Good to be Me

Today was good to be me, and I am going to brag about it, 'cause if you can't brag in your blog, where can you?

A few months ago I doula-ed for a sweet couple. The dad had cancer and was literally days away from having a bone marrow transplant when the couple delivered. He was dealing with the side effects of his chemo treatment and was generally not at the top of his game in terms of his ability to support his wife through birth. To top off the whole cancer thing, toward the end of the labor he got very sick and shortly after the birth (which was fantastic... great OB, great nurse, of course great doula...and most of all mom did an amazing job) he had emergency surgery to remove his appendix. Yowzers.

Anyway, what makes that a cool-to-be--me thing is that I got the sweetest mail today. It was a note in a pretty frame that reads:

Dear M,
Thank you for bringing comfort to me and peace to my husband during the birth of our son. My husband says that hiring you was the best decision we made for our labor. I especially appreciate your guidance throughout and your additional support afterwards, since my husband was unable to be with me. May the Lord bless you for your kindness towards us and continue to bless your ministry as a doula.

How cool is that? I have had a few tough births recently and have been feeling a bit guilty that I was away from my kids a bit more than I prefer (admittedly I prefer not to be away from them at all...). I am still planning to cut back, but receiving this note today really did remind me why I do it and to continue with my commitment to God to leave my doula gigs in his hands and allow him to use me in whatever way as he brings me expectant couples.

Why else is it cool to be me? I have been married to Super B for 14 years today. Yup, he has put up with me that long. We didn't do anything special for our day, we are often lame like that, but our kids were super cute. They made us a full dinner complete with napkins wrapped around our silverware, a table center piece, and name placards for the seating assignments at the "formal" room table. They also composed a special song and dance and gave us coupons to redeem for such things as "we will stop fighting with each other", "sleep in", "no chore day" etc. The dinner was good too, and they really did cook it all start to finish including some chocolate chip crepes for dessert. Oh, and we received a trophy (it looked suspiciously like a soccer trophy won by Reese...) for being the best parents. Not a bad anniversary at all!

LIfe in 200 words

I think the last time I managed to get on this computer to type anything in my blog I was bragging about how Dalton was sleeping so well. Hmmm, that will show me not to brag. Shortly after that post we went through a grueling period of sleeplessness. It seems to have abated quite a bit, but out of fear of starting another season of extreme sleep deprivation, I will say no more about how much better he (we) are doing.

So beyond learning to live on coffee, it really has been a fun few months. Let me recap, not in any particular order (except the lice and head shaving incident, those were sequential).

I turned a year older
kids finished school
Super B finished school (CPA stuff)
Wes started going to speech therapy
big boys had lice (should I admit that on a public blog?)
big boys got heads shaved
I taught a bundle of childbirth classes and attended a bunch of births
D got 2 teeth the day he turned 6 months and 4 more the day he turned 9 months
Ashby had her ballet recital
Ashby read all the Bluebonnet books
Ashby got a perfect score on her TAKS test
Reese's soccer team won 2 games (1 better than last season!)
We all flew to Greenville to celebrate Easter
Dalton learned to sit up, crawl, go up stairs and eat anything and everything
Dalton started solids right after he turned 6 months starting with avocados
I bought 50 avocados at the store b/c they were on sale and Dalton likes them so much

So you can see we have been busy, if not productive.

Summer is now here, kids are out of school, and I am hoping not to melt as Texas summers are not my favorite experience. Lots of fun on tap though for upcoming weeks and I am looking forward to time with kiddos, family vacations as well as doing a lot of VBS hopping.

This apparently is not a season in my life where I get much time to blog. But that is OK because my little guy is growing bigger every day and one day I will be able to blog all the time but I won't have sweet (and sometimes not so sweet...) little ones wanting me to play or hold them. I am not really looking forward to that day!

