Week 27: More of the strange, childbirth ed

Still enjoying the antics of my geographic tongue, which for several weeks has caused my tongue papillae to do their own doodling. If I'd had my camera, sense of humor, and decent lighting in the same place when it started, I'd have started a time-lapse montage of the doodles on my tongue just as a silly retort to all those bump time-lapses I see, tongue-in-cheek because it's taken me this long to be able to tell the difference between my pregnant belly and the fat belly I had a year ago. (Hint: the fold above one's navel finally smoothes out. I still have a crease there, though!)

Other strange symptoms that have crossed my attention: The occasional worrisome elevation of my pulse to about 120 for up to an hour at a time; the very sudden (within a week!) expansion of my rib cage by a whopping three inches (no wonder I can't breathe!), and a change in the cell-phone sensation in my lower uterus. It now pulses from time to time; shorter duration but longer intervals of sensation. So help me, Dean is going to put his ear to my belly one of these days and instead of a heartbeat, he's going to hear the T-Mobile jingle and then a mischievous giggle. I'm sure of this.

Speaking of Dean, haven't yet persuaded him to dad-blog but hoping I can soon; I'd really like to get his perspective on our childbirth education class. We're the only second-timers there, in a room of 15 other couples all on their first. It's our first together, of course, and I need a refresher after 17 years, but more importantly, I want Dean to get a better understanding of how to work with me and guide me through the experience. He gets very squeamish during the class, and when I notice this I tend to take his hand and squeeze it, or lean on his shoulder to let him know I'm there and I understand. During dinner afterward, I realized what this was. "I'm banking my positive energy with you," I told him. "So that you can feed it back to me when I'm in need of it." In other words, I'm being strong for him now, as I have been since the beginning of this pregnancy; I resented it during the first trimester but now I am enjoying it because I do see it as feeding him with the energy I will need in three months, and knowing it can be safely stored with him.

About 8 months in our relationship, I was felled by a gallbladder attack that landed me in the emergency room at about 3 in the morning. Dean didn't leave my side the entire night, even when I vomited prolifically and was howling in pain. Similarly, when Dean dislocated his shoulder earlier this year, ER staff had a hard time prying me away from his side. Glad they did though, because it was later that week I found out I was pregnant and the further I was from the X-ray machine, the better. I've realized that with both of us, when we see the other suffering we do all we can to radiate healing energy and compassion toward the other. And I sense it radiating back to me when we're practicing breathing. I feel that love and I'm just amazed by it, and know oh so well that Bunky was created out of that love.

Well, that and a generous helping of absinthe. It was a crazy Valentine's Day night, after all.

So anyhow, here's hoping I talk him into writing a post soon. I'm wagering his perspective on childbirth education will be much less mushy and much more hilarious.

Week 25: Feeling Pretty, Oh So Pretty

....and that's saying a lot, considering that on Monday I felt like I was coming down with something horrible, but I did chalk it up to pregnancy fatigue, took the afternoon off, and rested up and now feeling much more glow-y than I think I have all summer. Of course, perhaps it's because I got my eyebrows cleaned up and so my face looks more normal to me than it has in a while, or perhaps it's because in 95˚ super-muggy weather without any air conditioning, of course we're all going to positively glisten. But since it's taken this long, til the last week in July, for the humidity and hot temperatures to set in this year, I'm taking it in stride.

Bunky is a very active baby but right now seems to be enjoying a siesta. I am wondering if he's starting to get into a groove of sleep and wake.  But all in all, we're doing ok. Weight gain a wee bit higher than I'd like, but a lot of it is coming on now as the baby gets bigger, and I really only have two more months of weight gain before I hit the top end of the curve. Had a minor blood pressure scare, but it was back down by the end of the appointment; I really think I'm going to start doing yoga workouts before my appointments and start doing more focused meditations. I'm through most of the pregnancy anxieties at this point and starting to process the labor and delivery anxieties--most of which revolve around a tangible fear that my first labor and delivery was so near-perfect that there's no way I'm going to be able to do a re-run. But statistics really are in my favor; easy labors (as labors go) run in my family and Elder Son's rapid arrival does more to establish that I can handle a large baby with no problem than would be the case if he wasn't around to be Mr. Precedent.

But as I was describing his birth to the midwife, her face was brightening. More people should tell their positive birth stories, she said. And she reassured me that we would work together to make sure I had another one, easing some concerns I had about being able to eat and drink in labor and her own caeserean rate (8 percent). One thing I didn't know about her that made me really happy to hear was that she had originally been a midwife in practice with the obstetrician who delivered Elder Son, and that obstetrician, other than ordering an amniotomy to trigger active labor (I'd been walking around at 3 cm with no idea I'd been in passive labor), steadfastly avoided ordering any interventions, even going as far to fuss at the nurses for giving me an IV without his asking for it.

I registered for childbirth education classes. To be honest, they are more for the Mister than for me; I'm realizing I would love to teach childbirth education, would love to be a doula, would love to be a midwife like I originally planned to do when I was 23. Because I can't imagine a health-care reform landscape without midwives and doulas. At the very least, I want to find freelance writing opportunities that fit this new passion of mine--or, rather, this reactivated passion of mine.