growing, growing, growing....

Sweet Zara is already 5 weeks and 4 days old.  She is growing and fattening up beautifully.  It is hard sometimes growing so fast, her tummy gives her trouble but besides some screams to get gas out she is a happy and healthy little lady.  She is getting so strong, holding up her head and standing on her feet.  She is a super sucker and loves to drink mama's milk.  She has started to smile sometimes and is the cutest most snuggly creature I have ever met.  My love for this little being is beyond anything I could have ever imagined.  She is so sweet and looks deep into my eyes straight to my soul.  I have waited for her to come and join us on this planet earth for so long and now that she is here it feels like she was always somewhere in my heart.

my amazing life partner (and common law husband:)

I never knew that I could be so pleasantly surprised in a human especially after almost 10 years of love and partnership.  I fell in love with Darren on my 25th birthday.  I am now almost 36 and I love him more everyday.  We put a good effort into making little baby Zara and the trials and tribulations we worked through in the process brought us closer together as a team.  I know that Darren is a wonderful man, loving, kind, understanding, supportive but I didn't know that as soon as baby Z came that he would be an even more amazing father and partner to me while I heal.  He has been going non-stop, doing dishes, laundry, sshhhing baby Z, burping baby Z, supporting me when I break down, even cooking and putting together meals.  I am blown away at all that he is and has been doing for me.  I would like to nominate him the most amazing man on earth.  I might explode with love and thanks for him.  Thank you Daddy D.  Zara is a lucky little nugget to have picked you as her dad.  

Zara Wheatley Hall...Birth Story

Labor

Day.... November 13th, 2011

Time...11:30 pm

Place...Home and on my way to bed

On this day, Sunday, November 13th, I was officially 40 weeks pregnant.  Darren and I had a nice day together getting our lives in order.  I had come to terms with the "fact" that I would probably be 2 weeks late so I was just trying to get comfortable however I could.  I started having regular contractions (fairly painless) on Thursday, November 10th (full moon) but they were easy to ignore.  Sunday night I went to bed around 11:30 and these contractions started hurting.  A menstrual type cramp that would last between 30 seconds and a minute.  I just laid in bed feeling these contractions come and go.  I was't sure that this was "Labor" but I knew it was different.  I told Darren I was having painful contractions but that I thought that could go on all night but I wanted to let him know.  After a couple of hours of these contractions between 5 and 7 minutes apart they started getting stronger and closer together.  I was timing them and they were between 2 and 3 minutes apart and were starting to really hurt, I could not talk through them anymore.  It was around 2:30 in the morning and we couldn't get a hold of any of the midwives.  We knew we were supposed to go to the hospital around when the contractions were 3 minutes apart, 1 minute long for 1 hour.  So we just decided to go to the hospital just to be safe.  So around 3 in the morning we packed up and went to the hospital and at this point I could not walk or talk through the contractions.  When at the hospital the contractions slowed down a bit but were still strong and close together.  The midwife was called and came in to check me, I was only 1 cm dilated and still only 50% effaced.  That is what I was on Friday at my midwife appointment.  All I could think was that she must be kidding me, I had been having strong contractions for what felt like a long time (3 hours) with zero progress.  So we stayed at the hospital and I labored through the night, the contractions got stronger, more painful and more and more difficult to just breath through.  I could no longer stand up straight through a contraction, I was feeling them in my back, and through all of this I had hope, I was visualizing opening.  Darren was the most amazing Doulo, he was so supportive, only left my side for a short nap around 5 in the morning, and he was so full of love and support for me through the entire process of labor.  There is not one moment in this entire process when I felt alone, I felt supported and loved and even though this story did not go as I had planned I can say that Darren's support made everything that happened easier for me.  Back to the story, after laboring all night I was checked at around 7 in the morning and I had only progressed to 4 cm dilated and was only 70% effaced.  I was feeling a little discouraged but I was making progress and it was getting more difficult, I could not just breath through them anymore, I was getting really vocal and the pain was up around 8 out of 10.  I did that for most of the day, everything begins to be a bit of a blur at this point.  I was checked again later in the afternoon, this was on Monday, November 14th, and I had not progressed much.  Angela, my midwife, massaged my cervix and in the process of that my water broke.  She mentioned a few times that my cervix was "fibrous" and was not really opening up very fast.  this was discouraging but I was still hopeful.  I started really going into my body, took a bath, visualized opening, put my meditation and mantras to work, I could not open my eyes, I could not recover in between contractions before the next one came on strong.  I was feeling baby push down on my cervix with every contraction, I thought I was feeling myself open, I was moaning and Darren was moaning with me, he was holding me, massaging me, talking me through each contraction back to back.  I was ready to have this baby.  At this point I had been going strong with labor for about 18 hours.  I did not slept the night before and I had nothing to eat.  I was doing my best to drink water, recharge, coconut water, etc between contractions but I was not able to keep up with getting enough fluids.  This went on for awhile, I had dilated to a six and was still not 100% effaced yet.  This was probably around 7 in the evening.  About an hour later is when what I call my second labor started.

