Baby is 24 weeks

I'm starting to feel uncomfortable sleeping on my back.  I toss and turn between sleeping on each side and get up in the morning feeling totally unrested.  :(  I haven't been walking very much the last few days so that could have contributed to my inability to rest well, too.  I'm now a firm believer that daily exercise should not be underestimated in the benefits one derives from it. 

This is such a small thing to go through to get to my reward that I'm definitely not complaining.

Here is an article that shows how hospitals are still manipulating women during childbirth.  I think most people don't even realize that they and their baby become wards of the hospital when they check in.  Statism has barged into hospitals and no one even minds. 

Part of a hospital birth is the medicalization of a normal life event.  I once read an article I wished I had kept.  The author stated that the high cost of medical insurance could be cut if certain non-life threatening events were not automatically covered like prenatal care and childbirth.  His reasoning was that unlike diseases and illnesses, pregnancy is neither and one can and should save up for the fees associated with it.  Probably most people would disagree with him but I can totally see his point.  Auto insurance doesn't pay for routine maintenance either.

Why do people not question the validity of all the tests and procedures they are subjected to by doctors?  I applaud my son for forgoing IV sedation during his wisdom teeth extractions.  The dentist gave him no other option but Max read the risks involved and decided he would rather go the safer route without additional drugs.  I guess the answer to my question may lie in our trust of medical professionals.  We expect that they would act in our best interests.  It's easier to submit to their authority rather than to question it. 

I've gone through four pregnancies and births without any kind of testing and have found that my trust in God has increased and my worries have decreased.  (I do use dipsticks for confirming pregnancies.)  I've missed out on hearing the baby's heartbeat, but really I didn't need even that to give me assurance that my baby is indeed there in my womb.  I am not convinced that the doppler is really all that safe for babies anyway.  :)
How many know that the doppler utilizes ultrasound technology?  Who cares?  Well, I do.  And my advice is to ask your midwife to use a fetoscope instead of the doppler.  There's no reason why you can't also listen with the fetoscope.  Ask the midwife to get a longer cord.  :)  After all, you are paying for her services, right?

This is a great article about making wise decisions about technology in birth.

I'll just quote this one paragraph from the article.

"Is the increasing use of technology saving the lives of more pregnant and birthing women? In the United States the scientific data show no decrease during the past 10 years in the number of women who die around the time of birth (maternal mortality). In fact, recent data suggest a frightening increase in the number of women dying during pregnancy and birth in the United States. So it may be that the increase in the use of birth technologies is not only not saving more women's lives but it is also killing more women. This possibility has a reasonable scientific explanation: cesarean section and epidural anesthesia have both been used more and more in this country and we know that both cesarean section and epidural block can result in death."

Baby is 23 weeks

There's no hiding the fact that I'm clearly with child now.  It's good to be asked about how many children I have and to be able to express thankfulness to God and how we look forward to welcoming more blessings of children into our family.  We're rather an oddity wherever we go.  The children tell me that they notice people staring.  It's good to be different this way and to be able to tell people that the reason for our family size is because we take God at His Word that children are a reward, blessings, and a natural and sweet consequence of a marriage that seeks to give glory to God.

I went to a seminar given by a Christian counselor called Caring for the Emotionally Damaged Heart.  The speaker said that babies may experience emotional stress in utero!  This would only make sense since we know that each little baby is a unique person that God has "knitted" together and knew from the foundation of the world.  We know this little person has an eternal soul.  S(he) can experience physical pain, so why not emotional pain?  I wonder how many babies are emotionally stressed with their birthing experiences and how that affects their well being in the first days of their lives.  Another huge reason to have a gentle birth at home.

Baby is 22 weeks

I now weigh triple digits. Baby is definitely growing. This baby is more active than I remember my other babies. I wonder if that's any indication of a boy. Even Noah is rooting for a girl. I know when the baby is born and we find out what sex the baby is, we will be so happy to have that boy or girl. I think if I found out right now that we're going to have a boy, I may feel a little tiny bit disappointed just because I'm thinking we may have our third girl soon. I'd much rather just wait until birth and have no room whatsoever to have differing emotions about the baby's gender to deal with for the next 18 weeks. When I was expecting Noah and Noble, I thought both would be girls. And at their births, those thoughts were totally extinguished like they were never there. I'm so grateful that Chris doesn't want to find out ahead of time either.

I think the baby deserves some privacy. God gave him his special place to grow. All I need to do is to respect that this baby is his/her own person and is not ready to be outside of me. Should my curiosity preempt my baby's right to be left alone?

Since my husband asked...

When Chris left, my belly was non-protruding. 

