She's having a baby....

Yup, that's me. I'm having a baby. In fact, my doctor thought I was going to have her tomorrow. Because his completely banana's receptionist (her name is Suffron) called me at 10:00am to inform me that my "surgery" is scheduled for tomorrow at 7:45am.

First of all, please do not refer to the birth of my daughter as surgery. I may have been referring to it as "gutting me" and "cutting her out of me" for the last 2 weeks, but I'm allowed. You are not. And second of all, please give me slightly more than 24 hours NOTICE about said surgery. Not 21.25. And third of all, you're insane and I know you can multi-task like no ones business, but could you pretend to listen to me?

I realize that my baby could, at any point, decide today is the day and we'd be off to the races, but that is OK. This is her birth, so she can dictate the time. But in absence of being afforded that possibility, I will control it and that means keeping her in my womb until the latest possible moment. And the latest possible moment is not 7 entire days before she is DUE! So no, she will not be born at 7:45am tomorrow, despite it being St Patrick's Day, and everyone thinking I should have jumped at that chance. I cancelled that appointment, and asked to be placed BACK on the wait list. She thought I was crazy (along with a few other people in my life) but thankfully obliged. I will now be waiting for a phone call, giving me less than 24 hours, but at least occurring, for my daughters BIRTH on Friday or Monday.

I am feeling much better these days. We met with the midwives this morning, and she was very optimistic about the c-section, and said something I hadn't really thought about properly. She said "no matter how this baby comes into the world, this is still her birth and a moment to be cherished. Whether she is born vaginally, or through an incision, it is her birthday, it is still special and we will still celebrate it". And she is RIGHT! And I am happy to hear that she will be there, doing many things to help this experience be positive, wonderful and exciting.

I also need to give mad props (yes I just said that) to 3 bloggy women who have helped me immensely over the last 3 weeks. I had to explain to the hubs that while he might not GET this whole blog/Twitter world I have found myself living in as of late, he should appreciate it. If not for all of my Twitter friends, and these 3 in particular, I definitely would have wallowed longer in my self pity than I did. I needed someone to help me pull my fat head from my tiny ass. And none of my real life friends have had an experience like this that could empathize and then kick my butt into gear. My real friends are awesome, and have helped me just get through the last weeks on a personal level, but in terms of getting out of my head and learning to keep my eyes on the prize, I need to say THANK-YOU to 3 very special people.

First of all, Mae from Parenting in Progress. She has spent a ridiculous amount of time emailing me, and really making me THINK about all my issues with the c-section process. It's 1 part tough love and 3 parts sincere desire to help me have a wonderful birth experience like she did with her daughter Piper. Due to a medical condition, Mae needed to choose between a c-section for her daughter, or a labour which would potentially leave her blind (to read Mae's story, go here: The Story and then here: The Slice...The Yank ). So while the catalyst for her decision was different than mine, she shares my experience of having to make this choice. And she has done wonders for helping me get over myself. So thank you Mae, because you have certainly stopped the flood of tears I was previously experiencing. And she is the first one to tell me that this birth will be special, no matter how she arrives, and she even beat the midwife to making me realize it. Unfortunately though, the midwife will be with me when Mae cannot, so I needed to also hear it from her.

Then we've got KristiMaristi who is super cute, super awesome and super funny. She not only walked me through HER c-section experience, which she went through for EXACTLY the same reason we are about to go through this one, but she sent me a photo of her little Milo's cute baby butt in the tub which made me laugh and smile on a day I couldn't swallow without the tear bubble popping up. Not to mention she is sending me a baby gift AND watches 16 & Pregnant with me...she's a friend and I'm so happy to have met her....even if it's been only virtually (and one day, it will be IN REAL LIFE).

And last, but certainly not least, is Emmie Bee . I think she is my first official twitter/blog friend! She's the first one to ever find me on Facebook and friend me. And let's not forget, she has hds 3, count them 3 babies via c-section. 2 of them just 2 short weeks ago. Emily helps me by telling me not to take it so seriously, and giving me pep talks, sometimes 140 characters at a time. She's shared her experiences with me, and helped me stop freaking out about major abdominal surgery. She's a friend, who also watches 16 & Preggo with me (and may have introduced me to it?), and who bought baby girl something from baby gap (how DID I get SO LUCKY?).  And when I make the trip to see Kristi, it will also be the trip to see Emily. And there will be perfectly round headed babies EVERYWHERE!

