APPOINTMENT DATE: OCT. 6

Ever since I was 6 months pregnant with Jack-Evan, I have wanted to use a mid-wife - specifically one at a Christian Birthing Center about 4 miles away from my home. My heart was set on it.

I had such a terrible experience with prenatal care with my 1st pregnancy that I felt there must be something better out there, right??

I’m not really into the homebirth, all natural, endure the pain aspect of childbirth, especially after enduring horrendous “crowning” pain even with an epidural last time. So my plan was to use the birthing center for prenatal care, and then have the midwife join me at our local hospital up the road from the center. After all, their website had said, “Whether home birth, birth at our center, or hospital birth….”

Seemed simple enough.

So on Oct. 6, at 4:00 pm, my parents loaded up with me in the car to head to my scheduled tour at the birthing center. Dad would watch the baby, while mom went on the tour with me. Kevin wanted to be there so badly, but he couldn’t get off of work.

Walking in the center, I was comforted by the sights, smell, and homey charm of the place. Surely this was the place for me!

After filling out the paperwork, the main midwife joined me.  Her plan was to catch me up with the current tour already in session.  We began talking, and I mentioned I would be having a hospital birth.

And that’s when she dropped the bombshell on me.

They have “no jurisdiction to perform a birth at the hospital”.   WHAT??   In other words, if I used the birthing center midwife for prenatal care, and then gave birth at the hospital like I wanted, she would not be able to attend the birth.

Now, if you can imagine, think about what it feels like to be a child wanting an ice cream cone.  You picture that ice cream cone all day long.  Your parents promise you an ice cream cone all day.  You hear the bells of the ice cream truck coming past your home.  Running outside with your money, all hot and sweaty from playing, you ask for a strawberry ice cream cone.

“Sorry, we’re fresh out of ice cream,” says he.

Imagine the shock.  Imagine the disappointment.  An ice cream truck with no ice cream??

A MIDWIFE WHO COULDN’T ATTEND A HOSPITAL BIRTH?

I was devastated.  I had psyched myself up for using this birthing center for over 2 years.  I had promised myself, during my prenatal visits with Jack-Evan that ONE day, some day, I would be able to use that wonderful, homey looking, Christian birthing center.

And now I was hearing that I couldn’t unless I went all-natural and gave birth IN the center itself.

So right there in the hallway, I began to cry.  I couldn’t help it, emotional pregnant hormonal lady that I was.  How embarrassing!  But I couldn’t stop.  In between heaves, she pulled me into the examining room and coaxed my history out of me, and the story behind why I wanted to use them.  I told her of all the mistakes the other doctor’s office had made in my first pregnancy prenatal care.  I told her of how they had blamed me when they forgot the 20 week anatomy scan (and didn’t discover the error until I was 30 weeks).  I told her how I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes after failing the hour test by only 4 points and then vomiting within 10 minutes of the 3 hour test.  And how I was given absolutely no support after this diagnosis and simply told “not to worry about it”.  I also explained how at 32 weeks, I went in for a required “stress test” because of the gestational diabetes and forced to stay for 4 days in the hospital on a medicinal drip, being told I was going into premature labor.  I did not dilate any during this time and felt absolutely no contractions.  I knew the baby wasn’t coming!  Yet because the monitor detected “faint” contractions, they decided what was best.  I also told her how, after the 4 day hospital stay, the on-call doctor (the same one who eventually attended my birth at 40 weeks) reviewed my charts and said I should NOT have been diagnosed with full gestational diabetes.

I then explained to the midwife how at 10 pm the night I gave birth the on-call doctor walked in the room and TOLD me they were now starting pitocin drip.    I said absolutely NOT!   I was already 8 cm’s dilated at that time (I progressed a little under a CM each hour).  I was progressing just fine by myself, thankyouverymuch.

He just shrugged, while he and the nurse exchanged annoyed looks, and said “I’ll be back at midnight and we’ll decide then.”

HELLO!  Over here!!  Angry laboring lady here in the bed…I SAID I do NOT want pitocin!  I’ve heard way too many horror stories (and known of 2 personally) where the effects of pitocin were terrible and many have resulted in a C-Section.  There was absolutely no medical reason for me to have that dripping in my poor laboring body.  I was progressing just fine in all aspects and even with the epidural in me, I could feel the pressure of each contraction just fine.