I feel particularly huge today.  Pictures never really show how big one feels.  I feel much bigger than this picture shows.  Then I found a picture of myself prior to Noah's birth and I don't feel quite so huge now.  It's always so amazing to me that a body can stretch so much and not burst.  God is an incredible creator.

What to do with one's loved one at death?

I read this post at online.worldmag.com and thought it was thought provoking.

I have always been surprised at the popularity of cremation and wondered about it.  Understandably, the fact that it costs much less than a funeral home assisted burial must be something that makes it attractive.  Money seems to be the big motivator on the decisions we make.  Practically speaking, it makes sense.  Spiritually?  What does money have to do with anything?

I guess most people really don't know all their options.  Just as I did not know I could have a homebirth many years ago, I'm sure there are many people who do not know they do not need a business to take care of their dead.  I have a book called Caring for the Dead: Your Final Act of Love.  Isn't that a wonderful title?  "In early America, home funerals were the practice everywhere, and each community had a group of women who came in to help with the "laying out of the dead." "  The author, Lisa Carlson, goes on to write, "Just as they [baby-boomers] took back control of the birthing experience, many will choose to handle death more actively, more distinctively-with or without a funeral director."  I have witnessed the taking control of the birthing experience by some in my generation, but I really haven't seen much of that in regards to caring for one's loved ones.  I'd like to think that we automatically turn to the mortuaries and crematories instead of burying our own dead because this is what society has trained us to do.  I hope it's not because the dead body is repulsive to us and we don't want to think about actually having to handle it.

What is it that mortuaries do that they are such an integral part of death?  "The funeral industry, emerging between 1880 and 1920, successfully convinced the public (through the efforts of the newly formed National Funeral Directors Association) that professional services were necessary for proper care of the dead-with compatible laws and regulations quickly following.  Embalming was the centerpiece of that effort.  Families could place a body on ice to slow its deterioration, but only an experienced "professional" could embalm.  In fact, embalming remains the only specific skill required in the undertaking business."  So, it seems that we hire morticians to embalm and make our dead look like they're not dead.  "Most people don't know that embalming is almost never required."  And if that's the case, then why do it?  So as to delay the funeral until the weekend where more people will attend?  "Most people don't know that the normal funeral-type embalming "holds" a body for only a few days."  Once a person is dead, is there any reason to keep their body life-like?  I don't think so.  I remember seeing my dead father's face in the casket at his funeral and thinking that the make-up on him is rather gruesome and that his hair was parted the wrong way.  I would have preferred a closed casket.  But the mortuary went through all that trouble to make him look good.  What a waste that would've been!  Maybe that is the kind of thinking that takes place when people make arrangements for funerals.  And maybe it's to avoid all these funeral traditions that cremation has become so popular.  Caring for the Dead isn't a Christian book and it references cremation.  I think a Christian would want to go to the Bible for understanding how a dead body should be taken care of.  As far as I know, burning of a loved one's dead is not a Christian practice.  And even if Christians now practice it, I believe we should follow biblical precedence rather than cultural norms.

Not too long ago I read about a cemetery where I'd like to be buried in if we still didn't own our own land and family cemetery.  This is the kind of cemetery where costs would be kept to a minimum and where one would have more control of the burial.  I like what I read on their website: "Burial is not a waste of land, it protects and restores the land."  But I'm praying that God would give us our own family resting place one day.

I pray for my family's health regularly and desire that God would give us long lives, especially for our children.  But I also want to be prepared for our deaths.  Surely if my husband and I are predetermined in our decisions regarding burial decisions prior to any of our family member's death, how much less stressful the arrangements would be when the time does come.  

Death does not have the victory over the children of God.  We are confidant of this and we rejoice in knowing that the life after, our eternal destination, is where we want to be.  I pray that God would grant us peace and acceptance when that time comes.  And that we'll be able to truly love and care for each other, in life and in death.

P.S.  Another book that is insightful about burials and in particular, the funeral industry,  is The American Way of Death written by Jessica Mitford.  She also wrote the book I referenced to in my last post.  I'm not sure where my copy is, otherwise I would've quoted from that book as well.

Baby is 21 weeks

                                                                                 

I no longer think I am really big for being this pregnant. I know I am! But I am also more than halfway so I should be getting big. I'm still intrigued by the disparity in sizes of bellies in pregnant women.  Just as babies come in different sizes and shapes, it figures that pregnant bellies should too.    :)

 I wish I had studied the history of childbirth before having children.  I would have been better able to make a decision regarding my birthing choices.  So many take our status quo for granted, as I once did.  It never occurred to me that I didn't have to go to the hospital to have my first baby. 

