Andrea's Super Simple Advice for the Pregnant

Since I am now nearly 33 weeks into this thing, I feel I have learned enough to give some unwanted advice to other pregnant women, or those who will be pregnant later.

1.  Calm down, you are only pregnant.

I was one of those people who knew she was pregnant long before (a week) a home pregnancy test would have been accurate.  I never took a test, I just took my basal body temp and felt the symptoms.  I felt no rush to find a care provider, I was fine and was taking prenatal vitamins and avoiding toxins. 

Until I got a migraine with an aura.  Migraines were not new for me, but auras were.  So I did the "right" thing and called my clinic at the time.  Here is the simplified version of the conversation:

Me: "I'm pregnant and I'm being seen by one of your doctors for migraines, and now I have one with an aura."
Nurse: "Well, I don't know why you are having an aura, but HOLY SHIT you are pregnant?! Fucking find an OB you goddamn idiot!!  Conception was THREE weeks ago?!  You are practically in labor!  How could you be so stupid as to not seek care!?"
Me:  "Uhh... I was... um..."  CLICK.

Obviously that was a dramatization, but that nurse seriously must know nothing about pregnancy because unless you have some horrible illness that can interfere with pregnancy or are in extreme pain, chances are super, super, great that in your first month or two, everything is fine and you need very little care, if any. 

Here is the simplfied version of my first prenatal appointment at 8 weeks 5 days pregnant (three or four weeks after the above conversation):

Nurse Midwife: "So you're pregnant, how does that feel?"
Me: "Pretty shitty."
Nurse Midwife: "Try vitamin B6 and Unisom."
Me: "OK."
Nurse Midwife: "Are you drinking alcohol."
Me:  "Fuck no, I feel like puking all the time, why would I drink alcohol?"
Nurse Midwife: "Awesome, see you in a month."

So even when I did get the care the first nurse insisted I needed right away, there wasn't much to it.  So if you find yourself pregnant and otherwise healthy, it's OK to just celebrate for a while and not rush to the doctor.

2.  Stop reading pregnancy books. Do what feels right to you. 

Focus your reading on baby care and parenting, these things are way more important and you won't be reading them after baby comes.  Pregnancy books are also full of misinformation and overly cautious advice.  I'll admit that reading What To Expect When You Are Expecting was kind of fun, but the crap that book tells you to do or not to do is overwhelming and not backed up by scientific research for the most part.  It claimed you should never point your toes!  I point them every few days to see what it supposed to happen; no leg cramps yet. 

I decided to follow some of that book's advice for the first trimester because I thought maybe being a bit overly cautious the first three months would reduce my chance of having a miscarriage.  So I avoided lunch meats, or I would microwave them, and I decided to skip the raw seafood for the entire pregnancy.  I figured nasty food poisoning was something to avoid.  I also stopped drinking alcohol because that toxin does have scientific research backing it up, and I haven't changed the cat litter in probably three years, so that was no problem (Brent does it).  I also decided to avoid cleaning products with nasty chemicals in them, which was easy because I don't do much cleaning (Brent does it), and I stopped using my acne cream, which was fine because pregnancy totally cleared up my skin.  

The other thing Brent and I did was buy more organic foods.  I'm not sure about the research regarding pesticides on fetuses, but it doesn't sound like a good thing.  So for a lot of our staples, like tomato sauce, salsa, beans, milk, and a good portion of our fruits and vegetables, we went organic.  We didn't go 100%, but we both felt good about making an effort.  I didn't worry about whether my food was organic at other people's houses or when we went out to dinner.

3. Diet really isn't that important.

That uterine parasite of yours will take calcium out of your teeth and bones if it needs it!  Which is bad for you, but you really have to have a bad diet before it will affect your fetus.  Folic Acid is easy to get through pills and a prenatal vitamin should cover the rest of the holes in your diet.  Chances are if you didn't have a vitamin deficiency before pregnancy, you won't have one now.  Eat what sounds good and eat a variety and you should be good.  The pregnancy diet guidelines that ended up in some of those pregnancy books I read were so long and complicated, I bet there are few women who follow them. 

I don't think my midwife once talked about diet.  She only talked about exercise and maybe cutting a few calories when I was gaining a ton of weight my second trimester. 

Like, I said above, calm down, you are only pregnant. 