I was fully dilated within 2 hours (by 12:15 am) and gave birth to Jack at 2:04 am (May 4, 2008).  Yet to this day I do not know if they started the pitocin without me being aware of it.  They could have put anything into that IV drip if they had so desired, especially since they acted all night as if I had no right to choose how my birth progressed

I also told the midwife how excruciatingly painful the actual crowning and birth was, even considering I had an epidural.  It was such horrendous pain that I felt as if I had exited this world and entered the pits of hell itself.  Surely if childbirth hurt that bad WITH an epidural, how could I endure a non-medicated childbirth?

Then the midwife started in on how childbirth is “pressure” and not really “pain” and it’s all in perception.

And I could have slapped her.  Really.  I know the difference between pressure and pain.  It was pain.  There’s no way around it….knife stabbing, fire burning, skin tearing, gut wrenching, haul your heart to Davy Jones Locker kinda of pain.

After about 40 minutes of standing there explaining my story to the midwife, I felt somewhat better.  I wanted to use this center for prenatal care so badly, and the midwife was far more comforting and pleasant than any other medical professional I had encountered.  So, I continued with the rest of the tour.

The center was beautiful.  There were two appointment rooms that looked like a regular OBGYN appointment room.  Then there were 2 birthing suites that were just gorgeous.  The first had a lovely kingsize bed, couch, mood lighting, stereo hookups for your ipod, gripp bar for laboring when standing, and a soothing water fountain.  In the attached bathroom was a huge jetted mood-light jacuzzi for birthing.  The 2nd Queen size room had all of the same amenities, but was even more beautiful!

Down the hall was a gorgeous restroom for family, a main kitchen, a library stocked with educational birthing materials (books, videos, etc.) you could check out for free, as well as a large conference room for the various educational classes they held.

After the tour, Kevin arrived for the main consultation, while my Mom & Dad took Jack-Evan back to their house.  During the consultation, the midwife spent over 60 minutes reviewing center rules, standards, menu recommendations, appointment layout, pricing, and other various little tidbits, including some samples of raspberry flavored Vitamin C powder.   I also took a few moments to show Kevin around the center as well.

Upon paying our $50 consultation fee, I was given 2 recommendation sheets for other clinics because the birthing center outsourced all ultrasounds and labwork.  The birthing center fees, as I just found out, did not cover the outsourced fees.  Those would need to be paid directly to the other clinics out of pocket, and a few days later I would need to have an ultrasound for dating purposes since I could not remember when my LMP was.  I would also have to have full blood work done as well.

Finally everything was completed and we said our goodbyes to the midwife.

Kevin & I left the center that night around 7 pm, full of excitement about using such a wonderful, caring place for our 2nd pregnancy.  I even psyched myself up into a state where I began to think I could endure a non-medicated waterbirth considering all of the amenities I would have at my disposal - not to mention the wonderful midwife we had just bonded with.  After all, I would have 9 months to practice the different techniques, calm my nerves, and instill in myself a sense of confidence that my body could do what it was designed to do.  Perhaps, after 9 months of wonderful caring prenatal care, I would be fully capable of having that really cool water birth.  Perhaps, just perhaps, after 9 months of getting to know the same woman and knowing that in all likely hood she would be at the birth as well (something I didn’t experience with my first pregnancy as I had a different person for every visit), that I would be capable of having the waterbirth.

I could definitely do this.

Or could I?

Thank you all for the well wishes and congratulations on my last post about baby #2!

We’re definitely excited.  My first doctor’s appointment isn’t until October 6, so I don’t have an official due date yet.  Sometime next May seems to be a good guesstimate though, as we first learned about the pregnancy with Jack-Evan in early September as well (2007).  My LMP this time was in early August (it was July 31 with Jack).  So the timing is exactly the same from what I can tell.

By the time this baby arrives, Jack-Evan will be 24 months old.  Two years feel like a perfect age gap for siblings!  It’s what we’ve always wanted for our kids, although we’ve never “planned” it that way.  We just let what happens, happen.  So far, it’s happening nicely.

