wonder(ing)land

During our last meeting, our midwife said something striking: “The decisions you make about your child can haunt you for the rest of your life. It’s best if you know all the sides of the issue before making them.” She also said “trust your intuition.” We were talking about SIDS and about vaccinations (another sticky subject was also on my mind but I didn’t bring it up).

There is anecdotal, but not clinical, evidence that MMR (mums, measels and rubella) vaccine causes autism. Doctors say MMR is perfectly safe, while some moms report their children getting sick after getting it and then being diagnosed within autism spectrum or ADHD. In addition, there is a school of thought saying that antibodies introduced into the body through administration of a given vaccine don’t exactly reproduce the full cellular immunity that a body develops when it fights off the disease by itself. And there is a bunch of other stuff I don’t know anything about (and we know that little knowledge is dangerous).

Through haze, I remember being sick with some of those disease as a kid. I was out of school for a while and had red, pussy dots all over me. Parents made soups and cuddled me. I lied in a darkened living room and read a lot. I do not remember any pain (though, I’m sure there was some), just the feelings of love, care and freedom from school. It is a pleasant memory.

Am I being ridiculously idyllic about something dangerous? What’s at stake isn’t just our personal health, there are public as well as legal repercussions to consider.

The medical practice we are considering for the kid is “pro-vaccines” but they have a less aggressive immunization schedule than most other practices. This is supposed to make us feel better. We attended an information session and it turns out the kid would need to be vaccinated for 12 different diseases for a total of 30 pokes by the time he’s 11. More than half of these pokes will happen in his first year of life (17). Each of the diseases/vaccines has its own special quirks, so, I guess, we have to read up on them individually. There are few books on the subject on reserve at the library and we are going to an “anti-vaccines” information session next week.

I am of a heavy, heavy heart about this whole thing. Chris promised to read some books, though he did sigh and wished I was into architecture or Mayan ruins.

It’s a lovely day in Brooklyn. The rumbling, all-nightly rain stopped for just long enough for my morning walk around the park which was perfect in every sense. It was still dark at 7am and the wetness of pavement combined with freshly shed leaves from neighborhood trees made for some heart-stopping prettiness.

When I got back, Chris and I had to scramble (again) to make our place a little more presentable. The occasion? Why, it was the midwife visit day, of course!

Every time I see her, I feel like I can fly. She makes me feel so confident and secure, it’s like she’s sprinkling faerie dust on me.

Things are well: belly is perfect 34.5 cm (corresponding to my 35 weeks), blood pressure 104/65 (I seem to have an even pattern here), baby’s little heart regular (she lets me and Chris listen on her stethoscope),  his head is down, his back turned toward my left side (optimal: chances for posterior labor are smaller), weight gain at 20lb (can go 5-10 more by the end).

We have 2 more weeks before I can stop worrying about preterm labor (and replace that with post-term worry :-), but even at 36 weeks (as early as next week!), she’s confident to assist me at giving birth at home.

Magical!

In my pre-pregnant past, I had often and casually called other pregnant women big. I truthfully regarded being big a natural pregnant state and, frankly, a compliment. Rare is a woman who feels comfortable in her curves and pregnancy gives us the license to be just that: comfortably big.

Imagine my surprise when, during my 5th month, a causal remark from a relative (”Are you sure it’s not twins? You look big for 5 months”) hurt my feelings. Me? Hurt over a BIG remark? Impossible! But there it was. I scanned my memory trying to recall recently pregnant friends at 5 months, and yes, I was sure I was bigger. It didn’t help knowing that everything was going by the textbook: I was gaining an optimal amount of weight weekly (and even less than that on more than one occasion). This was my body, my normally flabby belly filling up with baby and its accoutrements. Oh, the predicament! I suddenly felt foolish for all that casualness with others.

I put off licking of my bruised ego’s wounds, hoping for redemption elsewhere. And it came: the hugeness continued unrestrained and I felt better with every bit that came. Ironically, the way out of this emotional inconvenience, was the course I was already on: getting bigger. Consequentially, random Big Remarks started rolling right off my back. There wasn’t even a twinge of hurt after a (male) co-worker yelled across the room that I was “ready to pop” and how he’d give this kid no more than two weeks, it was so “huge.” The time of devastation had long passed and the biggness became what I only intellectually believed to be the case: an indication of a new life inside itself; a miracle of life, if you will; an awesome thing a body is capable of doing.

Besides, I kind of I think I look cute…

Chris hasn’t stopped being funny. It’s just been coming on in small quantities that I’ve been collecting over time:

-”Lupe has been taking too many days off. I don’t want to dock her pay, but let’s have her come in already!”
On our messy house and our imaginary housekeeper, Lupe.

- “Good morning belly, good morning uterus, good morning amniotic sac, good morning round ligaments, good morning cervix!”
A semi-regular greeting he likes to do, possibly after he told the kid to hang in there.

- “Your body just knows it needs to wake up and research.”
On me waking up at 5am to resume reading the most recent birthing/parenting/nutrition book or magazine/web article.

- “A stitch in time saves us 5 hours of you being mad at me.”
On spending 10 minutes printing directions to the airport while running late. A very versatile, uber-applicable frame of mind.

