Month Three

I am so happy to be feeling good! I am loving pregnancy and am really excited for everything. I have a good little round belly already, I don't ever get sick anymore and I have all my energy. I have been reading like crazy lately. I have become completely obsessed with pregnancy books and am just about finished with Birthing From Within. It is really fantastic. It was written by a midwife and if you are even remotely interested in natural child birth it is a must have. It is actually one of the main reasons I decided to look into Birth Centers. I know, I know. Everytime I bring this up everyone thinks I'm crazy. Your NOT going to have your baby in a hospital?? Your NOT going to have any pain medication?? No and no. It's not like I had a bad birth in the hospital last time. It was actually pretty good. I really loved my midwife, I was only at the hospital for like five or six hours before I had James, and James was healthy, no real complications. But there were things that bugged me about his birth. There were a few hiccups that I just figured were a rare instance, just something that had to happen. But as I began reading I found out that the annoying things that happened to me weren't so rare. They were actually kind of "routine".

I read that ninety percent of women who have a doctor attending their births end up getting an episiotomy. That's a lot. I didn't originally plan to have a doctor at my birth but they started having problems with the fetal monitor and so they had to call her in. She was really rude and changed the whole atmosphere of my birth. What happened was they thought that James' heart rate was dropping but it turned out that the thing just ran out of batteries. Fluke? Kind of annoying. Turns out a lot of women have been wearing the monitor and it shorts out or runs out of batteries and then everyone freaks out thinking the baby is having fetal stress. And since the doctor was already here I guess she just decided to deliver the baby. She kept saying Push LADY Push. That was so annoying. She could have just said push and I would have known who she was talking too. I could tell she really talked down to my midwife and thought she was superior to her which I thought was annoying too. And then, without even asking me or telling me they gave me an episiotomy and used the vaccum to help get my baby out. That is part of the reason why I didn't want to have an epidural in the first place. Using the suction or forceps can give your baby brain damage. And it always mishapes their head which does eventually go back. But it bothered me. I am the patiet. I could have gotten my baby out on my own. Why didn't they let me. If I was going to rip and they wanted to save me the damage that would be one thing but that wasn't the case.

Anways, everything turned out fine. The healing time was longer than normal but other than that I was fine and I fully intended until recently that I would go back to my same midwife and just hope the same issues wouldn't arise again. But as I kept reading and researching I realized that these things happen all too often. I had a couple cousins go to a birth center and birth centers philosophy is "birth is normal, intervention is dangerous" how true. Women have been giving birth without any kind of pain medication up until the 1800's. Up until the mid 1900's people still did without. Over half still had their babies at home. That wasn't that long ago. So why was it safe back then before people had basic hygeine sense but now it's so unsafe? Probably because it's not unsafe. Doctors just don't make a lot of money if you don't have your baby in the hospital. So why would they support it?

So now that I have been through labor, I know what to expect and I'm not afraid, I've decided to go somewhere that doesn't restrict me by procedure and policy and unnecisary intervention. I am so excited about it. There is this really great facility down in Salt Lake called the Birth Center and I am having my first prenatal visit there next week. They have these extensive birth classes that I'm excited to take as well. I think that I freaked Justin out at first with the idea but it turns out he is really on board as well. I am excited to be in control. I know I can do this.

Month 2

I can honestly say this pregnancy has been completely different than my first one. For one, I have lots more time (technically) but almost none of it is spent being lazy. Instead of going to school and work all day, I am chasing around a toddler with an agenda all of his own. I have decided also that because I was so busy in my first pregnancy I didn't really have time to think about how I was feeling. At least I don't remember for the first whole month being so exhausted that by mid day that I had to take a nap. Luckily James still does too. I did have cravings and that has returned. Hahaha just thinking about it makes me laugh because when a craving hits it's not like should I or shouldn't I, it's like life or death. I choose life, I am eating the dang ice cream snickers, or wendy's fries, or drinking that pepsi. Also my hormones have completely run away with me and I've decided that I am no longer responsible for any irritable outburst, crying episode or irrational upset I have. I have turned into quite the cry baby. It feels good though. Good to cry. I wasn't missing crying that's for sure, since my life has become much less dramatic, but every time I do it's like a whole hearted, body wracking cry. And then I feel great after. I feel bad for Justin because everytime I do, he thinks something is really wrong with me but I think I just need to get bad energy out. And then there is the nasea. I only had this for about three weeks last time at the end of my first trimester. Basically I've been nasious since my fifth week on. It's off and on but it's one of my least favortie symptoms. I don't remember the beginning being so hard. I feel like I'm starting to come out of a lot of the exhaustion though. I definitely have more energy. And I have tied my throwing up to my prenatal vitamins. I am always on a verge of puking for like two hours after I take my prenatal vitamin. So I have resorted to taking it before I go to bed. I am still having incredibly incredily strange dreams. Too wierd to even mention.

I had my first prenatal visit two weeks ago. It was so great. My regular midwife is out of town for all of the holidays so I met with one of the other five. It's good to meet with all of them because you never really know who will be on call when you happen to go into labor. I was lucky last time and Nancy was on call. I don't think I could have done it the first time without her. They did an ultrasound already which is crazy because at that point my baby was only the size of a grape. It's incredible what detail you can see. My baby already looks human but with a giant head. So kind of more like an alien than a human. When we first started doing the ultrasound my baby was like bouncing around. Moving all over the place. James came with me which I thought was pretty special even though I'm pretty sure he still doesn't understand that his little sibling is sitting in my belly. I have been trying to explain it to him but in the end he just thinks that our belly buttons are named baby. Maybe it will make more sense once my belly is huge and protruding.

I have only gained a couple pounds but if I'm wearing a tight shirt it's obvious that I am either pregnant or have spent a lifetime drinking beer. It's crazy to be showing even the slightest this early. Last time I just kind of looked fat until I was about five months and then it was like BAM, pregnant. Ready to have that baby, pregnant. It is slowly starting to make sense to me that before long I will have another little baby. I think it helped to see my little one on the ultrasound, moving around inside of me. Still will be a month or two before I even feel life. I can't wait for that. And since a lot of the bad symptoms are subsiding I'm feeling more excited about being pregnant until June.