4.  You are not fragile; your uterus is super strong!

The uterus is one of the best shock absorption systems around.  I could easily lay on my stomach until I reached the third trimester; as long as the surface was soft enough.  My protruding baby bump has been shoved, bumped, run into a wall, elbowed, mushed against a wheelchair... the thing gets in the way!  The only time I've been concerned is when I'm being shoved (at work, I work with adults with developmental disabilities), because I don't want to fall over, so I tell them to watch out for the baby.  But baby is fine, my uterus feels fine.  I built an IKEA book shelf by myself in my sixth month of pregnancy.  I was exhausted after, but baby was fine.  I occasionally lift wheelchairs and people and I'm well into my eighth month.  My lower back hurts from it sometimes, but my lower back hurts from simply walking these days. 

I have a much bigger problem with picking small things up off the ground (it's hard to bend over) than carrying heavy things.  I think the greatest thing I've said at work in the past few months was, "Hey, does someone who's not pregnant want to crawl under my desk and see if my phone is plugged in?"  If it hurts, don't do it; if it doesn't, chances are it's not harmful.  You really have to be in a bad accident to hurt the contents of your uterus.  I'm sure some pregnant women are different and have other issues making them have more restrictions, but chances are you are fine. 

5.  Look into all of your options about care and birth.

There are so many options and you should at least know about them.  I still sometimes contemplate a home birth.  Your options grow if your pregnancy is low-risk, which most are.  I chose a midwife because I felt pregnancy and birth were natural things, not illnesses.  I don't feel the need for a doctor.  So far I've only had one pelvic exam when they did an overdue "poke and scrape" and tested me for STIs that could hurt the baby.  Minimizing pelvic exams is a plus, I have a feeling they will start looking in there soon, however. 

Not every test is needed for you.  And learn about all the interventions, they all have risks, some that will simply not be worth it.  Get informed well before your due date so you know your options before the birth.  Some hospitals and doctors have a very high C-section rate, these are places to avoid, these are places that rarely see a natural, normal birth without an intervention.  The C-section rate is close to one third in the US, when really it should probably be under 10%.  C-sections save lives, but are way overdone and are major surgery to recover from.  Birth and pregnancy do not have to be medicalized unless there is a medical problem, which rarely there is. 

Losing My Patience With Those Still Catching Up.

This is a non-baby post. 

OK, so some of you know that I've had a bunch of trouble in my life.  Not a HUGE amount, but enough where my growing up and maturing into an adult was thrown off and I had to over-compensate and grow up a little late and work through some issues and be in lots of therapy. 

So my general thought about myself for most of my life was that I was "crazy" and broken and wasn't as good as other adults.  But over the last few years I've changed a lot and now it's switching to  me generally feeling like I'm mature and functioning well and acting consciously and making good decisions.  Not that it's easy, but over all, I am fitting in with society and accepting myself as being unique and intelligent without being "crazy." 

In fact I think some of my issues in life were advantageous because I really learned a lot about how emotions work and how to get what you want out of life without being in control of anyone else.  I really feel like my coping mechanism for the little bumps in the road are very well polished and working well.  Major stressors still will throw me off the path, the wedding was a big one, I had a few days where I felt completely insane, but it was just a few days, most days were just mild insanity. 

I also think, for the most part, I don't take my anger out on others and if I do, I recognize it right away.  I say kind things and try to work smoothly with others, even if I do not get along with them or I think they are dumb.  If I snap at anyone I usually apologize and explain why I snapped and how it wasn't really about them.

So, awesome for Andrea, right? 

Not so fast.  People who are not emotionally mature bug the crap out of me.  I can see their issues really well, I can put a label on their problems sometimes.  I can also see what might help them.  How they could change their thinking or behavior that would help them and also make dealing with them easier.  It's because I've been there before or witnessed people close to me deal with these things for years.  But I'm NOT in charge of them and have no control and really can't to squat about it.  And this part is really hard for me. 

So the choice becomes accepting a person for who they are or avoiding them to cause myself less distress.  I do a little of both in my life.  There are some people I don't have much contact with at all because they are simply too nuts for me to ever want to be around.  I can deal with people who have issues, but I need to be able to see that they are dealing with their issues and growing and changing as a person, this is a rare occurrence, but is a trait in most of my closest friends. 