Dalton got two teeth this week and thanks to a week of mommy/baby sleep bootcamp he is taking regular naps and sleeping better at night. So thankful for that! We were all on the edge of insanity until this week. Nobody... mommies, daddies, babies or their siblings were meant to survive on no sleep. What did boot camp entail? Well, it didn't involve plain 'ole cry it out because I don't like that method...though everyone and their cat told me that is what I needed to do, but it did involve some crying. Instead of just letting him scream, we started a consistent wake time and bed time and the rest fell into place pretty easily. Honestly, it was so easy that I feel like an idiot for just figuring this out on baby #4. We need to have another baby just so I can enjoy a baby that sleeps normally from the get go. Seems instead we have always "disordered" them at about 4 months of age which I have learned is the age parent can start to have an impact, positive or negative, on real sleeping skills. (see Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child for more details.)

Oh, and if anyone notices the day and time that I am posting....yes it is Sunday, and yes I am home skipping church...because Dalton is napping. :) B and the rest of the crew are at church though.

Whole Food Republicans

While catching up on my newspaper reading this morning, I read an editorial in the WSJ that used a new term, to me anyway, that I find appealing...a Whole Food Republican. I generally use the term crunchy conservative to describe my political/lifestyle views but I like this one a lot too even though I don't consider myself a Republican (more of a Libertarian really). However, this term is an ode to the fact that you can be a cloth diping, organic food eating, raw milk drinking, homebirthing, herb swallowing, alternative medicine using, extended breastfeeding, skipping vaxes kind of gal and still be a down with being a conservative and follower of Christ. I think most people equate shopping at Whole Foods, veggie co-ops, leading an environmentally responsible lifestyle, homebirth and herbs as things that line up with being a liberal politically speaking and perhaps leaning New Age religiously speaking. Tree hugging in general definitely seems to be the province of the Left. However, to me, conservatism and these choices go hand and hand. It is all about personal liberty. The less rules the government makes, the more each person can make choices that best suit their family. Big government gets in the way of that process more often than not.

I know others like me exist, I meet them on line all the time. I just don't see them very often in everyday life though and I never see them in the pews next to me at church. I see conservatives for sure, and I see those who are "crunchy" but rarely the combo of the two.(Don't get me wrong, there are lots of very nice folks in my life and church and being crunchy or conservative is NOT *the* thing that makes great friends or great people in general. In fact in the grand scheme of things it is a minor detail.) That being said, it was fantastic to see an article about people like me in the Wall Street Journal. I feel very cool and loved after getting some press!

Life Now

Dalton will be 12 weeks tomorrow. 12 weeks! That is just craziness, it seems like I was just pregnant and rubbing my cute tummy. However it has been the quickest 12 weeks of my life. As I have had what I consider hard babies each previous time, I was expecting life to be really difficult after Dalton arrived. To the contrary, I have either gotten more laid back or he is a laid back guy himself because it has been great! He is so sweet and cute and precious and all those adjectives us moms use to describe our offspring. Best of all, he sleeps! Not all night every night, but for 6 plus hours straight each night. Not too shabby considering my others did not do that until, oh....maybe a year.

We did have a few moments of imperfection. Dalton lost a lot of weight his first weeks of life and I had trouble nursing him which led to even more weight loss. I am proud to say that after LOTS of work and stress on my part, nursing is now going great and he is a chunker, at least compared to those first scrawny days. And I did it all without anything but my mommy milk. He did get many a bottle but he never got any supplements. I do think some of those bottles represented equal parts milk to my tears. Nursing issues immediately post partum are so not fun and I definitely cried as we struggled.

Dalton went on his first plane trip when he was around 8 weeks when we flew home to SC to see my family and for him to meet his great grandmother. Travel is still pretty easy at that age because nursing takes care a multitude of baby woes. He nursed most of the plane ride and was also very accommodating during the visit. He did have some "loud" moments in the 2 hour car drive that was necessitated due to overbooked flights and us not being able to fly into the closest airport to our destination. Nana seemed to think he was pretty cute and everyone thinks he looks just like W.

I had my first after- having-my-baby doula client delivery two weeks ago and that went fantastically. Luckily for all of us it was quick and mom made it look easy (though I know she would most certainly say it was NOT easy!) It is great to be back in the delivery room but after my homebirth I really can't wait to start my midwifery training. It will be hard to put it off the 3 years or more that I want to wait for Dalton to get bigger....and of course I won't stop praying for another little blessing in the mean time (but don't tell Brian just how hard I am praying for that, hehe).

