Week 27 and the Insider is on the move in there. Lots of kicking, pushing, headbutting, flipping - I swear she is going to join Cirque du Soleil. It doesn't wake me up in the night or anything, but it can be quite alarming when I'm typing away and she almost kicks the laptop off my lap.
I also had a cold this week, which started last Friday and which is still lingering. Ugh. When we owned the business, I didn't get a lot of bad colds, because I was rarely interacting with people in the public. Now that I work as a receptionist, I have had two bad colds this year, and I'm assuming I'm catching them from clients at the clinic, or from touching money...Or maybe I caught it at the hospital last week when I was stuck there for 4 hours for appointments!!! Anyway, I'm almost past it, and hopefully it's the last one for a while.
As a follow up to my post about birthing naturally, just wanted to say thanks to those who posted comments and who messaged me privately. I love hearing all about different birth experiences - both about what your intentions were vs what you ended up with, and how you would plan differently next time. It is all extremely helpful in the planning process.
To help us achieve our goal of a natural delivery, we decided to hire a doula to help us out. A doula, or at least a doula the way that we plan on using one, is basically a birth coach who is with you from the moment you are in labor until the baby makes its entrance. She is also helping us prepare for labor with several prenatal information sessions (like a private prenatal class, I think these will be much more useful to us than group ones), and will have a visit with us a week or two after the baby is home to follow up and help us out in any way she can for a few hours.
We found our doula at www.motherwit.ca - they have great information sessions once a month where all the doulas are present to explain what they do, how they work, and where you can ask any questions you may have about their services. It was also a great opportunity to see which of the doulas we felt most comfortable with, like a group interview really.
What do we hope the doula can do for us? Well, since we want to stay home as long as we can, she will join us here and help us decide when it's really time to go to the hospital. I would much rather be hanging out in my own house, on my own bed/couch/floor or in my own tub or shower as long as we possibly can. I never had any interest in birthing at home, and would prefer the main event to happen in the hospital just in case, but from what I understand labor is a pretty uncomfortable experience, and I'd rather be in a comfortable environment while I'm working through it.
We're also going to rely on our doula to help make suggestions about labor positions, to give some helpful massages to relieve some tensions, and to remind us to eat and drink when appropriate. Once we do get to the hospital, her role may be even more important. While the doula won't take on the role as arbitrator between us and the hospital staff, she can help to counsel us in our decisions. I think that if it came to a point where I had to decide whether to have or not have one of the interventions I'm trying to avoid, I would feel a lot better about whatever I decided if I was able to take 5 minutes with her to discuss the situation and get her opinion as someone outside of the medical team who actually knows how a regular birth should go.
Hopefully this strategy will work for us. And if not, at least if SB faints or something I won't be stuck alone :P
1 comment:
What a good birth plan, and good reasons behind it.
I cant wait to hear how your labor goes! I'm almost there myself (just about 35 weeks now) and once again, even though it's my 3rd - not sure what to expect as it's different each time!
Hang in there - you're almost there!
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