Irregular labour blows goats....I'm just sayin', s'all.

I have now been in irregular labour for approximately 36 hours. I am growing somewhat aggravated. I am having *crazy* real labour type contractions for hours at a time, but with no real rhyme or reason (some are 2.5 minutes long, some are 30 seconds and they are between 30 seconds and 10 minutes apart). They will taper off for a while and then return full-force. I am not really feeling this is entirely fair.....other women are having babies within hours of their labour starting, but it is going to take me days?!?!?! I sense some injustice in the world.

I have tried absolutely everything: eating pineapple and spicy food, walking, bouncing/swiveling on the yoga ball, hot baths, even making plans (in the hopes of invoking Murphy's Law) among many other techniques. I think the only one I haven't tried is castor oil and I am just not willing to do that to my body.

So at this point, I have scheduled the induction for Sunday....I am *really* hoping (read: expecting) not to have to wait that long.

On a side note, as a rule, I think that pushing presents are a ridiculous concept and mostly perpetuated by the type who are too posh to push. This particular pregnancy has almost convinced me otherwise.

Felt a little like Lost...1, 2, 3, 14, 37, 60, 96, 140

Saw my OB today. Nothing crazy to report.

My blood pressure is high for me...which is still hilariously low for anyone else 96/60....normally it is 80/50ish. The nurse laughs every time she checks.

The OB checked the babe's heartbeat, which was hovering around 140bpm, as usual.

He measured my fundus and it measured 37 weeks, just as it has for the last three weeks.

He did an internal and found me to be 2-3cms dilated. I took him up on his offer of a stretch and sweep in the hopes of moving things along.

We then started talking about induction. He said they normally do that between 1 and 2 weeks after your due date passes. Given the confusion over my due date, I am kind of inclined to take him up on his offer. The date we'd be looking at is February 14th. I am still thinking and will wait until after my biophysical profile tomorrow to make a decision, but at that time I will give the office a call and let them know.

Still here....

I haven't posted in a while because I am basically at a stand-still.

When I went to see my doctor on February 1st, my due date, I got the shocker that they had been documenting my due date as THIS Monday (Feb 8th) due to reports from Dr. Butt having had that date on it. Talk about throwing a person for a loop. I was very upset. I wanted to crawl under a rock until the baby was born, mostly to avoid the "hey, have you had the baby yet" inquiries and the "when are you due" question from strangers. It took about a day for me to come around.

So here I sit, once again, on the cusp of my due date. I am hoping to have this little guy sooner rather than later (like, the next day or so would be nice).

I have been experiencing pre-labour off and on for a couple of weeks now (it is like labour, but it goes away rather than resulting in a baby :P....for the record, we are not talking Braxton Hicks here, but rather full out labour pain that simply dissipates after a couple of hours) and it seems to have become more regular, so hopefully that is a good sign that things are progressing.

I am as ready for this little guy as I am going to be, so now it is just a matter of sitting and waiting.

I have an appointment with my OB tomorrow afternoon and an appointment with Dr. Butt for a biophysical ultrasound first thing Tuesday morning. I am hoping not to make it to either, but I am not holding my breath either ;)

I will pop in with any interesting tidbits that come up over the next few days.

Belly pics - 39 weeks 3 days

What on Earth Was That?

Last night around 8:30pm, I started to feel uncomfortable. By 10:30pm, I would definitely call what I was feeling pain. However, there were no defined contractions - no tightening of my belly, nothing to time, just general pain (like the worst menstrual cramps I've ever had x10).

Dave put some counter-pressure on my back with a hot compress, which eased the pain back there briefly, but I felt like I need that everywhere from my waist to my toes. By 11pm, I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer, so I decided to try to go to bed and get some rest.

Between Dave and I, we got me positioned in bed with the hot compress draped over my waist, touching as much of my back and abdomen as possible. This got very uncomfortable very fast.

I had heard of this thing called "back labour" and, given the amount of pain in my back and legs, I decided to ask my online community friends what their back labour was like. None of their descriptions fit the bill, but some of the positioning eased the pain a little.

I struggled until about 12:30, trying various positions and heating the compress and doing anything else I could to ease the pain. Eventually, sleep took me, despite the pain, which woke me several times throughout the night.

I got up for a bathroom trip around 5:45 and noticed that the bulk of the pain was gone, but it had left behind residual aches and burning. It feels like I ran a marathon or spent the day at the ski hill or something crazy (you all know how sporty I am ;) ). My legs feel like they are on fire and they tingle and everything from my waist to my toes aches.

