Goodnight Mom

You can buy all the onesies, bathtubs, diaper bags, and nursery furnishings you want, but you can’t control the way your baby comes into this world. Maybe you get lucky and your ideal birth plan runs smoothly. Go into labor, head to hospital, listen to Beyoncé, have some pain meds, push, et voilà, baby! (or whatever it might be, that’s not mine just an example. Except for the Beyoncé part). On Friday, following a visit to the hospital to attempt an External Cephalic Version (ECV) –a procedure where the obstetrician attempts to manually turn a breech baby into a head down position. We were told by the doctor that our baby was too small to attempt the procedure, and due to some other factors he wanted us to bring him into the world by c-section ASAP. I tell the details below, I follow the timeline from way back to my earlier post about the breech baby up to yesterday. Before you keep reading, I just want to establish that it may be a hard read, but I’m all OK and baby is OK.  ...

I first heard about Doula’s during Fem*Ex , a community class on gender, power and privilege, that I took in Washington, DC (in 2012). The class was very much focused on the female experience, so we had a module on motherhood, including pregnancy and adoption. I was miles away from any intentions of motherhood at the time, so I don’t remember a huge amount. I do remember learning a little bit about Doulas, the non-medical women who are present at births to provide emotional support to the mothers. And then, one of my good friends and classmates became a Doula! She loved it. A doula is like a personal birth coach. Not only are they providing emotional support to the mother and her birth partner/s during labor, but Doulas also provide a lot of information that the medical professionals might not offer up. They’re not medical professionals, but they know a lot about labor and birth. They’ve done their research and are armed with the latest knowledge and science on birth. As well as t...

It’s a strange thing to be home and away from home at the same time.  Salmon are born in freshwater rivers. Yet they live their fun-filled lives out in the ocean. These fish return to the river again only to spawn (i.e. have babies). In fact, many of them return to the exact river and location of their own birth. Like a salmon, floating up stream (to quote one of my favorite songs ), I have returned to my birth place and hometown of Fareham, England, to have my first child. Side note, “to spawn” technically refers to depositing eggs, but go with it. Steve and I had often talked about where we’d have a baby. England was an option, with me being a citizen and my family here. But it seemed like it wouldn’t be practical with my employment: it would mean leaving my job. On the other hand, we both really wanted to have at least one of us be primary carer for our child, especially for the first few years. As someone who has worked in nonprofits, my income tended to be much lower ...