He is Just so Sweet

We had planned a homebirth for our 5th child, but things didn’t go as planned. The last few months of my pregnancy was very stressful, found out my father had terminal disease, my family (parents and sisters were causing problems) and my oldest son’s 4th grade teacher was not doing the proper job in her teaching. Isaac seemed to turn like a clock in my belly, never staying in one place for too long. Women under stress tend to hold their babies in malpositions. A few times I started having contractions, but I was not happy and did not want to bring a child into the world if I wasn’t happy and almost willed myself to stop. But two weeks after Isaac was due my body could no longer stop nature. I started having contractions while at a party, it seemed like things were moving along by the time we got home I was 6 cm. dilated. My oldest and most wonderful sister was babysitting our children. She left and we told her we would call when the baby was born, I labored all night long, I had dilated up to 8 cm. and the baby just didn’t seem to be coming, I labored in many different positions trying to get him to change his position, I could feel pressure in my right hip. The kids woke up and were surprised that I hadn’t had the baby yet. Bill decided to call my sister and have her come over, Bill suggested we go to the hospital, but I knew that meant I would end up with a c-section and I didn’t want that, I wasn’t ready. We waited another 2 hours and I decided to take a shower, where no one could hear me, I cried my eyes out, knowing I had done all I could, when I got out I told Bill we should go to the hospital.

When we got to the hospital they insisted that I have an ultrasound to make sure it wasn’t twins (I knew it was just one of my big babies). That was the most pain I was in during my labor, laying on my back with my head tilted down and having cold jelly spread all over my belly. Bill told the tech that if he saw anything not to say anything because we didn’t know what we were having, he said “You don’t want to know?” Bill said, “We have come this far and I think we will know soon enough.” He couldn’t believe we didn’t want to know. We have never found out what were having, we like to be surprised. It was decided that I would have a c-section. I won’t go into details of how the doctors and nurses treated me, let’s just say they rather enjoyed the fact that the Bradley teacher was having a c-section. We aren’t against c-sections when they are NEEDED.

In the operating room they have my arms strapped down and a drape up so I can’t see anything and I kept saying “Where is my husband?” Finally they brought Bill in. Bill watched as they cut me open and could see that the baby had his head on his shoulder and had turned toward my right hip, a head a shoulder just don’t fit through the birth canal. As they lifted Isaac out, Bill said “It’s a BOY!” and started laughing, he thought for sure it was a girl, but I told him it HAD to be a boy because it was so stubborn! Bill rushed over to where they had brought Isaac and I started crying (I cry after every baby is born) and was trying to get a glimpse of my new son, all I could see was dark hair. Finally they brought him over for me to see, for all of about 30 seconds. I remember his little sweet face and his little hand wiggling out from the blanket, he was beautiful, they unstrapped one of my hands and I reached out and stroked his sweet face.

Bill went to the nursery with Isaac and made sure they didn’t do things that we didn’t want to him. When they moved me from recovery the nurse asked “Do you want to stop by the nursery and see your baby?” I said “YES,” I hadn’t got to hold him yet. Bill brought him out and asked if I was up to nursing him and I said yes. The nurse said, “Let’s get her to her room.” About a half hour later they brought him in and I nursed him and held him, I never wanted to put him down. Because I didn’t get to hold him right away (yes, I was jealous that Bill got those first few hours with him), I wanted to hold him even more.

There are some people that say, what a waste 18 hours of labor for nothing, no it wasn’t a waste, I needed all that time to do everything I could to try to turn him in a more favorable position, I NEEDED that time to come to terms with everything. My mom’s first words to me were: “I knew something would go wrong” my response was, “Nothing went wrong, I was fine and the baby was fine, things just didn’t go as planned.” There were those who said “Bet you wish he was a girl,” no, no I didn’t. Bill and never got pregnant because we wanted a boy or a girl, we wanted another child. I wanted what came out and that was Isaac, this sweet, innocent, beautiful baby boy, my boy.

My sister Freda was wonderful, she went grocery shopping and made lists up for Bill what there was to put in lunches and what to make for dinner. The best thing my parents ever did for me beside give life, was blessing me with such a wonderful older sister.

Twelve years later, the first words that most people use to describe Isaac is “He is just so sweet.” He is, he is a good brother to his brothers and sisters. He never seems to amaze Bill and me with his level of thought and his kindness. I can’t help but look at his face and smile; he still is just so cute!

The Other Side of the Glass

This is an eye opening, soon to be released documentary. This film focuses on how babies are treated when they are born and how father's feel helpless in watching. We as parents have a need to keep our baby safe, this film looks to help parents be able to do this.

The goal is to keep the baby in the mother's arms so that the baby gets all of his or her placental blood and to avoid unnecessary, violating, and abusive touch and interactions. When we do that, whether at home or hospital, with doctor or midwife, the birth is safe for the father. The "trick" for birthing men and women is how to make it happen in the hospital.

At Your Cervix

There is a new project underway, it is a documentary on how pelvic exams are performed and taught. As a woman and a childbirth educator I have experienced and had students that have complained how a pelvic was performed. Many woman have been told their parts do not have nerve endings and therefore can't feel pain. We woman know our parts "feel" on many different levels.

This is a very interesting project and I encourage you to check it out.

“Uncomfortable”; “Humiliating”; “Traumatic”; “Scarring”--words women too often use to describe pelvic exams. Most of the 90 million U.S. women who get pelvic exams think they are supposed to hurt. Women show disbelief when told that if done correctly on a healthy woman, pelvic exams should be pain-free.