It had been 20 hours, I was not dilated any more than 6 cm, my labor had slowed down but the pain was still unbearable.  I could not do it anymore.  I needed to try a different approach.  I thought that if got a epidural that I could rest a bit, recover a bit, maybe my body would open up without all the pain and stress.  Darren did his best to keep my birth vision in mind, he tried reminding me of the natural birth I had envisioned, he did his best to tell me that I did not want this but there was nothing he could say to change my mind.  I could not do it anymore.  I got the epidural and I am not going to go into the complications that occurred but after about an hour they got the problems cleared up and I could rest.  I ended up with a very week epidural so I could still feel the contractions.  Of course since they gave me the epidural  my contractions slowed down so on to the next intervention, Pitocin.  They started the drip at a super low dose and my contractions got stronger and closer together.  Angela checked but still no change.  They upped the Pitocin for another hour, still no change.  I did get a break from the pain and that is what I needed.  i was able to rejoin my own mind because before it was somewhere else,  I was on a hospital bed, hooked up to tubes from every direction, I was numb (partially) and sad that what I didn't want to happen was happening.  So the nurse came in and said that my contractions were still not strong enough and too far apart so they were going to up the Pitocin again.  I said NO, do not up the Pitocin, I am not going to do this.  I have read so many stories about all the reason why you should not have an epidural and I became one of those stories.  I was not progressing, they wanted to pump more and more synthetic hormone into my body.  I could see it happening, up the Pit, contractions get stronger and stronger, then the baby is in distress and an emergency c-section is ordered.  Up to that point Zara was doing fine but as I lay there and watch her heartbeat dip lower with every contraction I just decided that this route was not going to work.  I was at 22 hours of Labor and they told me that it could take 5 - 10 more hours.  I just said that I was done, I was ready to meet my baby, I wanted a C-section. My mom and Aunt and Darren's parents had been in the waiting room "waiting" to meet baby for hours, I didn't want to put baby in distress, I could not labor anymore, especially with no progress.   I made the decision and now I break down in tears on a daily basis asking myself why, how come I couldn't do it, did I make the right decision, should I have kept trying, etc.  I do not know if I made the right decision or not, my midwife said that she thought that I had a 50/50 chance of being able to deliver baby vaginally and she said it would be hourS before that happened.  I weighed the risk to baby, the amount of synthetic hormones and pain killers that would continue to be pumped in my body and I knew what I needed to do.  Maybe it was my intuition telling me something, my mind was in such a fog from so many hours of unreal pain without food, sleep, and proper hydration.  

Birth
Date...November 14th, 2011
Time...11:10 pm
Weight...7 lb. 10 oz
Length...20 inches

They wheeled me down to the operating room, upped the pain meds considerably, cut me open and took out my baby.  Zara came out screaming and pooping.  She did not seem effected by the pain meds, she was alert and bright eyed.   I was looking for her but could not see her just after she was born, I was imagining her body on mine, her face, her hair, her spirit while I lay there alone getting sewed up.  I was so happy that she finally arrived but so sad that she did not arrive right to my chest.  I am so happy that Darren was able to be with Zara from the time she was pulled from the 6 inch incision on my lower abdomen.  I cannot change how Zara was brought into the world.  I can tell myself that she was in a bad position to come out, that my body was not able to open for her, that I made the right decision but I will never know.  All I do know is that Zara Wheatley Hall is amazing.  She is beautiful, alert, strong, and perfect.   I need to also know that being in the moment and making decisions is the way I need to be in life.  We can not live on preconceived notions of how perfect everything is going to be because Life is what is happening while you are making other plans.  

