“Women like their men occasionally childlike, but never childish.”
-- Silk --
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-- Silk --
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Showing posts with label g-baby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label g-baby. Show all posts
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
3265 Meetup mess up
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
I was supposed to see the new 3-D Johnny Depp Pirates movie this evening with a Meetup group.
I'm very annoyed because the Meetup was canceled, and nobody notified me! Like nobody has to plan their day?
Just as well. I've got a lot to do, and I agreed to babysit Nugget this afternoon while Daughter does some shopping.
.
Epitaph: This is merely a temporary setback.
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----------------------------------
I was supposed to see the new 3-D Johnny Depp Pirates movie this evening with a Meetup group.
I'm very annoyed because the Meetup was canceled, and nobody notified me! Like nobody has to plan their day?
Just as well. I've got a lot to do, and I agreed to babysit Nugget this afternoon while Daughter does some shopping.
.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
3235 Baby Pictures
Saturday, April 30, 2011
They just got home, maybe an hour ago.
.
You don't fall in love with a person. You fall in love with the way you feel when you're with that person.
-- Silk --
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-- Silk --
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They just got home, maybe an hour ago.
.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
3233 Baby details
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Daughter had wanted as natural and intervention-free a birth as possible. She had started out planning a home-birth, and had engaged a midwife. She read everything she could. She was certain she could go natural. I supported her in that, because I believed she could. She went beyond me, however, in that she had zero trust in doctors. She was scared near to death that if she went "conventional", she'd end up another of the victims of the scandalous American love affair with C-sections.
She's also a bit of a control freak, especially where her body is concerned.
However, impediments piled up. Her first choice in midwife turned out to be an undependable flake. The next was not much better. The insurance company threw up barriers. And so on. The final blow came when she was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. That plus her age (35 and first pregnancy) made her pregnancy high-risk.
--------------------------------
The call came at 2:50 am Monday. Daughter's water had broken, although she wasn't yet in what might strictly be called labor. Ordinarily, the doctor would say it's ok to wait a bit before going to the hospital, but her amniotic fluid was heavily stained with meconium (baby's first poopy, normally not passed until late labor, delivery, or after birth). This is not good. It can cause serious problems if aspirated.
I had Fred the van in their driveway by 3:10, and she and Hercules and what looked like enough luggage for an arctic expedition (I'm not kidding!) were ensconced in a nest of blankets, foam, and pillows in Fred's open belly, and we set out at about 3:30 am. (None of us, by the way, had had more than 2.5 hours sleep.)
The fog was thick. So thick that I missed the turns out of our own neighborhood, a route I drive every day! And got lost! Four blocks from the house! None of the usual landmarks were visible. I had the GPS, and Jeeves would say, "Recalculating. Turn right on XYZ street", but I'd miss the turn because I literally couldn't see the intersection, even as I drove past it. It was so bad I could have been driving across someone's lawn and I wouldn't have noticed until I hit their house.
After maybe five minutes of stumbling around, we found the main road, and at least I could see the line down the middle. We arrived at the hospital a little after four, heavy fog all the way. Hercules took Daughter in, and by the time I'd parked Fred and gone upstairs, she was in a gown in a bed and hooked up to belts across her belly.
She wasn't dilated very much - maybe 3 cm. (I didn't write down times and numbers, and over the next 20+ hours things got a little foggy.) There was a monitor at the nurses' station with feeds from all the monitors in all the rooms, and I noticed that on all but one of them, the contraction bumps sloped halfway up the height of the strip. On one of them, the bumps went straight up to the top of the strip, ran flat across the top, and then fell down. That was Daughter's strip, echoing the monitor in her room. I don't know if it was just a difference in the position of the belly straps, or the fact that Daughter has virtually no body fat that made hers look so different, but I know she was having a very hard labor.
Very.
She tried kneeling, crouching, leaning forward against the raised back of the bed, lying on a blanket on the floor. By early afternoon it was obvious she was exhausted. But she was only up to 5 cm, and the baby's heartrate was a bit too high. The doctor was getting concerned because of the meconium. The longer the baby was in there with it, the greater the chance of aspirating it. She had to show steadier progress.