I know there is lots more I could say, but my blogging time is limited right now. Besides, I am pretty sure no one but me will have too much interest in my babbling on and on about my little guy, who by the way just woke up and needs some momma lovin'.

Some random images from labor and birth:

Dalton's Birth Story

This is the story of our 4th child and 3rd son. It was my longest pregnancy as well as my longest and hardest labor. It was also my first homebirth, and probably due to it being a homebirth, it was my most enjoyable birth and easiest recovery.

Sunday, August 30th During the afternoon, I started to feel what I thought were early labor contractions. They were not painful, just a whisper of the sensations I knew would come. All day they came but I kept this to myself and continued on with life. I went to bed early thinking that sleep might be elusive. Fortunately I did sleep for a few hours, unfortunately I woke up around midnight for a nightly potty run and I could not go back to sleep.

Monday, August 31st The contractions were no longer whispers, but the definite tightening that signals real business. Further more, with each one I needed to go the bathroom, so for several hours I played the back and forth game between the potty and the bed. Finally around 4am I fell into a weird twilight sleep where I dreamed odd dreams that incorporated the contractions in crazy ways and I knew that today was the day we would meet our little one. I was wrong.

Once the big kids were out the door to school I went for walk. It was slow going stopping for contractions every 6 minutes or so. However, it was a beautiful morning and walking around made me feel like I was doing my part to encourage baby’s exit. Though I did worry a little about freaking out the neighbors if they happened to glance outside while I was breathing through my contractions. I would like to say Wes and I did exciting things all day to pass the time, however we mostly just hung out cleaning the house, reading books, eating and talking on the phone to family and friends. Contractions were still coming every 6-10 mins with no pattern, though the intensity picked up through the morning and afternoon. I decided to get in the tub to see what happened, especially as I needed to do my pre-birth leg shaving anyway. I figured things might slow down or things would keep moving along. Of course since I was in the tub, Wes felt the need to join me. I can’t say that having a 3 year old ram toy boats into my thighs was really all that relaxing, but we both got clean, my legs got smooth and I established that my contractions were definitely not going away.

We walked down to pick the older kids up from school and once again walking felt productive. When we got home, I sat on my birthball for a while and had Ashby rub my back. I started to feel like contractions were getting closer together so I texted Donnellyn (my midwife). She thought I should time some to see how long they were lasting. Timing contractions is actually quite a challenge when one is alone in labor and can’t find one’s watch with a second hand, so I went to contractionmaster.com. According to the site my contractions were coming every 4-6 mins and lasting about a minute.

I have to admit; I was getting a little frustrated dealing with contractions and not having any one around to help the kids or me. I was also frustrated that my labor didn’t seem to be progressing as fast as I hoped. I was too uncomfortable to do much but not uncomfortable enough to be ready to push out a baby. Super B did come home around 6:30 and he watched me have about two contractions before he phoned Donnellyn and Charlotte (my doula) and told them it was time for everyone to come over. I was not sure it was really time, but B saw a panting wife and figured he needed to bring in the troops, if not for me then for him. Charlotte arrived first and we immediately went to walk. Donnellyn arrived about half hour later (8pm) and Lynsey (the photographer) a bit after that. After Donnellyn arrived she asked if she could check me, but honestly I was too worried to find out that I might be completely undilated to let her.

Maybe having B home and made me feel I could stop being mom and start being labor woman because contractions hit a regular pattern and intensity picked up. I was somewhat concerned that the baby was in an asynclitic position due to my labor’s slow start. We used some rotational positioning to see if that would encourage baby into a more ideal position if that was indeed an issue. The positioning slowed labor a bit, but eventually I made it through the whole rotation and it was obvious that afterwards my contractions were now stronger. Donnellyn again suggested doing a vaginal exam so that she would have a better idea about when to call the second midwife. I was still very apprehensive about having an exam for the same previous reason, but I did consent. I was thrilled to find out after a quick exam, that I was 100% effaced and 6cm. With this good news I had a sudden burst of energy and walked around the house with a big smile on my face. It was probably around 10pm at this point.