- “As a metro-card swiper, I am paying for the best of the best. Will I really be getting the same kind of service from the A train as I would from the F train? I think not.”
Emulating Q&A session with a prospective pediatrician we attended with a group of especially entitled Brooklynites.

“I trust Alisa with mold. Unlike her opponent, she knows mold and she will sure up our bathroom. There will be no additional budget spending, mold is already paid for.”
On cleaning the bathroom.

While still in awe composing my thank you notes, I wanted to say something about this….

The baby shower our friends gave us was a beautiful and a decidedly adult event and I loved it. There were human surprises, amazing cocktails (of which I had none, but that’s OK), pregnancy photo gallery, costumed photo booth, crazy crazy mad-libs, blog quiz, reading of an original poem and a gift of bottle of champagne (a contender for my labor medication, in lieu of an epidural. A shot of vodka or this bottle of zinfandel Chris has been saving are two others). It was a great time and all of this made the gift receiving portion of the day a little less awkward for me than it could have been. So, cheers and love to all our awesome friends!

A selection of pictures are on Baby Shower Photos page.

And here is the hilariously funny poem by Jen R. Johnson, written on scrap piece of paper, in the spirit of this “green” event:

Baby Bruza Koch
Chris and Alisa did not need to try
To stop trying not to made DNA fly
Near right away they could read AB’s charts
There’d be a new life taking a place in their hearts

And what does one do in the face of new life?
Oh just plan a home birth and find a midwife!
But there’s much more than that, the prep never ends
As you get rid of things that contain parabens

Search on the internet, read each right book
Green and organic for Baby Bruza Koch
A little Not a Desmond sung into the room
“Just turn off the light switch when you leave the womb!”

(Jen, not sure if I copied it right, correct my errors!)

One of my favorite writers, Terry Pratchett, often points out that books are dangerous and that people who think otherwise are naive. In Anhk-Morpork, his fictional city, they are under a strict watch of the Librarian of the Unseen University. The most dangerous ones are locked in chains lest they should escape. These seem to have freed themselves, running straight into my unsuspecting hands:

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan. This one, coupled with his Omnivore’s Dilemma, creates a new kind of food consciousness. It promotes “opting out” of the industrial food trap in favor of real food. One of the advices he gives the readers is “Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”  My other favorite is “Avoid products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronouncable, c) more than five in number, or that include d) high-fructose corn syrup.”

Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck. Planck is a former vegetarian, now advocating eating meat, albeit only grass-fed, free range, sustainably farmed kind. She points out that only in recent years sustainable meat eating got accepted as a viable part of the (modern) organic/green movement, which from its conception in the 70s was a vegetarian/vegan realm. My favorite part of her philosophy is her raw milk advocacy. This milk is from grass-fed cows from poly-cultured farms where contamination or disease are naturally contained.

Raising Baby Green: The Earth Friendly Guide to Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Baby Care by Alan Greene and others.
Sarah Lentz pointed me to this one. I had read a few others but I think this is my favorite so far. Dr Greene was aware the connection between some of his patients illnesses and environmental factors, and then he participated in a cord blood study conducted by Environmental Working Group. The findings blew his mind. There is “a total of 287 different industrial chemicals circulating through the body of newborns.” Some cause cancer in humans or animals, some are toxic to brain and nervous system, some cause birth defects and some do two or more of the above. I like this book because it’s gentle on the reader, doesn’t advocate or expect sudden and huge shifts but slow, gradual awareness that leads to permanent changes that are better for baby and the environment.

The Continuum Concept: In Search of Happiness Lost by Jean Liedloff is an anthropological study of lives of natives in the South American jungle, conducted in the seventies. The cover of my copy classifies this book among Child Development Classics and it’s on my midwife’s list of recommended readings. Basically, her findings are that babies need constant touch with mom or another person for the first 6 to 8 months of life. (People call this “babywearing”). This constant touch instils a sense of security in the child and stimulates his brain development. Furthermore, it allows the kid to be where the action is, close mom’s face from where he learns basic human interaction. Once crawling and walking, the children sort of move to the perifery of mother’s life to live and explore the world on their own. Mothers continue to meet the kids’ needs but they are far from brain-deadening vigilat supervision, rather, they go about their daily tasks communing with other adults.

Diaper Free! The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene by Ingrid Bauer. This is another one from my midwife’s list of readings. I had promised Chris not to talk about this one because IT’S COMPLETELY INSANE, but I can’t resist the temptation. The idea is that if you know the signals your baby gives when he needs to eat, you can also get to know those he exhibits when he needs to pee. Moreover, you two can learn to communicate so the elimination can be initiated by either party. How about that? Now, this sorta contradicts what we know about baby development, namely, that baby’s sphincters aren’t strong enough to hold things until the age 3 or so. But Bauer doesn’t even ask we do that. The idea here is voluntary elimination and not forced retention. Babies in all kinds of non-western cultures seem to have developed sphincters age 3. The people in those cultures are probably just backwards and need to be educated by our esteemed doctors. Don’t they know they are ruining their children?

