Birth Center Prenatal Visit

Today was the day I’ve been looking forward to for some months now.  My first prenatal appointment at the Topeka Birth Center.  When I first found out that this birth center existed, I squealed with joy!  Then when we found out we were moving to Manhattan, I was so, so happy and relieved to know that I could have the baby at the birth center -barring any major medical problems, of course.

The reason I want to give birth there is because they offer a peaceful, homebirth-like setting to labor and deliver in.  There is no constant pressure to “progress,” no one sets a timer or expects your labor to follow the clock, there’s no pressure to use pitocin for speeding things up, no episiotomies, no constant unwanted offers of pain meds, no IV’s, no fetal moniters that restrict movement, you can labor and deliver in whatever position is most comfortable -meaning you are not confined to a bed, on your back-, eat and drink when you want, the list goes on and on.  Everything they do and don’t do is just what I want and makes me feel comfortable.  Everything is peaceful, family-oriented, not rushed, not invasive, and yet still very safe for healthy pregnancies.  If there is an emergency, a hospital is available across the street, and that is comforting too.

I just love it.  It makes me so happy to think of giving birth there.  I know in a hospital setting I would feel much more afraid and out of control.  I have very little experience with hospitals, and I don’t exactly feel comfortable in them.  I’m not afraid of them or anything -just not comfortable.  I know that the routine interventions they do during labor often do not help labor progress and thus lead to c-sections which could have been avoided (one of my worst fears).  If I have a medical emergency during labor and have to be transferred to the hospital, I will be very greatful to the staff there for having the equipment and interventions necessary to save me and my baby.  But if everything goes normally, I would much rather stay out of the hospital.  To me, hospitals are for sick people.  I’m not sick; I’m pregnant!

So my first appointment was today.  I got to see the two labor/delivery rooms.  They look like bedrooms, with a big double bed in each one.  One has a big jacuuzi.  They have birth balls, birthing stools, cd players, a small amount of medical equipment.  They’re nice and cozy.  There is also a kitchen where we can keep and prepare food for ourselves during labor.

Get this, women who have been pregnant before:  for my gestational diabetes test next time I go, I don’t have to drink that nasty glucose syrup that makes some women puke.  I have to eat a breakfast taken exactly from a menu they gave me today, one hour before I go in to be tested.  Something like juice, eggs, and toast, or toast, cereal, and milk.  Awesome, huh??  I love this place.

They don’t do routine ultrasounds there, so I will not be having an ultrasound unless there is a medical concern.  This means, the baby’s sex will be a surprise!  How exciting!  Please send us neutral baby gifts.    However, the midwife says that the heartrate indicates it is a boy, and she claims that method is about 70% accurate.  My grandma also said I “look” like I’m having a boy.  So!  We’ll see!

The midwife also said the baby is positioned head-down.  Good baby.  Make sure you stay that way, please.  (However, breech positioning is not a reason for them to send women to the hospital for a c-section, unless the baby is breech during labor and things are not progressing.  None of this nonsense about scheduling c-sections when the baby happens to be breech in the weeks before the due date).  She said I am measuring about 28 weeks, which is 4 weeks ahead of what I’m supposed to be, so that is kind of strange but not alarming.  We’ll see where I’m at next time.

I’m so happy!

skin-hating

Today I read a post on one of my favorite blogs, NieNie Dialogues. I’ve been reading her blog for about two years now.  It’s a typical “Mormon Mommy blog” except for one thing: almost a year ago she and her husband were in a plane crash and were severely burned, NieNie on most of her body.  They both survived and she continues to blog.

Her post today is about how she is feeling sorry for herself because she used to look so beautiful and now her skin is scarred from the burns.  I was struck by this post, I thought, “How many women in their 20’s hate their skin when in fact their skin is perfectly lovely?”  I’m afraid the answer is, most of them.  I hope the women reading NieNie’s blog realize how thankful they ought to be for their healthy skin.  Even NieNie herself, though she is (understandably!) struggling because she looks like a completely different person, and people stare at her, and her kids were afraid of her at first, probably realizes that her skin is one reason why she is still alive today.  It is what protected her body from the fire.  We should all be greatful that we have skin that protects us, and even more so if it looks nice.

I checked out a few magazines from the library a while ago, including Martha Stewart Living and Real Simple.  Both were, of course, about 75% ads, and most of those ads said things like “fight against aging” and were just obsessed with facial skin and how keeping it looking impossibly smooth and dewey would not be so impossible if you would only buy X product (ranging in price from $ to $$$).  It was really disturbing to me, probably because I never watch TV and haven’t read a magazine like that in months.

It is such a waste of time, money, thought, it’s bad for your spirit, it’s bad for your heart to hate your body like those ads suggest you should.  They claim loving your skin means obsessing over it, when actually that probably just breeds more dissatisfaction.

My philosophy is, I look better now than I am ever going to in the future (as I age, have babies, gain weight, etc) so I might as well enjoy how I look or I’ll be kicking myself in ten years, twenty years, wishing I still looked that good.

a cozy spot

This corner looks so inviting.

