My mom and sister threw me a baby shower recently. Thanks Momma C and Amy! It was quite a success! And almost everything fit in my suitcases to get it all back to California.
I will get those Thank You notes out soon - once things calm down at work maybe (things are a little nutty with the semester starting).
But a big general Thank You in the meantime to everyone who attended and/or sent gifts!
I'll post pictures when I get some! I was having so much fun, I forgot to take pictures with my camera.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Why Natural Birth?
Some of you might wonder why we have the huge focus on Natural Birth. And we know that some of you are just waiting for our naivete to get blown apart by the reality of experiencing childbirth, but I'll at least explain why we're leaning in this direction.
This focus on natural childbirth comes partially from my philosophy that being pregnant and birthing aren't medical events in most cases. In fact, in many countries with similar infant mortality rates as the US, there are far fewer medical interventions. This tells me that there's either something wrong with American women that makes us ill-adapted for childbearing, or we're doing an awful lot of unnecessary interventions. Plus, genetically speaking, women tend to follow their maternal line, which bodes very well for my ability to have a vaginal, unmedicated birth.
I'll summarize what I've learned from research studies and books on birthing. And keep in mind that this is for information, I'm not judging anyone's past, present, or future choices in these areas. I'm simply sharing what is playing a role in our decision to go for it naturally.
Anaesthesia - both IV and epidural anesthesia (opiate and narcotic types) do reach the baby and can lead to fetal distress, a need for oxygen or intubation at birth, and can impede the normal progression of the baby through the birth canal, affecting how the baby's head and shoulders present (they don't do the normal twist in some cases). Also, these drugs can slow labor and reduce the effectiveness of the mother's ability to push, which lead to greater rates of cesearean and forceps or vacuum delivery due to failure to progress. AND a lot of the drugs that MD's choose for laboring women are drugs that have warnings AGAINST use in pregnancy, breastfeeding, and childbirth (Nubain and Demerole are examples of drugs with this warning). So we're dedicated to avoiding the drugs because there's no such thing as a completely safe one and I want to embrace the experience of childbirth, no matter how much pain is involved - after all - it's pain with a purpose.
Episiotomies - can actually lead to women tearing clear through to the anus, which occurs almost never in women without episiotomies. Plus they lead to longer recovery times and rarely lead to getting a baby out any faster (which is a justification sometimes given for slicing and dicing the woman's perineum).
Also, interventions like pitocin induction and forceps/vacuum delivery and c-sections are often the tools of an impatient provider. Failure to progress is a subjective call which due to the natural variations in time from early labor to birth, is nearly impossible to diagnose as a problem, and thus is rarely a reason in itself to use intervention. Basically, unless the mother or baby are in distress, there is absolutely no medical reason to use any of these. I don't think that these tools are useless - some babies and mothers are saved by them. However, there is research suggesting that they're overused and that many practitioners jump the gun on using them when a less invasive option can resolve issues that typically lead to them. For example, fetal distress often resolves with a simple change of position, which can resolve the issue quicker and with less risk than a c-section.
So we're choosing to go with a natural approach, and our CNM is in agreement that natural interventions be tried prior to medical interventions, as long as there is ample time, should a complication arise. We've based that decision on the research and on the philosophy that in a low-risk situation, nature knows best.
I guess we'll all have to wait and see how it goes, but right now, we're all-systems-go on Natural Childbirth.
This focus on natural childbirth comes partially from my philosophy that being pregnant and birthing aren't medical events in most cases. In fact, in many countries with similar infant mortality rates as the US, there are far fewer medical interventions. This tells me that there's either something wrong with American women that makes us ill-adapted for childbearing, or we're doing an awful lot of unnecessary interventions. Plus, genetically speaking, women tend to follow their maternal line, which bodes very well for my ability to have a vaginal, unmedicated birth.
I'll summarize what I've learned from research studies and books on birthing. And keep in mind that this is for information, I'm not judging anyone's past, present, or future choices in these areas. I'm simply sharing what is playing a role in our decision to go for it naturally.
Anaesthesia - both IV and epidural anesthesia (opiate and narcotic types) do reach the baby and can lead to fetal distress, a need for oxygen or intubation at birth, and can impede the normal progression of the baby through the birth canal, affecting how the baby's head and shoulders present (they don't do the normal twist in some cases). Also, these drugs can slow labor and reduce the effectiveness of the mother's ability to push, which lead to greater rates of cesearean and forceps or vacuum delivery due to failure to progress. AND a lot of the drugs that MD's choose for laboring women are drugs that have warnings AGAINST use in pregnancy, breastfeeding, and childbirth (Nubain and Demerole are examples of drugs with this warning). So we're dedicated to avoiding the drugs because there's no such thing as a completely safe one and I want to embrace the experience of childbirth, no matter how much pain is involved - after all - it's pain with a purpose.