How it happened?  (Oh no, not that!)   What I mean, see, we left for Upstate New York on Sept. 9 for a week visit with my husband’s family.  I knew then that I was *almost* late, and I had the strange feeling that I might be pregnant.  I let Kevin in on it a day or so before we returned to South Carolina.  Well, *it* never came, and by the time we finished the 20 hour car trip back home on Tuesday, Sept. 15, we were so anxious that Kevin headed to Walgreens that night to pick up a pregnancy test (at 9:30 nonetheless!  Bless his heart!).

Well, Kevin started some popcorn whilst I took the test (with Jack-Evan playing at my feet, of course.  No privacy for poor Mommy.)

One blue line appeared immediately, but the next line didn’t show up.  My heart sunk.  (Kerplunk).  Oh well.  Not pregnant, I thought. No big deal, right? (Wrong, I was devastated)

I put the test down, stood up, sighed, casually picked up the box and noticed that the line that had appeared immediately was the “yes, my dear, you definitely are pregnant” line.  I grabbed the test, and ’shore nuff, the 2nd “control” line was now coming in strong.

I seriously started shaking.  I mean, 23 seconds ago I was disappointed that I wasn’t pregnant.  Now that I WAS, here I am, shaking in fear like a leaf in October.  I yelled out to Kevin, “Are you watching wrestling???” (a throw back to what he was doing the night I told him about the pregnancy with our #1,  Jack-Evan).  He said, “Ummm…nooo.” Then he ran into the bathroom and asked “Why???”.  I silently showed him the test.  Of course his next words were “Are you sure?!”   Then he started sniffling his nice, sweet man-tears.  He was crying and I was scared to death.

He was far more excited than I was at that moment.  And I wasn’t quite sure how to articulate anything I was feeling to him.

I’m not sure why fear gripped me so hard during those few seconds.  I suppose it was the shock.  Well, “shock” not in a sense that I wasn’t expecting the outcome (I was and had thought so for a week), but “shock” as in “Wow, this IS reality and my life is about to change yet again.”  The deep fear, I suppose, may have also come from the fact that since this is my 2nd time around, I KNOW all of the pain I will endure and the trials.  My fears during pregnancy #1 were mainly shadow fears, the kind where I was so new at it that once something happened, it was over and done with. I could easily pass off all of those fears as pretty much “unfounded” for the most part.  But now, I DO know how terrible contractions & labor & crowning feels.  I DO know how my body may be reacting throughout this pregnancy.  And now I have 8 months in which to anticipate everything I KNOW will happen.  Tiredness, numerous needle pokes, mind-numbing doctor visits, and excrutiating pain - it’s all very real, and the memories of my last pregnancy woes all came crashing down on my harder than a kamikaze fighter.

Also, the thought of change was part of it too.  Here we are, settled into our routines.  Jack-Evan is my little star, my main squeeze, my little hambone that makes me laugh during the quieter moments when he’s not erupting into one of his famous temper tantrums.  He’s my little poopie head, you know.  My “Tooter” (as we usually call him! He answers to that better than “Jack”!).  Having another child is not just something that is a part of mine and Kevin’s life - it will also change Jack’s life forever.  Our decision to expand our family will impact him, and he doesn’t even know it yet.  His life will change.  Our lives will change.  Routines will change.  We will have to yet again find a new “normal”.

So anyway, the reaction I had that night was so deep that Kevin even half-jokingly accused me of not being excited and happy.  Perhaps it was the look of blatant fear in my eyes? Or maybe it was because I wasn’t joining him in the happy dance he was doing with Jack-Evan.  I was just standing there, frozen, with a bajillion thoughts erupting in my mind.  Of course I was excited…. in my head.  In my head, I desparately wanted another child.  Being an “only child” (and hating it my whole life!), my highest goal in family planning was to have at least 4 children.  But my logical thoughts and dreams for the future took backseat to the terribly deep feelings of dread that my body dived into that night.   It was just pure, raw emotion that swept over me.  I would have never ever expected to feel that way!  And I’m almost ashamed to admit it for fear that I would be perceived as a terrible mother!  I mean, only mothers who hate children and never want more, feel their hearts sink to China upon learning of another pregnancy…..right?  Well, at least that’s what I’ve always figured.  But nonetheless, that’s what happened to me.  I mean, I know the flip side of pregnancy too - the outcome, the beautiful baby awaiting me in the end, the joyous feelings of seeing new life arrive.  So how can I explain my primortal reaction?  I can’t.

