I would really like to have a drug free birth. I heard there was a certain type of class I should take to learn how to make it easier to go drug free. I also heard that people that participate in and teach these classes are pretty gung-ho about all this, and that they sometimes can get a little radical. They often paint doctors in a bad light and cause women to fear doctors and hospitals. So I emailed the instructor and voiced my concerns just asking her if she thought this class would still be a good fit for me, considering I was not interested in hearing about why I should fear my doctor or hospital, and also that I am not fully committed to a natural birth. She assured me it would still be a great class.
So Stephen and I paid our $50 deposit (of $300 total) and went to our first class this evening. As one would expect, hippies are generally the type of people that participate in classes like this where everything is natural, etc. More power to them. I have nothing against hippies, and even have friends that are hippies. This class fit that mold exactly, with the exception of me and Stephen. Our instructor brought a snack which was homemade yogurt, home grown strawberries, and homegrown cantaloupe. Now, I like to eat healthy, but let me tell you, homemade yogurt is gross, and all the homegrown strawberries and cantaloupe in the world cannot make it worth eating.
But on to the class. It was me and Stephen and two other couples. That's right, two. That should have been my first clue. A birthing class is not the setting that you want to be in such small numbers. You are talking about slightly awkward things, not to mention the awkward videos you are watching (yes, even in the first class!) and the strange positions you are getting into, you can't exactly snicker from the back of the room. We were only about 3 feet away from our instructor and everyone else in the room. Our instructor brought her two kids to class. So every few minutes, in the middle of some awkward birthing statistic or pelvic demonstration, her children interrupted to tattle that the other one drank 11 glasses of water.
We played a "True/False" game of statistics and medical facts. One of my favorite "true" statements was "Doctors kill more people than heart attacks." This is when I first got a little irritated. We moved on to awkward jokes about her children and more statistics on how many people die in hospitals. We then spent the next hour of the class talking about the history of natural child birth. Apparently it began in the 1950s. Funny, because I thought maybe Eve was the pioneer to natural child birth. We then spent the second hour of the class doing exercises and relaxation techniques. The class was suppose to last from 7 to 9, by the way. At one point, all the women were laying on the floor, and our husbands had to hover over us and watch us tense every muscle- touch it to see what it felt like, then we would relax that muscle- and he'd touch it to see what that felt like. His assignment for the week was to watch me sleep. No thanks. Then for the NEXT hour, I honestly don't know what we did besides watch a video from the 60s of five natural births. Of course these women had NO pain, and were basically in a state of euphoria for labor. How nice!
Class was finally over at 10pm (uh hello! I am pregnant here...don't we need to go to bed???) and the instructor wanted to ask me about my clotting disorder. Immediately she questioned the medication I am on and "could not believe" that my doctor was going to induce me at 39 weeks because that is SO early. I forgot to remind her that he went to school for 10 years and has delivered thousands of babies, and she got certified to teach a class. She continued to babble statistics and stuff, and I was flustered and felt like she was attacking my decisions for me and our baby. That did it for me. I decided that we just paid $50 to sit through 3 hours of awkwardness. As we walked out, I was still containing my anger, and Stephen sheepishly asks me what I thought. I told him we weren't going back, and immediately he was giddy. He said he'd been thinking for some time during the class about how much money he'd pay to not have to go back, and it was well over $50.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
She's almost a pound...but what about the other 9?!
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| (16 weeks, sorry it's blurry!) |
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Her name.
I know it may seem a little early to land on a name, but it felt like forever to me. So I say we have landed on her name, but I guess nothing is actually official until it is written on a birth certificate. And even then, pay 50 bucks and you can change that too. Stephen and I have very different opinions on cute girl names, so there are only a small few that we both actually like. So we picked Blakely because we both liked it. I knew a girl in high school named Blakely, and I mentioned it to Stephen and he LOVED it. So since he loved it, I loved it. So that's her name.
The middle name has a little better story. We decided a long time ago that we wanted to use family names for the middle name. And not just a random Gertrude that just sounds good with the first name. We wanted to pick names from people in our family that have qualities that we hope our children have. We have several people on the middle name list, but it should come as no surprise that my mom was one of the front runners. Her middle name is Lynn.
