The Business of Being Born

my sister sent me the link to a great documentary called The Business of Being Born. it's all about the medical industry and how maybe doctors and hospitals are not doing what is best for delivering mothers. i found the documentary to be biased toward midwives and home births, but the facts that it presented were hard to deny. and i felt very validated by what it was presenting. to explain why, i'd better share my birth story...

caleb was due on august 20th, but i was not surprised when the 20th came and went because my mom always carried her kids longer than expected (i was about 2 weeks late). usually my doctor doesn't let women go longer than a week overdue but we she was out of town the week of the 20th so we scheduled an induction for the 29th. i had an ultrasound that week to make sure that the placenta was still looking good and caleb didn't show any signs of distress. everything was wonderful. now i look back and wish someone had told me that i could say "no" to the induction. i would have liked to give it a full 2 weeks. but i didn't know... and i trusted my doctor.

i went into the hospital and they started pitocin. which i hated. contractions are supposed to start out more slowly but not mine. i went from none to minute-long contractions with at most 30 seconds in between. it was awful. after about 4 hours of that they checked me and i was still only dilated to a 6 and was not making any progress. i chose to get an epidural so that i could rest a bit. it helped (mostly on one side of my body), but i didn't like that now i was confined to bed for the rest of the labor. one thing just led to another. external monitoring wasn't enough so i was given an internal contraction monitor as well as internal fetal heart rate monitor. awful. and caleb wasn't doing so well with the hard contractions of the pitocin. so they stopped the pitocin but it wasn't getting better. to make a long story shorter, i was scheduled for a c-section but at the last minute caleb's heart rate increased, they started pitocin again, and i was allowed to labor on my own for a while longer. finally, after about 2.5 hours of pushing, i was a mom!

i guess what was hard for me was that i felt one intervention (pitocin) led to another which led to another and it was a huge downward spiral. now, i appreciate doctors and all the amazing medical interventions we have, but i truly believe my body would have been able to give birth without all that extra "stuff" getting in the way. and that's what the documentary pointed out... how amazing a woman's body truly is and how they were designed to give birth. i felt like all the frustration and confusion i felt during my labor was explained by the documentary.

lest anyone think it was all bad, let me tell you of a few high points. some amazing nurses fought for me to not have a c-section. my doula, merrell, helped more than words can describe. troy was an amazing support and partner to me throughout the entire ordeal. God sustained my spirits and answered prayers left and right. i have an amazing and healthy son. and i've learned a lot. next time, i'll be getting a midwife and probably delivering at a birth center.

so anyway, for those of you still reading... it's an interesting documentary. you should check it out.

fuzzi bunz update...

no more leaking! for the past 2-3 weeks now, our fuzzi bunz leaking issue has been solved. here's the routine: for normal awake times, caleb wears a regular fuzzi bunz diaper. for nap time, we double up on the liner, and for bedtime, he wears a disposable. it's a lot to keep track of, but it's working for us and i get the best of both worlds... cloth diapers to help the environment and keep him from getting diaper rash, and no early wake-ups because of leaking. hooray!

pulling up

caleb can now pull himself up. not quite to his feet, but to his knees.. it's so adorable to watch because he has to work so hard for even that much. it started because i put all his toys in the bottom drawer of his dresser. and then i open it up during play time and he crawls right over to it. but in order to see into it and pull stuff out, he needs a higher vantage point. enter the pulling up. he usually just pulls everything out, but sometimes he looks as though he's really choosing which toy to play with.

hair cut

i got my hair cut this weekend. it was sort of spur of the moment, sort of not. see, i have curly-ish hair. and, while i like it, it frizzes if it gets played with too much. and caleb loves to play with my hair. so, i spent most of my time with my hair pulled back. so, i decided to cut it. then i started asking around for who to go to and everyone that was recommended was so expensive. my hair just isn't worth that much money to me! i decided to try a beauty school... but did i go to someplace nice like gene juarez or aveda? no... i went to a little place called bellevue beauty school. i wouldn't recommend it as it definitely didn't inspire confidence, but i actually really like my hair. it's short and cute.

swimming

yesterday, we took caleb swimming for the first time. it was sort of spontaneous; we got a call from friends of ours in our neighborhood who were heading to the pool so we packed up our stuff and met them there. at first, caleb really didn't like it... it was very different from the bathtub! but toward the end, he was smiling and kicking and loving it. he never did use his spring float, but just hung out in daddy's arms the whole time. we will definitely be doing more of this as the summer continues!

mondays

mondays are long days. in case you hadn't heard, troy is going back to school to get his master's in computer science. he has classes on monday nights, which means that i have a long monday! it starts when caleb wakes up (which, this morning was WAY TOO EARLY) and then troy gets home sometime after 10pm. as if that wasn't long enough, troy needs to take the car on mondays so that he can get to school. i get the car every other day of the week, so i don't mind, but it can often make the long day seem longer when i can't go anywhere. fortunately, i have the stroller so we just take long walks a few times a day.

the destruction phase

a couple of months ago, my friend megan came to visit with her son. she mentioned something about the "destruction phase" that kids go through where they like to dump things out and take things apart. but not put them back in or back together. i'm starting to see hints of that with caleb. he used to be fine playing with just one or two toys for a long time. but now, he likes to have lots of things out at the same time. and his new favorite discovery is that the books on his bookshelf can come off! fortunately, he gets so excited about getting 1-2 off the shelf that he leaves the rest alone, but i know this is just the beginning.