In the week since learning of the new baby though, those initial feelings have subsided, and have been replaced by the typical excitement that washes over expectant moms.  I’ve once again found myself stopping on TLC when I catch a sniff of “A Baby Story” wafting by the airwaves.  And once again, I found my buggy pulling me haphazardly towards the pretty pink (or blue?) baby outfits that are just oooohhh so darling.   I’ve also been cleaning like mad the past few days!  Just today I shipped 4 big bags full of stuff to the Goodwill.  We’re clearning out our guest room (more like “junk” room!) to make way for either a nursery for a girl or a play room for Jack (if we have another boy).

As for prenatal care this time…..  With my 1st pregnancy, I was quite naive.  Back then, I started out the 9 month journey with the assumption that doctors knew best.  I ended with the knowledge that if you do not take control of your own pregnancy, things can (and will) turn out quite unpleasant.  So this time around, I have decided to utilize our state’s only natural “birthing center” and a midwife.  (My unpleasant experiences with prenatal care during my 1st pregnancy will probably come out in future posts, so I’ll save my ranting and raving for then.)  I’m not sure yet if I want to go with natural / waterbirth (something the center offers) or epidural at the hospital next door with this one yet, but at least I’ll have the option of what I want to do.  This time I KNOW I will be “in control”.  And that means a lot to me - expecially after having the doctor try to force pitocin into me to speed up labor at 8 CM dialated - when I did NOT need it.

Anyway, thanks again for all the well wishes!  It’s great to see I still have some loyal reader friends here.  I must be going now though.  I’m quite nauseated and dizzy….. unlike my 1st pregnancy (where the sickness totally passed me by), I have experienced morning-sickness-at-night for the past 2 weeks!  Tonight seems to be the worst.  Guess that’s what I get for staying up after midnight though, I suppose.

….we’re taking our dog PupPup to their clinic be neutered. It’s pretty nice - they offer it for only $50. Our main vet cost over $200! His appointment is at 8:00, and we’ll be picking him back up this evening at 5 pm. He wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything after 6 pm last night, poor fellow. He has no clue what’s about to happen. I just hope it isn’t too painful.

In the meanwhile, we’ll be helping my dad clean his yard up - tons of family folks are coming for thanksgiving! Mom is the “matriarch” of her siblings….her 8 siblings…and we’re a very close family. I love when all of us get together, even though I am the youngest one of the “first-grandchild generation” that lives in SC. Almost all of my cousins are at least 8 years older than me….one of them is 44, I believe…and all of the others are at least 8 years younger than me. I’ve always felt like a baby around the older ones and a big, protective sister around the others. But such is life.

Afterwards, we’ll be leaving Jack-Evan with my mom and dad at 5 pm while Kevin and I take the SUV to pick up PupPup. He’ll need to be able to lay down in the back, so we have to remove the baby car seat base to make room to let the seat down.

If I didn’t have a baby, we’d also be headed to the Kelly Clarkson and Reba Macintire concert in Charlotte, North Carolina tonight at 8 pm. Kevin was the 10th Caller on a local radio station trivia contest and won two tickets this past Wednesday (they’re worth around a hundred bucks each).  He was so excited when he told me!  But after deliberating about 3.6 seconds, I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave my baby for that long yet. We’d be gone round trip about 7 hours! Kevin even offered to let me go alone with a girlfriend, saying he would like to see me go have fun for my birthday (Dec. 1), but I passed that up too. I just can’t fathom being away from Jack-Evan yet. In my mind, I know he’d be fine for that amount of time since he’s now accepts sippy cups and baby food, but in my heart, I knew it wasn’t him I was worried about - it was ME. I’d probably have a massive meltdown being away from him. It’s. Just. Not. Doable.  No way, no how.  Maybe when he turns 26 or something, but at just 6 months old?  nope.  Not even the fun of a power vocal duo concert could draw me away from my sweet little baby.  Plus, what if he decides not to take the sippy cup?  What if he just wants good ol’ fashioned mommy cuddles?  What if he starts crying and I’m not there to sooth him?  What if he says MumMum and I can’t hear his calls? what if he turns his head around justso in that way he does that’s so cute, looking for me, and doesn’t see me? What if he thinks I abandoned him?  His reasoning skills and sense of time isn’t too well developed ya know.  I just couldn’t bare it if one ounce of him missed me.  I just couldn’t bare it if one ounce of ME missed him.  He’s my little poopie head, you know.