The documentary, At Your Cervix, enters U.S. medical and nursing schools and breaks the silence around the unethical ways in which medical and nursing students learn to perform pelvic exams. These practices—which include nursing students being required to perform exams on each other in front of faculty and medical students “practicing” on unconscious, unconsenting patients—lead directly to the reality that most women find pelvic exams to be humiliating and painful. The existence of these egregious practices are challenged in the film by highlighting an ethical and more effective way of teaching the pelvic exam that has existed for nearly 30 years: the work of the Gynecological Teaching Associates (GTA) of New York City, in which the “patient” herself is the teacher.

For Noah

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August 8, 1981

27 years ago today, I married the love of my life, my high school sweetheart. We were just 15 when we met, but within weeks of meeting Bill, I knew he was special. He pulled me in with a "hi" and a smile, he still can just melt my heart with a smile. When we married not everyone thought we should and some like my nephew Kyle, at first hearing we were getting married said, "FINALLY I can call him Uncle Bill." Our wedding was different to some, we married in a walk-in theater, I went down the aisle to Jethro Tull, we came back up to a Led Zeppelin song (they were both instrumentals and soft). He quoted me Shakespeare, I Robert Plant. Our first dance was to the "Rain Song." But in more ways our wedding was very traditional. We were happy, in love and knew it was the right time to get married.

As we were driving to our honeymoon, Bill had his left hand resting on the side mirror and the sun shone down on his wedding ring, he lifted his hand up and looked at his ring and said "Wow, I am married, we are married." He turned smiled at me and took my hand, he melted my heart all over again.

The first few years of being married we both worked full-time, he as a janitor and I at Carl's Jr. and Bill went to school full-time (I typed full-time). We lived in a 10 x 60 mobile home. We paid for everything in cash and only bought what we could afford. Four years later he had graduated with his B.A. and M.A. in English (with a high GPA), we paid for his college on our own, no loans, grants or financial aid, and also 2 weeks before he graduated with his M.A. we had our first child. We worked hard, and enjoyed every minute of it.

27 years later, we have six beautiful children, all of which were planned. Besides being married to each other, there could be no greater blessing than our children, there isn't anything we would rather spend our time and money on.

My sister-in-law once said to me "Don't you know, you aren't suppose to be so in love after this long?" Bill and I think "why not?" It isn't that being married is easy, we have had to work through the good, the bad and the difficult, but if you love each other on the day you marry, you should do everything to make sure that love grows.

Because as I said to Bill all those years ago . . .

If the sun refused to shine, I would still be loving you.
When mountains crumble to the sea, there will still be you and me.

Countertops

If you are buying a new home or thinking of redoing your old countertops. You might need to think harder about granite. I know we are planning on redoing our countertops, between cost and and something that is "green" makes the decision hard. But this article from the NY Times might make you think a little harder.

SHORTLY before Lynn Sugarman of Teaneck, N.J., bought her summer home in Lake George, N.Y., two years ago, a routine inspection revealed it had elevated levels of radon, a radioactive gas that can cause lung cancer. So she called a radon measurement and mitigation technician to find the source.

“He went from room to room,” said Dr. Sugarman, a pediatrician. But he stopped in his tracks in the kitchen, which had richly grained cream, brown and burgundy granite countertops. His Geiger counter indicated that the granite was emitting radiation at levels 10 times higher than those he had measured elsewhere in the house.

“My first thought was, my pregnant daughter was coming for the weekend,” Dr. Sugarman said. When the technician told her to keep her daughter several feet from the countertops just to be safe, she said, “I had them ripped out that very day,” and sent to the state Department of Health for analysis. The granite, it turned out, contained high levels of uranium, which is not only radioactive but releases radon gas as it decays. “The health risk to me and my family was probably small,” Dr. Sugarman said, “but I felt it was an unnecessary risk.”

Orgasmic Birth

I just received a copy of this wonderful new movie by Ina May Gaskin. The movie has 11 different births in it and what is most powerful is the commentary by the professionals. Their comments are truly thought provoking. Don't let the title confuse you, it about women putting the pleasure back into childbirth.

Marsden Wagner, MD, former Director of Women’s and Children’s Health for the World Health Organization. He says in the film:

Very clear hard evidence in the last 10 years [shows that] the number of women who are induced—that is, their labor is kick-started—is doubling. You kick-start labor by giving them a powerful drug. And then you give them more drugs to keep the labor going. Now, there are about five to ten percent of women in which there's a good medical reason to do this, and you’re saving lives and all that. But if you go above ten percent, you’re not saving lives anymore. These are powerful drugs with all kinds of risks, including brain damage to the baby, a dead baby, a dead woman. And yet we do it twice as much [as we used to]. And there’s so much pain in induction—incredible pain. And so they have to come with all the pain relief and the epidurals and all of that. So we get induction, leading to epidural, which leads to cesarean. And that is what’s happening in this country. Now, why? Did something happen? Did American women’s bodies suddenly go bad? Did American women’s bodies suddenly lose the ability to figure out when it’s time to go into labor? Goodness, no! You know, why do 60 to 80 percent of American women have to have powerful drugs and interventions to their bodies? Well, it has nothing to do with there being anything wrong with their body. And it’s not because of bad doctors. It's a bad system.

This movie I think helps empower women to once again believe in their bodies. To trust ourselves. . .