My opinions on the world...or maybe just on how people come into it...

Welcome to the crazy blog, of a crazy pregnant mother of six! 
                                                 

Photo taken by Brenda Schaefer Photography of our fourth son Cohen :)

       I have spent the last several months of my pregnancy watching youtube birth videos. Why? Because I feel it helps me prapare and bolster emotionally for repeating the journey of birth, also because it gives me the courage and even the desire to give birth again when I see other women's beautiful birth stories unfold. However, this is where my crazy opinions on the world and how its inhabitants arrive here explode into a blog worthy rant.
        Why, have hospitals and society in general decided to rob women of this beauty? To strip them of their strengths and feast on their weaknesses? To shove medical text books and unnatural fears where they were never intended to be? There are few things that make me truly angry, but this subject is a top qualifier. I am not angry at the women who have been blind folded and practically led to the tune of the pied piper into these staged, intervened upon, and sometimes even violent births. I am angry at the educated, who turn a blind eye deliberately, who mislead and lie encouragingly, to these last few generations of women. I am angry at those who remain ignorant on purpose, who have no desire to see what other options might be out there, who are so fearful of change that they force the old and dead upon the new eras of strong and vibrant women. I believe strongly in the strength of a woman. I believe that most women can bring her children into the world without fear, intervention, or a Doctor at all.
           Now- let's pause there to clarify a little. I did not say all doctors were evil, I did not say they didn't serve a purpose. What I mean,  is that they have no every day purpose in child birth. At least not without some serious retraining.  Doctors are trained as surgeons, and unfortunately that lends them surgical sight, seeing many situations that didn't require surgery or intervention as a place to do so anyway because it made the situation beneficial or easier for them. I cannot even count how many women I know who were induced because their delivery time range was going to cut into the doctors vacation time. Or because the doctor was "concerned" about some inane detail, acting like an excited detective discovering a meaningless clue that allowed them a warrant to do what they really wanted to. Cesareans performed because the labor was lapsing past the indicated time of the doctors level of trained comfort, or was going to cut to closely into a shift change. One of my own deliveries was rushed into happening because they had decided they had the proper staff on hand and therefore broke my water and began the pitocin. The end result was fine, but it's a bad foggy memory for me. The mandatory epidural I received was botched at best, and what should have been a quick smooth delivery was drawn out and long thanks to intervention. And I still didn't deliver in time before shift change so they were under staffed after all!
             I feel like I have been blessed with a broad expanse of experiences practically covering the whole gamut of child birth. My first pregnancy was delivered in a hospital by nurse midwife practitioners who had hospital privileges. Which was mostly an average hospital delivery, as I was able to scream for an epidural, even though it was too late and therefore denied, I had an IV, and was induced two weeks early for no great reason. I forgive myself of all of this now because I was just freshly 18 years old and highly uneducated on...well, everything. My second pregnancy, being a twin delivery, was at yet another hospital and delivered by an OB since there were no midwives who had the proper insurance to take me for any other birth option since twins automatically made me "high risk". I actually went to multiple different doctors until I landed on one that didn't want to immediately just do a cesarean. Stranger yet, this doctor turned out to be local to me, compared to the specialists I had been interviewing two hours away from where I lived at the time. The pregnancy and eventually the delivery were still filled with people with medical degrees trying to scare me to death , threaten me with unnecessary bed rest, and give me night mares about the horrors of premature babies, and the loss of one or the other twin. However, in the end, even though I delivered in the operating room, Betadine and hair net prepped, and a full staff hovering over me scalpels in hand, I escaped c-section free and with two very alive happy and pink babies. That though, I firmly believe is thanks to God looking out for us, certainly not my doing as they had me drugged to the max! They are now five and have no lifelong physical or emotional scarring. My third pregnancy was my first wholly natural home birth. I found a midwife I loved, and gave birth to a great big full term baby in my own bath tub at home. Finally! I had found my inner power and strength! My fourth pregnancy, and now this current pregnancy were and are also with the same midwife, and were and will be delivered in her fabulous jetted tub she has at her birth center. (The jets really do make all the difference)
             I don't for one second think that women who deliver at hospitals are lesser for their choice. I don't belittle or begrudge other Mothers for going where they feel safest. That is not where this article is headed. What I am trying to loudly proclaim from my soap box is, women need to be handed back the power WHEREVER they choose to birth. If that is in a hospital, then I'd like to see more birth story videos posted with women being listened to, hands being kept off of her when she's working hard, IVs and drugs being left behind unless truly needed or desired. I'd like to see more birth support teams, professional, family, and friends alike being more educated on what they're witnessing, and not shushing the Mom to be when she's vocalizing her birth pains, ordering her to speed up or slow down, or giving her an unneeded sense of panic. Women know instinctively how to birth without help. I want birth to be handed back to who it's always belonged to- Mom, baby, and God.  Everyone else should only be there should a true emergency occur, and to help the Mother and baby achieve comfort and serenity in the birth they are looking for. Perhaps then we could see America's ridiculous c-section rate drop, and in so doing the professional level of care takers could truly take charge in seeing the correlation between unnecessary intervention and c-section, and ending it where it started.  Yes, in most cases, Mom and baby turn out fine no matter how and where the delivery occurs, but is that something to strive for? Fine? OK? That sounds along the same lines as WHATEVER to me.