Hercules and I had a conference in the hall. We both knew Daughter was adamant about avoiding an epidural, and especially about avoiding pitocin (oxytocin). But she was obviously already exhausted. She wasn't dilating as fast as she needed to if she was to avoid a C-section. She needed a break. We convinced her to give it a try, if only so she could rest a little, and being a drip, they could taper it off when she was ready to push. She was concerned that it would slow or lessen contractions - and - this part made no sense to me - the nurse said that's an old wive's tale, it doesn't affect contractions, but with the epidural they'd have to give her pitocin to make sure. (Um, isn't that an implied contradiction?) Anyway, she agreed to the epidural and pitocin on the condition that she was in charge of the dosage level. She didn't want to feel nothing.
Now, anyone who knows me knows how strongly I feel about unnecessary intervention in the birth process. Daughter is even stronger. But as I explained to her then, unnecessary intervention, intervention only for convenience, is absolutely a bad thing. But necessary intervention can be a wonderful thing. It can help you to do what is needed. Even a Cesarean (she tensed at the very word) can be a good thing, when the only alternative is worse.
So she got the epidural, and continued with the lowest possible dose (or so they told us). At any rate, she could feel the contractions enough to make her pant.
Time passed.
She developed a fever. It rose quickly. They didn't know why, but attributed it to an infection due to the meconium (which I thought was virtually sterile, containing nothing that she didn't already have inside her). They were worried that if she had an infection, so did the baby.
Eventually she had tubes all over her. The IV sprouted multiple branches - saline, antibiotic, pitocin. There was the epidural. The Foley. They put a tube into the uterus to flush it with saline to wash out the meconium. (There was a lot of it.) There was an internal monitor - not the one screwed into the baby's head - this one just ran past the baby to measure (I gather) pressure on the baby. Because her water had broken so early, this was also a concern. There were two belts around her belly - one for contractions and one for baby's heart rate.
She finally made it to 9 cm dilated, and stopped.
She remained at 9 cm for the next seven hours.
She cried. She felt that she had somehow failed. She had the epidural reduced to next to nothing, but she still didn't dilate any more. We explained over and over that she was wonderful, she did everything right, that whatever was going on was nothing she could control, It just was.
Stasis. She still had the fever.
She agreed to the Cesarean.
That was about midnight.
-------------------------------
Now, it wasn't exactly a red emergency, but I've seen this happen before in non-emergency situations and it always amazes me. Within seconds of her saying yes, a SWAT team of nurses poured through the door to unplug everything she was attached to, and she was being wheeled down the hall before we even realized it. Another smaller team rushed in and pushed a papery set of scrubs on Hercules, shoved him into the bathroom to change, and rushed him down the hall, and in seconds I was standing alone in the empty room, with scraps of paper swirling down to the floor, like a scene in a movie shot in an abandoned city.
I suspect they do that so you don't have a chance to change your mind.
Then a nurse stuck her head in the door and told me to gather up their personal belongings, and take them out of the room. "To where? Where will they be going next?" "Don't know. Take it all to the waiting room."
The arctic expedition, remember?
It took me three heavily loaded trips. By the third trip, the room had been cleaned and there was a new bed all made up in there. I felt like we'd been ignominiously kicked out.
I found Hercules' mother in the waiting room. She had driven 12 hours up from the Carolinas.
Hercules showed up in his scrubs sometime a little before 1 am, with photos.
-------------------------------
The baby (she still has no name) is now in the NICU. She has ALL the usual gestational diabetes symptoms. Daughter breastfed almost immediately after delivery, and goes to the NICU very few hours. She has a lot of milk, had no problems with "letting down", and Baby latched on tight right off the bat and drains Daughter thoroughly. I hear she's loud - when she's not eating or sleeping, she's screaming. That's a GD thing, too. The jittery thing. I hope that clears up soon.
It's actually very lucky that Daughter got stuck at 9 cm. It may have saved some lives, or at least bodies.
If she had made it all the way to 10 and the pushing stage, she would have done her utmost to push that baby out. The head would have made it out, because it's smoother and harder, but the shoulders would have gotten stuck. Baby's got shoulders like a football player, a common GD problem. (See the photo below. Hercules' new nickname for her is "Mack Truck".) The shoulders, being softer, don't make it through, an obstetrician's nightmare because in that condition, a Cesarean is difficult, and vaginal delivery often results in shoulder damage - broken bones or nerve damage.
