my bump, my bump, my bump

Filed under: baby — karen at 1:37 am on Wednesday, January 24, 2007

…is getting rather large. 36 inches to be exact. I freak out a bit every time I see myself in the mirror.

It may be a while before I have a chance to blog since things are picking up a bit. I have a buyer for mom’s condo so I will have to cancel the taxes, utilities, insurance and condo fees along with arranging everything for the sale with the laywer. It will be nice to have it finished but it’s quite a bit of work to arrange.

We’re taking prenatal classes wednesday nights (for the next 5 weeks) and we had the first class last week. I’m officially scared now. Maybe we can just skip the birth part and go right to the having the baby around part. The problem is that I don’t want pain medication unless it’s really necessary but it looks really painful. I keep hearing stories about people who said it was really difficult until they took the medication and then everything went fine. Also it’s interesting that the baby has to turn a whole bunch of times to fit through the pelvis, but I think Kicky will be a pro with turning, since she is always moving around! I hope that she will just wiggle her way out without too much work on my part … ok maybe that’s wishful thinking.

I am working through a yoga book I picked up and it’s quite helpful. Also the Yoga lessons on thursday continue to be helpful. I find just the breathing makes me so relaxed I fall asleep really easily so I am trying to do it just before bed and that helps a lot with being able to sleep better. But my back is really hurting a lot at work - no matter whether I stand or sit or how I put my feet. Most annoying.

I did go for a massage last Saturday and it was great. I will definately do it again!

Tyler sent us a cute/creepy Youtube video this week … check it out. Will that be me in a few months? Singing the “poo” song with Kicky? Where is my life going???

Speaking of poo, I spoke with a lady about cloth diaper service and it sound pretty good. I just have to check with my landlord and see if she is ok with us leaving the pail in the hall for pick up once a week.

Dan started school this week and so far it looks like it will be a good semester. His French class looks excellent - the material is at an appropriate level and the teacher seems very competent and enthusiastic. He also has a digital recording class which I hope he will kick ass in, and even the dreaded ear training seems ok so far (mind you it’s only been one day). It looks like we will manage alright despite everything.

We still have to figure out how to get her home from the hospital. I was really hoping we (Dan) could take her either in the sling or in the bassinet on the metro, but kind of get the feeling we should really get a car seat. Actually I think the hospital might require a car seat before letting us out! But it seems like such a waste to buy an infant car seat for one use, since she will probably grow out of it before she’s in a car again. Needs to be resolved.

3 Comments »

2557

Comment by Anik

January 25, 2007 @ 2:43 am

You are a petite elegant lady, and today’s babies are irresponsibly large and odd-shaped, so I think you should not hesitate to get as much state-approved pain medication as you can at the first sign of discomfort! And we promise not to breathe a word to Kicky, so that you can still guilt-trip her in later years (”I was in labour with you for thirty-six hours in unimaginable pain, and this is how your repay me?” etc etc.)

I’ve heard that the Birth Centre at the BC Women’s Hospital has a waterbirth program — I seem to remember a classmate saying she found it helped her to relax (relatively, of course). Do you have access to something like this? After all, nothing eases stress like a hot bath :-)

(In case you’re wondering, it came up during a discussion of the stress-induced neonatal line on baby teeth, and whether the line might be less intense on such “waterbabies”. Yay science!)

2619

Comment by karen

January 28, 2007 @ 9:37 pm

After last week’s prenatal class I am even more against pain medication than before, mainly becuase the use of epidural generally requires the mother to be restricted to lying on her back in bed, which is the worst place to be to allow labour to progress and also for increasing risk of perineal injury (and possibly requiring an episiotomy). Also in most cases the pain medications slow or stop labour, requiring either a medical intervention (foreceps or vacuum extraction which also require an episiotomy) or the use of an induction agent (pitocin). Nevertheless the lady teaching the class kept the opinion that it was “safest for the mother and the baby” which I think is nonsense. She then said that 97% of north american births involve the use of pain medication (!!!!) which is astonishingly, ridulously high. I get the feeling like most hospitals wouldn’t allow women on pain medication (especially those that numb the lower body) to participate in any kind of alternative birth including water birth. Of course this is all easy for me to say now having never experineced it, but it seems better to tough it out :(

With all that said, we do have access to private showers and a common jacuzzi but of course only during early labour but not at the point of birth. That seems ok with me although I might skip the jacuzzi if I don’t think it’s too clean (yuck).

2803

Comment by Anik

February 4, 2007 @ 7:12 pm

Aw, too bad. The alternative birth & home birth/midwife thing seems pretty big out here, I suspect Vancouver’s hippy tradition has something to do with that.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>