08.08.08

I have been anticipating this date. It only happens twelve times in a hundred years. You've got 01-01-01, then 02-02-02, and so on up through 12-12-12. And since there is no thirteenth month, that's the end of it. Right? Unless I'm missing something here. Without planning it this way, Jason and I got our drivers' licenses switched over from Alaska to Montana today. So our new licenses say the rad date: 08-08-08.

Some times cool yet meaningless things happen, and you just have to say, "How cool. Yet meaningless."

spregnancy: so far

I misspelled pregnancy that way in my journal the other day and decided I like it. It’s a sprig of a plant, and it’s spunky, whereas now the word pregnancy seems pudgy or priggish. I’m at the five month mark, and here are some notes about my main symptoms thus far:

• being thrilled out of my brains for a baby
• crying about how I’ll protect it from random accidents
• a sensitive gag reflex and car sickness, though, thankfully, not much other nauseousness
• restlessness at night – however, since I don’t have a specific schedule to maintain, I can sleep other times of day (though, then I feel like I get nothing accomplished, a feeling I try to fight)
• the eternal need to pee, night and day, day and night
• thinking about my own childhood, hoping I can recreate all the wonderful experiences my parents gave to me, and imagining new traditions too
• an inflamed pelvic ligament, which is much better than before but not totally calmed down
• feeling kicks and wiggles all day now (!)
• hitting my belly on things accidentally – bicycle riding is becoming problematic, because my thighs jostle my belly with each pedal: left, right, now left, now right. Poor kid. As things progress, I’ll simply have to spread my knees outward.
• enhanced shapeliness
• stretch marks in said shapely spots
• wondering how we’ll discipline our kid
• slightly elevated blood pressure, the thing I’m most concerned about, since it could mean the difference in a home birth or not – I’m attempting to bring it down with a liquid calcium/magnesium supplement my midwife suggested

Regarding the birth itself, our hope is to have this punkin in the comfort and warmth of our home, or rather my parents’ home, where we’ve decided to stay until the birth at least. They have a full basement apartment for us, and it will be quite convenient all around. It's only a mile from a hospital that tends toward natural childbirth philosophy, so in the case of needing to go there, I know that my wishes will still be honored.

here we are in a dress that belonged to my great-aunt, Wilma

shootin' with Grandpa and the cousins

(don't worry; I was only shooting a .22, and when my cousins shot a big rifle, I held a pillow to my belly)

new life and new life boiled. Is that weird? Sorry.

whey protein smoothies

You’re supposed to down a bunch of protein during spregnancy, and I find that difficult to do. Maybe you too have such troubles. Well, here’s something I’ve been digging: whey protein smoothies. There is no specific recipe, so make it to taste. Combine in a blender or your Magic Bullet:

• some amount of sherbet (I like lime), icecream, or yogurt
• juice if it needs to be liquidier
• a scoop of whey protein powder
• fruit if you’ve got some

Nothing special so far, right? But here’s the secret ingredient. If the whey protein flavor doesn’t appeal to you, add a couple teaspoons of unsweetened cocoa powder for a beautiful flavor offset.

spregnancy: our beginning

Though I’m confident in your understanding of the general idea of how spregnancy comes about, I’d like to tell our story – how it came to be and how we found out.

In a week, Jason and I will have been married for 9 years. During all but the first few months of our marriage, we have tried neither to avoid nor to embrace parenthood. Essentially, we’ve let the wild winds direct, and since they haven’t directed a baby into my womb, we’ve done other stuff. After so much time, though, we realized we’d need to take intentional steps. We bought a bottle of prenatal vitamins and also a thermometer to monitor ovulation. I remember a conversation with Elisha not much later in which I was producing our usual lackadaisical approach to getting pregnant. She looked at me from across the couch and said, “Um, most people I know who want a baby start doing something about it.” Yes. See, I need Elisha as my friend.

And we would do something serious….just after finishing the Pacific Crest Trail this summer. Knowing that spregnancy would certainly not hit us one month into charting ovulation, we decided to finally finish the PCT, a goal we’d been putting off because of money or other ridiculous things. We began reviewing our gear. There were shoes to purchase, food menus to assemble, plane tickets to buy, exercise to start getting. In late March, Jason went away for a long weekend to refresh his Wilderness First Responder certification. They only had one slot open, so I couldn’t get in. I stayed home and wondered why I needed to pee so much these days. I had been toying with the idea of spregnancy for a week but didn’t want to either worry or excite Jason unnecessarily. So while he was gone, I waited one more day, then one more, until finally on Sunday after church I bought a test.