Maybe two minutes old:
Now THAT'S a fat baby. Cheeks, lips, thighs, even the feet. Catch the Mommy-killer shoulders:
I'm left with some questions. Howcome ultrasound can detect a penis, but not a linebacker's shoulders? Shouldn't they know about this before labor even starts?
.
Definition: Perfluxity - the feeling that you are drowning in a sea of information.
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Daughter had wanted as natural and intervention-free a birth as possible. She had started out planning a home-birth, and had engaged a midwife. She read everything she could. She was certain she could go natural. I supported her in that, because I believed she could. She went beyond me, however, in that she had zero trust in doctors. She was scared near to death that if she went "conventional", she'd end up another of the victims of the scandalous American love affair with C-sections.
She's also a bit of a control freak, especially where her body is concerned.
However, impediments piled up. Her first choice in midwife turned out to be an undependable flake. The next was not much better. The insurance company threw up barriers. And so on. The final blow came when she was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. That plus her age (35 and first pregnancy) made her pregnancy high-risk.
Quick lesson: Gestational diabetes begins at or after the 24th week when the hormones from the placenta interfere with the mother's pancreas' ability to make sufficient insulin. Without sufficient insulin, there's too much sugar in the mother's blood. This excess sugar passes through to the baby. The baby then makes large amounts of insulin and converts the excess sugar to fat. You end up with a very large chubby baby. They tend to be especially large in the upper body, and the size of the baby's head and shoulders can make vaginal delivery difficult if not impossible. In the worse case scenario, the head makes it though, but the shoulders, being softer, cannot and become wedged.So, with the "high risk" tag, home birth was no longer an option. Daughter shopped hard for an obstetrician who she felt would be willing to allow her in the hospital the kind of birth experience she envisioned.
For a short time after birth, the baby still is making excess insulin, but is no longer getting all that sugar, and becomes hypoglycemic. This can cause lower calcium and magnesium levels, "the jitters", jaundice, and breathing difficulties. Most of that resolves itself in a few days with care and feeding. Gestational diabetes does not cause birth defects, since the major organs are well formed before the 24th week. However, the child may have a higher risk of childhood obesity and of developing type 2 diabetes in mid-life. For some reason, breast feeding for six months lessens those risks.
--------------------------------
The call came at 2:50 am Monday. Daughter's water had broken, although she wasn't yet in what might strictly be called labor. Ordinarily, the doctor would say it's ok to wait a bit before going to the hospital, but her amniotic fluid was heavily stained with meconium (baby's first poopy, normally not passed until late labor, delivery, or after birth). This is not good. It can cause serious problems if aspirated.
I had Fred the van in their driveway by 3:10, and she and Hercules and what looked like enough luggage for an arctic expedition (I'm not kidding!) were ensconced in a nest of blankets, foam, and pillows in Fred's open belly, and we set out at about 3:30 am. (None of us, by the way, had had more than 2.5 hours sleep.)
The fog was thick. So thick that I missed the turns out of our own neighborhood, a route I drive every day! And got lost! Four blocks from the house! None of the usual landmarks were visible. I had the GPS, and Jeeves would say, "Recalculating. Turn right on XYZ street", but I'd miss the turn because I literally couldn't see the intersection, even as I drove past it. It was so bad I could have been driving across someone's lawn and I wouldn't have noticed until I hit their house.
After maybe five minutes of stumbling around, we found the main road, and at least I could see the line down the middle. We arrived at the hospital a little after four, heavy fog all the way. Hercules took Daughter in, and by the time I'd parked Fred and gone upstairs, she was in a gown in a bed and hooked up to belts across her belly.
She wasn't dilated very much - maybe 3 cm. (I didn't write down times and numbers, and over the next 20+ hours things got a little foggy.) There was a monitor at the nurses' station with feeds from all the monitors in all the rooms, and I noticed that on all but one of them, the contraction bumps sloped halfway up the height of the strip. On one of them, the bumps went straight up to the top of the strip, ran flat across the top, and then fell down. That was Daughter's strip, echoing the monitor in her room. I don't know if it was just a difference in the position of the belly straps, or the fact that Daughter has virtually no body fat that made hers look so different, but I know she was having a very hard labor.
Very.