My mom is a person of extremes. I don't mean that she is particularly adventurous or that she takes risks or does much that is really all that exciting (sorry, Mom). I mean that the characteristics she has, she has them to an extreme. One of my favorite examples of this is her bedtime. An understatement about my mom would be that she is not a night person. By that, I actually mean she goes to bed around 9pm. I'm not exaggerating, ask my dad. So when my mom goes to bed early, and she does more often than you'd think, that means she goes to bed BEFORE 9pm. I definitely hope Blakely inherits this great quality of going to bed early. However, the characteristics that actually made us want to name Blakely after my mom are her hard work, sacrifice, and generosity. She is all of these things to an extreme.
The best example I have is our hangout spot in highschool. All mine and my brother's friends hung out at our house all through high school. We didn't have a particularly amazing house. It wasn't big. But we did have a few items that made it easy for us and all our friends to hang out. We had a basketball goal, and a trampoline. But more important than these things were those characteristics my mom had. She always had an unlimited supply of cokes and food. Any of our friends could come over at any time. My mom was so welcoming that many times our friends would end up sitting at the kitchen table hanging out with my parents instead of us. During the summer, our friends would stay at our house well into the middle of the night. This was a sacrifice for my mom since she goes to bed at 9pm and our house is small. I am sure she could hear everything that went on. All the while my friends and I were freeloading off my mom's generosity, she was also taking care of my younger brother, Micah, who is deaf and mentally retarded, while also keeping up with a full time job.
My mom is the hardest working, most serving, most generous person I know. I could go on about the money that she spends on other people and the things she does for our family. And my dad is obviously a generous person too, but I think he was lucky enough to have my mom rub off on him (no offense, Dad!). I know that everyone in our family would say, including Micah (if he could talk), that we are all better people because of my mom. I wonder if my mom always slept through our ruckus or if she would ever just lay awake listening to the ridiculous conversations teenagers have. Now that I am going to be a mom, I really hope that we can make a home where Blakely Lynn and her friends want to hangout all the time, and I think at least sometimes I'll stay awake and listen.
The middle name has a little better story. We decided a long time ago that we wanted to use family names for the middle name. And not just a random Gertrude that just sounds good with the first name. We wanted to pick names from people in our family that have qualities that we hope our children have. We have several people on the middle name list, but it should come as no surprise that my mom was one of the front runners. Her middle name is Lynn.
My mom is a person of extremes. I don't mean that she is particularly adventurous or that she takes risks or does much that is really all that exciting (sorry, Mom). I mean that the characteristics she has, she has them to an extreme. One of my favorite examples of this is her bedtime. An understatement about my mom would be that she is not a night person. By that, I actually mean she goes to bed around 9pm. I'm not exaggerating, ask my dad. So when my mom goes to bed early, and she does more often than you'd think, that means she goes to bed BEFORE 9pm. I definitely hope Blakely inherits this great quality of going to bed early. However, the characteristics that actually made us want to name Blakely after my mom are her hard work, sacrifice, and generosity. She is all of these things to an extreme.
The best example I have is our hangout spot in highschool. All mine and my brother's friends hung out at our house all through high school. We didn't have a particularly amazing house. It wasn't big. But we did have a few items that made it easy for us and all our friends to hang out. We had a basketball goal, and a trampoline. But more important than these things were those characteristics my mom had. She always had an unlimited supply of cokes and food. Any of our friends could come over at any time. My mom was so welcoming that many times our friends would end up sitting at the kitchen table hanging out with my parents instead of us. During the summer, our friends would stay at our house well into the middle of the night. This was a sacrifice for my mom since she goes to bed at 9pm and our house is small. I am sure she could hear everything that went on. All the while my friends and I were freeloading off my mom's generosity, she was also taking care of my younger brother, Micah, who is deaf and mentally retarded, while also keeping up with a full time job.
My mom is the hardest working, most serving, most generous person I know. I could go on about the money that she spends on other people and the things she does for our family. And my dad is obviously a generous person too, but I think he was lucky enough to have my mom rub off on him (no offense, Dad!). I know that everyone in our family would say, including Micah (if he could talk), that we are all better people because of my mom. I wonder if my mom always slept through our ruckus or if she would ever just lay awake listening to the ridiculous conversations teenagers have. Now that I am going to be a mom, I really hope that we can make a home where Blakely Lynn and her friends want to hangout all the time, and I think at least sometimes I'll stay awake and listen.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Nice to meet you
Well here I am blogging world. I am 20 weeks pregnant today, and to celebrate I decided to swallow my pride and start a blog. I have actually thought about it and wanted to for a couple of years now. I say swallow my pride, not to knock bloggers (I mean, I am one, right?) but because it is such a scary thing to start. What if no one reads it? What if I have nothing to write about? What if my friends find out and make fun of me? So I am swallowing my pride, because I no longer care about those things. I know two people will read it: my mom, and my friend Katy. And like Katy said, they are the only ones that matter anyway. And of course I will have something to write about. I could talk to myself for hours, so now I will just put it on a blog so others can know what I talk to myself about. And if my friends find out and make fun of me, well, that's ok.
