Bits
I'm going to review this Slate article whenever I am tempted to accede to anyone's efforts to make me feel had about having the baby sleep in our room.
There's been a lot of kicking lately. Or rather, I'm guessing there's probably the same amount of kicking as before, but I can feel it more regularly now.
At that midwife visit last week, I learned that I had a "big jump" in weight (i.e. I'm at 140 now, where I started at 129 or so pre-conception.) I think this is as it should be, and I was merely catching up to where I would have been had I not spent so much time feeling so miserably ill. However, I am surprised to find that I have some slippery-slope feelings of "Oh, no, I've started gaining weight and I'll never stop!" Also I feel guilty that I've been so sedentary, and think it would feel better if I were back to exercising more. It's hard to tell what's unnecessary guilt and what's reasonable motivation.
As the results of the ultrasound had arrived, the midwife told me that the placenta is attached in the front, and that this means there is a stronger chance that the baby will come out facing the front "sunny-side-up" (which in birth terms, is backwards--it should be facing your spine.) (And it's only "sunny-side-up" if you're lying on your back to give birth, which I assure you will not be the case. I'm pretty sure I'll be on my hands and knees and hiding under the bed.)
Great. This backwards birth position means longer and more painful labor, and as the midwife reported about her own child, a lot of head and facial bruising that can last weeks. (The squished baby, not the mother.)
However, she also reported that a recent British study suggested that one thing that encourages this "sunny-side-up" positioning is slouching. That's right, bad posture is bad for one more thing. Recliners are apparently bad for the same reason. So I am making an effort to sit up straight all the time, to make plenty of room in there for it to get into the right position. (This is easier to remember whenever I feel a little mnemonic kick.)
She was able to locate the hearbeat immediately with the doppler this time, as the baby's back was at my front (a good sign?!). If you haven't heard what a fetal heartbeat sounds like somewhere or other, then just do this: in the back of your throat, make a sound like the "ch" in "challah" or "loch", then with the front of your mouth modulate the swooshing sound coming out to say "wow, wow, wow, wow," continually. That's pretty much exactly how it sounds.
The other thing that happened is that when I referred to the baby as "he" as I have been doing for a while now, the midwife said, " 'He'? What's that about?" I said we still (purposely) didn't know the sex of the baby but I'd been calling it "he" for a while now.
I thought the ultrasound tech said that she was not going to write down the sex, but...now that I think about it, there are some different issues with boy and girl babies (like length of gestation), so maybe she just meant she wouldn't write it down for us, but did put it in the report that the midwife got? Did the midwife give away something she thought we already knew (as nearly everyone else can't wait to find out the sex of the baby at the 20-week ultrasound)?
So now I'm trying to figure out if she was just questioning my use of "he" because how could I know, or because she knows something different. Maybe my feeling that it's a boy is just because we have a macho girl, like mummy. (At which my husband can't contain his sarcasm, -- I expect it protects his ego to imagine I am a gentle little flower.)
So, anyway--birthing classes begin tomorrow evening. Yikes.
There's been a lot of kicking lately. Or rather, I'm guessing there's probably the same amount of kicking as before, but I can feel it more regularly now.
At that midwife visit last week, I learned that I had a "big jump" in weight (i.e. I'm at 140 now, where I started at 129 or so pre-conception.) I think this is as it should be, and I was merely catching up to where I would have been had I not spent so much time feeling so miserably ill. However, I am surprised to find that I have some slippery-slope feelings of "Oh, no, I've started gaining weight and I'll never stop!" Also I feel guilty that I've been so sedentary, and think it would feel better if I were back to exercising more. It's hard to tell what's unnecessary guilt and what's reasonable motivation.
As the results of the ultrasound had arrived, the midwife told me that the placenta is attached in the front, and that this means there is a stronger chance that the baby will come out facing the front "sunny-side-up" (which in birth terms, is backwards--it should be facing your spine.) (And it's only "sunny-side-up" if you're lying on your back to give birth, which I assure you will not be the case. I'm pretty sure I'll be on my hands and knees and hiding under the bed.)
Great. This backwards birth position means longer and more painful labor, and as the midwife reported about her own child, a lot of head and facial bruising that can last weeks. (The squished baby, not the mother.)
However, she also reported that a recent British study suggested that one thing that encourages this "sunny-side-up" positioning is slouching. That's right, bad posture is bad for one more thing. Recliners are apparently bad for the same reason. So I am making an effort to sit up straight all the time, to make plenty of room in there for it to get into the right position. (This is easier to remember whenever I feel a little mnemonic kick.)
She was able to locate the hearbeat immediately with the doppler this time, as the baby's back was at my front (a good sign?!). If you haven't heard what a fetal heartbeat sounds like somewhere or other, then just do this: in the back of your throat, make a sound like the "ch" in "challah" or "loch", then with the front of your mouth modulate the swooshing sound coming out to say "wow, wow, wow, wow," continually. That's pretty much exactly how it sounds.
The other thing that happened is that when I referred to the baby as "he" as I have been doing for a while now, the midwife said, " 'He'? What's that about?" I said we still (purposely) didn't know the sex of the baby but I'd been calling it "he" for a while now.
I thought the ultrasound tech said that she was not going to write down the sex, but...now that I think about it, there are some different issues with boy and girl babies (like length of gestation), so maybe she just meant she wouldn't write it down for us, but did put it in the report that the midwife got? Did the midwife give away something she thought we already knew (as nearly everyone else can't wait to find out the sex of the baby at the 20-week ultrasound)?
So now I'm trying to figure out if she was just questioning my use of "he" because how could I know, or because she knows something different. Maybe my feeling that it's a boy is just because we have a macho girl, like mummy. (At which my husband can't contain his sarcasm, -- I expect it protects his ego to imagine I am a gentle little flower.)
So, anyway--birthing classes begin tomorrow evening. Yikes.
posted by liz at
11:20 AM
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