I honestly have NO idea what happened last night. Babe is moving and seems happy (listened to his heartbeat and it is going great guns). I had worried that he had repositioned himself (and heaven forbid he turn breech at this point), but he seems to be in the same position he was. There don't seem to have been any long-term effects from last nights festivities, but we'll see what the rest of today (my birthday, I'll have you know!) brings.

BAH!

Everyone back your regularly scheduled programming...nothing to see here.

Apparently I am miles from labour. The doctor almost snickered at the irony, given that I had just been telling him about the false labour I had had over the weekend and we were pondering whether it had made any changes. Not cool!

Nesting or Just Common Sense?

I've been busting my butt around here over the last week, trying to get things ready. Ready for what, you ask? Not so much for the baby - we are as ready as we are going to be for him. I'd say ready for me to be unable and unwilling to do major housework/cooking for the next month.

The folks around me are calling it nesting. I dunno, maybe it is. Overall though, it makes perfect logical sense to me, so I don't think it is a bad thing (or an illogical insensible thing).

On the docket for today (unless something exciting happens at the doctor's office, for which I am not getting my hopes up) - groceries, cleaning the bathrooms, prepping more freezer meals and goodies, folding laundry and some general tidying on the main floor. I just can't help but think, at this point, how irritating and stressful it would be for me to have to labour in a cluttered house, never mind knowing that the clutter will still be there when I get back with a new baby, sleep-deprived, emotional and sore.

If nesting is keeping myself comfortable and content in my own home and with the looming prospect of labour and new parenthood all over again, then yes folks, I am nesting.

Ahhh, false labour...how I have missed thee.

Pregnant bodies preparing for labour are quirky things. We just had a stint for about an hour where I was having consistent 1-1.5 minute long contractions every 3-5 minutes. I kept tidying and getting things I wanted to done just in case. I knew that either way, it would work out in my favour - I would have a tidy house to come home to with my new baby OR I would be several steps closer to the state I would like my house to be in at that point. I also knew that continuing to move will encourage labour to move along.

Well, ladies and gents, false alarm. The contractions have stopped entirely. I believe I will put the wee girl down to bed and continue to putter around the house though rather than go grocery shopping alone as had been my plan. Pushing the grocery cart really bothers my hips as it is and it would be especially inconvenient to get my cart full of stuff only to have to leave it in the store and jet to the hospital :P

Ahhhh, false labour....how I have missed thee!

A Very Cool Article - Breastfeeding in the Land of Genghis Kahn

I thoroughly enjoyed this artcile when I read it. I remember how relieving it was when one of our flight attendants was comfortable and enthusiastic with regard to my breastfeeding Isabel on the way to Orlando. He gave us the best care of anyone on that plane and, most importantly, didn't look away nervously when she was latched on. It made me very comfortable, especially since I was nervous about the traveling with a wee babe as it was. I can only imagine how incredible it must have been to live the life this author did.


What would it be like to nurse in a place where everyone embraced it? A Canadian living in Mongolia finds out.
by Ruth Kamnitzer
Published in Mothering Magazine Issue 155 July/Aug 2009

In Mongolia, there's an oft-quoted saying that the best wrestlers are breastfed for at least six years - a serious endorsement in a country where wrestling is the national sport. I moved to Mongolia when my first child was four months old, and lived there until he was three.

Raising my son during those early years in a place where attitudes to breastfeeding are so dramatically different from prevailing norms in North America opened my eyes to an entirely different vision of how it all could be. Not only do Mongolians breast feed for a long time, they do so with more enthusiasm and less inhibition than nearly anyone else I've met. In Mongolia, breastmilk is not just for babies, it's not only about nutrition, and it's definitely not something you need to be discreet about. It's the stuff Genghis Khan was made of.

Like many first-time mums, I hadn't given much thought to breastfeeding before I had a child. But minutes after my son, Calum, popped out, he latched on, and for the next four years seemed pretty determined not to let go. I was lucky, for in many ways breastfeeding came easily - never a cracked nipple, rarely an engorged breast. Mentally, things were not quite as simple. As much as I loved my baby and cherished the bond that breastfeeding gave us, it was, at times, overwhelming. I was unprepared for the magnitude of my love for him, and for the intensity of his need for me and me only - for my milk. "Don't let him turn you into a human pacifier," a Canadian nurse had cautioned me just days after Calum's birth, as he sucked for hour after hour. But I would run through all the possible reasons for his crying - gas? wet? understimulation? overstimulation? - and mostly I'd just end up feeding him again. I wondered if I was doing the right thing.

