A Thank You

This post inspired by a blog carnival I ran across on the subject of doulas, and, more importantly, my fantastic doula.

I swear I'm trying to keep birth related posts to a minimum, but as Dahlia passes the two month mark I find myself still wanting to shout to the masses how not scary, wonderful, and uncomplicated birth can be. I feel like I owe four people huge thank yous: my husband, my mother, my midwife, and my friend and doula, Talitha.

As of late, I've sung freely the praises of my midwife to anyone who will listen. She was and has continued to be a very positive influence on my life, and she made the birth of my youngest child the joyous event it deserved to be.  I believe I've also made no big secret of my extreme pride in the degree to which my husband stepped up and supported me. It might not hurt to tell him that a bit more often though. I have a long thank you letter I've been slowly writing, editing, and adding to that will eventually find its way to my mother. My doula, however, has gone essentially thankless to this point.

Let me remedy that. Thank you. Thank you! THANK YOU!

For full disclosure, for anyone reading this who does not know me, I am a doula and therefore carry a significant degree of bias regarding the usefulness of the profession. That said, I came to be a doula after having my eldest left me really wishing I'd had one. I won't go into the details of her birth, but I will say it made a doula a requirement for the births of any other children I should happen to have after that.

That whole being a doula myself came with some pros and cons. On the up side, I already knew a number of other local doulas and had a pretty good idea of who lived close enough to me for comfort (I have fast labor and deliveries), I felt comfortable around, and had a philosophy that meshed well with my own. In short, my interviewing process was very brief. On the downside, these other women are essentially professional peers. Did I want someone I occasionally work with or might in the future seeing me stripped down and groaning? What if this birth wasn't as minimally physically painful as my first (it wasn't)? Would I be self conscious about screaming or crying in front of them if I really needed to during labor? If I found myself asking to transfer for pain meds, would I be made to feel like I failed?

After a discussion with my doula-to-be, I felt infinitely better. I didn't bring up most of my concerns, but still came away with those fears quelled. I suspect she's psychic. After an official interview that included the hubby, we were set. I was comfortable with her, hubs was comfortable with her, and Talitha would be our doula.

Most of my pregnancy was uneventful. It was mostly eight months of feeling like we had all the time in the world to get everything done and one month of panicked unpacking of baby gear saved from when the eldest was an infant. I didn't have any great deal of questions or concerns during most of that period. The last month changed that.

I repeatedly told myself that I wasn't "due" until 42 weeks. I had delivered a bit early with my eldest, but was determined not to count on a repeat of that experience. This approach kept me feeling fine with continuing to be pregnant, even through the heat of a southern summer, until baby decided it was time. What I didn't consider in this plan was prodromal labor. I really dislike prodromal labor. The first couple of times I shrugged it off. After five or six rounds I was frustrated. After several weeks of contractions that would get down to 4-5 minutes apart and feel very intense, then just stop, I was ready to tear my hair out.

After one particularly annoying day and night of contractions that had stayed twelve minutes apart for most of that time, I started to meltdown. I felt like I was on a timer. I needed to go into labor when both my husband and my babysitting were available. At that moment my daughter was a few hours away from coming home from spending the night with her grandparents and my husband had just left for work. It was like I had missed my window and would have to wait another week. It wasn't rational, but it was the place my brain was at that time.

I sat in my glider bawling my eyes out and texting my doula. She calmed me down and offered to come be with me while hubby was out. I told her I would be fine and I was pretty sure it wasn't happening today. At that point I don't think I believed it was EVER going happen. I was wrong.

I'll spare everyone the whole birth story, but shortly after that conversation my contractions went from twelve minutes apart to three. I still didn't believe I was really in labor, but my husband thankfully realized that something was very different in my behavior (over text messages, if that says anything about how well he knows me); he called me back after one batch of texting and told me he was coming home and I needed to call my midwife and doula.