I'm friends with people who have grand ideas and change their minds a lot and wonder all over the place because we are lost people trying to figure it all out, we are changing career paths and seeing therapists and taking up new hobbies and forgetting them a week later, because we are trying to get a hold of our life, we are trying to grow and change and become high-functioning adults.  We can be selfish and flaky, but all for good reasons.  Rarely do we stay in dead-end jobs or relationships without really discussing them and looking at our other options, we are always plotting and thinking, our significant others might not know, but sometimes we think about ditching them.  Might sound mean, but we re-evaluate things a lot, even unnecessarily sometimes.  At least that's my impression of me and my friends, maybe they have other thoughts. 

So when I see someone who clearly has issues, who doesn't seem aware of their issues and/or doesn't seem to want to resolve their issues, or is in total denial about their life, I really have no more patience for these people.  Luckily I haven't run into many of these people holding red flags, maybe a dozen or so that really bothered me over my adulthood. 

And if I've learned anything in my lifetime, it's that you can't change others.  Reality is depressing.  So I guess this was a rant on how I can't fix others' crazies and it bothers me sometimes. 

And if you are one of those who has issues, please, make the world a better place and help yourself. 

The PLAN of Your Birth!!!

So we're at birth plan writing time.  Which is way harder than is sounds, especially when your like me and want to be well informed about EVERY decision there is to make and try to make the best decision.

My latest thought is that birth plans are crap and I'm not going to have one.  They tell you to keep it short, but I have no idea how to do that.  For example:

I really, really, really, don't want to have an epidural.  There are so many restrictions with them, they up your chances of having a C-section to 50%, you can't get out of bed, they tend to make pushing harder.  I just don't want one, which is fine.  But it's not that I will NEVER EVER EVER consider having one.  So I feel a need to say something like, "Andrea does not wish to have an epidural... UNLESS she has exhausted all other coping mechanisms, can't get into a birthing tub, has been laboring for many hours, is no where close to full dilation, can't rest, can't progress, then maybe after you remind her of the benefits and disadvantages of having one, she will agree to it."

I honestly feel like writing, "Ask Andrea's permission before you do anything, thanks.  The end."

And what is the plan anyway?  I've never given birth before.  I could have all the plans in the world and it could all go wrong.  I feel informed, but still hesitant to plan this all.  I don't want people to laugh at my plan and then be proven right when my plan can't be followed.

There are some cut in stone things; we will be encapsulating the placenta.  They can't deny me my placenta, there is no other purpose for it after birth and I definitely have it.  And we won't be circumcising; there's nothing that will change our minds about that.  And a lot of the other stuff we want, they already do the vast majority of the time like skin-to-skin contact after birth, and rooming in, and exclusively breastfeeding; these are not things that the nurses will think is weird and will make a fuss about, so do they still need to go in there?  
And as far as I can tell my nurse midwife unit is very pro eating and moving around during labor, and I'm pretty sure I will qualify to use their birthing tub room.  They have been very hands-off through this whole thing and have not tried to push any ideas into my head.  So I highly doubt anyone will tell me to lay in bed and only give me ice chips, unless I have an epidural.

So the basic plan in my head right now is that Brent and our doula will be with me for the whole thing, I will use natural comfort measures like the birthing ball, massage, TENS unit, aromatherapy, changing positions, relaxing music; I will eat easily digestible things that aren't too bad to throw up (although only about 15% of women do throw up during labor); drink plenty of fluids; when I am able to get into the tub, they will inform me of this, then when I feel ready to get in the tub, I will also use the tub for pain management and may give birth in there if I choose; I want to push when I feel the urge to push with little coaching unless I'm starting to tear; cut the umbilical cord after it has stopped pulsating.   Then as long as baby is fine, I want to hold baby and attempt the first breastfeeding before doing anything else. Oh and no time limits on any stage unless one of us is in distress. 

If at any point the plan is not working, then we can discuss other things.  Sometimes emergency C-sections are needed; I want one if it's needed. 

So it's hard.  It makes me feel good about my choice to birth in a hospital with an open-minded nurse midwife unit.  I can go all natural if I want, but we're in the hospital if something goes wrong.  I do however realize that things often go wrong in a hospital because they do unnecessary things.  So I want to minimize the unnecessary, like artificially breaking the waters, which has been shown to be no better at speeding things up than simply waiting for time to pass (although you can only do correlational studies about it). 

So, I'm going to go in with confidence and an open mind.  I'm also going to stay at home for as long as possible.  The hospital doesn't even want me until my contractions are 4 minutes or less apart, lasting for one minute, for one whole hour.  So, we could have days at home!