She tried kneeling, crouching, leaning forward against the raised back of the bed, lying on a blanket on the floor. By early afternoon it was obvious she was exhausted. But she was only up to 5 cm, and the baby's heartrate was a bit too high. The doctor was getting concerned because of the meconium. The longer the baby was in there with it, the greater the chance of aspirating it. She had to show steadier progress.
Hercules and I had a conference in the hall. We both knew Daughter was adamant about avoiding an epidural, and especially about avoiding pitocin (oxytocin). But she was obviously already exhausted. She wasn't dilating as fast as she needed to if she was to avoid a C-section. She needed a break. We convinced her to give it a try, if only so she could rest a little, and being a drip, they could taper it off when she was ready to push. She was concerned that it would slow or lessen contractions - and - this part made no sense to me - the nurse said that's an old wive's tale, it doesn't affect contractions, but with the epidural they'd have to give her pitocin to make sure. (Um, isn't that an implied contradiction?) Anyway, she agreed to the epidural and pitocin on the condition that she was in charge of the dosage level. She didn't want to feel nothing.
Now, anyone who knows me knows how strongly I feel about unnecessary intervention in the birth process. Daughter is even stronger. But as I explained to her then, unnecessary intervention, intervention only for convenience, is absolutely a bad thing. But necessary intervention can be a wonderful thing. It can help you to do what is needed. Even a Cesarean (she tensed at the very word) can be a good thing, when the only alternative is worse.
So she got the epidural, and continued with the lowest possible dose (or so they told us). At any rate, she could feel the contractions enough to make her pant.
Time passed.
She developed a fever. It rose quickly. They didn't know why, but attributed it to an infection due to the meconium (which I thought was virtually sterile, containing nothing that she didn't already have inside her). They were worried that if she had an infection, so did the baby.
Eventually she had tubes all over her. The IV sprouted multiple branches - saline, antibiotic, pitocin. There was the epidural. The Foley. They put a tube into the uterus to flush it with saline to wash out the meconium. (There was a lot of it.) There was an internal monitor - not the one screwed into the baby's head - this one just ran past the baby to measure (I gather) pressure on the baby. Because her water had broken so early, this was also a concern. There were two belts around her belly - one for contractions and one for baby's heart rate.
She finally made it to 9 cm dilated, and stopped.
She remained at 9 cm for the next seven hours.
She cried. She felt that she had somehow failed. She had the epidural reduced to next to nothing, but she still didn't dilate any more. We explained over and over that she was wonderful, she did everything right, that whatever was going on was nothing she could control, It just was.
Stasis. She still had the fever.
She agreed to the Cesarean.
That was about midnight.
-------------------------------
Now, it wasn't exactly a red emergency, but I've seen this happen before in non-emergency situations and it always amazes me. Within seconds of her saying yes, a SWAT team of nurses poured through the door to unplug everything she was attached to, and she was being wheeled down the hall before we even realized it. Another smaller team rushed in and pushed a papery set of scrubs on Hercules, shoved him into the bathroom to change, and rushed him down the hall, and in seconds I was standing alone in the empty room, with scraps of paper swirling down to the floor, like a scene in a movie shot in an abandoned city.
I suspect they do that so you don't have a chance to change your mind.
Then a nurse stuck her head in the door and told me to gather up their personal belongings, and take them out of the room. "To where? Where will they be going next?" "Don't know. Take it all to the waiting room."
The arctic expedition, remember?
It took me three heavily loaded trips. By the third trip, the room had been cleaned and there was a new bed all made up in there. I felt like we'd been ignominiously kicked out.
I found Hercules' mother in the waiting room. She had driven 12 hours up from the Carolinas.
Hercules showed up in his scrubs sometime a little before 1 am, with photos.
-------------------------------
The baby (she still has no name) is now in the NICU. She has ALL the usual gestational diabetes symptoms. Daughter breastfed almost immediately after delivery, and goes to the NICU very few hours. She has a lot of milk, had no problems with "letting down", and Baby latched on tight right off the bat and drains Daughter thoroughly. I hear she's loud - when she's not eating or sleeping, she's screaming. That's a GD thing, too. The jittery thing. I hope that clears up soon.
It's actually very lucky that Daughter got stuck at 9 cm. It may have saved some lives, or at least bodies.