I honestly didn't know blogging would ever result in meeting so many wonderful people. I know, everyone says this, but I really wasn't expecting it. And I am so lucky that these 3 women, and many others out there (hopefully you know who you are) have helped me. Because honestly, I don't know where I would have found this kind of support, and I've truly needed it.

Stay tuned for updates on when Baby Chilla will be here....OH and I'm moving to my mommy blog...as soon as the design is ready...I will let all my Google Friends Connect followers know by message, but if you're a lurker who doesn't follow there, and you want to know where you can find it, please email me at babechilla@gmail.com for the URL. I won't be posting it here for my special reasons :D

And since you've read ALL the way down here, I think you should probably give me a click, because I've slipped off page 1 to #28, since I've stopped harassing people while being completely self absorbed this week.......and doesn't my baby deserve to come in on page 1?

When right side up is upside down...

36.6 weeks into this pregnancy, the hubs and I headed to our midwife appointment...blissfully unaware that things had changed with our baby girl. We sat, we talked, we covered the basics. How am I feeling, were we ready, and hey did you want to have a vaginal swab (GBS test)? Sure, what girl doesn't want a 6 inch swab up her vajay at 9:45am?!?!?!

All that was normal, and then the midwife did the heartbeat and position check, and my heart sort of sunk. Luckily her heart beat was clomping along like a little horsey at 130 bmp, so I knew she was ok. But the midwife was having a hard time verifying position. But hey, she's the student midwife so no problemo, let's get one of the pro's. Problem is, the pro couldn't tell baby girls head from her butt either. Egads!

Now we KNOW for a fact she's been head down for a long time. At 33.6 weeks, we confirmed she was head down. The midwife felt her "nestled perfectly in the pelvis. Head down ready to go". So I am not worried. No baby in their right mind would flip the wrong way this close to their birthday, that would be crazy, and stubborn and just plain difficult. Then again, this is my kid, who is already demonstrating just how much like me she is.

So I go for my "emergency ultrasound" at the most hilarious little clinic. It's in the heart of our Chinatown, on the 2nd floor of perhaps the most confused mall ever. Chinese food, herbs and cell phone providers all in one place... conveniently located next to the medical clinics of Wong and Wong. Whatever I'll take it, they had an appointment for me 2 short hours after the visit with the midwife. My darling friend G joined me, as the hubs was not able to, and waited patiently for me in the waiting room...

I was 100% sure the tiny little woman performing my scan would tell me that lump under my ribs was my kids bony butt and away we'd go. That was right up until she put the doppler on my lump and said "and that's her head".

"Excuse me, pardon, fuk the what, how stupid are you, did your degree come from a Fruit Loops box, you've gotta be wrong you insane women my kid would not flip like that" was sorta what went through my mind. There may have been a few more expletives involved.

As I lay there, choking back tears, sure this woman would not "get' why I was upset, I tried to wrap my head around this thought. My child is heads up, which is actually upside down in fetus world.

We left the appointment, I called the hubs and we stopped to get Chinese food, because really, when in Rome...

Back to the office me and my friend go, and I sit in my office the rest of the day, choking back the tears, whining incessantly on Twitter (but getting AMAZING support) and wondering what went wrong.

I also remembered back to the previous Thursday, when in retrospect is when the baby flipped. At 36 weeks 1 day, in the evening at my BFFs house, my baby flipped out. Literally. I had felt funny all afternoon. I'd been crampy, and feeling a tad on the nauseated side. I was starving by the time we put her daughter to bed and ate our dinner, and I knew something was going on. My belly had jetted out so far for a moment, on the opposite side that she'd ever been, that my bestie even commented. I felt crampy in my legs and even had a hard time walking back to my car when I left. It was certainly strange and I actually thought for a minute or 200 I might be going into labour. But it all went away and I thought nothing more of it. Now I know, that was her pulling a gymnastics move.