Anyway, I’m making myself cry, silly sentimental momma that I am.  And I’m not even going anywhere!  Just the thought of being that far away sends me into emotional meltdown.

Luckily I have an understanding husband.  He found someone at work to gift the tickets to, and hasn’t said anything more about it.  He’s quite the nice guy.

So I better go.  Keep PupPup in your thoughts!

One would think that something important should come out of each doctor’s trip.  Especially when you are pregnant.   But this trip was really nothing much to think about.   Shoot, I could have done it over the phone.

Well, ok….everything except the pee-in-a-cup part.

Outside of my routine stuff (blood pressure, weight checking, peeing), the only thing this visit entailed was a short 15 minute talk with my regular female practitioner, Dr. Newman.   I didn’t even had much to ask her.

She was able to go briefly over what happens during my upcoming gluclose test….which I’m scheduled to have at my next appointment - this Thursday, January 24.  (Gosh, is it only a few days away already???  I didn’t realize it was so close!)

Oh - one bright spot with this particular appointment - during all of my previous appointments I had been losing weight (about 3 lbs. off of my starting weight) and that worried us.   This weigh-in was differen though!  I had finally gained weight - to the tune of 7 lbs.   It’s no telling how much I’ve gained since then…..I knew it sure does feel like a lot though!

Ok, now, though.   No chunky jokes, please. :)   My dad has already exhausted them all on me!

Have I mentioned before that my practitioners are female?  At the OB office, I have 2 regular female doctors and then there’s “The Big Guy” as I think of him.  Dr. Reynolds.  He always seemed mysterious (probably because I never met him) and the only thing I knew about him was that he would be delivering my son! 

So…I was excited when I learned I would be meeting with him during my 4th visit. 

What wasn’t so exciting was what happened to me just a few days before my appointment.   We were at church the Sunday morning after Thanksgiving and before my appointment that week when I suddenly became very faintheaded during worship singing.  I sat down quickly to try to overcome the “spell” I knew was coming on but it didn’t help.   Within 30 seconds I started losing my hearing and my vision, I felt nauseated, and also lightheaded.   I was on the verge of passing out!   I went as quick as I could to the back hallways of the church. 

Luckily I didn’t go completely out, but it really scared me.  I’ve had “spells” like those before a few times in my life but not without a known trigger (smelling blood, getting too hot, etc.).  This time it seemed like it came from nowhere.

Well - at my appointment a few days later you can be sure I had a lot going on my mind.  Unfortunately, it was discovered during my routine blood pressure check that I didn’t have a lot going on in my BLOOD though!   My blood pressure that day was 70 over 50.   Doctor Reynolds (during our meeting!) laughed when he first looked at my chart and said that wasn’t enough to keep me from passing out.   As you can imagine, I immediately launched into my experience the previous Sunday.  

He calmed my fears somewhat by saying that low blood pressure in my case was a sign of a good, very strong connection between me and the baby.  It’s just that sometimes the mother’s body is working so hard to take care of the baby that when confronted with the choice of traveling to the tip top of the mom’s head versus traveling a few inches over to the baby, it will more than likely choose the baby in those instances (and, thus, that’s when I pass out).  He concluded that a combination of loss of fluids (I had diahrrea bad that week…eww) and low blood pressure is what made me pass out - and so I was taken off of my prenatals for a few days and instructed to get as much liquids in me as possible and get all “dried out” again.

His final warning for me was to be careful driving places alone (in case another spell comes on)….

…and to keep my head away from church pews….just in case. 

November 1 marked not only my 3rd doctor’s visit, but also my 3rd ultrasound.   I was only 13 weeks, 2 days pregnant at the time so we were thinking it was a little unusual to be on the 3rd already.   You see though, during my first appointment the doctors had noticed what could have been a slight cyst on the baby’s cord so they were keeping an eye on me.

