Runaway October

Today the big D-Meister turns 3. As a mat­ter of fact it wlll be exactly 3 years to the minute as I write this post. Man, how things have changed since his birth.

It’s been a long haul so far. So much to learn, so much to change, so much to cel­e­brate. Before I had chil­dren I would always tell Matt that I wanted 17 kids. I would think of my mother and how she had 6 kids and thought I could do that too, no prob­lem. Now that I have two lit­tle boys my want for 17 kids has dropped a lit­tle to a more man­age­able num­ber. I still think of my mother and how things make more sense, yet I don’t know how she managed.

While child­less it never occurred to me just how much work it took to do your best. How often you fall short of ideal. How self­less you have to become. In all hon­esty, it has been hard. When I crack my eye­lids in the morn­ing, before the sun, because Rowan is gig­gling and try­ing to stuff Legos in my ears I long for the days that I could sleep until 2 o’clock in the after­noon. After spend­ing a full day clean­ing, cook­ing three meals and nurs­ing non-stop all I want is a long hot bath, by myself. But Declan doesn’t like the water too hot and Rowan can’t stay in too long or he gets too prune-y.

But there are so many price­less moments that I would never want to miss. The feel­ing of pure eupho­ria when your baby finally comes home from the NICU. The first steps. The first time you hear Mama. When he runs past other peo­ple cry­ing because he wants com­fort from you. The lit­tle feel­ing of dread­ful but­ter­flies when he does some­thing so amaz­ingly grown up and the thought of how big he’s really get­ting. Being awestruck by how large his men­tal capac­i­ties have become in 3 short years.

There is so much grow­ing that goes on with chil­dren about, not their growth but mine as well (and not just the size of my butt). My heart has truly grown.

Happy Birth­day Declan Pierce. I love you so much, baby. (This is where he would say “I’m not baby. Declan is big boy. Rowan is lit­tle baby!”  )

Okay, so some of you know this already, but I am 1000% for what I call “nat­ural” par­ent­ing. To me this means home­births, breast­feed­ing, intact gen­talia, lim­ited immu­miza­tions, etc etc. I feel that we’ve made it this far, thou­sands of years, with­out all the inter­ven­tions and place a lot of trust in our bod­ies and the com­plex inter­nal sys­tems that keep us alive.

Every now and again I’ll run across some­thing that just totally solid­i­fies me in my want to avoid all inter­ven­tions when pos­si­ble. Here are some exceprts from “10 Home­birth Facts No One’s Telling You” on Indiebirth.com by Maryn Leis­ter. Please read the full arti­cle here.

2. The US has the high­est obstet­ri­cal inter­ven­tion rates of any coun­try. (1) The US is cur­rently ranked 28^th for infant mor­tal­ity (that means 27 other coun­tries have a bet­ter rate of infant sur­vival than we do). 

• How is it that med­i­cine is one of the most advanced coun­tries, in the world, yet our babies die in such numbers?

4. You are very likely to have a c-section if you chose a hos­pi­tal birth. The WHO con­cluded that there is no rea­son for any region of the world to have a cesarean rate of more than 10–15%. As of 2004, the US has a 29.1% c-section rate. This rate is up from 27.6% in 2003. (2, 20) (3) C-section infants also are four times more likely to die than those born vaginally. 

• 4 times! 4 times more likely to die!! Granted a C-Section is a major abdom­i­nal surgery but still. Why would any­one be okay with a C-Section that wasn’t absolutely required?

Both of my boys, arrived early and were hos­pi­tal births because of it. My old­est son spent two weeks in the NICU becaue the doc­tors felt that my womb was not the best place for him. They felt that they could help him bet­ter than I could. In the end, the doc­tors were wrong and should have left him alone.

My youngest son was just in a hurry to get here. I was 2 days, maybe it was 4?, from being able to birth at home. Had I stayed home any longer he would have been and if I remem­ber cor­rectly (oxy­tocin has a ten­dency to make you for­get any­thing com­ing from some­one over 6 months old) my mid­wife stated she would not have sent us to the hos­pi­tal. Although he was early, he was strong and healthy. The hos­pi­tal kept him in the NICU for a week “just to make sure”, fed him for­mula and pumped him full of med­i­cine pro­phy­lac­ti­cally. Had they known my water was bro­ken for 10 days prior to deliv­ery they would have flipped a  lid.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that any and all of my next child­births will be attempted home­births. You’ll only find me in a hos­pi­tal if some­thing is actu­ally wrong and med­ical inter­ven­tion is nec­es­sary. Some­times I strug­gle to keep my mouth shut but in the end I also respect a mother’s right to birth how she wants, granted that it was an edu­cated decision.

What were your child­birth expe­ri­ences like? Is there any­thing you would change?