I spent the better part of Tuesday night crying uncontrollably. This is equal parts fear and confusion, and 9 month pregnant hormones. It is cruel and unusual punishment that your 10 months of sobriety has to end with a shit show of excess hormones. If a girl ever needed to slam back the better part of a bottle of wine, now is the time. I was just gearing up to get all excited about the arrival of my baby, and she threw me a curve ball. And I've never been a good catch.

I am ashamed to admit I felt a little anger towards her. Not really at her, but I just had this sense of "why NOW?" And I felt slightly less excited about her arrival. Not less excited to have her. I'm still just as excited to hold her in my arms, but I am now not looking forward to potentially going into labour. I am not looking forward to it because I don't want it to come unless she flips. Now there is a whole new sense of fear surrounding her arrival. Not the hopeful curious fear that comes with having no sweet clue what to expect, but a raw fear that exposed a nerve which is now perfectly poised to be struck repeatedly.

I've heard from everyone that no matter what, she will get here and I will love her. And I have no doubt about this. As long as she arrives happy and healthy, I will be ecstatic. I know it could be a lot worse, of course I am SO lucky that she's healthy in there, that she's made it to term and that my pregnancy has been complication free up until now. I know a c-section is not the end of the world, and that my life will not be ruined if I have to go that route. I know that bottom line, the most important thing is that soon, we will be a family of 3. But knowing all of this does not make me any less sad. My rational side is fully aware and happy, but my emotional side feels like I lost something.

There are 2 types of people - the ones who get how I feel and the ones who really don't. And I don't blame the ones who don't, because frankly, what is the big deal? And maybe somewhere the old me, the one that existed before my baby ate my rationality (thanks Mae for letting me know what happened!) agrees with them. It's not a big deal, who cares. I sometimes miss that girl. But let's face it, she was drunk a lot so probably shouldn't be trusted. This me, the one who has poured 9 months of heart and soul into researching birth stories, reading really motivating and empowering books about birth, and meeting with her midwives and doula with the excitement of a little girl getting her first dolly on Christmas, is crushed. I'm crushed because I'm not getting what I wanted, and maybe that is a lesson I should learn here. I think my times of living for me are over sooner than I thought. It's time to start living for my baby. This is not to say I appreciate her position right now, or am willing to concede to it. Just that there is probably a lesson in there somewhere.

All hope is not lost yet though, and this is how I stopped the tears. We've looking into all our options. I spent the better part of Tuesday and Wednesday evening inverted in some fashion or another. I've been trying to convince her that it will be better for HER if she flips. I know she's just a stubborn brat like me, and that is why she is going against the grain. So I need to appeal to her in the right way, in that this decision to flip has nothing to do with me and everything to do with making her life easier. And I've been trying to tell her that. But she's also a fetus, so I've promised her multiple pony's (and neglected to mention I mean of the "my little" kind). I've visited a chiropractor and started the Webster technique with her (2 more next week). This morning, I did an hour's worth of acupuncture and moxibustion. I will repeat this on Tuesday. Tonight I am going to go do handstands in my BFF's pool. I am going to try to keep calm and relaxed and hope that she chooses to flip back. And I'm about to go visit an OBGYN who specializes in both version techniques AND vaginal breech deliveries.If she doesn't flip back, then she wasn't meant to. And I will just have to accept that my kid is that darn special, even from -1 month old.

If it comes down to a C-section being the best and most safe way to bring her into this world, I will opt for it in a heart beat. But I will continue to seek out alternative this, and hope she flips naturally right up until the last milisecond before they cut me open.

Birth Stories - The Arrival of OMyFamily's OBaby

As we know, I'm scouring birth stories on the internet like a fiend. I am reading them, I am watching the videos, and I am borrowing books from the midwife, all to help me learn from other people's experience. I am trying to empower myself to believe that I am capable of doing this without drugs, and without fear. I am trying to surround myself with the positive stories, because as women we're forever told of the horror stories of labour. 

