The Final Tri....And He Arrived!

We're now four months post-partum and I just felt the strongest pull to get back into blogging, however finding any time to do so is an absolute challenge of its own of course.

However let's recap....back to the days when I felt exhausted...just in a different way :)

The second trimester was fairly pleasant all things considered and I even felt fairly decent a large portion of the final trimester too. The most challenging aspect of the final trimester was that my body didn't hold up quite the way I'd hoped. By month 7, my pelvic muscles would start to "lock down" if I walked over a mile and my SI joint ached after almost any yoga, so months 8-9 contained almost no physical activity. In the final 1.5 months heartburn also caught up with me to the point of interrupting sleep some nights. While these were two aspects that definitely were not fun to deal with, I will forever be grateful that my sleep was never super negatively impacted during pregnancy. In fact, during the final weeks, I spent a LOT of time sleeping. I also never had much issue with swelling nor any issues with muscle cramps, which I still attribute to the epsom salt baths.

I think it was around 28 weeks that I finally realized that the medical group I'd been going to most definitely did not align with my desires and values, thus I actually marched out of a required group visit over a dispute on C-section rates and at that point started looking for a new provider. At 30 weeks, I'd discovered a naturopathic delivery center but after reading shaky financial reviews and having a negative response time from their billing department, I decided to keep looking. I finally discovered another midwifery option with good reviews and had my consultation with the woman who became my midwife at 32 weeks.

At 36 weeks, I was praying that lil man would stay put as I still needed to get my students through their final projects. At 38 weeks and after passing the mucus plug, I let the midwife initially check me before driving  the hour down to my parents house for a potentially final good-bye visit with my granny who was being put on hospice. At that visit I was told that my body had enough signs that he could start to arrive at anytime. Since I still needed to grade 20 group papers and get winter term grades in, I was praying all that week and the next while being super stressed out about an earlier arrival than what would work best with my schedule. Thankfully he stayed put....and then he stayed put....and stayed put. Ha! At 40 weeks, my body still showed signs that anytime could be go time and I had researched average gestational periods for biracial babies. At 41 weeks, I was required to have a follow-up ultrasound to make sure all was still okay in there for him to be able to keep going, but post-ultrasound I elected to a) have my membranes stripped and b) to schedule an induction. I wanted to give him time to come on his own post-stripping of the membranes, so I elected to schedule for when the midwife would be on-call about four days away. While I had some contractions that night, no labor started.

The next day my mom (who was staying with me that week just in case) and I drove the hour or so to the Woodburn Tulip Festival to try to distract away my frustration. While the trip didn't get him to arrive, it was an absolutely beautiful day!

We ended the day with yummy fajitas at a nearby Mexican restaurant. That night I had one of the most uncomfortable ones of the entire pregnancy (which I've reflected upon this many times in the months since for reasons I'll share later). I couldn't sleep at all and it felt like he was just wanting to crawl out of his own skin in there. He couldn't get comfortable, I couldn't get comfortable, no sleep was happening, my anxiety was up, and I was wishing I would have scheduled the induction earlier.

I don't remember much about Saturday, but it was during a deep sleep that night that I was awakened about 330am by the dogs wanting to go out. When I went to the bathroom I felt extremely nauseous and couldn't stop shaking. About 45 minutes after that I woke my mom up to keep me company because I felt so weird...and after laying in my king sized bed with me for 15 -20 minutes she decided that I was in labor and that we should go to the hospital. A little after 5am we were on the way to the hospital and my contractions were six minutes apart. I was checked in around 6am and then labored for several hours in the shower before eventually transitioning to the hospital bed.

Ironically we had gone into labor the morning of the induction :) Little guy arrived on his own time and I truly can't complain about my L&D experience. They followed my desired birth plan to a T and my L&D nurse was truly remarkable. I labored naturally the majority of the time until I finally decided about 2.5 hours prior to delivery that I "didn't need to be anyone's hero" so I asked for some initial level pain relief.

The biggest things I remember from L&D: I wanted complete silence during contractions (and ironically both my mom and sister are super chatty but soon respected my wishes), I worked through contractions in the same way that I work through running by either zoning out or repeating mantras in my head, I counted down the final 10 minutes until they could administer the next pain meds for the 5 rounds that I received them, I vomited on three occasions until I decided they could give me the anti-nausea meds after all since I went with the pain meds, I wanted to push before I was officially ready and in the end they gave me the green light ahead of time to move the baby down anyway (he never "fully engaged"), pushing felt way different than I could have ever expected, labor felt way different than I could have ever expected, my biggest pain was the muscle cramps that happened in my quads & glutes which are always my problem areas, and I'll never forget not even realizing he was out and following the instructions to look down....and discovering my little man laying on my chest :)

I truly lucked out....my sister was an incredible labor support, we were immensely blessed by my L&D nurse, my labor was 8ish hours and I pushed for 10-20 minutes, baby boy was healthy at 8lbs, 2oz and 22 inches long. All very good things indeed!

What I don't remember? Apparently yelling that I never needed to have sex again. Haha!

