! It was amazing. It still is. And I'm glad to be able to share it with you. I'm looking forward to birth stories from those of you who are getting close! And thanks for reading, if you got this far

[PreggieUBA2C]

Me again!

I do live in the far north of Canada, but I really don't think that our location warrants the fuss regarding birth. If I am not out by 3 weeks to edd, and then I need a transfer (which can only happen via medivac helicopter), then my penalty is to have to pay for the helicopter ride, the medics and all of the interventions I recieve from the time I'm driven to the helipad to the birth. The transfer takes 30 minutes from here to the closest hospital and our medics are very well equipped and trained. This is not frightening to me because I know that even when we lived 2 minutes from the hospital, the average time from pronouncement of an emergency to being in the OR was 40 minutes if I am already at the hospital, half that time if we started at home and arrived by ambulance. So, given that by road it takes 4-5 hours to arrive at the hospital, 30 minutes isn't so bad.

HOWEVER!!! This is pure logistics for me; I'm not concerned about needing this provision anyway; it's just how I reassure our friends 'down south.'

I personally think the whole system is ridiculous and is impossible for those with more than one child at home. Can you imagine me being away for 10 or more weeks to accommodate this policy? I'd have to take our three with me and find others to care for them, have them with me alone, or leave them with dh who wouldn't be able to take 10 weeks off work, of course. I just don't get it; it makes no sense to me. What does make sense is that this policy on its own drives people out of the town after they've had a first or second baby since the possibility of another one under these circumstances is too risky to most women.

What I find most disturbing is the attitude that this policy has engendered amongst the people here. There is a dreadful fear of childbirth and a really over-the-top negative, fear-based view of pregnancy that I didn't see even amongst the mainstream crowd in the city down south where, over time, homebirth and midwifery became common.

So that's another weird thing. The cost of all of these pg women to go out of town for their myriad ultrasounds and appts with travel grants could not be less than a midwive's salary. Each travel grant is approximately $250, so multiply that by the amount of pg women and the amount of appts/pg. That's a lot of $$$, especially this year with half the town expecting! I don't understand why the township doesn't employ a midwife, except for the huge fear thing, of course.

The worst part about it is that I haven't heard of a single birth that wasn't chemically induced (who can afford up to 10 weeks away at her own expense in another town?) and every birth story has some sort of horror attached to it including even the death of a baby from intervention and the ensuing lawsuit. Babes up here have been maimed, brain-damaged and generally injured and mistreated to say nothing of the treatment the women here have recieved, and these are the stories I've heard from mums who've given birth in only the past two years! I am amazed that women keep going. The hospital is barbaric at best, and even out-of-date by current obstetrical standards. Yuck.

I'm not willing to pioneer a perspective shift while pregnant though, so we may leave as well before there is any positive change here. Too bad.

I'f I'd never freebirthed before, after hearing the stories around here, I'd be doing it for the first time now!

ETA: Since I don't have an 'edd' because I've never seen a 'professional' who would brand me with one, I don't think I could be pinned with transfer charges since I am insured by the province- the policy is a municipal thing. Also, this gives me leeway to give whatever dates I want to since the policy doesn't extend to unexpected or preterm labour.

[mwright]

Hello mama's! My name is Melissa and I found MDC and this wonderful forum after doing a ton of research after a traumatic birth of my wonderful dd who is now 14mo. She was a planned FSBC turned hospital transfer (put on clock for waters being broken over 48hrs) after being unduced with Castor Oil and nipple stimulation. After 70hrs of labor I only got to 6cm and out of pure exhaustion got the epi and ended with my baby being sectioned. I remember longing for a purely natural birth, and out of ignorance, trusted my midwife too much and let there be too much interventions.. My story has inspired my sister and she is now 29 weeks pregnant and she is UP/UCing and I am so excited to watch her go down this most amazing, beautiful and natural path. It is my hope and dream to UP/UC my future babies.

Thank you ladies for you courage and strength and for standing up for what you believe in!!!