If she had made it all the way to 10 and the pushing stage, she would have done her utmost to push that baby out. The head would have made it out, because it's smoother and harder, but the shoulders would have gotten stuck. Baby's got shoulders like a football player, a common GD problem. (See the photo below. Hercules' new nickname for her is "Mack Truck".) The shoulders, being softer, don't make it through, an obstetrician's nightmare because in that condition, a Cesarean is difficult, and vaginal delivery often results in shoulder damage - broken bones or nerve damage.
Maybe two minutes old:
Now THAT'S a fat baby. Cheeks, lips, thighs, even the feet. Catch the Mommy-killer shoulders:
I'm left with some questions. Howcome ultrasound can detect a penis, but not a linebacker's shoulders? Shouldn't they know about this before labor even starts?
.
3232 Treasure at the end
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
It's a girl.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011, 12:38 am
8 lbs. 4 oz.
Labor was long and difficult, Daughter and Hercules were heroic, Baby-Still-No-Name-Yet was finally delivered by cesarean. It was the right decision.
.
From Something to Talk About: Poison - homeopathic aversion therapy.
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It's a girl.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011, 12:38 am
8 lbs. 4 oz.
Labor was long and difficult, Daughter and Hercules were heroic, Baby-Still-No-Name-Yet was finally delivered by cesarean. It was the right decision.
.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
3193 Baby shopping
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Daughter and I went shopping for baby stuff yesterday, but not at a store, at a community college.
"They" (not sure who) run a multi-day consignment sale in a huge gymnasium twice a year, spring and fall. Rows and rows of tables and racks covered with everything from baby furniture and clothing and toys to maternity clothes and car seats. Some is lightly used, and some is never used.
Daughter got a slew of sacques and footie-sleepers for like $2 each, and a bag of undershirts and booties for $1, and several little shirt&shorts sets. I bought a little umbrella-folding stroller, and a light over-the-shoulder sling for my use. Hercules joined us when he got out of work. He fell madly in love with a huge solid wood "fancy name brand" highchair, and bought that. I think he just loved the wood - but the thing doesn't fold, it's huge, and their house is tiny. I think he'll be sorry, but they can just sell it next fall when they get tired of climbing over it, eh?
With all the furniture, books, maternity tops, and baby clothes, and keeping in mind that most things were less than $5, the total came to $209 - not counting the rather expensive highchair. (I paid for it all, except the highchair. Belated shower gifts.) She got a LOT of stuff. We don't know how big the baby will be, and she's hearing horror stories of women who'd bought a lot of newborn sizes, and everything was already too small when the baby came home from the hospital, so she stocked up on 6-12 month sizes yesterday.
That consignment sale is a great idea. Sometimes things are used for so short a period, it makes sense to cycle things through many babies.
Daughter is tiny. Pre-pregnancy she wore XS-XXS sizes. She's already huge in the tummy (six weeks to go), and she's having trouble finding maternity tops that will cover her belly. She can't wear mediums, they fall off her shoulders, but the small tops aren't long enough to cover the belly (they stick almost straight out at the bottom), and small maternity pants are too tight around the tummy, so she wears them with the waists rolled down to under the belly. That leaves a belly gap, and she has nothing to comfortably cover the gap. She doesn't like maternity dresses - they're not suitable for work, and she can't wear long T-shirts for the same reason.
I suggested that she pick out some maternity dresses yesterday, and I can shorten them to the length she needs to serve as tops.
She's seriously huge. I don't see how she can still drive a car - how she can fit behind the steering wheel and be able to reach the pedals - so pretty soon she may not be able to get to work, and the clothing issue will be a non-issue.
.
No matter how much you care, some people just don't care back.
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Daughter and I went shopping for baby stuff yesterday, but not at a store, at a community college.
"They" (not sure who) run a multi-day consignment sale in a huge gymnasium twice a year, spring and fall. Rows and rows of tables and racks covered with everything from baby furniture and clothing and toys to maternity clothes and car seats. Some is lightly used, and some is never used.
Daughter got a slew of sacques and footie-sleepers for like $2 each, and a bag of undershirts and booties for $1, and several little shirt&shorts sets. I bought a little umbrella-folding stroller, and a light over-the-shoulder sling for my use. Hercules joined us when he got out of work. He fell madly in love with a huge solid wood "fancy name brand" highchair, and bought that. I think he just loved the wood - but the thing doesn't fold, it's huge, and their house is tiny. I think he'll be sorry, but they can just sell it next fall when they get tired of climbing over it, eh?