Then I moved away from Canada, to Mongolia, where my husband was conducting a wildlife study. There, babies are kept constantly swaddled in layers of thick blankets, tied up with string like packages you don't want to come apart in the mail. When a package murmurs, a nipple is popped in its mouth. Babies aren't changed very often, and never burped. There aren't even hands available to thrust a rattle into. Definitely no tummy time. Babies stay wrapped up for at least three months, and every time they make a sound, they're breastfed.

This was interesting. At three months, Canadian babies are already having social engagements, even swimming. Some are learning to "self-soothe." I had assumed that there were many reasons a baby might cry, and that my job was to figure out what the reason was and provide the appropriate solution. But in Mongolia, though babies might cry for many reasons, there is only ever one solution: breastmilk. I settled down on my butt and followed suit.

A WORKING BOOB HITS THE STREETS
In Canada, a certain amount of mystique still surrounds breastfeeding. But really, we're just not very used to it. Breastfeeding happens at home, in baby groups, occasionally in cafes - you seldom see it in public, and we certainly don't have conscious memories of having been breastfed ourselves. This private activity between mother and child is greeted with a hush and politely averted eyes, and regarded almost in the same way as public displays of intimacy between couples: not taboo, but slightly discomfiting and politely ignored. And when that quiet, angelic newborn grows into an active toddler intent on letting the world know exactly what he's doing, well, those eyes are averted a bit more quickly and intently, sometimes under frowning brows.

In Mongolia, instead of relegating me to a "Mothers Only" section, breastfeeding in public brought me firmly to center stage. Their universal practice of breast feeding anywhere, anytime, and the close quarters at which most Mongolians live, mean that everyone is pretty familiar with the sight of a working boob. They were happy to see I was doing things their way (which was, of course, the right way).

When I breastfed in the park, grandmothers would regale me with tales of the dozen children they had fed. When I breastfed in the back of taxis, drivers would give me the thumbs-up in the rearview mirror and assure me that Calum would grow up to be a great wrestler. When I walked through the market cradling my feeding son in my arms, vendors would make a space for me at their stalls and tell him to drink up. Instead of looking away, people would lean right in and kiss Calum on the cheek. If he popped off in response to the attention and left my streaming breast completely exposed, not a beat was missed. No one stared, no one looked away - they just laughed and wiped the milk off their noses.

From the time Calum was four months old until he was three years old, wherever I went, I heard the same thing over and over again: "Breastfeeding is the best thing for your baby, the best thing for you." The constant approval made me feel that I was doing something important that mattered to everyone - exactly the kind of public applause every new mother needs.

THE LAZY MUM'S SECRET WEAPON
By Calum's second year, I had fully realized just how useful breastfeeding could be. Nothing gets a child to sleep as quickly, relieves the boredom of a long car journey as well, or calms a breaking storm as swiftly as a little warm milk from mummy. It's the lazy mother's most useful parenting aid, and by now I thought I was using it to its maximum effect. But the Mongolians took it one step further.

During the Mongolian winters, I spent many afternoons in my friend Tsetsgee's yurt, escaping the bitter cold outside. It was enlightening to compare our different parenting techniques. Whenever a tussle over toys broke out between our two-year-olds, my first reaction would be to try to restore peace by distracting Calum with another toy while explaining the principle of sharing. But this took a while, and had a success rate of only about 50 percent. The other times, when Calum was unwilling to back down and his frustration escalated to near boiling point, I would pick him up and cradle him in my arms for a feed.

Tsetsgee had a different approach. At the first murmur of discord, she would lift her shirt and start waving her boobs around enthusiastically, calling out, "Come here, baby, look what mama's got for you!" Her son would look up from the toys to the bull's-eyes of his mother's breasts and invariably toddle over.

Success rate? 100 percent.

Not to be outdone, I adopted the same strategy. There we were, two mothers flapping our breasts like competing strippers trying to entice a client. If the grandparents were around, they'd get in on the act. The poor kids wouldn't know where to look - the reassuring fullness of their own mothers' breasts, granny's withered pancake boasting its long experience, or the strange mound of flesh granddad was squeezing up in breast envy. Try as I might, I can't picture a similar scene at a La Leche League meeting.

WHEN THEY'RE WALKING AND TALKING. . . AND TAKING THEIR EXAMS?
In my prenatal class in small-town Canada, where Calum was born, breastfeeding had been introduced with a video showing a particularly sporty-looking Swedish mother breastfeeding her toddler while out skiing. A shudder ran through the group: "Sure, it's great for babies, but by the time they're walking and talking ... ?" That was pretty much the consensus. I kept my counsel.

