Winter Pictures

 

Seizure?

My poor doggie is acting weird...her teeth have been chattering when she closes her mouth and she keeps licking the air....Husby called the vet today and they said that she might be having seizures...my poor Louna. I am worried about her, I hope that she will be getting better soon.

Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife

I finished reading Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife by Peggy Vincent and I really liked it.

Since I am not too good at summarizing books, here is how Amazon describes it:

In a joyous, often hilarious ode to the Birkenstock-scuffling, tackle box-toting mobile midwives who flourished in the 1980s, Peggy Vincent chronicles her abundant life as a professional Baby Catcher.

The wild ride begins during her nurse training years in the 1960s, when laboring women were expected to lie down, shut up, and submit to whatever drugs and procedures the doctor ordered. A rebellious patient who chants and dances through her contractions--and the hell that ensues when seasoned hospital staffers intrude--lights a permanent fire under Vincent. .

Her resolve to serve each laboring woman with compassion and respect carries her from obstetrics nurse to head of an alternative birth center within Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley, California, and eventually into her own private practice as a licensed midwife.

Like the most courageous home births, this collection of delivery experiences refuses anesthesia: plenty of bellowing, sweating, bleeding, and pushing accompany nearly all of the more than 40 tales. Tough confrontations with stubborn physicians, panicky labor partners, and one particularly nasty calico cat are dabbed with as many keen insights as Vincent's quieter, more heart-rending newborn encounters.

Baby Catcher is an inspirational literary gift suitable for expectant mothers, fellow baby catchers, and anyone who loves reading about nature's greatest magical feat.

It's a great book that I certainly recommend.

Poem

Learn to respect this sacred moment of birth,
as fragile, as fleeting, as elusive as dawn.
The child is there, hesitant, tentative,
unsure which way he's about to go.
He stands between two worlds.

For heaven's sake don't touch him,
don't push him,
unless you want him to fall.
Let him wait until he feels the time is right.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Can you say when he left one kingdom for the other?
It is so subtle, the eye can hardly catch it.
As subtle as stepping in,
or out, of time,
to be born,
or to die.
. . . .
Let him be.
Just wait.
This child is awakening
for the very first time.

This is his first dawn.
Allow him its grandeur, its majesty.
Don't even stir until he leaves behind
the night and its kingdom of dreams.

Frederick Leboyer in Birth without Violence

Upsetting Article

I read an upsetting article courtesy of Navelgazing Midwife called C-sections are increasingly used by choice, not necessity.

Just to give you an idea I selected some parts of it that summarize it pretty well:

"Meanwhile, some research has suggested that vaginal delivery creates its own risks and that C-sections help women avoid incontinence and other health problems down the road. "

"Even newer studies are beginning to compare the risks of vaginal delivery not with emergency C-sections, as most previous research has done, but with planned surgical deliveries. C-sections are safer, some researchers are finding, without the last-minute rush to surgery after an exhausting trial of labor."

"In the United States, the overall infant mortality rate is 6.9 per 1,000 babies; the maternal mortality rate is 11.8 per 100,000 live births, and estimates are that a C-section more than doubles the mother's risk of death."

"But in the overwhelming majority of childbirths in the United States, mother and baby do just fine, regardless of the method of delivery. "

"The increase in elective C-sections comes amid a rise in C-sections overall. In 2004, close to 30 percent of all births were caesarean, up from about 20 percent in 1996. "

Just for your information, there are about 20 countries that have a lower rate of maternal death than the US, so when I read that "the overwhelming majority of childbirths in the US, mother and baby do just fine" it make me cringe. As long as the "majority" does "just fine" everything is ok then? I would assume that the US being such a technologically advanced country the standards would be set a little higher...

I understand that I am not quoting a medical journal here, but that's the problem. The problem is that any young woman can read this article and think that it's ok then to just ask a C-section to deliver her baby instead of trying to deliver her child vaginally. I honestly think that giving birth is a rite of passage, you become a mother, and it comes with efforts and sacrifices. If you are not willing to even try to go through the pain of labor, are you really ready to take onto the responsibility of having a child?

Dream

I had a weird dream last night!

I was about to give birth, but it seems like I just noticed that I was pregnant. I remember feeling like I didn't want to annoy anybody, but I was pissed because I knew that I was going to be taken to the hospital and have my baby there, even though what I really wanted was to have my baby at home. I was not really in pain and I noticed that my belly was pretty small...then I thought that I better take a picture of my belly, because once my baby was out it would be too late! I don't remember actually giving birth, I think that I just woke up...it was really weird.

Burned out

It seems like the only reason I write is to complain, but again it's my website so I can do whatever I like!!!

I am really excited to finally see the end of the tunnel, and I can hardly imagine that if everything goes smoothly I should be graduating in August. It seems like I have been taking classes for 4 years without really thinking about the end...my graduation. Maybe that is what made it more bearable, but I have to admit that I am really excited. But it doesn't come without a price.

I sometimes come home after a day of working and going to school looking as if "my dog had just been ran over!" I have a hard time managing my time, that's what it comes down to. Last semester I had classes on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights and this semester I go on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights...what's the difference you ask me? The difference is that last semester I could come home on Monday afternoon and catch up on homework that I hadn't quite finished during the week end...this semester there is none of that. By Sunday night I have to be all done...which is not how it works. So instead I just walk around freaking out most of the time!

The other thing is that I am not that excited about the degree that I am going to graduate with. I am not an MIS person! I can't picture myself doing whatever it is that people with MIS degree do for the rest of my life. I can't even picture myself doing is for a little while! I seem to be able to get good grades and get into it, but not picture myself practicing it. Like a thing that you learn about and then forget about it as soon as you get out of class...except that it is my college degree that we are talking about. I know that people end up not necessarily working in the field that they studied in school but still...

I read all these doula and midwife blogs and I can't help but wish that I had time to do that. I wish that I could read all the material and become a certified doula. I wish that I could go to the farm to one of their workshops. I wish that I had time to read all the books that I have bought and just put up on the bookshelf.

I guess I shouldn't complain, since I have a Husby who loves me, I am healthy and so are all of my close relatives and I am almost graduated...time will come when I'll be able to do what I really want to do.