It’s a whole, proper humanity out there and you get to discover it when sporting a baby bump. Here’s the kind of stuff that keeps happening:

- Your local Korean bodega night-shifter (who may or may not remind you of your dad), insists you eat a lot of watermellon and says stuff like “Oooooh Baby Party.” (In the past, after buying large quantities of beer, he started with “Oooooh Big Party;” then, to your joy, he ventured further into “Oooooh Paper Party” as you’re purchasing toilet and other papers; “Oooooh Cat Party” for cat litter and food late-night emergencies; and so on). He also might be one of those rare stranger-people that will instinctively grab your belly with both of his maimed hands and you will NOT mind in the least. (As a sidenote, I do not - yet - have strangers on the street reaching for the belly, so not really sure if I’d be ok with the practice.)

- Duane Reade employees not only smile, a huge feat in and of itself, but also offer to get various items from the shelves for you, snarl at people who cut in line before you, and insist you start drinking your water before they ring you up.

- Street fruit vendors give you a free banana here and there. They smile.

- Grumpy, do-rag wearing inner city boys eagerly get up for you in the subway, still holding on to their cool. They just might move the corner of their lips for you.

- Moms of all colors (all but white– what up with sticks in our buts?) kindly talk about parenting and how it’s the best thing ever. They are ear to ear in smiles, a true joy shows there.

- Farmer’s market sellers engage you in conversations about nutrition. With a smile.

- Cashiers, elevator co-riders, co-workers knowingly nod in the direction of your belly. Some ask how far along, most smile.

Most people enjoy guessing (correctly) the gender of the baby and I have yet to have anyone profer unwanted advice.

Here’s to people!

I’m noticing some parallels between the first and third trimesters. For example, in the first few weeks, there was this otherworldly daze and exhaustion, and it’s creeping back in the last few. I’m still able to climb the subway stairs but it’s starting to be a challenge. Also, I think I’m starting to feel nauseous and I definitely need to go to the bathroom a whole lot.

Also, early on, I had one or two small scares in the shape of occasional cramps that had me worried about miscarriage.  And, lo, yesterday I started feeling these almost sharp pains really low in the pelvis that had me picturing myself with a preemie. Cramps in the first trimester, indicate the stretching of the uterus. This new stuff, seems to be doing the same thing, some kind of stretching. It happens when the baby moves and his head pushes against me.

I called my midwife’s office and I got an immediate call back. She realized that I was worried about preterm labor and assured me I’m not in the middle of one. Other stuff signals that (lots of cramps and– sorry if TMI but — blood and watery discharge).

So we go on. I’ve been getting very excited about meeting my kid, I think for the first time. Up to now, I’d mostly been psyched about being pregnant and about the prospect of giving birth (the adventure!). But now I’m starting to daydream of changing his diapers, soothing his cries and wrapping him inside my winter coat before we go out. He’ll smell so sweet, I bet. And I suppose I’ll find him to be cute from day one, while the rest of the (maybe mostly non-parenting) world will wonder what I see in him. As for his dad, he may already be guessing this, but it will be insane when it happens: he’ll fall in love like never before. Now would be the time to say “I can’t wait” except that wouldn’t be true: I can wait and I’m loving the anticipation.

In the meantime: vegetables, fruits, protein (bring it on, sardines). No more sugar until California. We’re moving on.

We have something like 8 (+/- 2) weeks to go. If I can judge by the way I feel today (which comes after two restless nights, to be fair), the time of exhaustion may have started. I’m feeling weak and listless.

Our birth education class just finished so we have a good number of extra hours to our week. Unfortunately, there is much left to do:

- Finish studio/bedroom and general apartment re-arrange.
- Store studio ‘junk’ currently residing on living room floor.
- Paint two unpainted walls of bedroom (non-toxic paint, of course) and zen it up.
- Procure a certain portable laundry washer and hook it up.
- Get organic stuff for bed (yes, still haven’t done, despite the law that was passed earlier)
- Obtain “home birth” kit, including oral vitamin K for the babe.
- Continue yoga practice despite being totally pooped.
- Meet a pediatrician.
- Go to a vaccination info session at above pediatrician’s office so we can be told how vaccines do cause/do not cause/or something in between regarding autism.
- Figure some sort of baby changing station (this to please husband but surely I’ll come to love it too, right?)

Additionally, we need to step up the practice of body scan/relaxation technique for labor. We’ve been very, very slack at it. We often do it late at night when we generally just fall asleep. While falling asleep isn’t a bad outcome of relaxation, in this case, it would be better to be able to finish the process consciously and then sleep. While a person can and should do the the relaxation by herself, it’s best to have another person guiding the process. You see, your mind drifts to all kinds of places before you remember you’re supposed to be moving the imaginary orange light from your forehead to your neck. This is where your “birth partner” or, as I prefer to call him, “husband” comes in play. The secret is to use a true and tried script but make it your own so it doesn’t sound like you’re reading from a book.

We’re still searching for a good way to do it. Birthing classes helped, but we can’t remember what exactly made the teacher guided relaxation so much more successful than the stuff we’re trying at home. Any progress will be documented, I’m sure