For an interesting read on childbirth history, I recommend Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Birth.  

She wrote in her book, "In the year 1900, less than five per cent of all American births took place in hospitals; by 1939, 50 per cent of all women and 75 per cent of urban women chose hospitals for the purpose; by 1970, the figure had risen to close to 100 per cent."?  Trends catch on fast, don't they?  I wonder how many know that puerperal, or childbed, fever, was an epidemic that was only prevalent in maternity wards of the hospitals during the 18th and 19th centuries.  And it was the single most common cause of maternal death.  And the reason?  Doctors weren't taught yet that they needed to wash their hands prior to vaginal exams and delivering babies.  See, doctors are just like us.  They don't know everything.  Of course, now they know they need to wash their hands, but if medical schools continue teaching that babies measuring such and such must be delivered by C-section, they will go with that too.  Here's an interesting tidbit on C-sections: Today, the single most important risk of puerperal infection is Caesarean section.

After doctors learned to wash their hands, it didn't seem that women fared that much better in hospitals.  Women were treated like crazy criminals when they went to the hospitals to have their babies.  They were strapped on the bed and given injections of morphine and scopalomine, a hallucinogenic, until she couldn't remember what was happening to her.  Again, it would seem to be common sense, even to someone totally devoid of medical training, that causing a healthy woman to react negatively with drugs (hence the necessity of restraining her arms and legs with straps)  is unacceptable.  But that was long ago.  Now in our enlightened age, are there safer ways of administering drugs so that there are no risks involved for both mother and baby? Certainly one is led to believe this and never told otherwise.  18 years ago, I wasn't even aware that I was getting an epidural until told to turn over.  Not coping well with the contractions while laboring on the bed for hours with an external as well as an internal monitor on, we asked to see the doctor who had not shown him/herself yet.  Instead of the doctor coming, I was given an epidural.  Accordingly, "Uterine contractions can become weaker and less frequent. An oxytocin infusion is then necessary to improve labor and produce good strength contractions Mothers having epidurals have longer labors and have a higher incidence of the use of oxytocin than mothers having non-medicated deliveries."  That was 18 years ago and I'm sure hospitals don't just force epidurals on people nowadays and SURELY they tell women the risks of epidurals before administering them.  But just in case they don't, here's the package insert for the epidural medication manufactured by Abbot Laboratories:
Local anesthetics rapidly cross the placenta, and when used for epidural, caudal or pudendal anesthesia, can cause varying degrees of maternal, fetal and neonatal toxicity.... Adverse reactions in the parturient, fetus and neonate involve alternations of the central nervous system, peripheral vascular tone and cardiac function....
Neurologic effects following epidural or caudal anesthesia may include spinal block of varying magnitude (including high or total spinal block); hypotension secondary to spinal block; urinary retention; fecal and urinary incontinence; loss of perineal sensation and sexual function; persistent anesthesia, paresthesia, weakness, paralysis of the lower extremities and loss of sphincter control all of which may have slow, incomplete or no recovery; headache; backache; septic meningitis; meningismus; slowing of labor; increased incidence of forceps delivery; cranial nerve palsies due to traction on nerves from loss of cerebrospinal fluid. 

Here's a theological question to think about.  Does God desire for childbirth to so incapacitate the laboring mother that she should need laboring aides that may harm her?  Someone once said that God gets all the credit while man gets all the blame.  God gave grace.  Grace to have the knowledge of coping with the work of childbirth.  Grace to persevere in childbirth throughout history.  From my own experiences, I had one birth with an epidural and 6 without.  There is no comparison in the quality and satisfaction between the medicated and unmedicated births.  If you had a positive experience with an epidural birth, I would challenge you to see if there would be benefits in forgoing the drug and accepting the grace that comes from the One who loves us and surely wants good for us.  He, alone, can dole out the curses and give what it takes to handle them victoriously and joyously.  


P.S.  I really do hope that it is evident that my intention is not to malign doctors and hospitals.  Doctors come away from medical schools with certain knowledge and they act accordingly.  Doctors save lives.  I pray that they may save mine if there was a medical emergency.  Please note that I didn't write that doctors actually killed mothers when they gave them puerperal infections.  Their lack of knowledge and women's lack of wisdom in going to the hospitals caused those tragedies.  While the hope is that hospitals will offer us safe deliveries, one needs to understand that giving birth in a hospital has a high potential of resulting in surgery.   
 

Baby is 20 weeks!

Halfway! The weeks have been going by pretty fast still, although I know it always seems to slow down in the weeks before baby is born.