Episiotomies - can actually lead to women tearing clear through to the anus, which occurs almost never in women without episiotomies. Plus they lead to longer recovery times and rarely lead to getting a baby out any faster (which is a justification sometimes given for slicing and dicing the woman's perineum).
Also, interventions like pitocin induction and forceps/vacuum delivery and c-sections are often the tools of an impatient provider. Failure to progress is a subjective call which due to the natural variations in time from early labor to birth, is nearly impossible to diagnose as a problem, and thus is rarely a reason in itself to use intervention. Basically, unless the mother or baby are in distress, there is absolutely no medical reason to use any of these. I don't think that these tools are useless - some babies and mothers are saved by them. However, there is research suggesting that they're overused and that many practitioners jump the gun on using them when a less invasive option can resolve issues that typically lead to them. For example, fetal distress often resolves with a simple change of position, which can resolve the issue quicker and with less risk than a c-section.
So we're choosing to go with a natural approach, and our CNM is in agreement that natural interventions be tried prior to medical interventions, as long as there is ample time, should a complication arise. We've based that decision on the research and on the philosophy that in a low-risk situation, nature knows best.
I guess we'll all have to wait and see how it goes, but right now, we're all-systems-go on Natural Childbirth.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Birthing Class
The one good thing that came out of my bad OB experience was that he recommended taking a Bradley Method birthing course. We found a Bradley class that we could fit into our schedule and dove right in. We'll let you know how the birth goes with this method, but everything we're learning makes intuitive sense. I'm not worried - one of my new colleagues had two very successful Bradley births - so it comes with high recommendations!
One of the most frequent questions we get is, "Is that like Lamaze?" And well, it's hard for us to say since we've never taken a Lamaze class.
From my understanding they're similar in that both focus on unmedicated, natural childbirth, and emphasize the importance of the labor coach (usually the baby's father or a doula).
The difference lies in philosophy. Bradley focuses on embracing the bodily sensations (err...pain) involved in labor and relaxing through deep breathing and visualizing those sensations so that the body can do what it was meant to. Lamaze focuses on deflecting pain through using other focal points (distraction) and breathing in a way that is theoretically supposed to act prophylactically.
Both seem to have good outcomes in terms of women having unmedicated births, Bradley's statistics claim that 86% of women who take the courses give birth vaginally without the use of pain medications of any kind. I couldn't find statistics on Lamaze.
What made me choose a Bradley course was that it's more intensive (12 weeks vs. 6weeks) and that it focuses on embracing all the bodily sensations of birth and working with them, rather than trying to mask them, which can work against their purpose.
If you're curious about the Bradley Method you can check out their website.
Our Bradley course is on Saturday afternoons for 2-3 hours in San Francisco. This is just over an hour away (if there's no traffic), which is hard sometimes, but it does get us out of the house and exploring the city every week! AND it's in the Mission district, where a lot of good Mexican restaurants are so it guarantees that my permanent Mexican food craving gets assuaged at least once each week!
One of the most frequent questions we get is, "Is that like Lamaze?" And well, it's hard for us to say since we've never taken a Lamaze class.
From my understanding they're similar in that both focus on unmedicated, natural childbirth, and emphasize the importance of the labor coach (usually the baby's father or a doula).
The difference lies in philosophy. Bradley focuses on embracing the bodily sensations (err...pain) involved in labor and relaxing through deep breathing and visualizing those sensations so that the body can do what it was meant to. Lamaze focuses on deflecting pain through using other focal points (distraction) and breathing in a way that is theoretically supposed to act prophylactically.
Both seem to have good outcomes in terms of women having unmedicated births, Bradley's statistics claim that 86% of women who take the courses give birth vaginally without the use of pain medications of any kind. I couldn't find statistics on Lamaze.
What made me choose a Bradley course was that it's more intensive (12 weeks vs. 6weeks) and that it focuses on embracing all the bodily sensations of birth and working with them, rather than trying to mask them, which can work against their purpose.
If you're curious about the Bradley Method you can check out their website.
Our Bradley course is on Saturday afternoons for 2-3 hours in San Francisco. This is just over an hour away (if there's no traffic), which is hard sometimes, but it does get us out of the house and exploring the city every week! AND it's in the Mission district, where a lot of good Mexican restaurants are so it guarantees that my permanent Mexican food craving gets assuaged at least once each week!
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Origin of Nugget...
Some of you may be wondering what the deal is with this whole Nugget thing. Well, after an adjustment period of referring to our first born to be as "it" we decided we needed a temporary name. Our dear friend Koos suggested nugget as both descriptive of it's size and symbolic of our big move to California gold country. And there you have it.
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