This Mama is out~ Most likely to go to bed, or at least put these crazy swollen feet up!
Please feel free to leave questions or comments below

Donna

Baby makes SEVEN!!

Cohen’s Birth Story

       This post is of course, old news, since Cohen is a month old now- but we were a little busy! :)

Photo taken by Brenda Schaefer Photography (unedited)

             After being in prodromal labor for days after our last midwife appointment a week prior, we were greatly anticipating Wednesday May 2^nd 2012 for a multitude of reasons. The first was that our midwife had told us that if I was more dilated and effaced she may consider breaking my water to progress labor along and so that AJ wouldn’t miss the birth since he worked so far away (about 45 minutes) and my labors were so quick. At six o’clock AJ and I were praying and fretting over my appointment and nearly having an anxiety attack in the waiting room. I was dreading hearing what Laura (my midwife) might say, thinking she’d say I’d gone backwards and was not going to be having this baby anytime soon like had happened to us with my pregnancy with Griffin. Finally it was our turn to see her and she ushered us in and shut the door so she could check me in privacy. After checking me she said I was dilated to a stretchy 5 (woohoo!) and effaced 95% , however, she also said that she would not break my water because she thought I’d go into labor naturally within the night. I was excited, but devastated at the same time. I am a control freak, and my need to have things in order in my life and absolute answers to things had me chomping at the bit over the complete lack of control in this situation. I wanted her to break my water so that I knew I was ABSOLUTELY going to have a baby in the next 24 hours! Of course though, patient and wise Laura just smiled at me, and was also of course totally right as usual. Within minutes of leaving Laura’s office I was beginning to contract. By the time I got home they were timeable and coming at a pattern of four three and two minutes apart, in that order, repeating again two times in the same order before going to a three, two, two pattern, and then a two, two, two pattern. We called Laura, and she said to call her back after I’d had contractions for an hour. I was not in any pain, and I was walking around and smiling and laughing so no one was taking me very seriously yet. I knew that it was time to get moving though. It was 7:30pm at this point. I called my mom and she was in the middle of watching a TV show and said she’d come over after it was over (still no one thought I meant business, obviously) I called her back in less than ten minutes and told her to come sooner. She laughed at me but came over anyway. When she arrived she was still looking at me like I might be kidding since I was showing no signs of contracting even though they were still a steady two minutes apart. AJ was playing his gory shoot em’ up game on the Xbox and we had called the neighbor girls to come watch the older kids, but they hadn’t arrived yet. I called Laura back again and told her we’d be there by 8:30pm.  While we were waiting for the babysitters to show up mom and I decided to go for a walk. We chatted about the baby’s name, the logging project down below the house, the Christmas trees, and all sorts of things. Mom asked me periodically how I was feeling, though I could tell she was wondering why I’d pulled her away from her show when I was not even pausing conversation for contractions. At around 8:25 when the sitters got there and we’d circled back to the house I announced it was time to go to Laura’s. Both AJ and my mom looking a little surprised said okay and loaded things up, Mom scrambling last minute for her camera that she’d misplaced (that’s kind of important!). We got to the birth center first since mom had to stop and get gas and Laura already had the tub full and the jets going. Still feeling perfectly fine and cheerful but feeling the contractions getting closer together I put my swim