Hippie Mom in a Preppy World

Posts Tagged ‘pregnancy’

“no baby yet?” that seems to be the question du jour, usually coming from the masters of observation mentioned previously, if I’m still walking around with a basketball under my shirt the answer to that question should be pretty obvious.  It makes me wish that I had ordered a t-shirt that says: “No I haven’t had the baby and I’m not in labor.” or even better, one that says “it isn’t over until the fat lady isn’t fat anymore”

I made the mistake of sharing a link that I found interesting/amusing on Facebook about how people swear that a dish at a certain restaurant is guaranteed to induce labor within 48 hours.  Several different people took it to mean that I wanted to eat the dish to induce myself, quite a jump in logic!  Specially when I’m the one regularly ranting about how one shouldn’t induce labor unless medically necessary.

And since everything is healthy, the only time I would consider induction is if I’m overdue which I am not (yet).  Yes people, please remember that I still have almost 2 weeks to my official “due” date or as I like to call “guess date”.    And if it comes to that, then I’d rather try the natural tricks before I check myself into the hospital for a pitocin drip at 42 weeks.

As much as we’re excited to meet baby Fox, I am not trying to dictate when he/she should make his/her appearance.  In a sense I would probably miss being pregnant as I’m still enjoying it all when I don’t count the cankles.  I do hope that this isn’t one of those “cool babies” that insists on being fashionably late for it’s debut but baby will get to pick the time it considers best and we’ll adapt to that.

I guess this is another aspect of being a granola mom in a fruit loop world.

Thinking about fruit loops, it saddens me to see so many other new parents putting so much focus on the theme and color scheme of their nursery and not on other more important (in my opinion) decisions.  But I notice that this is because there is hardly any mention of the important  decisions to be made since most people think they have no choice and go with the “standard” procedures.

I am referring to things such as where to give birth, how to give birth, who to give birth with, which classes to take, whether to have a doula, which prenatal tests to take, to eye goop or not,  whether to vitamin K shot or not, whether to delay vaccines or skip them, whether to circumcise and most of this is just the “medical” side of it.  There’s still the decisions on parenting style and everything that comes with actually bringing the baby home.

It shocks me how often I hear somebody saying that they just did things that way because “that’s how everybody does it”, “that’s what my doctor told me to do” or “I didn’t know there was an alternative”, has anybody ever heard of the concept of INFORMED decisions?

In non ranting news, this week we had a belly cast made of the bump, it didn’t come out perfect but being Daddy Fox’s first job as sculptor it’s pretty good, it wasn’t hard to do and aside from having a waterproof belly and boobs from the vaseline lubricant it wasn’t as messy as we feared.

Now it’s a matter of me getting the chance to try to sand it a little and figure out how to decorate it after a trip to the craft store for ideas and supplies.

I had been having trouble sleeping for a very long time and something as simple as flipping sides was being torture, this was in part because we have a tiny bed and Daddy Fox is a giant and I’m not so pixie sized with the bump so there isn’t much room for movement and positioning.  Apparently Daddy Fox got tired of my whimpering and swearing throughout the night and he started to sleep on the futon in the bedroom and suddenly the room to spread and move in bed has allowed me to get the best sleep in months.

It sucks that it’s harder to fall asleep without him as close and  I can no longer sneak in middle of the night cuddles without getting up but at least I’m starting to get some decent rest again.  I appreciate his sacrifice and it’s cool that our room is big enough to fit 2 beds so that he doesn’t have to be all the way out in the couch.

An unexpected side effect to this pregnancy is that I’ve developed a sensitivity to certain food ingredients.  In the past all I had to do was avoid seafood and I could eat anything else without remorse but in recent months I find myself having reactions to MSG and other food additives used in many popular restaurants.  Now I get sick after every time I eat at Golden Corral and the other night I had an allergic reaction to food from Chipotle that was bad enough that required me breaking out the benadryl to avoid skinning myself alive.

Back to ranting… This hasn’t yet made a big stir in the news but it may, there is a peaceful “nurse in” being staged tomorrow at a park in Orlando to protest the discrimination by a lifeguard against several breastfeeding mothers and I’m cheering for them from afar.