With all the furniture, books, maternity tops, and baby clothes, and keeping in mind that most things were less than $5, the total came to $209 - not counting the rather expensive highchair. (I paid for it all, except the highchair. Belated shower gifts.) She got a LOT of stuff. We don't know how big the baby will be, and she's hearing horror stories of women who'd bought a lot of newborn sizes, and everything was already too small when the baby came home from the hospital, so she stocked up on 6-12 month sizes yesterday.
That consignment sale is a great idea. Sometimes things are used for so short a period, it makes sense to cycle things through many babies.
Daughter is tiny. Pre-pregnancy she wore XS-XXS sizes. She's already huge in the tummy (six weeks to go), and she's having trouble finding maternity tops that will cover her belly. She can't wear mediums, they fall off her shoulders, but the small tops aren't long enough to cover the belly (they stick almost straight out at the bottom), and small maternity pants are too tight around the tummy, so she wears them with the waists rolled down to under the belly. That leaves a belly gap, and she has nothing to comfortably cover the gap. She doesn't like maternity dresses - they're not suitable for work, and she can't wear long T-shirts for the same reason.
I suggested that she pick out some maternity dresses yesterday, and I can shorten them to the length she needs to serve as tops.
She's seriously huge. I don't see how she can still drive a car - how she can fit behind the steering wheel and be able to reach the pedals - so pretty soon she may not be able to get to work, and the clothing issue will be a non-issue.
.
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
3185 Two classes
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
I went to the grandparents' education class at the maternity hospital last night. The 4 hours did cover a lot more than just "put the kid on its back". They went over the labor and delivery procedures and policies and a whole bunch of stuff, and ended with a tour of the labor/delivery rooms (very homey, and you deliver in the same room as labor) and the nursery and so on. They do have rooming-in if the mommy wants it. It all sounded pretty good.
I did have two spots of annoying concern.
It's my opinion that it's NOT pain. It is extremely intense, yes, but it's like when someone else removes a splinter from your finger, it hurts, but when you remove the splinter yourself, even though you are doing the exact same thing, it's not pain. If everything goes as it's designed to, if you fully understand what is going on during birth, if you understand that your uterus knows exactly what it's doing and is doing it right, if you are able to relax the rest of your body so that all the energy goes to the uterus, and if you are allowed to feel that you retain control of what's happening to you, knowing that you are delivering the baby, not the doctor, then it's not painful**. It's hard hard work, and very intense, but not painful.
If, however, someone in a position of authority tells you over and over that it will be painful, then I guarantee it will be. It sets you up with the expectation, which causes tension, which CAUSES PAIN! and even when there's no tension, if you expect pain, then you will interpret the expected intense contractions not as the natural wonder of the uterus doing its job in spectacular fashion (wow! look how strong it is!), but you will interpret it as pain, because that's what you'd been told it is.
Bullshit!
I've had two babies completely absolutely totally naturally, no meds whatsoever, one baby's head was out before I got to the hospital, and it was very hard work and very tiring, but THERE WAS NO PAIN! Because I knew what was going on, and I knew about relaxing the lower muscles and pushing only with the upper muscles, exactly the opposite of the "like a bowel movement" crap they tell you, which is completely counter-productive and will cause the vagina and vulva to resist, which causes the muscles there to separate rather than to stretch, which causes PAIN! and tearing. Or that "little snip", which should be totally unnecessary. Plus if those muscles separate rather than stretch, they don't go back and you end up loose.
I do know whereof I speak.
Anyone who wants to argue that they have more experience in these matters and they know I'm wrong, simply has the wrong experience, dealing with frightened tense women who have been taught to push wrong and to expect pain and who feel no control.
So there!
**Note that women who deliver "by surprise" in their kitchens, or in a taxi, with no meds, nobody taking over, never say anything about pain.
--------------------------------
Daughter took an interesting anatomy class last year. The class got (relatively) fresh cadavers, and, in groups of three, over the course of the class, they took their cadavers completely apart.
Daughter was fascinated by all of it, of course, but one thing was surprising to her. In anatomy books and everywhere else, when there's a diagram of what's inside, they all show the liver "here", the spleen "here", the kidneys "there", the pancreas "over there", the intestines "just so", and so on. The diagrams always look pretty much the same.