The rocking chair with the sheepskin is sooo heavenly….

Is it kind of sick that sheepskin makes me love sheep more than I would otherwise?

My dress is put together (and looking rather shapeless without a body in it) so the next thing to do is hem it, add some tucks, and some kind of decoration.

Ridiculously easy ways to go without

ETA update from last post: I have an appointment with the birth center next week!  I am so excited!  I will write a post all about it soon.  Maybe after my appointment.

I was doing some chores today and realized blogging about it might be interesting or useful to some people.

How to not have a clothes dryer

We haven’t been using the coin-op dryer lately, because we don’t have any money.  It’s $1.50 per load and doesn’t even dry things completely.  Some things I’ve learned that make me feel a little more self-righteous -instead of just poor- about not using the dryer include the fact that clothes last longer when they’re air-dried.  Dryers use heat, tumble clothes around,  shrink clothes, and set stains permanently.  All that lint they acquire is the result of clothes slowly being worn thin.  If you own your own dryer, keep in mind that it’s probably the highest electricity-sucker in your house.  It takes a lot to make that much heat and move that much weight around.

So here’s what we do instead:

One load of laundry hung on our shower rod. Ridiculously easy to do. You're going to hang them up anyway. These dry overnight, so make sure no one needs to take a shower before they're dry.

This is the rest of the same load. You can buy these drying racks for a few dollars. It's not really that good for most clothes because it's so small, but socks, small towels, etc. hang really well on it.

Some more tips:

-This only works for one load at a time, unless you have multiple shower rods or other places you can hang stuff.  Therefore, we only do one load of laundry on any given day.  It keeps things from piling up and prevents “Laundry Day” where you spend all day washing clothes.

-If you have tons of clothes, this might not work.  Also, if you put clothes in the hamper when they’re not really dirty yet, this might not work.  There will simply be too many clothes to hang up.  Our example is one load, probably one weeks’ worth of clothes for two people, not including the whites, which we will do another day.

-Ways to dry other things:

-sheets: just put them straight back onto the mattress to dry, and don’t cover them up.  In my experience cotton sheets will take about 5 hours to dry this way.  So make sure you don’t do it right before bedtime.

-towels: hang them on the towel racks.  This will not work if you use a new towel every time you shower, and you shower very often.  Think about it: you’re drying off your freshly cleaned body. The towel isn’t going to get that dirty.  So reuse it and make your life easier.

-of course, the easiest way to dry laundry is to have a nice outdoor clothesline!  A porch or deck railing will also work in a pinch.

How to not have a microwave

Our microwave died a month before we moved, and, almost three months later, we haven’t bought one yet because we have no money.  We recently decided not to buy one at all, ever, because we’ve learned how to live without one and it’s ridiculously easy.  Here are the problems we came across and how we fixed them:

-heating up most leftovers: put them on a plate and heat them up in the toaster oven (This presupposes you have one.  You could use a regular oven, but that might be overkill.  Many things you can heat up on the stove)

-heating up leftover rice: put it in a pot and sprinkle some water over it.  Cover and heat on the stove until it’s steamy.  Seriously, this makes leftover rice almost like new!

-heating up leftover pasta: boil some water and put the pasta in for one minute or so.  Be careful, it gets mushy really fast.  This works best if you mix it in with fresh pasta.  But even by itself it’s fine.

-melting butter, chocolate, etc.: Put it in a baggie and immerse in hot water for several minutes.  Or, melt in a saucepan on the stove.

-defrosting meat: Put it in a baggie and immerse in hot water.  Or, if you’re really on top of things, defrost it in the fridge the day or two before you need it.  I never remember to do that, though.  Unless it’s a whole turkey or roast.  Those are kind of hard to miss.

-making popcorn: Get a popcorn popper.  It’s so worth it, trust me.  Or, you can do it on the stovetop.

-heating up frozen dinners: Sorry, I don’t think this one’s going to work.

What’s happening today

Regency maternity/nursing dress I'm working on. It has a drawstring neckline and waist.

This dress is made out of some kind of shiny polished cotton, with a darker blue silk dupioni for the trim.  And a silver gimp braid.  I want to do something really fancy around the skirt hem but I’m not sure exactly what yet.

kitty wanted me to take a picture of her too

Hair this morning

Lately I’ve tried washing my hair with a minimum of products.  Scrubbing the scalp with some cheap thin conditioner, rinsing with vinegar water, and then oiling with a coconut oil/shea butter blend.  I think I might just take out the conditioner part and see what happens.  Then my hair will be like a salad.  Water, vinegar, and oil.  haha.  Vinegar rinses are amazing, they make my hair feel just like I put conditioner in it.  Who would have thought?  Anyway this is a picture of my hair this morning after washing last night.  Keep in mind I haven’t combed it yet.  I like the lack of frizz that this routine produces.  My scalp hair is nice and clean too.  It’s funny how simple it is to wash and care for hair.  People make it into such a complicated and costly procedure.