It was my turn to be surprised when one of my new Mongolian friends told me she had breastfed until she was nine years old. I was so jaw-dropped flabbergasted that at first I dismissed it as a joke. Considering my son weaned just after turning four, I'm now a little embarrassed about my adamant disbelief. While nine years is pretty old to be breast feeding, even by Mongolian standards, it's not actually off the scale.

Though it wasn't always easy to fully discuss such concepts as self-weaning with Mongolians because of the language barrier, breastfeeding "to term" seemed to be the norm. I never met anyone who was tandem breastfeeding, which surprised me, but because the intervals between births are fairly long, most kids give up breastfeeding at between two and four years of age.

In 2005, according to UNICEF, 82 percent of children in Mongolia continued to breastfeed at 12 to 15 months, and 65 percent were still doing so at 20 to 23 months. A mother's last child seems to just keep going, hence the breastfeeding nine-year-old -- and, if the folk wisdom is right, Mongolia's renown for wrestling.

As three-year-old Calum was still feeding with the enthusiasm of a newborn and I wondered how weaning would eventually come about, I was curious about what prompted Mongolian children to self-wean. Some mothers said their child had simply lost interest. Others said peer pressure played a part. (I have heard Mongolian teenagers tease each other with "You want your mommy's breasts!" in the same way Canadian kids say "Crybaby!") More and more often, work commitments force weaning to happen earlier than would otherwise have occurred; children will often spend the summer in the countryside while a mother stays in the city to work, and during the extended separation her milk dries up. My friend Buana, now 20, explained her gold-medal breastfeeding career to me: "I grew up in a yurt way out in the countryside. My mom always told me to drink up, that it was good for me. I thought that's what every nine-year-old was doing. When I went to school, I stopped." She looked at me with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. "But I still like to drink it sometimes."

PASS THE MILK, PLEASE
For me, weaning from the breast seemed a fairly defined event. I always expected that, at some point, feedings would decrease, and continue to taper off until they ceased altogether. My milk would dry up, and that would be that. Bar closed.

In Mongolia, that's not what happens. Discussing breastfeeding with my friend Naraa, I asked her when her daughter, who was then six, had weaned. "At four," she replied. "I was sad, but she didn't want to breastfeed anymore." Then Naraa told me that, just the week before, when her daughter had returned from an extended stay in the countryside with her grandparents and had wanted to breastfeed, Naraa obliged. "I guess she missed me too much," she said, "and it was nice. Of course, I didn't have any milk, but she didn't mind."

But if weaning means never drinking breastmilk again, then Mongolians are never truly weaned - and here's what surprised me most about breastfeeding in Mongolia. If a woman's breasts are engorged and her baby is not at hand, she will simply go around and ask a family member, of any age or sex, if they'd like a drink. Often a woman will express a bowlful for her husband as a treat, or leave some in the fridge for anyone to help themselves.

While we've all tasted our own breastmilk, given some to our partners to try, maybe used a bit in the coffee in an emergency - haven't we? - I don't think many of us have actually drunk it very often. But every Mongolian I ever asked told me that he or she liked breastmilk. The value of breastmilk is so celebrated, so firmly entrenched in their culture, that it's not considered something that's only for babies. Breastmilk is commonly used medicinally, given to the elderly as a cure-all, and used to treat eye infections, as well as to (reportedly) make the white of the eye whiter and deepen the brown of the iris.

But mostly, I think, Mongolians drink breastmilk because they like the taste. A western friend of mine who pumped breastmilk while at work and left the bottle in the company fridge one day found it half empty. She laughed. "Only in Mongolia would I suspect my colleagues of drinking my breastmilk!"

Living in another culture always forces you to reevaluate your own. I don't really know what it would have been like to breastfeed my son during his early years in Canada. The avalanche of positive feedback on breastfeeding I got in Mongolia, and Mongolians' wholehearted acceptance of public breastfeeding, simply amazed me, and gave me the freedom to raise my child in a way that felt natural. But in addition to all the small differences in our breastfeeding norms, the details of how long and how often, I ended up feeling that there was a bigger divide in our parenting styles.

In North America, we so value independence that it comes through in everything we do. All the talk is about what your baby's eating now, and how many breastfeedings he's down to. Even if you're not the one asking these questions, it's hard to escape their impact. And there are now so many things for sale that are designed to help your child amuse herself and need you less that the message is clear. But in Mongolia, breastfeeding isn't equated with dependence, and weaning isn't a finish line. They know their kids will grow up - in fact, the average Mongolian five-year-old is far more independent than her western counterpart, breastfed or not. There's no rush to wean.