A lot of people seem to be getting their panties in a twist over this ranging from “breastfeeding is gross” to “I don’t care what you do but I don’t want to see you do it”.  A lot of this stems from the taboo over breastfeeding and the over- sexualization of breasts.  I roll my eyes at the prudes that don’t want children to see a woman nursing a baby, they will never grow up to learn what breasts are truly for otherwise since media and society emphasizes a completely different purpose for them.

Normalizing breastfeeding means more people, adults and children, must be exposed to it on a regular basis in the course of their everyday lives.  Breastfeeding is not something to be embarrassed about. In cultures where breastfeeding is the norm, children simply don’t ask what mothers are doing with their babies, because they already know what breasts are for. And parents understand the dual purpose they can serve without embarrassment.

I’ve got nursing covers and if I use them it will be for my benefit and not anybody else’s and if baby doesn’t like them or it’s too freaking hot or inconvenient to cover up while nursing people can choose not to look or put the cover on THEIR head.

I believe in people’s right to be offended but that doesn’t entitle them to interfere.  There are many legal activities I witness in public that personally offend me and when I don’t like it, I stop looking and continue about my day.

Regardless of the many benefits of breastfeeding and its promotion by medical and governmental organizations, Florida law protects a child’s right to nurse but most people don’t know about this. Florida enacted Fla. Stat. § 383.015(1) (1993), which reads:

“A mother may breastfeed her baby in any location, public or private, where the mother is otherwise authorized to be, irrespective of whether the nipple of the mother’s breast is uncovered during or incidental to the breastfeeding.”

Why should we stand up for our breastfeeding rights?  Because the next breastfeeding mother might not know her rights, she might not be confident enough to stand up for herself, she might even be discouraged enough that she stops breastfeeding.

On the getting ready for baby front, the stereotypical nesting instinct of wanting to clean and disinfect everything including the screws in the cabinet hinges has been non existent for me.  The house needs a good spring (or in this case summer) cleaning but the best that I can do is try to keep it from getting worse, oh well…

I have been doing some last minute shopping for miscellaneous items that we still don’t have, most of it would be extras (more towels and washcloths) or luxuries (fox crib mobile and wall decals) but it brings me joy, still dreaming over that fox themed bedding set that is out of my current financial reach….

I have printed a sign to be posted in our front door in case I get loud at odd hours while in labor and somebody calls the cops.

Think it gets the point across?

This has been an interesting week, Daddy Fox behaved and waited until I reached the official 37 week mark to start with the “is it time yet?” jokes, if I go overdue I’ll be VERY sick of those jokes…

The pregnancy newsletters that I subscribe to have shifted from talking about ” this week baby developed …” to ” cope with labor by…” or “things to take to the hospital”.

At least my body has been showing signs that it is getting ready for labor but nothing definite, it could still be weeks.

At work the boss looks at me like I’m a ticking time bomb, at least they finally started to plan for my leave.  Work has been particularly hard this week due to fatigue, swollen feet and sporadic contractions.  But despite all that I found myself nesting at work, since those are the hours in which I have energy and I’m stuck in there I end up cleaning my desk and reorganizing my filing cabinet.  It sucks that I don’t have the same energy by the time I get home, or if I do, by then my feet are so huge that I have no choice but to get off them.

Yes, I have elephant feet now, they are HUGE!  And the swelling doesn’t go down after a good night’s sleep either, they may shrink a little but it’s still super inflated.  But my blood pressure is good and it’s only my feet so I don’t have to worry about pre-eclampsia.

I am hard pressed to put my feet up often due to work and lifestyle but yesterday when I finally did get the chance to put my feet up for most of the workday I found that it didn’t help one bit, my feet kept swelling at the same pace as if I had been walking all day.

I’m drinking the water, moderating salt, trying to rest, trying to do some light walking (or in my case waddling) all to no avail.  I freak out every time I look at my feet.

I just hope that I don’t end up like my mother, her pregnancy edema is still with her 29 years later.