I went home and peed on the stick. You know the drill. I left the stick on the counter and walked into the main room. I paced, I fidgeted, I knew it would be negative. Back into the bathroom I went and looked at the stick, which said YES+. I was dumb-founded. I looked at the stick over and over again. I went back into the main room and speed-walked around and around the pool table with my hands over my mouth, wide-eyed, crying, excited, incredulous, a bit panic-stricken I suppose, saying, “I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant.” I wanted to keep it secret until Jason knew, but I needed to tell someone. I got ahold of my sister, who was driving someplace with Cameron. They flipped out with joy. Okay, now someone knew, and I could settle down.

Books! I thought. Books about what the heck I’m supposed to do next! Jason wouldn’t be home for 8 hours anyway. Out the door I headed to Title Wave Books, and just then Jessica called. She wanted me to drop by Moose’s Tooth to have a bite of pizza with her and Kevin. I was indeed hungry and suddenly considered that I shouldn’t ignore hunger pains, so I said yes. I could make it through a quick lunch without saying anything. But as I sat down nonchalantly at the table, Kevin said, “Sooo! What’s new?!” with an unusually chipper tone. They both looked at me expectantly. I couldn’t have lied with any pretense of sincerity. After a moment’s hesitation, I said, “I’LLTELLYAWHAT’SNEWI’M PREGNANT.” They stared at me. Jess started tearing up and put her hands to her mouth, just as I’d done less than an hour before. Kevin became short of breath, red in the face, and said his blood pressure was suddenly high. It was beautiful!

Mutual friends, Jill and Dave, dropped by Moose’s Tooth to bring an anniversary cake for Kevin and Jess, and despite a long conversation, we managed to keep mum about the baby. I knew this could quickly get out of control before dear Jason even knew he was a dad-to-be. After lunch, the three of us went to Title Wave and sat down on the floor in the pregnancy section, scouring books and dreaming. A friend of theirs walked by, talked to us for awhile, and asked if Kevin and Jess were pregnant. “No, we’re not,” they said, and tried to act like this was a normal reading spot. The guy turned to me. Sigh. “Yes, yes I am.” I said, “But I just found out. My husband doesn’t know yet, so don’t say anything.” When I went to check out, the young man at the counter smiled widely and said, “I probably shouldn’t ask this, but are you pregnant?” “YES, YES I AM. BUT I JUST FOUND OUT. MY HUSBAND DOESN’T KNOW YET, SO DON’T SAY ANYTHING.” Dangit!

Home I went and didn’t call another soul, though there were some close friends I longed to tell! But Jason was absolutely going to be the next person to know. When he got home, he hugged me and said, “Well, are we gonna hike the Trail?” We already knew we were, but Jason and I tend toward never-ending decision mode. I looked him in the eyeballs and slowly shook my head no. “Why?” he asked suspiciously. I took him by the hand and lead him toward the bathroom. He looked at the stick, then back at me. “How could it be?” he asked quietly (and has kept asking throughout the spregnancy).

That very night and the next day, we began calling our out of town family and close friends in Anchorage, because a) we didn’t feel like keeping it in for the traditional two or three months until you’re sure everything’s okay, and b) everyone was expecting us to leave within a few weeks for the Trail. One of the phrases we heard often was “This is the best news I’ve heard in a long time!” That made us feel so special and happy, knowing people are on board with us.

So, how? Well, God’s timing is beyond ours, and we have to trust that. But also, here are some wild and silly winds blowing during the time of conception:

• We were renting the basement apartment of an older couple we know who had 7 children. He is Protestant; she is Mormon. Either way, there’s a rich history of child-bearing going on in that household, and it could be catching.
• I was working part time at a Montessori school, surrounded by children in a very nurturing environment.
• My other part time work was an office job, replacing a woman on maternity leave.
• I had taken 11 prenatal vitamins in one month’s time, which averages one every 3 days. I counted after I knew I was pregnant. (Incidentally, after the news was out, Chloe, who is 4, often asked me if I'd taken my vitamins today. She was on it!)

And that's how our little one came to be.

a really long but excited report about a rad book / WARNING: tread no further if you’re squeamish about birthing words like sphincter and episiotomy

(I will post a picture of something nice every now and again to offset such long-winded text.)