Why did I decide to start a blog, you ask? Well, a few reasons. First of all, I have always thought I loved writing. Not writing stories or anything like that, just writing whatever I am thinking. My friend Katy and I email back and forth, and we really don't talk about anything important, we just sortof talk about whatever we are thinking. She says that we should change all the names and publish our emails into a book. It would be a good read, I can assure you of that. I also always wanted to write an autobiography. My husband thinks this is arrogant. But it's not like I think I have any sort of exciting life or anything, I just think people would probably enjoy to be inside my head sometimes. Another few reasons is that I sortof read 3 blogs. I am sure that number will expand now that I am officially in the community. It all started when I got pregnant. I was so curious about everything with pregnancy and I found two people that I knew were also pregnant, but further along than me, that had blogs. I wanted to read about the weird things that were happening to their bodies, the weird things they ate, and when they started to show, etc. So I started reading them. One of these ladies I know well, one I only know a little. The third person I only knew as an acquaintance in college, and I have to admit that the reason I started reading her blog is because she was really cute before she had a baby, really cute after she had a baby and I wanted to know what she looked like in between. She sort of gives me hope that I too can be cute again after a baby. And not to my surprise, she was cute during as well. She is actually the one that really made me want to start blogging. In the 3 years that Stephen and I have been married, we have taken a total of probably 15 pictures. Seven of those were on our honeymoon. I have no excuse for this. I realized, now that I am having a baby, that we have nothing to show for the last 3+ years of our life. And when I am old, I will only remember general things, and not the useless details that I want to remember. This girl said that she hopes to one day get each year of blogs printed into a book for her to keep on her shelf and read when she and her husband are old. How sweet. So I thought that I wanted to do that too. I want to be able to remember everything about my pregnancy and having a baby, and I figure there are at least 2 people that want to know those things too. Here's my downfall: I talk too much. So I will stop there, in fear that if it were much longer then you would stop reading anyway.
Why did I decide to start a blog, you ask? Well, a few reasons. First of all, I have always thought I loved writing. Not writing stories or anything like that, just writing whatever I am thinking. My friend Katy and I email back and forth, and we really don't talk about anything important, we just sortof talk about whatever we are thinking. She says that we should change all the names and publish our emails into a book. It would be a good read, I can assure you of that. I also always wanted to write an autobiography. My husband thinks this is arrogant. But it's not like I think I have any sort of exciting life or anything, I just think people would probably enjoy to be inside my head sometimes. Another few reasons is that I sortof read 3 blogs. I am sure that number will expand now that I am officially in the community. It all started when I got pregnant. I was so curious about everything with pregnancy and I found two people that I knew were also pregnant, but further along than me, that had blogs. I wanted to read about the weird things that were happening to their bodies, the weird things they ate, and when they started to show, etc. So I started reading them. One of these ladies I know well, one I only know a little. The third person I only knew as an acquaintance in college, and I have to admit that the reason I started reading her blog is because she was really cute before she had a baby, really cute after she had a baby and I wanted to know what she looked like in between. She sort of gives me hope that I too can be cute again after a baby. And not to my surprise, she was cute during as well. She is actually the one that really made me want to start blogging. In the 3 years that Stephen and I have been married, we have taken a total of probably 15 pictures. Seven of those were on our honeymoon. I have no excuse for this. I realized, now that I am having a baby, that we have nothing to show for the last 3+ years of our life. And when I am old, I will only remember general things, and not the useless details that I want to remember. This girl said that she hopes to one day get each year of blogs printed into a book for her to keep on her shelf and read when she and her husband are old. How sweet. So I thought that I wanted to do that too. I want to be able to remember everything about my pregnancy and having a baby, and I figure there are at least 2 people that want to know those things too. Here's my downfall: I talk too much. So I will stop there, in fear that if it were much longer then you would stop reading anyway.
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