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Category Archives: Pregnancy
Why Our Women are Afraid of Birth
Maybe if the television channels like Discovery health followed a dozen home births or even aired The Business of Being Born they could get a popular, and controversial other side to what they are constantly airing. Maybe it will boost their ratings even more, maybe not? But what it will do is give the other side of the whole issue. Let’s get Marsden Wagner to do a half hour special on Birth in The United States and see how many women run off to the midwives. Instead they air these disgustingly inaccurate “Freebirthing” shows. They find the one idiot who is going to make women who choose unassisted birth look like a bunch of uneducated yokels. Which is exactly what they did with their special on Unassisted birth. Continue reading
Why Did I Move During Labor?
I never knew the importance of moving around during labor until I was actually in labor with my second child. With my first I was strapped to a bed, a fetal monitor, and pitocin, so I never really had the … Continue reading
Study Shows That Pregnant Woman Do Not Lose Cognitive Ability
Here is the link to an article entitled “Pregnancy does not cloud the brain, says Australian study”. Many people, including pregnant women themselves, feel that pregnancy clouds their judgment. Perhaps this study will put that myth to rest.
Some notable quotes from the article:
A study by the Australian National University’s centre for mental health research found that there is no evidence to suggest that impending motherhood affects a woman’s cognitive ability.
“It really leaves the question open as to why (pregnant) women think they have poor memories when the best evidence we have is that they don’t.
The professor said research on rodents had found that mother rats had an improved capacity to do more than one task, navigated mazes more efficiently and suffered less anxiety and fear.
“There’s enormous changes in the rat brain during pregnancy so you might actually expect that women perform better during pregnancy than when they’re not pregnant,” Christensen said.
End of Pregnancy Zen
I’m sitting here, nearly 41 weeks pregnant with my 8th baby. I’m getting asked a lot about how I feel, what my practitioners are thinking about when the baby will decide to be born, what I’m doing to encourage things along, etc. I know that this type of discussion typically further frustrates most women who are overdue, but I try to take it in stride.
First of all, I realize that I have a pattern. I don’t have babies before my due date, not even my twins. My longest pregnancy was born at 42 weeks exactly. If you throw out the twins and the two pregnancies where I feel like we had interventions that may have brought the babies early, I have a 9 day, 12 day and 14 day pregnancy. (Hey there has to be some statistical benefit to having all these kids when it comes to defining my personal due date.) So feel like this weekend is the most likely the time my baby will decide to be born.
But my goal is to be calm. Zen. Not in a rush. Why no rush, I’m asked? I mean seriously, right now people care about me and how I feel, after the baby, not so much so. Once the baby is here, I’ll still be up at night, but the difference is that I won’t be able to go back to sleep when I return from the bathroom. While I know that the end of pregnancy is rough, but early postpartum is rougher.
So I’ll sit here, patiently waiting. Enjoying my last few days of pregnancy. I’ll nap and snack. I’ll take baths in middle of the day. And I’ll continue to dream about the day my baby decides it’s birth day…
If you want to hear the good news, you can sign up for the Twitter Feed announcing Baby Ocho’s birth.
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Posted in Baby, Labor and Birth, Pregnancy
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Special Time
I was chatting with a friend today about how special the time right before birth is. Everyone around you seems to be tuned in to your every move as they anxiously await the arrival of your little one. One of the things that we were talking about is how fun it can be to think “is this it?” to every little twinge or possible early labor sign. I can’t help but think it would be sad to miss out on that with a scheduled induction or cesarean. I’ve been trying to think up inventive ways to tell my husband when I’m in labor, since I didn’t do anything really cool to tell him that the test was positive (in fact, the words “I told you so!” came out of my mouth.)
Posted in Dad, Pregnancy
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Lamaze- Building Confidence Weekly
Three weeks ago I signed up for Lamaze’s new Building Confidence Week by Week e-mails. So far, I have found them to be fantastic! Each e-mail has a little something written on preparation for labor and birth, a specific stage of birth, etc. The best part is the tone that they are written in. A lot of what is available on the internet is written to scare pregnant women. Lamaze’s e-mails are written the way you would expect – that pregnancy and birth are normal, natural parts of life. The other thing I have found is that when reading the e-mails I feel so much more positive. I get EXCITED about my baby’s arrival instead of dreading it as some literature has made me feel. So, overall, I give them four stars. What about you? Have you enjoyed them? If you haven’t signed up – you can do so here Lamaze Building Confidence Week by Week Continue reading
Building Confidence in Pregnancy
Confidence is a real issue in pregnancy. We do so much to destroy the confidence of other women, mostly unknowingly. This doesn’t negate the damage done. However there are some glimmers of hope!
Lamaze International has just launched it’s new Building Confidence Week by Week free email newsletters. They actually span from week 6 to week 42 of pregnancy, just like my pregnancy calendar does, so you know I’m partial to it! This is one piece of pregnancy mail I bet you’ll look forward to every week and it’s something that doulas, childbirth educators (of all walks), midwives and doctors can all feel confident about sending their client to read. Continue reading
Posted in Media, Pregnancy
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