I have been reading and loving “Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth” and getting so excited for the beautiful event of childbirth. I want it all! The pain! The joy! The waves! I can’t wait to watch my body go through the process of plunking out onto the earth another human being. What an incredible and weird thing. To be fair, I have read a couple of conventional birthing books too that stress the medical model, but they haven't jazzed me up nearly as much.

Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth (by Ina May Gaskin) has done so much to prepare me mentally for this event. She is one of the U.S.’s premiere midwives, published in all kinds of professional journals, and asked to speak the world over. She has also traveled worldwide to learn from both indigenous and civilized peoples who don’t have an invasive medical model for birth and yet give birth better. Sure, some of those people don’t have a lot of hygiene and nutrition know-how, so their life expectancies might not be stellar, but the act of childbirth itself is seen as normal, not as an emergency from the get-go. What’s nice is that she acknowledges the use of medical intervention when necessary, and appreciate that we have surgery as an option for saving lives. But she believes there are better ways to deal with the majority of births.

Let me give you a small example. She talks about “shoulder dystocia,” in which the baby’s head makes it out of the mom but his shoulders get stuck. This occurs in 1–2 % of births, and in medical circles, it almost always results in using forceps, giving the woman an episiotomy (cutting her from the vagina to the anus), or other injury to mom or baby. Well, Ina May and her partners were once studying with indigenous Guatemalan midwives and noticed that in such a case, these midwives have the woman turn onto her hands and knees, in a dog position. Guess what? Out pops that baby almost every time. Why? The pelvis (and the baby) are made of movable bones, so a position change can affect body shape. These illiterate midwives had been passing down for who knows how many generations a good position for remedying stuck shoulders. From then on, Ina May and her partners used that trick, and after enough experience to see that it worked, Ina published her finds in Journal of Family Practice and Journal of Reproductive Medicine. The maneuver was later named after her as The Gaskin Maneuver, but when she asked the Guatemalan midwives where they had learned it, they said, “Dios. We learned it from God.” (This story is on page 99 of the book.)

Ina May also emphasizes a woman being able to choose her birthing positions according to what feels good – squatting, standing, kneeling, etc. – rather than on the “stranded beetle” position used in hospitals. A lying-on-back position was first recorded as used by a mistress of the French King in the 1600’s. Shortly thereafter, forceps for grabbing the baby and chloroform as an anesthesia came into use by the “civilized, fashionable” ladies, necessitating their lying down. Squatting began being viewed as low-class. So, for the sake of fashion, we abandoned good birthing positions that allowed us to work with gravity, our best muscle function, and best blood flow between mom and baby.

Lest you think this woman a quack, let me say that on the contrary, she and her midwife partners have run a birthing center in Tennessee for the last few decades with amazing statistics. They see less than 4% medical intervention, including the use of forceps or a vacuum. The c-section rate for their patients has been consistently less than 2%! Compare that to the U.S. average right now of 29.5%. She is so encouraging and down to earth about birth, purporting that a woman’s body is made to do this and is quite capable of it when the woman is physically comfortable, surrounded by loving support, and most importantly of all, mentally and emotionally at ease. You wanna eat while in labor? Eat! This is the hardest job you’ve ever done, so why would we deprive you of food?! And yet, food deprivation is standard hospital procedure, just in case you have to be wheeled into surgery. And we think we’re advanced and that less technologically saavy cultures are barbaric. Hm.

Check out this water bug's shadow on the river rocks below!

Ina May talks lots about the mind-body connection. What struck me was the part about sphincters. We all know that it’s difficult to poo if you’re in an uncomfortable environment or don’t have privacy. Some people on vacations will actually hold in their poo for a week or more because they’re not comfortable. Same idea with sex; a vagina doesn’t open well if its owner doesn’t want sex. Well, my friends, these acts involve sphincters, as does childbirth. Biologically, what closes sphincters in humans and animals is adrenaline coursing through the body. This is a good and helpful response if a person or critter is out in the wild pottying, sexing, or birthing, and they need to end it quickly and run from something. But it’s not good when a woman is actually safe, yet her body is freaked out and producing adrenaline because of loud noises and commotion, bright lights, unfamiliar equipment and people, etc.

Oooh! Don’t you want to give birth right now? I do! But I want to do it well. I’m under no Pollyanna perception that it’ll be downright orgasmic, although many women do have orgasmic type sensations under pleasant, natural birthing conditions. That’s not something you’ll hear much talk of in our polite society. In short, Ina May doesn’t say birth will be pain-free, but that your best chances of a good birth rest in being fear-free.

Okay, I’m out to do Kegels exercises.