Probably the most valuable thing about raising my son in Mongolia was that I realized that there are a million different ways to do things, and that I could choose any of them. Throughout my son's breastfeeding career, I struggled with different issues, and picked up and discarded many ideas and practices, in my search to forge my own style. I'm glad I breast fed Calum as much and as long as I did - it turned out to be four years. I think breastfeeding was the best thing for my son, and that it will have a lasting impact on his personality and on our relationship.

And when he wins that Olympic gold medal in wrestling, I'll expect him to thank me.


NOTE
1. UNICEF Childinfo, "Monitoring the Situation of Children and Women: Infant and Young Child Feeding (2000-2007)" (January 2009): www.childinfo.orglbreastfeeding_countrydata.php

Ruth Kamnitzer lived in a traditional felt tent in the Mongolian countryside for three years while her husband, Steve, conducted a wildlife study on the Pallas cat of Central Asia. She has an MSC in Biodiversity Conservation and currently lives in Bristol, UK with Steve and Calum (4).

Breastfeeding in the Land of Genghis Kahn

Mat leave, GBS+ and engaged...confused yet?

I am on maternity leave now. My last day was Friday. I have spent the last few days running errands, doing housework, preparing for baby...the usual. I am not feeling "ready" but that is because I am a perfectionist :P

I had an appointment with my OB yesterday at which I got some crappy news. I am positive for group B strep. This is not a big deal and VERY common (it is just an overgrowth of a bacteria we all have in our bodies to which most women are asymptomatic, but in passing through the birth canal, the baby can contract the infection, which can result in NICU time). What does it mean for me? It means that I will be hooked up to a stupid IV throughout my labour. Again, not a huge deal, but it does make changing positions, walking and using the tub challenging. We will manage though.

Finally, the good news is that the baby's head is engaged. This means he is down in my pelvis and could be born any day *clap* Here's hoping he doesn't decide to put it off too long.

Two bits of news

Bit one: I am throwing in the towel. I am just too tired and too sore to be hauling my sorry butt all over Leo Hayes anymore. My last day is this Friday. That gives me two weeks before my due date to get things done around the house, spend time with Isabel, run errands and hopefully have a baby.

Bit two: We met our doula on Sunday. I know some of you are completely boggled by that whole statement. A doula is a labour support person. She is trained in all sorts of great relaxation techniques. She helps advocate for you when you can't necessarily advocate for yourself (or helps your husband do so). She can be as directly involved in the labour as to get right in the tub or up on the bed with the labouring woman to physically support her in whatever way necessary or she can do things that need to be done like relay info to family, get supplies (water, wash cloths, etc.), take photos and video. She is nurturing and helpful. She is just another helping hand in the labour room and a step closer to the unmedicated, midwife-attended homebirth I would love to have. This is likely as close as I will get to that.
Anyway, her name is Lesley. She is very nice. She needs to attend one more birth to receive her certification from DONA and mine is it :) I am very excited to have this form of support (I wanted it last time, but with all of the other hullabaloo, it never came about and was really hoping that the government-regulated midwife clinics would be established in NB by the time this babe was born, but that has fallen through too).

Some pic-a-tures

Nearly 37-week belly.


Isabel showing off her baby belly.


Kisses for Baby Budder


Fun with filters.

My ribcage is not a harp...

contrary to popular belief. The newest in in-utero fun involves sticking feet into my ribcage, getting them stuck between my ribs and then pulling them out roughly, resulting in a lovely strumming effect.

While I was chatting with a student about exams yesterday, I stopped mid-word and made a face that I suspect looked something like this:

accompanied by a pained "GAHHHHH!"

My poor students thought that I was losing my mind, but when I did my best to explain it, they seemed to understand to the best of their ability.

Holiday Hiatus

We haven't fallen off the face of the planet. I've just taken a bit of a hiatus over the holidays. There hasn't been a great deal to post about with regard to my pregnancy beyond general discomfort.

That was, until lately. My uterus has been so active and my belly so heavy that I've been spooked into packing a labour bag and overnight bags for all of us....just in case ;)

I am having braxton hicks contractions at a rate of several per hour now. Some hurt, some don't. The baby has definitely dropped quite low - I am waddling as a standard form of transportation now. I just feel very different than I have until now.

I don't know if it is just "pregnancy" or if it is significant, but I am doing my best to be prepared. I have a lengthy "to do" list of tasks that must/ought to be done before the babe arrives. I have my birth plan made up. I have called in the items that I've loaned out - especially the swing and pump. I'm also rummaging in the basement, digging out the baby items that could be useful in the early days. Hopefully, it will be enough. I will keep you posted ;)