Practical & Conscientious Parenting
Zach
Zach is a soon-to-be father who joyfully works from home creating things for the web and his family. In addition to spending hours in front of a computer, he likes playing mandolin, stirring up delectable vegan cuisine, and being outside. He wants to be a grown up when he grows up.
Home page: http://zbrustudios.com
Posts by Zach
Maternity Leave
15 years
Ashley is officially on Maternity leave! She finished up the school year last Friday, and she’s taking the fall off, so she won’t have to be back until January. I’m really excited about the extra time we’ll have together and the extra help around the house. Since I’m a work-at-home-father-to-be (I’ve been working from home now for about nine months doing web development, and I love it. I absolutely love it.), we’re both going to be home to do some serious nesting. Not to mention we’re going to have the best babymoon ever! Even this week, though, I’ve realized that having Ashley around the house all day is going to bring its challenges.
While Ashley was in school, I usually worked for about five hours or so during the day, took a little break when she got home to hang out and cook dinner, and then worked again at night while she was studying. We were used to hanging out when she was at home. One of the downfalls of being self-employed is that I don’t offer myself any sort of paternity leave (I know, I know… I really should get with the times). I’m thinking I need to iron out a little more structured schedule, or it will be way to tempting to sit around and watch movies all day.
Breech Baby
15 years
by Zach
in Pregnancy & Labor
Looking at this picture now, I can kind of see where the baby's head is pushing out on Ashley's right side (left side of the picture).
Well, we got confirmation from our doc and an ultrasound that our baby is sitting breech. Ashley thought that the hard lump sitting below her ribs was the head, and unfortunately, she was right. We’re not too concerned, but it sure will be nice if the baby decides to flip. Our doctor is seeing Ashley every week now to perform the Webster Technique, a chiropractic technique to reduce constraints around the baby that are preventing it from getting in the head-down position.
On a side note, our doctor is a D.O. (Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine, what Ashley is currently studying to become). In our ideal world, we would been having the baby at home (though, preferably not at our present home – it’s kinda ugly) with a midwife there to assist us. Since there are no home birth midwives in our area, we decided to go with a D.O. (who also happens to be one of Ashley’s professors). She’s very supportive, has an extremely low rate of cesarean births, and we’re both happy that she’s doing everything she can to help Ashley deliver vaginally. She’s also done a lot of physical manipulation to help ease some of the pelvic discomfort that Ashley has had.
We’re doing our part, too. We noticed early on that Ashley’s belly was a little lopsided, with the baby preferring to be on her right side (where the head is now). We both thought it was probably due to fascial restrictions (the webby stuff that keeps all of our innards in place). I’ve recently been doing myofascial release techniques around her belly while she’s been reclining backwards with her pelvis higher than her head. Both of these techniques should create the right space and flexibility for our baby to change its position. The baby is always really active during these times, and we’ve definitely felt the baby’s head move down a bit. We’re coming up on 34 weeks, though, so we’re getting anxious for the baby to flip already.
We’ve also been reading the techniques offered at SpinningBabies.com. They have exercises and positions to help with Optimal Fetal Positioning before and during labor. If the baby doesn’t flip, we may be able to deliver vaginally anyway, it may just be a more difficult labor. I’m voting for an easy labor.
Review: Schuyler’s Monster
15 years
Ashley keeps up on a lot of blogs, particularly those that are by parents of special needs kids. Maybe I’ll have her do a post soon on them. One that she has been following for a while now is Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords, the funny, sad, heartfelt and thoughtful blog of Robert Rummel-Hudson. His daughter Schuyler was born with a brain malformation called bilateral perisylvian polymicrogyria, which most noticeably affects her ability to speak. Rob has been blogging for several years now and recently published Schulyer’s Monster: A Father’s Journey with His Wordless Daughter. Ashley loved it, recommended I read it, I read it, loved it, recommended it to my book club and they all loved it.
What stands out immediately in the book is Rob’s honesty. I assume that most parents want to be considered good parents, and I’m sure there would be a tendency to gloss over some of the less glamorous moments that every parent has, but Rob lays it all out there. His candor and quick wit had me drawn in from the beginning. I wasn’t sure how much I would be able to relate to Rob, having just started my fatherhood journey, but the book deals with so many topics that we all can relate to: fighting for something we believe in, struggling to find meaning in life, feeling inadequate and feeling tremendous love.
He writes a lot about dealing with doctors and schools, and fighting for Schuyler when the “experts” disagreed with him. One thing he shows over and over again is how well-informed parents are the best experts on their children. With Ashley in med school now, I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between doctors and patients now that so much information about health is available online. I know I tend to self-diagnose before I even think about going to a doctor (if I even go after self-diagnosing), and having spent my whole life with myself, I know quite a bit about how I work. So when doctor’s don’t even listen to what I have to say it feels like when the dude at Jiffy Lube tries to tell me that my fuel filter needs changing because he doesn’t know I replaced it a month ago. Rob shows that a parent can be the best advocate and best expert of his or her child, and really should take the time to be just that.
This book is a great read for anyone, and I think doctors and educators – especially those in special education – could gain some great insights from it. Schuyler’s journey is truly remarkable, in no small part due to her crusading parents. People say it’s hard to describe a parents love for a child, but Rob does a great job of conveying it. A perk to reading Schuyler’s Monster is that I can keep up on Schuyler (and get a healthy dose of Rob’s synicism) on the blog.
A Stunning Realization
15 years
I’m not a big fan of gender roles. I like to use my sewing machine just as much as my table saw. I like both Reservoir Dogs and Roman Holiday. In our pre-pregnancy lives, Ashley and I try to share the responsibilities, and for the most part we work pretty well together. I’m horrible at keeping a schedule, so Ashley pays the bills. I’m good in the kitchen, so I do a lot of our cooking. Nothing has tried to push us back into traditional gender roles quite like pregnancy has.
It’s been hard to find ways that I can equally contribute, since I haven’t had trouble keeping food down, I haven’t been super tired, and I haven’t had to grow another human being inside myself. I try to compensate by doing most of the shopping, cooking and dishes. I’ve been to most of the prenatal appointments, and I keep our blog updated with pictures for our families. But recently, I was reminded just how different our roles are during pregnancy, and just how incredible mothers are.
On a recent trip to visit our families in Oregon, Ashley started getting worried because she hadn’t felt the baby move in a couple of days (spoiler: everything turns out just fine). Generally, our little bug has been pretty active (although we didn’t start feeling baby kicks until about four months into the pregnancy because of an anterior placenta). It was late at night, and we weren’t sure if our insurance would cover an out of state emergency room visit. Funny things happen all the time during pregnancy, but we thought just to be safe we should go in. We did, and after being hooked up to a fetal monitor for about 20 minutes, the doctor said everything was just fine.
On the way home, I was relieved, but I was never really that worried. Me being the current bread-winner and having a fundamental dislike of visiting doctors, I figured this was just going to be another needless trip to the hospital. But then came my stunning realization: somehow Ashley is expected, with no previous experience, to know what’s going on with our baby. Between all the gut turning somersaults and still moments, new mothers are expected to know when things aren’t okay. And bad things can happen if they don’t recognize signs that they’ve never even felt before. Wow.
So this is just to say, to Ashley, Anne, my mom and all moms: Wow. Way to go.