Emotionally I am having a hard time with my vision of birth and the reality of my birth.  I do have to say that I gave it my best, I gave labor 22 hours with no pain medication.  I tried my best and still ended up with the best gift I have ever received.  Now we are getting used to life outside of the womb.  She is a great suckler, my milk came in at 4 days, my incision is healing quickly and even though we are not getting a lot of sleep I feel pretty good.  I feel overwhelmed with the amount of love and support coming from so many different directions.  I feel emotional, I break down crying often, but at the same time I feel strong.  It is so wonderful having Darren here with me, he has continued to be so amazing.  He loves Zara so much and is working so hard to keep everything intact at home.  He is a truly amazing man and every time I look at him I feel so thankful that he is the father of this beautiful little girl.  

40 weeks

Today I am 40 weeks pregnant.  I am ready, I am uncomfortable and I feel huge.  Darren and I did our nesting.  We cleaned, organized, got new cabinets and a new couch, I even cleaned out my closet and did the switch from spring/ summer to fall/winter clothes.  I am done working and I am ready to meet this baby.  I am having regular contractions but they don't really hurt much.  I am experiencing more sensation with each contraction but I do not think that is what real labor feels like.  It sounds like real labor is really painful but I do not care, I want the pain now, I want my body to open up and bring this beautiful little baby into the world.  I am doing all I can to stimulate my body towards birth, taking evening primrose oil, drinking red raspberry leaf tea, stimulating acupressure points that bring on contractions and soften the cervix, nipple stimulation, orgasms, squatting, walking, and talking to baby telling it that the time has come.  I do not know what else I can do, I just hope it is not another 2 weeks even though I am expecting it to be.  The good news is that at least my body is working in the right direction, I am having regular contractions that last at least a minute each, on friday my cervix was dilated to 1 cm, I was 50% effaced, and my cervix was super soft.  Sorry if that is TMI but it is birthing talk and it is a natural thing that is happening, why not talk about it.  I think I might go in on Tuesday or Wednesday this week to get checked again and see if they can move things along with a little membrane sweep or something.  I am excited for my next post to be my birth story.  I am visualizing an efficient, peaceful, and beautiful birth.  My mantra is that I trust my body to birth this baby just as it should.  Baby's head is really low in my pelvis and it's body is in a great position for birth.  Now I rest, get as much sleep as possible and continue with all of my natural inductions.  Eventually this baby will have to come out, it can not stay in there all cozy forever:)

The waiting game.....

I am 38 weeks pregnant but my I am measuring 40 weeks.  Now we wait.....  I should be pretty good at this waiting game because it seems like there have been many times in life where I have had to wait for things.  Trying to get pregnant you have the 2 week wait every cycle, waiting for one's menstrual cycle every  month is a waiting game, waiting to hear about a job, waiting for a boy to call you back, waiting for your mom to pick you up from school, waiting to be fed, waiting to be born, we should all be pro's at waiting.  This might be the most exciting wait of my life.  I feel no fear of childbirth, I do not feel afraid of the pain or the physical challenge of birthing this baby, I just feel excited to meet this little one.  I can not wait to see this baby's little face, I can only imagine the feelings I will have when I see it's little hands and feet, it's nose and mouth, it's eyes and head.  How do you prepare oneself for a moment like this in life?  I do not know, all I know is that I am ready and I think I have reached maximum capacity.  From what I understand it is baby who decides when it is time to enter the world so next week (when I am finished working) I will have a little talk with baby and let it know that it is time.

Hormones

Hormones, we all know they can drive us a little wacky if they are out of line.  I have been a bit surprised during my pregnancy at not being too crazy with all the hormones pumping through my veins.  I have actually felt amazingly emotionally stable.  I have been rational, I have been dealing fairly well with my ever expanding waistline, I have been loving and understanding in my relationship, and I have very rarely had momentary breakdowns.

36 weeks, what happened?  I keep crying over silly things, I read a friends blog and I am sobbing, I read my daily e mail from "what to expect when your expecting" and start crying, just thinking about this beautiful baby that will join us sooner than later makes tears of joy just slip from my eyes, I am creating completely irrational scenarios in my mind shattering the beautiful life I have created, I guess the hormones are catching up with me.  I guess I will just have to ride this wave like all the others and cry when the tears form and laugh when they leave.  Maybe I am feeling that the end of baby in my belly is coming, maybe the fact that I am measuring 3 weeks ahead of where I am supposed to is making me feel like baby might be here sooner than we thing, maybe I am just going to be one of those sappy moms who cry at everything.  I am okay with all of it, I just find it strange that it is happening now.