I admit that swelling is the only symptom that is making my life miserable.  Heavy belly, minuscule bladder capacity, low heat tolerance, pelvic pain, contractions, cramps… and anything else that I forget at the moment, they’re all manageable, constantly swollen feet that don’t fit into anything but flip flops = grrr.

We are in the final readying stages as we enter “safe dates”.  We have the birth tub at the house, the labor day supplies are all ready in a box and I struggle to keep the house clean or at least semi decent.

Daddy Fox finished assembling the nursery furniture and I love it.  Cherry is my favorite wood color so I’m glad that we got this set. It was super cute to have Daddy Fox channeling Martha Stewart last night as he applied the decorative decals to the walls.

Aside from some clutter reduction and floor cleaning the nursery is almost done!

My placenta brain doesn’t let me remember that I still need to get the empty gel caps to encapsulate my placenta, agh! I’m pretty sure that I am forgetting other things as well but my placenta hasn’t allowed me to remember what those are.

I have already acquired the belly casting kit as it was on sale at a decent discount, now I’m trying to figure out when to do it.  I would like to wait until close to 40 weeks but with the whole “it can happen at any time” I don’t want to risk going into labor and missing out on the opportunity so I may end up doing it sooner rather than later.  It’s up to Daddy Fox now as he will be playing the role of “sculptor”.

Hubby finds it amusing that I seem to have developed what he calls a “reckless” attitude, I call it “who the hell cares”, this is seen in me being too tired to try hard at anything anymore, lol.  Didn’t park exactly parallel to the lines? don’t care, didn’t meet my quota for quality evaluations at work?… don’t care, used the wrong word?… don’t care.  I dropped something on the floor?… don’t care.  I have stopped being an overachiever at work until I return from maternity leave.

One thing that I’ve been ranting quite a bit elsewhere online is the fact that most people think that natural birth and vaginal birth are synonyms.  They don’t seem to realize that one can have a very medicalized vaginal birth (examples: induction, artificial membrane rupture, pitocin augmentation,  epidural… you get the point).  I don’t know about you but none of that seems natural to me.  Perhaps the new natural should be called drug free or intervention free.

Vaginal, natural…who cares? I guess I care.  I’m willing to concede that one can still have a natural birth with artificial membrane rupture provided that it’s done while labor has already been off to a good start,  there are some natural induction techniques that can be considered as well but pitocin, epidurals etc fall way out of that scope.

And  I think it matters because the pendulum about childbirth is swung so far out that, in general it has become an undefined mystery and it needs clarification, if only to let others make up their own mind of what seems normal and natural to them.

Will I get the natural birth I want?  I don’t know… I hope so but will I strive for it?  that’s what I’ve been doing for 9 months!

I leave you with the heavy bump and cankles at 37 weeks:

36 weeks. According to most people baby is now considered a fully baked bun if it decides to pop out of the oven so even though I technically have almost 4 weeks left we have entered the “any day now” stage.

First time moms are notorious for going overdue but the general consensus with the exception of 1 person is that I won’t make it to my due date.

I’m not one for competitions but I’m curious to see what the online consensus is, if you have an opinion, post a comment with the day you think Baby Fox will debut to this world along with your gender prediction.  If you feel really psychic you can also add other information such as time of birth, weight and length.  I’m curious to see if the online opinion varies a lot from the people that have already expressed their “knowing”.

I don’t care when baby decides to show up as long as it waits until next Thursday (the 37 week mark at which point it is legal to have a homebirth in Florida).  That is a big difference to most moms in the online message boards that I visit which are bragging about their baby “having an eviction date”.

Last Monday we had the home visit with the midwife, this means that she knows how to get to our house and won’t be accidentally knock on the neighbor’s door at 2am.  She loved my meditation bench, something I’ve had for years that allows me to meditate in the lotus position for hours while keeping good posture and preventing my butt from falling asleep.  It looks like a mini kneel cushion as seen in Catholic churches, apparently midwives can sometimes spend hours on their knees during a birth so it’s good to know that she won’t have to worry about sore knees at mine.