By the way, we got on WIC and Medicaid so tomorrow I’m going to make an appointment with the birth center!

23 weeks

Today I turned 23 weeks pregnant (for those who aren’t familiar with pregnancy lingo, that means almost six months)

The baby is a little over a pound, and 11 inches long, more or less.

I can sometimes see it kicking just by looking down at my belly.

Here’s a picture.  Samuel wanted to see what some of the Gimp filters did, so we played around with them, and I actually liked this one a lot so I kept it this way.  It’s called “photocopy”.

picture post

Since our toilet overflowed today and our car died recently, today we made the trek to Wal-Mart to get a plunger, a mop, a car battery cleaning brush, and some AA batteries.  What this means is that our car is working again, our bathroom is soon to be clean again, and I can take pictures again!

Turns out the car was only mostly dead.

So here are a few pictures!

The perfect loaf of bread I made, thanks to Thora's suggestion to use wheat gluten. It's 3/5 whole wheat, and oh so fluffy and nice.

My kitty Juliette, sitting on my dresser, which also holds my tree branch necklace holder. On the wall to the left is my picture frame earring holder. I'm really happy with both. Juliette knocked over the necklace holder one night, and broke off a small branch, but it still works and she won't do that anymore because she is a perfect angel.

Here's a slightly less blurry picture.

The living room is coming together.  All our books are on shelves now, and our TV/DVD dresser is full but we’re still waiting on getting one of the drawers fixed.  There are nice places to sit.  No lamps yet, though.  When things are more finished I will take a picture.

The baby has mighty foo.  Some time I’ll take a picture of how big my belly is now.  Oh, and wish me luck at my WIC appointment on Wednesday.  Hopefully they will decide I need free food.

Also please pray for Samuel that he will get a job soon!  He’s applied to many in the past couple days.

kitty update

She’s doing much better. She spent most of the day in a paper sack I got out for her. But whenever we were home she would usually come out and talk to us and explore. That’s what she’s doing right now. She’s still scared but more adventurous now.
We had a busy day. Got driver’s licenses -so much easier to do than in Provo!- and applied for Medicaid and WIC, went to the bookstore, and went to the farmer’s market, which we can walk to. It is so hot here. BLEH!
There was a storm here the other evening. Samuel and I were out in the middle of it on accident. There was no tornado that I know of, but tornado-force winds. Outside it looked like hurricane footage on a news show. We ran from Wal-Mart about twenty feet to our car and were soaked to the bone just from that. Driving around yesterday and today we saw some of the aftermath: several fallen tree limbs, one huge uprooted tree (trunk about two feet in diameter, and very tall) and a tree of similar size, split completely in half down to the ground, with one half upright and the other half lying on two houses, with maintenance men buzzing around it, trying to figure out what to do! Ahh, Kansas. It’s good to be home.

poor kitty

We just brought my kitty to our apartment.  Poor thing, she is really scared.  She’s currently hiding in a corner with her face shoved under a pile of debris.  She will warm up to the place eventually.

We bought a loveseat today!  So now our living room furniture is complete.  We still need a tv and I’d like to get a rug, because the carpet is really ugly.  Curtains, and picture frames.  Lamps.  But for now, we can sit in it comfortably.

Being unemployed is scary.  Pray for us that Samuel will get hired soon.  We can survive for a couple months but I’d rather have steady money coming in sooner than later.  Samuel’s been making a few bucks here and there doing odd jobs for people.  Today and yesterday he hauled rocks around for a few hours in 95 degree heat.  The money he made basically paid for the loveseat. 

moved in

Things are going well, we are moved in.  Our apartment is nice, good quality.  We got a really nice dining room table for $12 (had to fix it up a bit, but it’s done now), a dresser for the tv and dvds for $15, and two wingback armchairs for $40.  We have internet and phone.  I made my tree branch necklace holder and picture frame earring holder for $0, and I’m very happy with them.

Things we still need are a couch, dining room chairs, and a tv.  I’m having to go for my second choice: victorian type furniture, rather than the leather.  There’s plenty of cheap leather furniture out there, but since we found the wingback armchairs for so cheap and close by (craigslist), we now need a similar style couch to match them.  Leather couches are almost all overstuffed and would look ridiculous next to the chairs.  I think a large couch would be too much for our living room, anyway.

The baby moves around all the time now and Samuel has even felt it a few times.

Samuel doesn’t have a job yet and things are moving really slow on that front (not Samuel’s fault).  He might apply to a job he found watching delinquant teenage boys like he used to, (say it with us: “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!) just to make some money while we’re waiting on Ft. Riley to decide to hire him.  That would give us a lot of peace of mind.   We only have enough money for two months’ rent and bills, if that.  We got a bank account, next stop, driver’s licenses, then maybe getting on Medicaid so I can go to the doctor.  I can’t believe my pregnancy is half over.

We really like our apartment, and I think Samuel likes Manhattan.  Things are slowly coming together.  In a month or so when everything is pretty I’ll take pictures and put them up here.