Preparing for labor..34 weeks pregnant

I will be full-term in 3 weeks (@37 weeks) but baby could decide not to come for up to 8 weeks.  Knowing I have this much time it is frustrating when random strangers tell me I look like I am due to have this baby now, today, this very moment.  Even though I still have time I have started thinking about the birthing process.  I have read a number of books, I have watched some videos, I have talked with friends about their birthing experience, and Darren and I are going to take a childbirth class.   With all of these attempts at preparation I find that my brain does not care.  My pregnancy brain seems to forget all the information I am trying to absorb.   My mind seems to be suspended, moving slowly, not digesting information quite right.  I am trying to think about and prepare my mind and body for labor but something inside of me just feels that I will give birth just like all of the other women in the world and no book or class is going to change how that happens.

I am reading a beautiful fictional book right now called URSULA, UNDER by Ingrid Hill.  In one part of the book a woman in the early 1900's gives birth, by herself, finds that the umbilical cord is wrapped around the baby's neck, gets up, cuts the cord (before the placenta is delivered) and finishes up the birthing process on her own.  I sometimes feel silly in the world we live in, making sure I have a certain car seat and stroller, the safest this and that, the most eco-friendly diaper option, as many organic clothes as I can get my paws on, reading books on birthing, watching births, and hearing about all the different birth experiences.  I feel silly about all these little preparations when millions of women all over the world are giving birth in a field under a tree or in a room all alone then cleaning up the mess and moving on with mothering.  I want to find a balance between being too concerned about all the happenings that go along with mothering and letting go of all that and just enjoying baby.

I think my reality check is going to be when labor kicks in, when the true pain of labor arrives, when baby arrives, when baby comes home, when my tendency to pre-plan and prepare is met with a life of experiences you cannot prepare for.  I think that my way of trying to control and organize my surroundings is going to come to an end.  I think this is going to be a pretty intense reality check for me but hopefully all my work in attempting to "let go" will pay off.  Maybe this spaced out pregnancy brain will continue into a spaced out exhausted sleep deprived brain so I will not have to worry to much about all these changes.

31 weeks and growing

That is my belly.  It is starting to feel big even though it has looked big for quite some time.  Baby still has 9 weeks left to fatten up and I feel like I am quickly approaching maximum capacity.  Even though I have moments of feeling uncomfortable towards the end of the day I really do still feel pretty good most of the time.  Baby seems to be in a cycle of being really active (day and night) for 2 or 3 days then mellowing out and sleeping a lot for a few days.  I have a feeling that this last few months may be a bit challenging but I am up for it.  At least I know that each new challenge will bring me closer to the day that I get to meet this sweet, rolling, kicking, growing babe.

This is what I do

Watch the head of the Phoenix in the first 20 seconds of the video and you will see the movement.  This is what I do.  In the evenings I sit and watch my tummy move around.  I could watch it all day and all night if I had the time.  I just sit and wonder what that little being is doing in there.  Darren puts his hand on my moving tummy and feels this little one in action.  We both just watch it and smile.  I can not wait to meet this little one.  Only 10 weeks before baby is due to emerge.

Mothers

When I think of mothers I have this vision in my head of so many different kinds of mothers.  I envision my mother, my grandmother,  women from the beginning of time, the number of people on the planet and how they all came from mothers.  I think of feeding, suckling, nourishing, and giving non-stop until the end of my days and that thought uplifts me.  When I am sitting and relaxing at the end of the day, feeling my baby roll around, kick, and stretch inside of my tummy I realize that this is what mothers do and have done.  This beginning of human life is such a miracle, I feel so special and then I realize that I am just experiencing something that millions of other women have experienced.  When I look at all these other mothers I feel like I understand something that I did not understand before.

This experience of feeling another being develop inside of me has left my spirit feeling suspended.  My thoughts are slower, felt and digested through my third eye, my heart seems to tingle and sparkle, I feel so light and happy, my reactions are more thought out, my love for Darren has engulfed my entire midsection at the thought of what we created together.  I have no real understanding of what it is that I am feeling but I do not need to because I am in it.  The rounder my midsection gets the more I realize that I have taken the plunge, never again will I go back to who this person is that has developed over the past 35 years.  Everything is going to change and I have never been more ready than I am now.