I think it's partly because misery loves company. People who have had crazy stories like to share them with anyone on the street. And don't get me wrong, I've had plenty of friends who have had plenty of different kinds of births. Hearing their stories is always welcome. I want to share in their lives, and hear about their experiences. I want to know how they brought their cute little bundles into this world, and whether it was short, long, natural or cesarean, I want all the details.

The details I don't want, are from the woman at the dollar store, whose cousin's best friends hair dresser tried to have a natural child birth, and ended up tearing so bad she had to have 15 stitches and 3 re-constructive surgeries. Or the waitress at the lunch place, asking me with a wince on her face when I'm due, and when I tell her, responding with "the good news is, once the baby is out, you have something to be thankful for, because labour is HELL and you want to die". 

These stories are not helpful, and they aren't productive. And some of my friends have had some pretty intense labour experiences, and not one of them has ever told me labour was hell or that they wanted to die. 

So when I read stories like the one from Allison at OMyFamily, I just melt. It's exactly the story I hope to be telling you all when we welcome our daughter into the world. 

Allison starts her 2-part story pretty much how I feel about this whole attempt at a natural child birth. You see, there is, for SOME REASON certain women who think those looking for a natural experience are either REALLY crunchy, or just plain smug. And neither has to be true. Sure either CAN be true, but let's face it, there is a huge grey area in there, where women like me and Allison (and a million others) sit. This is the area where we just want to try to let our bodies do what they were built for. And the area where we're afraid of big scary needles in our spines, temporarily paralyzing us from the waist down. 

In order to ensure you don't find her smug, Allison even prefaces her story with "If in the following story you perceive a twinge of smugness or any symptoms of i’msoholy-ididn’thaveanepidural-itis, please know that it was by no means intended"

She then goes on to say something you almost never hear, something so welcoming and unexpected, I've actually read it several times. Something I will be thinking about when I am in the dredges of labour and doubting myself. She said "You must believe me when I tell you that OBABY’S BIRTH WAS AMAZING. I want to shout it because I think that every sister, aunt, grandma, stranger, and otherwise well-intentioned woman who has ever intentionally or inadvertently scared the buh-geezus out of a first time mom regarding labor and delivery NEEDS TO HEAR THIS:

BIRTH CAN BE WONDERFUL"

The rest of her story is a beautiful, heartfelt account of how birth can be a wonderful experience. I am 100% sure she experienced some level of pain, but she never even mentions it. The pain did not define the experience for her, and it is not the overall theme of her fairly long labour. She even manages to have a smile on her face in all the photos she's shared. From this story, I believe she truly enjoyed the process of bringing OBaby into this world, and I can only hope my experience is the same. Heck, I'd settle for almost as good. 

This is one of my favourite birth stories so far. So go, read it. Empower yourself to enjoy your birth, and get over the fear that's come from years of TLC programming, movie births and crazy people behind counters in retail locations. 

OMyBaby's Birth Story

Birth Stories: Starting with Baby Rabies

In an attempt to get my vajay to unclamp itself and allow my darling daughter to exit without a spaghetti head (as an aside, the hubs has often said, since long before we were even married let alone pregnant, that we were going to have spaghetti children...I'll let that gem sit with you while you continue to read...or while you quickly run to the "unfollow" button and close this browser), I have decided to collect, read and record birth stories. 

The fact of the matter is, most of the labour stuff I know is coming from you people anyways. From women (and 1 man so far) who I know only since starting to blog, whose lives I've learned about 140 characters at a time, and in some cases, whose real names I don't actually know. This is not to say I don't have friends with children, I do. But for some reason, sitting down and trying to talk to them about their experiences rarely gets us anywhere. 

There are a lot of reasons for this. Often, they don't want to talk so intimately about the time they pooped on their husbands. We get easily distracted. I feel awkward asking them to detail the exit of their children from their bodies. And their kids are here, and are a lot of fun, so I'd rather play with those babes than discuss their arrivals. Also, of the people I know who have had babies, some have had medical interventions based on necessity, some have had early arrivals and some have spent the majority of their labour in a car, praying to make it to the hospital. And my goal here is to surround myself with as many natural, positive birth stories as possible, so I can, as mentioned above, convince my vajay it should unclamp. And finally, most if not all my mama friends don't remember their labour in the amount of detail I feel like I need. They never wrote it down, and it's been 4 years, or 1 year or 10 months or even 6 months, and they just can't recall. 

