Head down, thumbs up!

Our birth assistant, Liz, visited tonight. A birth assistant helps the midwife but she will also help me and Matthew with my labor and birth. She felt my belly and we were thrilled to hear that the baby is head down! (The baby still has lots of room to move all around, but it was still great to hear.) She used a fetascope to listen to the baby's heartbeat and Matthew and I got to hear it, too. No matter how many times we hear it, it's always a great sound to hear. Then, she did this really cool thing called rebozo using a big scarf to rock my belly back and forth. It's supposed to loosen everything up and encourage the baby to move into the right position for birth. It felt really good and relaxing. She showed Matthew how to do it so now we have another trick to practice. Of course, as this was all going on, I said, "Matthew, get your camera!" I'm so glad we have photos to share. Liz snapped a few shots of Matthew, too. (Please excuse any unflattering shots of the giant pregnant woman. Although, Liz did tell me that my stomach is really tight ... a nice thing for a six-months pregnant woman to hear!) ~ Nicole

Growing

I used to think I became a real grown up on the day my mother died. Seven years ago yesterday. The death of a loved one is one of those experiences that causes your whole world to shift in an instant. Nothing is as it was before. But then, after crying until you can’t breathe and you’ve ruined every pillow you own, crying until you just can’t stand crying anymore, you stop. You realize you have to adjust to this new situation. You decide to adjust even though you don’t really know how. You start to try to figure it out. You are doing this alone because no one can do it for you but at the same time everyone is helping and if they’re not you release them. And the loved one who has died is helping you. Your memories of them and their whispers in your ear when you need a little boost, saying, “C’mon Nic, think positive!” You can hear it and you listen. Sometimes you find yourself listening very carefully. Sometimes you realize you could listen a little better. And, sometimes that person’s absence gives you a chance to evaluate their words differently than when they were alive and you realize that maybe you have other ideas and that’s OK, too. This makes you feel a little sad but it’s also good because it helps you feel just a little more grown up. A little more confident because the confidence is yours not someone else’s. And, that’s when you start to figure out that those little whispers from your loved one are actually coming from inside you because they left them there for you. Little gifts. All yours. And you decide that death is kind of beautiful in a way.

The other night, in our birthing class, we watched a movie called “Giving Birth.” We watched to learn what a normal birth looks like and to hear stories about normal, natural birth from obstetricians, midwives, doulas and mothers. There were beautiful photos of a water birth that showed the father reaching for the baby as it was born, the new family in a big, round tub, outdoors, their skin glowing in the sunshine. There were images of brand new babies, all shiny and wet, in their mothers arms. Not the babies you see in movies or on TV, but real babies each with different little faces and shiny eyes and even hair.

In one scene, we saw a woman in labor at her home. She slow danced with her husband in their kitchen between contractions. Dancing swivels and opens your hips and helps the baby get in the right position. She breathed through contractions and seemed to go inside herself. She leaned on her husband’s shoulders as he held her up. I saw her listening carefully to herself, trying to adjust to this new situation, having made the decision to get through it because what other choice do you have? Then, her midwife had her sit on a birthing stool so she was in a good squatting position but most of her weight was supported. The mother started working very hard at pushing her baby out. When the baby’s head crowned, she reached down to feel it. “Baby,” she said, almost a whisper. Moments later, she got her first look at her baby as she lifted him up to her chest. At that moment, her face changed. All of the exertion melted away and was replaced not by joy but with a look of sheer astonishment. And then she said, “I did it. I can’t believe I did it.”

After the movie, I talked with some of the other women in my class about what we saw. We laughed at how everyone cries when they see a baby being born but that as pregnant women we were even more susceptible to tears. We talked about the value of seeing a real birth instead of a made-for-TV version and that watching it was powerful because it allowed each of us to really imagine ourselves in that situation. And, despite the pain and hard work, we decided it was kind of beautiful.

We are pregnant and there’s no turning back. We will go through labor. Maybe we will even slow dance with our husbands. We will work hard. We will have to decide that we can do this because we have to. There will be others there to help us but ultimately we are doing this alone. We will listen to ourselves carefully. We will listen to the helpful whispers of mothers before us, of our own mother, perhaps, using what strengthens our confidence and leaving the rest behind. And then we will give birth to a real baby. And at that moment, our whole world will shift. Nothing will be as it was. We will be astonished because we did it. Because we gave birth to a baby. But, also, because we gave birth to ourselves, and we are mothers. And, maybe that's what it really feels like to finally grow up. ~ Nicole

Ask me about home birth, if you dare.

I'm becoming a zealot.
An all-natural-home-birth-breast-feeding-champion hippy dad to be. It turns out that the concept of home birth kinda freaks people out. But the more I learn about it, the more I love the idea - and I'm not afraid to tell you. Just ask my hairdresser.

Ever since Nicole convinced me home birth was the way to go, my feelings on the topic have become stronger and stronger. I admit it sounded a little nutty to me at first, but I didn't know anything about birth then. Like most people, what I saw on TV and in the movies led me to believe that giving birth required being in a hospital where doctors and nurses would buzz around looking at monitors - with lots beeping gizmos and flashing lights - and that there would be some life threatening complication that would require incubators and blood transfusions and we’d end up telling our story on some TLC show. Not that I ever watch that shit.

Well since then, our friends Abbie and Anthony just had their second home birth, Nicole read about 8,000 books on the subject, and we started taking Bradley Method birthing classes. So now I know that natural birth totally rocks. The problem is that everybody wants to know "what hospital are you using?" I learned the hard way that my answer to this question can lead to a sometimes long and frequently uncomfortable discussion - which basically starts with the other person asking me if I'm fucking crazy. It's like trying to sell tofu to taco bell eaters - only worse because the taco bell eaters are convinced that your wife is going to die a horrible death and that we're going to kill a baby in the process. One person I told about it ended the conversation early with a comment like "whatever man, it's your baby's funeral." (Ok, not really but that's what I inferred.) Once friend said natural child birth was "just stupid." And this was someone that I like and respect. It was really disappointing to hear that, but I couldn't help wanting to say You're the one that's stupid!!!" Which sounds pretty juvenile, but it's true. Not that hospitals and epidurals and episiotomies don't all have their place, but why do all that shit if you don't need to? Why assume that every test, probe, monitor, and injection is ok because a doctor said so? After all, it wasn't that long ago that doctors were getting paid by the tobacco companies to endorse certain brands of cigarettes. Is this starting to sound like a lecture? That's probably how my hairdresser felt the other day. He and his wife have been trying to get pregnant for three years. They're probably the perfect candidates for a hospital birth when the time comes, but that didn't stop me from going on and on about the cascade of interventions and the wonders of breast milk. By the end, he was like "ok man, that's cool, I'll check it out, I promise. Now, can I get back to work please?"

So, I guess I have to be careful who I tell what, not to go overboard when I talk about it, and not to get too upset when some people think we're nuts. The other day a friend of mine from work asked: "Did I hear right - that your planning to give birth at home?" He had that "you can't be serious" look on his face that's become familiar to me. Hoping to keep it simple, I just said "yep - that's right." He sort of shook his head and asked why. I had already given one lecture that day and it was getting late, so I just said "because we're hippies man, we're just total freakin hippies."