“If you really want a humanized birth, the best thing you can do is stay the hell out of the hospital.” – Marsden Wagner former director or the World Health Organization (Women and children’s health) and author of Born in the USA

We are thinking about printing a sign to put on the door for when I’m in labor just in case I am in the backyard and decide to get loud and somebody calls the cops thinking that somebody is dying, it would be nice if I could find a template online though, lol.

Mentally and physically I’m as ready as I’ll be, not saying I feel 100% ready but it’ll have to do (and I’m sure it WILL do).

On the house front we are not fully ready but we’re way closer.  Last week we had a baby shower hosted by MIL and SIL co-conspired with hubby, I didn’t know any details until a few days prior and it was better that way.  We got a lot of very needed items, baby is all set for clothes, bath items and we even got a nursery furniture set!  Out of town family and friends that couldn’t attend sent gifts from afar.

I feel very grateful and blessed for the generosity of family and friends, we certainly wouldn’t have been able to buy all of this on our own.

Now I feel like I’m on a time crunch to get the thank you notes done and sent before baby arrives, yet another deadline!

Now I’m in the stage of buying the last minute must haves, found a good deal on the sling I wanted online, got a changing pad for 1 of the 2 changing tables that we now have and other minor items.  Still pending… a diaper pail.

I can’t stand Diaper Genie, most diaper pails are designed for disposable diapers, I was looking into just a kitchen trash can with a step but haven’t found the right one so I’ll probably end up ordering online.

Still looking for a carrier that Daddy will like, it looks like it will be an Ergo which is on the pricey range, specially if he will use it before 4 months because we would need to buy  the infant insert.  I’d rather spend the money in the Ergo than go cheap on an Infantino or Baby Bjorn for him, heck I would use an Ergo once baby is older.

I have finished sorting through baby’s clothing just to separate the newborn and 0-3 sizes to wash those first, baby has a lot of clothes!  More than mommy, lol!

Thanks to grandma Fox the clothes have been washed and the cloth diapers are being prepped which is great for my peace of mind and also a huge savings of $ and time at $2.90 per load (wash only) if we had gone to the laundromat.

While my nesting urge involved laundry and shopping, Daddy Fox’s nesting urge involved clearing and setting up the nursery.  One day he just HAD to clear the room of anything not baby related, that same night!  So here we are in the middle of the night relocating computers, desks, etc.  not a bad thing except it happened on the same day that I was trying to get the house cleaned and organized but relocating things meant we first had to create chaos, rearrange furniture and then… we could clean, so that was annoying for me but we got past it.

Daddy Fox’s second wave of nesting entailed getting the new furniture assembled, he pulled an all nighter going to bed at close to 5am and although not completely done he made a decent amount of progress.  It’s funny how our nesting urges seem to take turns, now that he’s slow down on the nursery setup I’m starting to get itchy about getting it finished, lol.

So formula companies seem to realize that they’re dealing with a hippie and now they have started to market ORGANIC formula to me, they just don’t give up!

On other marketing news, Amazon.com seems to know that I want a camcorder to video tape everything baby because they have been sending me sales and discounts on camcorders for weeks, unfortunately I can’t splurge on such a luxury when we still have baby stuff to buy so I probably won’t be able to get one until well after maternity leave is over.

Yesterday I had my 36 week appointment with my Primary Care Physician/ Breastfeeding Specialist/ Baby’s Doctor.  As usual it was great, we (meaning I) took almost an hour of her time with a long list of questions on breastfeeding, cloth diapering, vitamin K for newborns, etc.  I’ve never before had a doctor not rush through things and take the time to give honest answers in plain English.

When she asked me how I was doing and I said “good, aside from the swelling”, she immediately offered to write me a note for work to allow me to wear non-restrictive shoes for the rest of the pregnancy.  This is welcome as right now flip flops is the only thing that doesn’t torture my swelling feet.

I did find some slippers at Wally World that feel very comfortable and although they’re not designed for work, they do look like ballerina flats from afar so I hope that upper management won’t mind, I’m sure that they’ll rather have their supervisor wearing that than flip flops.