May 9th, 2008

60% Cesarean Rate and NOBODY is paying attention

So, in noticing the alarming number of women in the May 08 Expecting Club having c-sections, I decided to do a little informal research.  I spent about 20 minutes sorting through the first 43 birth stories I found and guess what?  Oh, just guess….. come on….. It's right there in the Subject……………

Yes, out of 43 births, 26 of those were by c-section.  That is a whopping 60% c/s rate, and we're only a week into May.  It's obviously not slowing down, and it looks like I'm the ONLY person who noticed it.  It's a good thing I don't post on Ivillage anymore because I'd be seriously trying to wake those women up right now, which wouldn't make me any friends.  People really cannot handle the truth.

Well, what are you gonna do?  America is experiencing a birth crisis right now, and it seems to only be getting worse.  Yes, I blame the greedy doctors and insurance companies, but I blame the women even more.  Women are being subjugated by letting the very thing that makes them a woman be silently stripped away. The ability to produce human life WITHOUT any involvement from modern medicine is a great gift…. and here we are, letting a male-dominated industry convince us that we're not capable of it.  I do truly believe that what keeps women from being the more dominant gender is the fact that very few women question the status quo.  When Betty Frieden admitted she wanted to work outside the home, the other women who were trapped in theirs told her to shut up.  When the suffragettes fought for our right to vote, many women took the men's side, afraid of rocking the boat and losing the few privileges that came along with being a powerless wife.  Do I even need to remind people of Thalidomide babies?  Women listened to their "expert" doctors then and look what horrific epidemic came out of that.

And here we are now… letting doctors tell us our bodies are too broken to give birth, because inductions and c-sections seem so appealing those last few miserable weeks of pregnancy.  It's too bad so many women who fall victim to this realize all too late how much damage they are doing to themselves.  I am one of those women.  No matter what, my first c-section will affect every pregnancy I'm ever blessed with.  And I will never get over that.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that the shear existence of these Expecting Clubs is totally unhealthy to the pregnancy process.  I mean, when else in your life would you know of SO MANY women due around your due date?  And when you're pregnant and uncomfortable, and you see other women having their babies before you (even if they're due weeks before you) you get miserably jealous and start thinking it's a great idea to kick your fetus out too.  I understand.  I felt the same exact way during my last pregnancy, especially because I was due at the END of the month (and actually delivered on the first of the next month) and it seemed like everyone in the whole wide world was having their baby except me.

God, that was so unhealthy.  And here I am with a uterine scar because of my impatience.

Well, I digress.  These women are strangers and as much as I care about the health of ALL women, I can't do anything about this horrifying 60% c/s rate.  All I can do is keep MYSELF informed and educated, and hope that other women learn what I have learned about the miracle of birth.

May 7th, 2008

Where, or Where, Did My Little Guy go?

Something strange is happening.  Pictured here smiling gleefully while brushing his teeth, my little boy has morphed into someone very different recently.  And I really hope this change is temporary. 

Last night, he was like Bizarro Jonas. He ate dinner at Grandma's house, and John had him home by 8 pm.  Normally he would have just come in and gone to bed without any issues, but he refused to go to sleep.  He stood at his door screaming and crying his little eyes out.  Holly the Doula was coming over, so we kept putting him back in bed and letting him try to calm himself down.  After 45 minutes of non-stop screaming and banging on his door, I couldn't handle it anymore so I broke my own rules and brought him downstairs with us.  I would normally never give in like that, but this was unlike anything we've ever experienced.  I've never heard him scream like that.  I know he's not sick either.  First of all he's never cried like that when he was sick, and He's been acting strange in many ways over the last month or so. 

Last night after Holly left, we put him back in bed and of course he started screaming, so I decided to lay down next to him.  This is a very unusual thing for us.  He NEVER needs/wants anyone to lay with him when he falls asleep.  In fact, if anyone is next to him he WON'T go to sleep, but last night was just the opposite.  As long as I laid next to him perfectly still, he was totally calm and drifting into sleep.  But the minute I tried to get up, he'd start bawling.  I stayed with him until my back was aching from trying to teeter on his tiny-little-toddler bed, and then I decided it was Daddy's turn.  My god…. leaving the room to get Daddy was heartwrenching.  As soon as I got up, Jonas jumped out of bed running after me crying hysterically.  I know that OTHER kids do this at bedtime… but not MY kid.  Jonas has always been the World's Best Sleeper.  I have never witnessed anything like this out of him before.

So Daddy laid with him until Jonas fell asleep at nearly 11 pm (!!!) and he was still sleeping when we left the house at 8 am this morning.

Now… over the last month I've been chalking his behavioral changes up to simple Toddlerisms.  But the more I talk to other experienced moms, the more I realize that Jonas's behavior change is more likely a reaction to this impending birth, and my stress associated with it.  I know that I'm a nervous wreck all the time.  I know I'm not focused on Jonas as much as I used to be.  I still love him so much my heart aches, but I'm very much inside myself right now, thinking about almost NOTHING other than this birth.  And I now think that Jonas is absorbing all of my stress hormones, which makes me feel terrible.  I don't want him to be stressed out.  I don't want to make him feel insecure or unstable.  I want so badly to calm myself so that he doesn't have to feel all this anxiety, but I honestly can't figure out how to deal with his feelings when I have no idea how to deal with my own right now.