That happy energy didn’t last long because I quickly entered the fun of transition phase. At first I was doing great, breathing slowly to relax through contractions and laboring on the toilet, against the kitchen bar, and at the end of my bed. However, within a short period of time my labor seemed to overwhelm me. Sarah, the second midwife, arrived at some point and Donnellyn suggested it was time to get in the tub, which I happily did. Once in the tub I relaxed well in between contractions, but it was hard getting comfortable during contractions. I don’t know how long I was in the tub, but the water had gotten cold and I needed to go the bathroom, so I got out. I honestly don’t know why I never made it back in, but at that point I started to come a little unhinged. I was laboring holding on the footboard of my bed and leaning over into each contraction but I no longer had any control of my breathing. With each contraction it felt like the baby might be coming out of my thighs and hips there was so much pressure there. I also had the shakes and felt like vomiting with each contraction. During this time the baby’s heart tones were getting a bit high, so Donnellyn and Sarah had me gulp a bunch of my tea. They also thought I needed some quick energy so Donnellyn spoon-fed me some honey. Yuck! I normally like honey but that was not something I enjoyed at that particular moment. However, instantly the baby’s heart rate came down and I just kept drinking as much as I could to keep it that way. I don’t recall how or why the issue was brought up, but we had a brief discussion concerning breaking my water. I immediately said I was not interested since in doula work, artificially rupturing the membranes is often the start of things going down hill fast.

Tuesday, September 1st At one point when I was really at my emotional limit, I heard Sarah, who was sitting in front of me, start to pray and then behind me Charlotte started to pray too. I loved the prayers but I couldn’t help but think, “Oh my, I must be really bad off if they have just given up on anything helping except prayer.” Donnellyn was praying too, but she also started doing some fabulous hip squeezes. They really made a big difference. I kept thinking that I must be almost complete and hoped to feel an urge to push with each contraction, but alas contraction after contraction came and no pushing urge. It had been 3 hours since I had been found to be at 6cm. Now I asked Donnellyn if breaking my water would be helpful because I was DONE. I still was not quite ready to try this option, but I was ready to talk about it. Donnellyn definitely did not push me and I think since I was still reluctant she changed the subject. Sometime in this phase Donnellyn gave me the homeopathic Rescue Remedy. I was a skeptic, but that stuff really works. Of course contractions were just as painful, but I felt pure peace for the few moments in between. I know I was really loud during this time, moaning (or singing as someone kindly put it) during each contraction. It was about this time that I started to consider giving myself a c-section right there in my room. My level of pain level was higher than with my other natural births and knowing I was reaching my breaking point, I decided it was time to pop my bag and see what might happen.

At first, Donnellyn thought she would do an exam and hope my water broke during the exam. It didn’t, and she said I was only an 8 plus cm. She tried a little finger amnio breaker, which also failed to break my water. Finally she used the big ‘ole amnio hook and it STILL could not break my water. Lying on the bed having this done during major contractions was the exact opposite of fun. Sarah then took a turn with the amnio hook and she said I was now 9 or even 10 with just a lip. That was good news! Finally Sara managed to rupture my water. She just started reminding me that I might feel a change in the next few contractions but she didn’t even get to finish that thought. Suddenly the baby was in the birth canal and on my perineum. I must have made some guttural sound, because Brian, who was sleeping in the den, came running in. I knew the baby was seconds away from being born and I wanted two things…I told Brian to wake up the kids and for someone put me in the tub. I wanted my waterbirth! Donnellyn and Sarah basically ignored me because they were now busy catching a baby and I wasn’t going anywhere. If Brain had gone to get the kids, he would have missed the birth.

So, less than 30 seconds after my water was broken, Dalton made his appearance. It happened so fast that Donnellyn didn’t even have time to put on gloves. He had a nuchal cord that needed to be reduced but otherwise I received Dalton on my chest and that is where he happily hung out for a nice visit until the cord stopped pulsing and we were ready to move to the herbal bath. I don’t recall who announced the gender, but someone told me that I had new son. I don’t even think I looked to verify until later though. Dalton’s apgars were 9 and 9, and he nursed well as we lay in bed together getting to know each other.