Once again, I'll try to spare everyone a huge tangent into birth story, but hubby arrived first and was trying to get everything ready for the birth while I labored. What I really wanted at that moment was my loving partner and father of my child to sit in front of me so I could lean on him, be held by him, just have some kind of physical contact, but I knew I would be really stressed out about everything that wasn't done if he didn't do it (getting the birth kit out, setting up and filling the pool, and cutting up some melon for me to snack on in case it was a long labor).

I often run into the perception that a doula will intrude on a birth or take over the father's support role in the birth, but mine gave me back my husband. Upon her arrival she took over all the tedium so he could give me that physical contact I needed. She gave him a quick refresher course in counter pressure so he could apply it.   In all honesty, I don't know what all she said or suggested to him beyond that; I was very inwardly focused at that point, but I know she was helping him and the two of them together made for the most intuitive support I could have imagined. There was only one point in the entire labor and delivery where I didn't feel like they were practically reading my mind. It was amazing to get the support I needed, when I needed it, and all without any hint of complaint or irritation when what I needed changed every five minutes.

Aside from general support, I really owe some major thanks to my doula for a few specific moments. The biggest one involves the birth pool. I wasn't totally sold on a water birth, but laboring in water was at the top of my list as a backup plan if I found myself with a long, painful labor. Despite everyone else's convictions, I wasn't convinced I was really having a baby, or that it would be any time soon, until Dahlia was crowning. That whole prodromal labor bit really did a number on my mental state in that area. I was urged on a few occasions to give up the attempt to fill the birth pool under the idea that there was no way it would be filled even a minimum amount before baby was born (which turned out to be true).

Only Talitha seemed to realize how desperately I needed to know that I had that backup plan in place if I found myself with contractions of the intensity I was experiencing for hours more. I was terrified that if we gave up the effort, we would only find ourselves desperately trying to resume it several hours later. She continued efforts to get the tub ready, surely knowing as well as everyone else in the room (myself excluded) that it wouldn't be done in time. I know that seems like a terribly small thing, but keep in mind how little room for logic there is in a laboring woman's mind, compared to the incredible degree that fear and stress, rational or not, affect labor.

After the delivery, she, along with other parts of my birth team and my mother, made most of the evidence that I had just had a baby in my living room disappear before most of the family appeared. All this freeing my husband to help me clean myself up and get settled into bed to rest and snuggle my new baby. I think my house was cleaner when everyone left than it was when I went into labor. To top it all off, my wonderful doula even cooked us dinner before she headed out.

I can't imagine any better start to motherhood than relaxing with my partner and our newborn after a peaceful birth with nothing feeling like it needs to be done and a wonderful meal on the table. Can you?

Good Morning River

I drug myself out of bed considerably earlier than normal this morning in order to catch the morning light for a little photography.

Dahlia came along and seemed to be a very happy baby as we did a little wading in the Chatahoochee River for a watery maternity session. The water was a little chilly on arrival, but thankfully not too cold.

My model was fantastic. The current was a bit strong today for whatever reason and didn't allow some of the images I was envisioning, but my model was gorgeous and glowing and looked very much like a mother mermaid sitting on the river rocks with her skirt swirling around in the water and hair blowing in the breeze.

It was a fun start to what turned into a crazy day. Looking forward to doing it again soon!

Fully Functional and Anatomically Correct

Kudos to you if you get the title reference.

Blame it on the newborn I'm nursing while I type, how recently I gave birth to her, the fact that I do a lot of work with pregnant women, my habit of reading pregnancy blogs, or simple the reality that, for one reason or another, I always seem to have babies, pregnancy, and birth on the brain, be they mine or the concept in general, but today's entry will be birth related. Since that's a little off the normal stream of thought here, I'm giving anyone reading this some advance warning. If discussion of babies arriving into the outside world or womens' reproductive rights aren't up your alley, come back tomorrow. I'm planning to make deodorant and pick some more figs tonight, so I'm sure I'll have a post regarding one of those things up then.