'Tain't so. When the students visited each other's cadavers, they discovered that the organs were all over the place. Some higher than expected, some lower, some more toward the center, some flat-out reversed or backward, some much larger or smaller than expected. It seems it isn't really all that easy to predict where you'll find something. Or even that it will actually be there.
Cool. Makes laparoscopic surgery a treasure hunt.
(I'm remembering the surprise when we discovered that Jay had only one HUGE kidney. Now I'm wondering why the doctors freaked out over that.)
.
Computers have raised writing to a new low.
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I went to the grandparents' education class at the maternity hospital last night. The 4 hours did cover a lot more than just "put the kid on its back". They went over the labor and delivery procedures and policies and a whole bunch of stuff, and ended with a tour of the labor/delivery rooms (very homey, and you deliver in the same room as labor) and the nursery and so on. They do have rooming-in if the mommy wants it. It all sounded pretty good.
I did have two spots of annoying concern.
- Five people had signed up: me, two women who were apparently the future maternal and paternal grandmas of the same baby, and a grandma/grandpa couple. The couple didn't show up, so it was just three of us. And yet, the nurse conducting the class, fully expecting five people, had brought only two informational packets. Um, disorganized much?
- The nurse said she teaches the Lamaze classes, and she repeatedly referred to "pain". Pain, pain, pain. It was always, over and over, pain.
It's my opinion that it's NOT pain. It is extremely intense, yes, but it's like when someone else removes a splinter from your finger, it hurts, but when you remove the splinter yourself, even though you are doing the exact same thing, it's not pain. If everything goes as it's designed to, if you fully understand what is going on during birth, if you understand that your uterus knows exactly what it's doing and is doing it right, if you are able to relax the rest of your body so that all the energy goes to the uterus, and if you are allowed to feel that you retain control of what's happening to you, knowing that you are delivering the baby, not the doctor, then it's not painful**. It's hard hard work, and very intense, but not painful.
If, however, someone in a position of authority tells you over and over that it will be painful, then I guarantee it will be. It sets you up with the expectation, which causes tension, which CAUSES PAIN! and even when there's no tension, if you expect pain, then you will interpret the expected intense contractions not as the natural wonder of the uterus doing its job in spectacular fashion (wow! look how strong it is!), but you will interpret it as pain, because that's what you'd been told it is.
Bullshit!
I've had two babies completely absolutely totally naturally, no meds whatsoever, one baby's head was out before I got to the hospital, and it was very hard work and very tiring, but THERE WAS NO PAIN! Because I knew what was going on, and I knew about relaxing the lower muscles and pushing only with the upper muscles, exactly the opposite of the "like a bowel movement" crap they tell you, which is completely counter-productive and will cause the vagina and vulva to resist, which causes the muscles there to separate rather than to stretch, which causes PAIN! and tearing. Or that "little snip", which should be totally unnecessary. Plus if those muscles separate rather than stretch, they don't go back and you end up loose.
I do know whereof I speak.
Anyone who wants to argue that they have more experience in these matters and they know I'm wrong, simply has the wrong experience, dealing with frightened tense women who have been taught to push wrong and to expect pain and who feel no control.
So there!
**Note that women who deliver "by surprise" in their kitchens, or in a taxi, with no meds, nobody taking over, never say anything about pain.
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Daughter took an interesting anatomy class last year. The class got (relatively) fresh cadavers, and, in groups of three, over the course of the class, they took their cadavers completely apart.
Daughter was fascinated by all of it, of course, but one thing was surprising to her. In anatomy books and everywhere else, when there's a diagram of what's inside, they all show the liver "here", the spleen "here", the kidneys "there", the pancreas "over there", the intestines "just so", and so on. The diagrams always look pretty much the same.
'Tain't so. When the students visited each other's cadavers, they discovered that the organs were all over the place. Some higher than expected, some lower, some more toward the center, some flat-out reversed or backward, some much larger or smaller than expected. It seems it isn't really all that easy to predict where you'll find something. Or even that it will actually be there.
Cool. Makes laparoscopic surgery a treasure hunt.
(I'm remembering the surprise when we discovered that Jay had only one HUGE kidney. Now I'm wondering why the doctors freaked out over that.)
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