I just keep thinking that this is temporary.  After Jules comes, though there will be a period of adjustment of course, I think the harmony will return to the house.  Hopefully Jonas will then understand what all the commotion was about, and we can get busy being a family again, instead of being totally absorbed with pregnancy-related-feelings.

Oh Jonas.  I love you so much.  Hang in there, buddy….. we're almost there. 

May 5th, 2008

What If I Just Stayed Home?

I really, really, really do not want to have this baby in a hospital.  And I don't want to drive 1 hour and a 1/2 through hard contractions to GET to the hospital that I don't want to deliver in either.  So, what if I just stayed home? 

I wanted so badly to find a homebirth midwife at the last minute, but stupid insurance won't let me change providers at this point, so, if I wanna have this baby at home, I'd have to do it all by myself (well, meaning without anyone medically trained.)  I think under normal circumstances that would be a perfectly logical thing to do, but I have this stupid prior ceserean complicating things.  Goddammit.

I'm really dreading labor at this point.  I don't even want to give birth.  I'll just stay pregnant forever, thankyouverymuch.  This sucks.  That is all.

April 30th, 2008

What I Want for Mother’s Day

• A Patio Set
• To meet Jules via a successful vaginal birth
• To be back in my pre-preggo jeans before I leave the hospital (what, a girl can dream, can't she?)
• To find out that my scholarship money from Loyola came through
• To be pleasantly suprised by the $$ of my Short Term Disability check instead of horribly disappointed
• Flowers would be nice
• And so would some jewelry (though I know we can't afford any)
• And last but not least…. just some peace.

April 29th, 2008

When Abnormality Becomes the Status Quo

I guess I half-expected that my epiphany about the birthing industry was late coming, and that most other woman already knew all this before I did.  After all, there are so many books, studies, and articles advocating natural childbirth (or at least childbirth free from systematic interventions) that I assumed everyone else was already hip to this.

And during my last pregnancy two summers ago, the women in my July 06 Ivillage Expecting Club all seemed much better informed than I did.  I don't remember there being a large number of "scheduled" births.  Perhaps I just didn't notice, but it felt to me like I was one of the few women who insisted on evicting my kid before he was ready – and even I waited until 41 weeks.

That's not the case in the May 08 Ivillage Expecting Club though.  The question on that board is more a matter of WHEN you'll be induced/sectioned, not IF you will be.  And when mommies come back from their inductions/sections, none of them have anything really bad to say about it.  Even those who ended up with a ceserean because of an induction somehow believe that their ceserean was one of the "necessary" ones.  Perhaps they're shell-shocked.  Or actually believe that the baby's "heart decels" had nothing to do with the Pitocin they were on.  Or maybe they just don't know any better.  I've seen stories on this board of women being induced as early as weeks before their due date.  Now, as much as I don't trust my doctor to keep Pitocin away from me, I KNOW he would not advocate evicting a baby before the due date.  He specifically said to me last week that he had a collegue who sectioned a woman at 39 wks (at her request) and the baby was born with severely underdeveloped lungs.  Baby had to stay in the NICU for four weeks.  Lotta good the impatience did that woman.  He thought her and her doctor were both idiots.

Now, I realize my bad induction/ceserean experience is not how every woman ends up feeling about it.  The inductions that are successful are the ones that probably didn't even need to be performed anyway because a successful induction means the baby was just about to come out on his/her own anyway.  But I'm informed now enough to feel like these women who are "scheduling" their births are just asking for trouble.  I mean, do you really think that "well, my family will be in town then" is a good enough reason to do something so unnatural to your body?  I mean, I can certainly understand induction POST-dates and/or if the baby is in some sort of actual distress…. but to choose induction or a section out of convenience?  Who ever said having a baby was convenient?  Is a uterine scar convenient?  Or even worth it?

This pregnancy my aging grandparents wanted to schedule a trip for the baby's arrival.  My grandmother (who had 5 children and should know better) kept calling me to ask me "when" the baby was coming – as if I'm actually supposed to know.  Now, to save them some $$ on plane fare, I'm sure I could have "scheduled" Jules's arrival to fit their schedule, but since that does seem like one of the more ludicrous things a person could do, I chose against that.  I also know that I could get an extra 2 weeks of paid maternity leave if I just went ahead and had another c-section, and despite us desperately needing the money, there is No WAY I would put a price on my baby's birth like that.  Two more weeks of pay is not worth another scar on my uterus.

So, I'm not sure if I just didn't notice these things happening in my last EC, or if things have really gotten worse over the last couple of years, but I'm just realing from this.  The audacity of doctors to think that a woman's uterus has some sort of on/off switch — the audacity of some women to think that they should fit a birth into their schedule — and the shear sadness of these attitudes and practices becoming "normal" is all enough to make me very sad. 

I'm not sure why I get so emotionally invested in the choices of other people, but perhaps it's because I believe that these "choices" are setting a standard that is grossly contradictory to what is healthy and normal.  Or maybe I'm just a judgmental asshole.  Either way….. Idon'tlikeit.