I had a bit of an epiphany this morning regarding inductions. I won't go into too much detail regarding the process of inductions, but here is some background information if you don't know much about them. Induction of labor is a very common procedure in the US. It also has a pretty high rate of failure, and, even when successful, can be very painful. There are many reasons they are performed, some based in evidence, some with research finding they don't improve outcomes, or even worsen them. The process can vary, but the most common method in US hospitals involves a drug to soften the cervix, another administered through an IV with a gradually increasing dosage to stimulate contractions, then artificial rupture of membranes to drop the baby into the pelvis. This process can take days. If you want to know more about indications for induction, the risks, or the physical process, do a little research. There's a ton of info out there.

My epiphany was regarding failed inductions and the mindset that goes with them. I've had one. They are not fun. Worse is the feeling after. Most often they are followed by a surgical delivery for what is termed "failure to progress". I've long disliked this term. No one likes to be told they've failed, and there is a whole slew of thoughts that follow that, like "Am I broken?" and "Is there something wrong with me?". Not exactly confidence boosters. This is no normal failure though. This is being told that someone had to rescue your baby from your body because it wasn't coming out otherwise. While this can leave some women feeling grateful for that rescuer, it can also leave their confidence in their body's ability to function on its own pretty shaken.

I'd like to pretend like I'm immune to this, like I never thought of it as failure and I unleashed my inner mama bear after my failed induction and told people where they could shove it. I didn't. In fact, I simply directed my loss of confidence in another direction. I got deeply frustrated with the idea of failed inductions being termed as failure to progress because, if the the mother wasn't a good candidate for induction, I had it in my mind that the induction made her fail. While that was going in the right direction, it was still going with the idea that the mother had failed.

An off hand comment from a midwife on another blog made me reassess this when she reminded a woman who mentioned her failure to progress diagnosis that, if her baby wasn't ready, her body had done exactly what it was designed to do by trying to keep her baby in the womb to gestate a little longer. This simple statement has completely overturned how I think of failed inductions. The induction may not have worked, but that doesn't mean the mother's body has failed. Our bodies aren't designed to have an eject button for whenever someone else decides it's time. They are designed to keep our children safe so they can develop until they are ready for birth. When an induction fails with a mother and baby that aren't ready for birth, the mother's body isn't failing, but functioning as it has evolved to protect baby from a premature arrival.

May I always remember this when discussing inductions from now on.

Dahlia Rose

My tiny baby is three weeks old today. Oh, how time flies! It doesn't seem possible that three weeks have already gone by, but the calendar disagrees with my internal clock.

She was 9 lbs. and 22 inches long, born on the couch in our living room after a short labor I spent most of doubting I was actually in active labor. We named her Dahlia Rose, though Mellie calls her "Sisser Baby" more often than she uses her name. She has a head full of light brown baby hair and the most beautiful blue eyes. What can I say? I'm in love.

Birthday Weekend

It feels a bit silly to write a weekend recap on a Tuesday night, but I think this past weekend warrants it. Sometimes it seems that babies have some secret communication, preference for a weather pattern, or maybe just like a particular lunar phase. Whatever the cause, this weekend brought the "I think I'm in labor" call from every doula client I had with a September due date. Calvin's birthday party was also this weekend, as was a Georgia Birth Network event I had previously committed to attending. It was a wonderful, but exhausting few days. Monday was spent relaxing with a friend for a much needed day off.

So now that I've mostly caught back up on sleep and spent some time with my little girl, I have lots of pictures to share!

My table at the Birth Ball was a bit sad looking next to others with larger displays. I guess I need to add some height to my presentation.

Mellie wore her new dress out to play (and promptly found a mud puddle).

I did some henna for a friend while Mellie played with her little ones during our day off. The design was based on a Tree of Life, with some alterations that were symbolic for the recipient (such as a bird for each of her children).

My mother was kind enough to provide us with some great food during the crazy weekend. Poached asparagus and black bean salad make a fantastic cold lunch.

Tomorrow it's back to work around home. With any luck, tomorrow we can get some peppers bundled and hung up to dry and some more clearing done on the lot for the house!