I'm having trouble falling asleep and am waking up numerous times during the night. This shouldn't happen until I get so big I'm too uncomfortable to sleep. I'm expecting to sleep better once my beloved comes home. Not too many more weeks now, although every week is one too many.

I've had a few comments on my pregnancy this past week. It's nice that I've gotten to the point where people don't have to wonder if I'm just really thick around the middle. :)

I was asked what advice to give a first time mom who will be delivering in a few weeks. The first thing that came to my mind was to understand the risks of an epidural and to remember that when one feels like one can't cope anymore, it probably means one is in transition and baby will soon be born.

I am very encouraged that homebirths seem to be on the rise. At least in my circle. I would think that in our internet age where information is so easily accessible that women would understand the risks of a hospital birth and that the rising C-section rate would deter women from planning hospital births. A woman's perception of childbirth will probably determine where she will birth. If she has the idea that childbirth is a medical event or a fearsome happening, she will more than likely think that the hospital will "save" her from anything bad happening or tell her how to have the baby.

The main reason we believe birthing a baby at home is safe is because childbirth is not an inherently dangerous medical event. We trust that God has designed the female body to be capable of birthing a baby. While some women may have medical conditions that require medical attention, most women do not need medical assistance in birthing a baby. They may think they need pain assistance, but that's because their fear of pain prohibits them from coping. Pain from childbirth is different from other sources of pain. This kind of pain comes and goes. It is a productive happening that is for good! What the pain suggests to me is that I'm not relaxing enough and I need to loosen my body and mind and not fight what's going on. We are all prone to pain avoidance. There is a drug for every discomfiture that one may experience. But there's no magic in the drugs. It doesn't make it all better. The symptoms may abate, but at what costs? The epidural that was given to me with my first birth when I was 8 centimeters stopped my labor. I remember crying at that point knowing that I'd much rather have the pain back and continuing on with my labor than for my body to quit doing what it was supposed to be doing. Of course, what often happens in the hospital is the cascading effect of more drugs. How lucky I was that they could give me Pitocin to put me back on track! I am being sarcastic in case you don't know that I dislike using the word "luck". I don't believe in luck. How does God's sovereignty and luck fit together? What is one saying about God when one says "Good luck!" Is that like saying, "May God be with you?" I don't think so. If you want to annoy me, tell me how lucky or fortunate I am to have 7 healthy pregnancies and births. And I'll tell you that God gets the glory and not luck. Sorry to have gone on that rabbit trail. It just irks me that Christians don't change their language habits to reflect that it is God who is in control.

Even if one understood all the risks of medical interventions at the hospital, one is still not at the liberty to birth in a natural and unhindered way. Birthing on a delivery table almost guarantees that a woman will tear. Her legs in the stirrups may assist the doctor in doing an unnecessary episiotomy and catch the baby more suitably, but that's purely for the doctor's benefit. If having my baby in an upright position was my only reason for a homebirth, it is reason enough. But of course, there are so many more reasons to not have one's baby in the hospital. Hospitals are where sick people go and there are germs there. Not like the germs in one's home. I would not want to deliberately expose my newborn to a place where disease and death is inevitable. I would not want to be in that environment either, come to think of it. I am not sick. And I don't want to get sick. Another reason childbirth should occur in one's home is because it's a private family matter. Why should male interns, male nurses or male doctors have anything to do with my body when I am not needing medical care? On the other hand, why should female nurses have anything to do with my body during childbirth? Everyone's fingers are different sizes, one person's 10 centimeters may be another's 7? To me, having a baby is as intimate as ... well, being intimate with my husband. Or to put it in the simplest terms, it's not unlike performing a natural function like going to the bathroom. Some may be comfortable having their extended family, church, and friends with them and to them, it's all good when it's in the privacy of their homes. They have control over their homes. It is a place of safety and peace. The hospital, no matter how nice, is a foreign place where one is a patient. Being a patient means that you give over control what happens to you. And to your baby. Being a patient means that this birth belongs to the hospital, not to you.

I am not against hospitals. One just shouldn't put oneself in a risky situation at the onset of a natural, family event. Should I need to transfer to the hospital, I will be grateful that there is medical help for me or for my baby. Because there is a possibility that I may need medical help doesn't alter the fact that childbirth is a normal and inherently safe life event. If I am going to allow fear to be the deciding factor on where to birth, I know the hospital will not alleviate that fear. Doctors are only human. But I am not going to allow fear to motivate me. Knowledge and wisdom have proven to me that home is where birth is safe and easy, compared to the hospital birth I experienced. I don't trust my body or the birthing process to make me feel safe. I trust in God in whom all good things flow.