When Sabrina and I decided we would attempt natural childbirth, our next big task was to research what we had to do to make that happen. There were thousands of possibilities, but the major/best recommended ones came down to “get an epidural”, “Lamaze”, and “The Bradley Method”.
Epidural was ruled out quickly as a last resort, as the statistics show is makes it *much* more likely you’ll end up having a c-section, which would defeat the entire purpose of natural childbirth! Lamaze seemed completely ridiculous, with lots of goofy-sounding breathing techniques that would make yoga instructors say “Really?!?!? That’s a bit much, isn’t it?”, and also very complex, with lots of things for both mother and coach to memorize. The Bradley Method, on the other hand, was well recommended like Lamaze, but every comment/review remarked on how simple and easy to understand it was. So, we bought some books.
After doing our reading, we realized that more or less, all the Bradley method is, is a guided meditation technique to train (and coach) the mother to relax during extreme pain, which decreases the energy they use and distracts their attention from the pain itself. We already *do* guided meditation with each other, and do so, frankly, much more sophisticatedly than the Bradley Method does. So, we ditched the classes and created our own personalized guided meditation/visualization, throwing in a couple of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) techniques I’ve picked up here and there to make it a bit faster.
Apparently we were super-stars. During labor, every hour or so, a nurse or midwife would stop in just to tell us ‘what a good team’ we were, and how amazingly calm and strong both mother and baby were. The staff repeatedly dragged in younger ones and “in-training” ones. They talked in hushed tones, but of course that made daddy nervous, so he listened to their conversations. They were ordering them to watch and listen to what we were doing, as they (literal quote) “were seeing the best possible scenario for a coached birth”.
So thanks Dr. Bradley, for providing us with a legitimate-sounding name for making up our own super-star birthing technique!
Now, if only we had a clue what to *do* with a baby, now that he’s here…
Yesterday, we had a baby. Today, we started living with baby. First of all, the pictures:
We’re still at the birthing center, but expect to leave in the morning. Some observations we’ve made along the way:
At exactly 11:51 AM on March 15th, 2014, Dashiell Thomas Hartley graced the world with his presence for the first time:
He is, I am told, an “incredibly cute”, 5 lb 14.6 oz, “button”. I have not discerned the entire meaning of this statement yet, but given that the staff keep gathering around him in spite of a dozen or so new babies at the birthing center, I’m assuming it’s a good thing.
Mommy and Dashiell are both well, and the birth was apparently “textbook”, despite the unusual course labor took (Apparently, a woman’s cervix *UN*-dilating by three centimeters *belongs* in a textbook.).
We won’t be home for at least 24 hours, but all is awesome!
OK, after a combined total of 20 hours of coaching and one hour’s sleep I have zero brain reserves for being cute. As of 8:30 AM, labor has long since resumed, dilation has progressed to eight centimeters, and there is *some* evidence the waters have broken. We may be entering the final week of labor!
Mommy and baby are both still doing so well the staff keep calling each other in to remark on how well they are doing. They seem rather surprised, disturbingly…
In yet another exciting episode of “This Damned Baby Won’t Come Out”, after 12 straight hours of intense labor which produced exactly *NO* further dilation, our intrepid parents have decided to opt for medicated sleep, and will re-begin the journey in the morning.
Mommy and baby are both healthy as horses and stubborn as mules, but have yet to determine a winner in the stubborn contest. There will, however, be no Pi baby forthcoming. The desolation at this fact is palpable…
Daddy got his first food in 28 hours this evening at around 10PM (You are a super-star, Karen!), and is no longer seeing double. He is somewhat disappointed at this decreased chance of getting twins, however!
As of 3 P.M. today, March 14th, we have officially been admitted to the hospital as “In Labor”. Things are progressing, but doing so *very* slowly!
In another exciting episode of “This Damned Baby Won’t Come Out”, we find our intrepid parents going as far as making a completely unnecessary early-morning trip to the hospital!
After an entire day of contractions, the midwife was called. She determined that since the last checkup had shown 4 centimeters dilation, if the contractions were regular and closer than 5 minutes, and were too painful to converse through, it was time to get to the hospital. By 11 PM, contractions were coming 3 minutes apart, and included loads of teeth-gritting and inchoate attempts at communication, so a decision was made. Off to the Burdett Care Center we went! By midnight, Mommy was being examined by a nurse, who said, “Oh, you’re only dilated one centimeter! We’ll keep you here an hour to make sure, but you’ll probably be going back home.”
Thanks, incompetent midwife, for wasting a huge chunk of our change, energy, emotions, and time!
So we’ve had something of an issue with this pregnancy. Not big medical problems, mind you, so we’re happy about that, but a fairly big issue, nonetheless. Our child is apparently afflicted with Stubborn Baby Syndrome.
Symptoms:
This child is *NOT* budging, despite 70% effacement, 4 centimeter dilation, three false labors, and several natural labor induction techniques that he has apparently completely ignored.
Come on, kid, you had your 40 weeks, time to get up!
This does not bode well for the Hartley family’s future domestic tranquility…
So last weekend, our friend Ambi Daniel came out to do “belly” pictures of Sabrina, capturing the pregnancy of our firstborn son forever. She just posted the first of the shots, and they’re amazing:
Source: Blaise’s Personal Portal
So what do you do when three out of 50 major website malware scanning services decide your website is “malicious” (despite it passing every scan you throw at it)? You spend hours sending them emails and researching their automated reanalysis tools.
Then, you discover that one of them, ‘CLEAN MX’ is a scam that randomly lists your site, and then won’t reassess it until you pay for and run their software, and that several of the other services, including the other two listing you, use their results.
Next, you discover that another, “Sophos”, is well known and ‘reliable’ (despite being wrong!), but will only reassess via a form that assures you they’ll have a look in a week or two, and sends you a threatening email response that if you keep bothering them instead of waiting for the tool, you’ll be put on their permanent blacklist.
You finally discover that the third, ‘Yandex’ has a whole page that describes how you can get your site reassessed, but it’s only available in Russian.
Why is nothing ever fucking easy?
