Practical & Conscientious Parenting
Posts tagged pregnancy
The Benefits of a Good Doctor
15 years
by Zach
in Pregnancy & Labor
I mentioned in an earlier post that our doctor is a D.O. I would also like to mention that she rocks.
Last week we did a tour of the Labor and Delivery wing of the hospital, and we were a little disappointed by a number of things. According to hospital policy, once we are admitted Ashley won’t be allowed to have anything but ice chips until the baby is born. The general theory behind this (misguided) practice is that it’s better that women in labor have empty stomachs in case they need to be anesthetized for a c-section or other surgery. Of course, like most of these modern techniques in hospital births, not having enough calories to push can make the labor go on “too long,” and the doctor will likely recommend a c-section. We were also shown the “baby’s first bed,” a sterile little plastic enclosure that will fortunately not be our baby’s first bed.
Anyway, on to why our doctor rocks. We went in for an appointment to see if the baby is still sitting breech (yep), and we brought a list of questions with us (because we kept forgetting our questions in the appointments). To our relief and excitement, our doctor said she let’s all of her mothers eat during labor! Not that Ashley will necessarily want to eat, but she’s read great things about drinking Gatorade or miso broth to replace electrolytes.
We also talked to her about what will happen if our little bug wants to stay breech. She said she has delivered many breech babies vaginally, but never on first time pregnancies. And this is where my respect went through the roof: she said if the baby was still breech and we still wanted to deliver vaginally, she would do it and call in another doctor she knows who’s done a lot more breech deliveries to help. How cool is that?! She’s willing to try something she hasn’t done before, and she’s also cautious and knowledgeable enough to bring in help!
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.
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.