Letting Go

During the process of trying to get pregnant I heard so many stories and experiences from a number of random women who did not get pregnant easily.  The only thing I found to be consistent in their journey is that they all seemed to get to a point where they had to let it go. I would repeatedly hear that they stopped trying and finally started having fun sex again, or they got drunk and crazy and just fucked, or they started looking into adoption and took the pressure off.   I knew in my head that I needed to let go but how do you let go of the one thing in life you have always wanted?  I do not have any idea how you really let it go but I do know that temporarily letting it go is what worked for me each time I got pregnant.

During my journey to motherhood my yoga practice stepped up considerably.  In my yoga practice I continuously meditated on letting go.  I would chant "let go" in my mind, I would visualize letting go in my mind's eye, I would create artwork of birds flying, I tried everything that I could to train my mind to be in the moment and to let go of whatever the future may hold.  I feel like my yoga practice really helped to train my mind to be aware of my thoughts and to be able to free from them the circle of rethinking the same thought over and over again but I couldn't really let go of trying to get pregnant until I became frustrated with the process.  The last two times I became pregnant I had reached a point of feeling hopeless, Spring Break was right around the corner and I wanted to just have fun and not think about what my body was or was not doing.  My heart was tired of the 2WW, the let down, assessing all my PMS symptoms and thinking they were pregnancy symptoms, I wanted to just have some fun.  Sure enough, having fun interpreted into having fun, wild sex.  The fun sex ended up getting us pregnant.

Now that I am pregnant and have just entered my third trimester I feel like the letting go is going to be tool that I will need to have sharp and ready at all times.  Now I am learning to let go of the fear of birth, the pain of contracting and pushing, the fear that baby might not be okay, the fear of my midsection getting bigger and bigger, the fear of stretch marks, the fear of not having everything we might need for baby, the fear of not having enough money, the fear of not sleeping.....  The list goes on and once baby is born then there will be a whole new list of things to hold onto, to think about, to "let go"of.

History

Currently...28 weeks pregnant.  Age...35 years old.  Years it took me to get to this point in my life...seems like forever.  


When I think back to when I decided I wanted to be a mother I end up back in my sophomore math class in high school.  I was 15 years old and had just decided that I wanted a tattoo.  I wanted a tattoo of a lily on my lower back because I wanted to name my first little girl Lily.  Thank the stars that my mother told me to get on birth control when I became sexually active. I did get that first tattoo at the ripe young age of 15 and it was a lily on my lower back.  A lifelong reminder of the little girl I always wanted.  


Fast forward 20 years...Here I am, finally pregnant and getting bigger by the day.  28 weeks ago I discovered that I was indeed pregnant again.  I do not have any children but I have had 2 prior pregnancies that ended in miscarriage. I was really beginning to give up hope.  I always thought that as soon as I was ready to have babies that I would get pregnant and have a baby but that is not how it happened.  


Rewind to age 32.   I was ready to have a baby.  I had a loving partner who was ready to start trying.  Darren and I had been together a solid 7 years, been through some ups and downs but had a stable, supportive, balanced and loving relationship.  We bought a home together, we were raising a lovely little pug dog together, and we were ready to try for a family.  I had a great job teaching art in an elementary school and everything was in it's right place.  I was shocked to find out that we were pregnant the second month of trying.  My mind raced ahead of the moment, all I could see was this baby, being a mom, I was so excited.  At 9 weeks I went in for my first doctor's appointment just to discover that there was nothing there.  A blighted ovum.  I had never heard that term before but learned that it is when the baby does not develop but the placenta does tricking the body into thinking it is still pregnant.  Also called a Missed Miscarriage.  Of course we were crushed.   I miscarried at home and would never wish that on anyone.  It took my body some time to recover.  We were finally ready to start trying again 6 months later.  It took us 5 months of trying to get pregnant again and those 5 months felt like 5 years.  Pregnancy #2, I had hope because I thought there was no way that I could loose another one.  Sure enough, development was slow, saw the heard beat at 7 weeks and at 8 weeks the fetus had died.  This time I had a DnC at the hospital and that was a lot easier to recover from than the natural miscarriage.  Even more devastated, wondering what is wrong with me, how many times can I go through this before I loose my heart and mind.  Not to mention the hormonal insanity that my body went through.  So we recovered and decided to try again.  This time it took 7 months of trying to get pregnant and those 7 months felt like 7 years.  Pregnancy #3...This time I just expected to loose it, I was just waiting to find out that it was not going to work out again because then I was going to give up on being a mother and live life with this empty place in my heart.  But this one stuck, everything has been perfect since the beginning.  The baby has always measured ahead and now at 28 weeks I can see and feel it rolling, kicking, stretching, hiccuping, etc.