What advice would I give for the hospital delivery?

Bring Chapstick. I'd read online to take chapstick...and it's a must have!

Best things to labor in? A tankini for the shower and a short tank dress/beach cover-up for the bed.
A nursing tank and a pair of shorts were all I needed until I went home.

Truly there wasn't much we needed in the hospital. An outfit to labor in, the items to lounge in, a weather appropriate going home outfit for me and him. Toiletries to shower and that's it. Granted we only stayed one night and I tend to be super minimalist about that type of stuff, but we way overpacked for both him and I.

When they offer you the granny hospital panties, ice pads, tucks, and water spritzing bottle...use and take all of it! :)

Write out your birth plan. That's sort of a given, but it was great to have it read by my mother, my sister, and photocopied into my medical chart.

Always remember you are your own best health advocate. Granted you need a team to help you but advocate for what you want. I wanted to go home early and I stated that as soon as it was apparent that we both were a-ok. From the moment we were wheeled downstairs, the entire team knew we were working toward an early release. (Interestingly in checking the numbers later, only staying one night also probably saved me another $1000 or more....)

Write a thank-you and take flowers to any awesome providers. We made our L&D nurse cry in return, but we couldn't have had a more incredible support than through her being a part of our team.

When they offer you as much food as you want for free? Order and eat all of it. There are so many calories to replenish! Also order as you for whoever spends that first night with you! I ate a TON and drank a total of about ten juices to help replenish lost electrolytes.

I'm hopeful to recap some other helpful pieces in future posts as I start getting back into blogging (hopefully), but the reality is each birth story is a unique one! As much as I love my baby, I'm truly hopeful that was the only birth story I'll ever share-ha.

These first few months have been rough and beautiful in their own right...but those stories are still to come too...... :)

Pregnancy Helpful Items

While I don't intend to get pregnant again, but hey who knows....I thought it would be helpful to list out some of the things that have been helpful during the transition from 1st trimester into finally feeling better the second half of the second trimester. This week marks the end of the second trimester, so I'm hopeful that keeping up with some of these will help some of the discomforts of the third trimester.

Being that I work in a natural medicine environment and have been a long term believer of a more natural approach to health care, most of what I read tended to veer more toward midwifery and nutrition. I was really interested in knowing what exactly to feed the bump, especially since he didn't seem to want any part of a prenatal (even at 20 weeks). Some of the books below contradict each other but I appreciate that and thus could form my own opinions.

Pregnancy Related books I've been reading:
1) Ina May Gaskin's: Guide to Childbirth: Ina May is the guru of common-day midwifery in the US. The first half of this book is personal stories (I skipped 75% of them....) but the second half is the informative stuff.
2) The Nourishing Tradition's Book to Baby & Childcare: Some of the advice in here is contraversial but I also appreciated reading from this viewpoint. Some of the stuff that I did implement: Cod liver oil is contraversial but I added it into my diet in variation, added the occasional liver, am eating regular organic chicken now that the kid tolerates some meat, and added eggs in as possible.
3) The Whole 9 Months: Week by Week Guide to Pregnancy Nutrition: In contrast to the above nutrition wisdom, this book is entirely vegetarian focused and gave some insight into what to focus on for each month. Truthfully I was a little disappointed in this book, but I have used it as a resource somewhat.
4) Nourished Beginnings: Baby Food: This book I love even though it's super simple! It's a helpful resource to know what to feed the lil guy once he arrives.
5) Sanda Steingraber's Having Faith: I don't advocate pregnant mamas reading this. I advocate for women to read this before becoming pregnant. For me it was a helpful reread to remember environmental toxicity concerns, take steps to reduce what I could, and also be immersed more in the development of the fetus. I also read her follow-up Raising Elijah about raising kids in a toxic world.

Getting back into working out has been truly wonderful. It's been good for my mental health, at times even makes me feel like I'm not pregnant, has decreased joint and low-back issues, and (they say) is great preparation for labor & delivery, while also having the potential to ease recovery from L&D. I had grand notions of being able to continue running if I ever did get pregnant.....but I quickly discovered that beyond the occasional jaunt, my body has craved & benefited more from other options.

Pregnancy Work-outs I've been enjoying:
1) Regular (but shorter) snowy hikes from my favorite trail head---much shorter and less inclines these days, but it feels SO great to get this body back on trail!
2) 2-3x a week 1.5 mile evening loop walk with the dogs--my bladder struggles to make it the whole 1.5 miles (otherwise we would probably go farther)
3) Tonic's Prenatal Pregnancy Yoga on youtube-- I seriously have loved the 2nd tri vinyasa and strength & stability work-outs. They include strength building, stretching, & pelvic floor exercises. I did find that the energizing flow irritated my SI joint however so I've stayed away from that one.
4) Slow & modified Pure Cardio Insanity work-out--This has been a recent add-in but I realized that if I just modified some moves (no jumping, knee push-ups, wider stances) and slowed down that this was still manageable.

