Practical & Conscientious Parenting
Archive for June, 2009
Little Bug’s Baby Shower
15 years
We had our family baby shower this weekend. When Mehalia was born, Anne and Ben buried her placenta at the base of a Bay Laurel, and we really like the idea of having a tree for Bug’s placenta, so Ashley’s mom got us a beautiful Japanese Maple. People put cards in it for us at the shower. Hopefully the tree can handle living in Yakima with its cold winters.
I’ve been reading Husband-Coached Childbirth : The Bradley Method of Natural Childbirth, and I just read a bit that Dr. Bradley wrote about the placenta. I had heard that animals and people sometimes eat the placenta after birth and I assumed the new mothers did so to replace some of the iron they may have lost during childbirth. While that may be partially true, Dr. Bradley also said that there may be a chemical in the placenta that helps stimulate uterine contraction after birth and that people used to take pills made from dried and ground placentas to help with bleeding after labor (uterine contraction is important to help stem the flow of blood to the uterus and heal the place where the placenta detaches from).
I’ve also heard that many people believe the placenta has healing and magical properties. While I don’t know if any of this is true, it’s clear that there’s something special about the placenta. Anyway, I love that we will have a beautiful tree to remind us of our baby’s first home.
Placemats
Another really fun thing we did at the shower was play “Placemats,” a game that works like this:
- Everyone takes a piece of paper and writes down a phrase.
- People pass their paper to the left, and then everyone draws a picture to represent the phrase on the paper that was passed to them.
- After folding down the paper so that the original phrase is covered and only the picture is visible, the papers are passed to the left again, and each person writes a phrase to represent the picture.
- Write, Draw, Pass, Repeat
We did several rounds of “interpretation,” and we ended up with some really funny phrases (things got especially funny after passing through Mehalia’s hands). A great example: one page started with “If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready,” and transitioned to “I’m so unhappy when my clothes fall off.”
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!
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.