suit on and hopped in, relishing the idea of the hot water relaxing my back muscles. It was heaven! Laura had it at the perfect temperature and my whole body instantly relaxed…until I had another anxiety attack! Laura wanted to check me and asked me to tell her when I was having a contraction, and I couldn’t! I couldn’t feel them anymore! My eyes got big and Laura laughed at me explaining that the jetted tub took away 30-50% of the discomfort of labor, and since I wasn’t in pain to begin with, it took it all away! My mom leaned in and said something mocking, something along the lines of "this is going to take all night" , to which I replied in a return mock voice saying ‘What, are you mad at me because I’m not having another quick labor?” We both laughed. My labor with Griffin, my previous pregnancy was only about 30 minutes long in the active stage, so we had gotten spoiled. Laura checked me though and said I was at 8 centimeters with just a little lip left to efface. She also said that my water must have broken because there was no barrier in front of the baby. This is when I chose to tempt fate and asked her mockingly if it was ever going to hurt. Ha! You won’t catch me doing that again! Immediately after I said that the contraction from heck with two L's lit into me and took me by storm. My whole body seized up and I clenched my hands and feet. It took me halfway through the contraction to remember to breathe and try to relax. Sometime before the serious contraction hit my mother in law Lela showed up as well and Laura told everyone that baby would probably arrive within an hour. (Take that mom!) That was at 9:26pm. After my first painful contraction was over Laura asked if I’d like to get out and sit on the toilet for a little bit to see if it would relieve some pressure. I did, and it did relieve some pressure, but within seconds another crazy contraction hit and I was rocking and moaning saying "relax, relax, relax" over and over to myself. AJ was sitting on a stool in front of me and kept trying to offer me his hand to squeeze, which I batted away like an annoying fly...I hate to be touched when I'm in pain. Laura came in and asked politely, but with some authority, for me to return to the tub after the contraction was over, she said she’d delivered babies on the toilet before but it wasn’t her favorite. In my head at the time I was confused, thinking, I’m not having this baby anytime soon, what are you worried about? We listened to her anyway though and when AJ and Laura helped me up we saw that there was vernix off of the baby in the toilet. Wow! Maybe we were going to have him soon! After returning to the wonderful soothing waters my relaxation was brief because the mother of all contractions (ha-ha) hit shortly after. Laura checked me again and told me to push, while at the same time pushing the last little lip of my cervix up over the baby’s head. During that same contraction one push and two breaths later Cohen Jesse Isaac was born!!  He had his umbilical cord wrapped loosely around his belly and I untangled him as Laura helped hand him up to me. What a doll! He had a perfect and flawless little head. No smashed ears, crooked nose, or cone shaped head from a long labor- how could it, the labor was only 15 minutes long if that! He was born at 9:32pm- only six minutes after Laura had said there was probably an hour left. What a whirlwind! After I held and admired him for a while and the umbilical cord stopped pulsing, AJ cut the cord (the first one of our children he ever did that with!) and they took him into the adjoining room to weigh and measure him. I thought for sure he was smaller than Griffin since he had a smaller and more petite head and body figure- but he was four ounces heavier at 8 pounds 12 ounces! Griffin was taller by an inch though as Cohen was only 21 inches. I was shocked at how big he was! I had even carried much smaller this pregnancy than I had with Griffin! Goes to show you can't predict anything when it comes to babies. :)