So now I am days away from my “due date”….. really hate that term….. feel like I am a carton of milk that is about to go bad by having a date. Now when people ask when I am “due” I just say soon. Never felt such discomfort in so many body parts in my whole life and I’m very used to dealing with chronic pain most of my adult life. Sometimes I feel like I can barely walk. When I walk is with great effort, a huge lack of grace, balance and coordination…. qualities that yoga has helped me cultivate and now that are GONE. I basically walk like that Edgar character in Men In Black – the guy whose body is taken over by cockroaches.
I’ve been doing everything I can to induce labor naturally – acupuncture, using the breast pump, chiropractic adjustments, evening primrose oil, special “assistance” from hubby, walking, yoga, pelvic tilts, going up and down stairs sideways, spicy food….. in a few days I might resort to castor oil.
We’ve been getting ready for 9 months…. we basically added a new addition to our house, but instead of hiring contractors to do this for us we did 95% of it which includes sledgehammering, adding new electrical wires, moving a ton of furniture around, adding new lighting downstairs painting little tables a huge bookcase, a dresser….. for the nursery that was easier but still more work than I realized. We put an Eco-bond paint covering on the floor in case there was lead paint on there before it would provide protection.
Then painted the molding, the walls, the ceiling, took down the ceiling fan, changing the curtains, fixing the drawers so they are not so noisy, getting a new radiator, insulating our new home office downstairs. Then we started to get all the baby stuff together which entails putting a crib together, moving even more furniture downstairs, reconfiguring our back sun room which is a storage area for baby stuff, toiletries.
Many trips to Babies R Us to exchange some of the dozens of newborn baby clothes ( we have about 45 newborn onesies – such a waste since they outgrow them in a month, that doesn’t even count the 15 I exchanged for other things such as diapers, wipes, blackout curtains, a baby carrier, nursing pads. I never realized the urge people have to buy newborn clothes. I didn’t even register for any and that is about 90% of what I got plus about 6 tubes of butt paste ( I only registered for 1.) I washed all of the baby clothes, baby sheets, swaddle blankets.
We’ve attended our Childbirth Education Classes and plan to use hypnosis for pain management. I also plan to have a natural birth without medications or interventions. Because of my age, thyroid and gestational diabetes I require enhanced monitoring and my Perinatologist recommends I get induced on by 41 weeks if I don’t go into labor naturally at that point.
I’ve been pretty adamantly opposed to that. I want to avoid the hospital and hospital staff as much as I can. I have a deep distrust of institutionalized medicine since I have been to countless Western-trained doctor for various health issues and 90% of them have been a HUGE waste of time and money. I hate how I am literally a “number” when I call MainLine Health they identify you by your social security number which is so impersonal. At so many doctor offices I visit it feels like a factory and it’s such a dehumanizing experience. The doctor’s main goal is to make sure they don’t spend more than 15 minutes with me since insurance doesn’t reimburse them if they spend too much time with me. Since I have a complicated health history I always feel shortchanged.
So I did a lot of research on the typical ways that women give birth in this country and decided I wanted to have a personal, intimate experience where I felt like I could get the attention I was craving. When you have a Midwife attending to you, you get a lot more attention, education than a typical OB office. So as I get closer to my little guy making his worldwide debut, I am anxious about my natural birth wishes.
So now all there is to do is to surrender…. to realize I don’t have any control over….. that someone else is in control. Hopefully the next post from me will be about how hours after I wrote this our little guy decided to make his debut……. stay tuned……..