Unfortunately they didn’t tell ME this until the last week of October. (Boy was I hoppin’ MAD!)

Fortunately it turned out to be nothing and everything looked all hunky dory again.

…but anyway…

The exciting news during this sonogram was that the baby showed himself pretty darn good!  The sonogram lady was quite astonished and was like “Uh…hey..do you wanna know what it is?”.  

 Of course!!  (Kevin and I had already agreed that if they could tell this early we both wanted to know, even if it meant him not being there for it)

She said with quite certainty that, yet indeedy, our little baby was a boy.  

We were so excited!  We both wanted a boy first… because of many reasons - a boy will protect and watch over his younger siblings, a “big brother” is always great to have, I’ve always wanted an older brother, Kevin did have an older brother, etc, etc.   I hate to admit though that I was a little taken aback at first, because I really don’t know what to do with a little boy…I’ve only been around little girls….and I would love to have a little girl…but once the shock wore off, I warmed back up to the idea.

The best part (or so I thought) was that we got it all on video tape so I could show Kevin.  Mom and I arrived home with our tape around noon that day.   In my mind I had worked out this big scene where I would fix a nice cozy candlelit dinner and pop in a “movie” to watch and surprise Kevin by showing him his son.   I even pretended to him on the phone that they couldn’t tell what the baby was yet.  “It’s usually too early to tell at only 13 weeks!” I had told him.

Well, in my enthusiasm, mom and I decided to watch the video and show it to dad before I went home for the afternoon. 

And what to my wondering eyes didst appear?

NOTHING.

The screen was completely blank!!  I felt like crying.  After talking with the OBGYN’s office, we determined it was a malfunction in their own recording machine and they offered to bring me in the following Monday for a reshoot.   I accepted, but still, the damage was already done.  So much for my movie with Kevin that night. :(    I gave up and just called Kevin immediately and gave him the big news (I was bursting at the seams to tell him anyway).   When I went back the following Monday, the same thing happened again - the machine simply would not record my ultrasound.  They promised me they’d call me in when they got it fixed.   That was over 2 months ago.

To this day, Kevin has yet to see a moving ultrasound of our son or hear his heartbeat.

After 3 home pregnancy tests confirmed that -yesindeed- a baby was here (August 31), it took nearly 2 weeks to get in to see the Doctor!  I was a little panicked at how nonchalant they were about it, but my mom assured me that they’re in the baby business….they see this stuff every day so it’s no big deal (haha).   I, on the other hand, being a first-time-pregnant-24-year-old, was quite tiffed at their lseeming ack of interest in my newest condition. :)  

Since my husband works during the day - and is paid hourly - it would have been too hard and costly for him to take time off to attend the appointment so he left me that morning with a promise that I would call him immediately afterward once it’s “professionally” confirmed.

I was still employed at the time, and there were only a few people who knew at that time - so I had to take off of work for a few hours that morning without letting the cat..uh..baby out of the bag.  My biggest surprise at the doctor’s office was that they did an ultrasound immediately!  That was very exciting.  The moment my little blob of a baby, no bigger than half a centimeter at that time, came into view I was awestruck.

And then she turned up the speakers.

THA-THUMP! THA-THUMP!

His little heart was just a-beatin’.  172 BPM.   I’ll never forget that moment as long as I live.  I started to cry and the sheer overwhelmingness of it all and (embarrassed) joked to the doctor “This is the part where all the other women cry, right?”.  She assured me it was.

 I had been in a bit of a shock before then….still not quite believing I was actually, finally pregnant.  But that little thing on the screen confirmed everything.   I was only 6 weeks pregnant at the time, yet there he was, squirming on the screen with a heart beating loud and clear.

I swear, I do not know how abortionists can claim that it doesn’t matter if something with a heartbeat that loud lives or dies.   Before now, even with my very conservative Christian background, I had straddled the fence on whether I was pro-life or pro-choice.  This one day decided it all for me immediately.  Just the sound of that little heartbeat influenced an opinion about abortion that I will carry with me as long as I live.   No fetus-or embryo-deserves to die.