So I put the word out to the Twitter world, and got a little help from my friends. Before I knew it, I had offers for birth stories coming from people I'd never spoken to. I had offers for natural birth stories, planned and emergency c-sections, hypnobirths and water births and almost every kind of birth I can imagine (I also learned about something called a Lotus Birth from Mandy at Harpers Happenings, and well, ick). . So I decided, I'm going to read and post them all (or as many as I can before I go into labour, because birth stories will end with the arrival of my daughter). I feel like everyones story can contribute equally well to my experience. And at the end of the day, I have no idea what kind of experience I am going to have just yet, so I might as well be open minded and get prepared.

I start my "birth story recap to get my vajay ready" reporting business with Jill from Baby Rabies. I start here for 2 reasons. 1 being that she is single handedly responsible for about 75% of the stories I received. She has a HUGE following (and for good reason, she's downright hysterical) and she put it out on her twitter and in they came (when Jill tells you to do something, you do it). The second reason is that anyone who has the guts to put the word "Baby" and the word "Rabies" in the same sentence, let alone build their internet persona around it, is a person I want to be best friends with. 

Jill's story is perfect. She thinks it's long winded, but as you can tell from my ever loquacious nature, you can never use too many words for me. In her usual style, she combines the right amount of hilarious anecdotes ("These are definitely NOT Braxton Hicks. I’m now noticing my mucus plug. Yay! My vagina finally sneezed!"), and hopefulness ("The car is packed by 6:30. I’m imagining we will be in it by the time lunch rolls around"). Her incremental reporting, her brutal honesty and her unintentional words of advice ( “How can I do this again?” but I stop that train as soon as possible and promise myself to only think about each contraction as they come. That frame of mind helps immensely.") give me a lot of hope for my ability to do this. 

One of the things I love about Jill and her story, is that it really resonates with me. Because I know that even if I DO manage to get through this without any drugs, and come out the other end alive and with working lady parts, I won't do it quietly. I'm not going to be one of those women who avoids using the word "fuk", who doesn't tell her husband he's a bastard for doing this to her, and who doesn't shoot bodily fluids at her midwife. No, like Jill I will do all those things. I will worry that the women in the other rooms are getting scared because I'm screaming my bloody head off. Like Jill, I'm going to yell "NO" emphatically when they ask me if I want to see the head emerge with a mirror. 

If you've come this far, then good for you. I should probably apologize to Jill for posting her story first, and prefacing it with a novel of my own opinions. But that's the point. To take these stories to heart, and get out of them what I will. To gain an ounce of strength and power, when the pain I feel is getting to be too much and I'm screaming for an epidural. To take something from every story, to remember as I experience that "ring of fire" everyone talks so much about. 

So before I talk anymore, here is the link to Jill's story. Go there, read it. Then spend the next several days pouring through the rest of her posts, and learn to love her like I do, and like so many other mommy bloggers out there do. It's one of the few things you can read on the internet, which isn't a waste of your time. 

Baby Rabies Birth Story

**Because I can't ever just shut up, I have to add, in Twitter-chatting about this post with Miss Baby Rabies herself (and OMyFamily) I got even MORE gems of wisdom out of Jill, and there are seriously things I will take with me into that delivery room and beyond. So here, I share some more:

babyrabies @Babe_Chilla When I ran my marathon I saw an awesome sign that said "Pain is temporary, pride lasts forever." Use that for inspiration :)

OMyFamily @babyrabies @babe_chilla My favorite motivational phrase was "You can do ANYTHING for 5 minutes." It's SO true. One contraction at a time.

babyrabies @OMyFamily @babe_chilla Yes! That's the way you have to think of it - small increments of hell followed by relief :)

OMyFamily Amen. RT @babyrabies: @Babe_Chilla I have to admit, I owe a lot to wanting to prove people wrong.