Based on all the books I read and the nutritional environment I work in, it was important to me to research and figure out what to feed the lil guy to try to make sure he is/was getting everything he needs for different developmental milestones. While I started reading & researching later in the game (16-18 weeks), I'm still glad to be able to incorporate more foods and items that are beneficial for him. A lot of this was already in my diet, but I just try to be more mindful of ensuring that I'm getting it as regularly as he needs it. I've also tried really hard to ensure that I'm selecting more organic items: meats, produce, dairy, etc. That being said....I still have the occasional DQ blizzard, ate a pan of homemade cinnamon rolls over break, and eat all the cookies friends & family gift upon me. :)

Foods I've been eating:
Lots of kale & leafy greens, salad w various veggies
Roasted root veggies (turnips, sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnips, squash)
Organic baked chicken, occasional beef or liver
Homemade soups & stews (beef barley, potato & leek, Mexican chicken)
Frittatas from fridge left overs
Smoothies w banana, blueberry, avocado, spinach
Plain yogurt w home-canned fruits, museli, cinnamon, chia
Other probiotics: kefir, sauerkraut, oral tablets, kombucha on occasion
Snacks: lots of fruit & dried fruits

There are so many other items and things that have been beneficial along the way. When I read the typical "symptom" lists and remember conversations with a few of my other friends, I feel very fortunate that while weeks 8-16 were rough, the weeks since then have been much more enjoyable and with limited symptoms.

I do have occasional bloating (and the gas!) or weird stomach sensations, which I tend to "treat" by eating extra sauerkraut, drinking the occasional kombucha or just letting it pass. This last week I also had a "sick day" where I got hit by the start of a UTI and a cold on the same day. I spent most the day in bed except for a quick trip to the store for pre-made soup & cranberry juice. For the regular cold, it just took lots of fluids, soup, cold season tea, & napping for it to pass. UTIs are pretty common in the 2nd trimester (and in me in particular) and I'm still somewhat attempting to self-treat this sucker (although they did run a sample on Friday). The main things that have helped: D-Mannose & Cranberry extract (read the label to ensure it's ok), TONS of water, pure cranberry juice mixed with kefir, oral probiotic pills, limited sugar intake, and I took a homeopathic remedy for 2-3 days also.

Symptoms I've been able to avoid so far (knock on wood!): heartburn, leg cramps (I like to think the epsom salt baths, foam rolling, & yoga are helping here), and swelling (again, perhaps the epsom salt baths? and just lots of water and regular work-outs).

I also would mention that at the beginning of 2nd tri my boobs got HUGE. As I've increased work-outs, they've reduced slightly, but I know that once my milk comes in post delivery, they'll increase even more. What has been interesting is that since about 18-22 weeks, I've already had some of the initial milk production. I do tend to notice that in the weeks when I get a lot of healthy nutrition, take the occasional cod liver oil, and also drink some pregnancy tea, the production of this tends to be more...things to keep in mind as I attempt breast feeding post-delivery.

Things I swear by:
Pregnancy leggings & comfy socks
Pregnancy tea
Coconut oil for lotion
Continued foam rolling for low-back & quad discomfort
Weekly epsom salt baths
Water, water, and more water
Natural home remedies (herbal teas, cranberry, homeopathics)
Continued alternative practitioner treatments
Probiotics

So far I've been able to continue sleeping in my regular pre-pregnancy position and I'm hopeful that somehow this will keep working out as my mid-section gets larger. During the last few weeks (maybe 25 on?), I've been waking up several times a night to pee & yet chug more water, but at least a few times a week I also wake up and just lay there for a 1-2 hours before being able to fall back asleep. I also would say that the amount of weird dreams continues. While weird dreams are a regular in my life, they have come more regularly with the pregnancy.

One other thing I guess I would mention is that after reading Ina May's book, I took a list of questions into my provider. My insurance does a better job of covering standard medical care, so while I'm working with a midwife, she operates in a Western medical model and I'll deliver in a hospital. One of the items I did not want to have to do was the gestational diabetes test, as drinking the mandatory glucose beverage did not sound appealing and was sure to set the kid off (who seriously tends to do best with real whole foods). In reality there is a blood test that can measure levels, but I was able to negotiate using a standard blood sugar finger prick test to check levels. While her requirement was a little excessive (4 pricks per day for 7 days: pre breakfast, 2 hrs post breakfast, 2 hrs post lunch, & 2 rs post dinner), it did actually provide some really valuable insight for me nutritionally. (I tracked food intake, blood sugar readings, & work-outs just to get a better picture for myself.) The good news is that I'm not diabetic.......and my body loves and absolutely needs carbs. My readings were much better when carbs were included in meals than when it was a protein based meal....so bring on all that carb goodness in the world! :)

The other questions I'd asked her were well-answered but I am a little nervous about L&D, especially in a standard hospital environment. I've asked my sister to be in the delivery room with my mom and I and I have a list of strategies to try for a natural delivery that I think will help me....but I also recognize that the best made plans & intentions don't always work out that way.....so we'll see what happens! For now, let's just hope the kid stays in there growing & developing for the next 10-12 weeks.....and so I can make sure to get through this term of work also! :)