feelin better

Thanks for everyone's support! Once I made it home last night I took a nice hot bath with healing bath salts that Becca got me in Israel and we lit some soothing candles and my uterus finally calmed down. A preview to what a contraction must feel like!

The bath helped tremendously and so did the ginger ale. I managed to get some gatorade and noodle soup down too. My midwifes both called to see how I was doing which was nice they were upset that the doctor hadn't told me that the amnio often leads to cramping and that they recommend bedrest after. As one of them said it's an invasive procedure! So I have been taking it really easy today. I woke up starving at 4:30 AM, (what else is new?!) I wonder where all the food is going if not to the baby! Athough as Mr. T pointed out the baby weighs 8 ounces instead of 10 ounces, it's hardly significant in the scheme of my body. . . It's amazing that those 2 ounces can cause so much stress and confusion.

But after my 4 AM snack I managed to sleep pretty soundly and woke up hungry but rested and my stomach is pretty much back to normal, so that's a relief.

Now we just get to play the waiting game, a game I'm good at in the best of times!

I just found out that an old friend of mine's father died. I grew up as an honorary member of her big loud fun family and have always loved her father, he was such a warm, generous and vivacious person. Too much sadness for one week.

long hard day

I woke up crying at 4:30 in the morning and couldn't get back to sleep.

We met with the doctor for what I thought was a consult but turned in to an all day and incredibly painful affair.

The good news, very good news, is that all the organs are there, the spine and heart look good and nothing seems to be missing! The bad news is that the baby is smaller than it should be, about 2 weeks smaller than it should be at this point. I still don't understand how they can calculate it with such confidence.

We've seen lots of movement, though i have yet to feel anything. The baby is a squirmer! and a kicker and a puncher!

As the nicest of the 5 techs I met explained it it's like going to fill your car with gas and only having one valve that the gas is coming out of, it will fill but will take longer! So we have to rule out whether it's just small or if this is indictiave of something much worse. So today I had to have an amnio, a procedure that i was not at all mentally prepared to do today and was horribly painful but luckily didn't last too long. My stomach is still in knots as a result and i am waiting for a call for my midwife for some advice. I had breakfast at 7:30 AM and then nothing till after 3:00 when i got some soup. I started walking to the subway but my stomach is too upset to walk right now so i am parked in a fancy hotel lobby.

The other thing they have to rule out is blood clots, that the placenta is clotting and not enough blood is getting to the baby which is keeping it small. So they took more than 15 things of blood, I've never had a doctor take that much blood before. the told me to drink lots b/c they were taking so much blood and all they have are these tiny dentist size paper shot glasses, it was a joke. Mr. T was filling up 2 at a time as i downed one after another. I love doctors offices!

In 2 weeks we go back for a fetal ekg and test results.

Always something. . .

So yesterday I had the big scan that happens at 20 weeks. There was a cool flat screen tv that allowed us to see everything as the technician was playing around. At first things were fun and exciting even if the technician had NO sense of humor and a limited bedside manner. But then things took a turn for the not so fun. She told me she was done but to wait a little bit. So Mr. T returned to work and I spent the next hour with two people trying to figure out how the machine worked and how to get the baby to move so they could see the spinal cord better and make sure that the heart looked ok. The baby, consistent as always refused to move for them. Then the technician questioned my duedate and said she thought it was 2 weeks later b/c the baby seems small. I was starving because this whole appointment took way longer than i had imagianed and was getting really sick of people poking my stomach and not explaining shit to me about what was wrong or what they were looking for. Finally they said I should come back in 2 weeks to see if the baby is any bigger and so they can try to look at the spinal cord again.
Today I get a call from my midwife who asked why I left before the doctor talked to me, when no one told me to wait for the doctor.

Apparently the umbilical cord is missing a vein. This happens in 1% of pregnancies and can mean some really horrible things or can just mean that the baby will be small and possibly early but otherwise fine. So now we have an appointment with the doctor tomorrow to talk about what this all means, how serious it is, and whether we can still do a homebirth or if i will now be high risk.

I am trying to stay calm. It sounds like there's a 50% chance of things being fine and then a good chance of their being serious complications. The baby's heartrate is still nice and high, 155 and the legs and arms were squirming like crazy during the whole ordeal. All the body parts seem to be in the right spots, although the tech's communication skills were so low that I am not positive.

As my friend who recently had a homebirth said, the web is not your friend. So I am getting off the web before I read one more tragic story associated with this.

last post of 09!

Hard to believe 09 and the decade are drawing to a close. I feel like this year went so quickly and I have nothing to show for it but I guess that's really not true. Yes I am still unemployed and haven't even had an interview in months but I did get married and pregnant and start a CSA this year so I guess it was actually a pretty eventful year. I also did a lot of camping and biking and we were pretty broke for a good portion of the year so we barely ate out and were probably healthier than we've been in a long time.

I went to a session about prenatal nutrition. One of the interesting things was learning about "good" fats. She said that our bodies process fats in whole milk and whole dairy a lot faster and better than non-fat dairy and that those are fats that help with fetus brain development and are actually really important for all of us. She claims that the idea of low-fat milk being healthier is ludicrous. That was interesting.

When we came back from CA our fridge died so we had to throw out everything in our fridge and freezer. I woke up at 3:00 AM obsessed with what meals I will be eating for the next 4 days until finally I went to the kitchen and had some cheerios since we had nothing else. I haven't been that hungry in the middle of the night in weeks I thought I had moved past that! I officially can't button any of my jeans anymore and yet no one seems to know that I am pregnant or they sound surprised. I am bigger than I have ever been in my life!

Here's to 2010 a year of new beginnings and new possibilities. . .

Plot thickens!

So yesterday I call back my original in-network midwife and she has taken on a new patient and no longer has any May openings! I almost broke down on the phone with her. So now it's pay $3200 out of pocket for people that we really like or start all over again with someone else and do a hospital birth. I just called my lovely insurance and the Brooklyn Birthing center would not be covered at all, so that's no longer an option. I cannot believe how complicated this is!

I cannot believe that we got married so that I can be on this freakin insurance and the insurance covers nothing that I want! I can't believe that the most progressive union in the city representing 100,000 workers will not cover a homebirth. It is so outrageous!!!!

I am so frustrated with this country and the state of healthcare and the utter lack of options.

I hate this country!

So last week Mr. T and I met with these really cool homebirth midwifes that we both had a good feeling about and decided that we want to work with them. Yesterday I had my first appointment and everything seemed to be on track. Today I find out that my insurance will only cover $2800 total for a homebirth which means that we would have to pay $3000 out of pocket. If we do a hopsital birth it will be completely covered. Even though a hospital birth will cost the insurance company 3 or maybe 4 times what a homebirth would cost they will pay the whole thing no questions asked!

I am not working and don't seem to be very good at earning money. Technically we can get $3000 together and the midwifes are happy to accept a payment plan but does it make sense considering how many more expenses we will have once the baby is born and considering that we could deliver for free.

Or is that the wrong way to look at it. Should I look at it as having the experience and care that I want is worth paying for regardless.

I feel like during a homebirth we would be completely cared for and respected and unhurried and we can create whatever kind of environment that we want. With a hospital we have no control of the environment, I would still get good care but i would be in an institution and have to follow their rules and have to fight for stuff that would not be a struggle in our livingroom!

Feeling very conflicted and incredibly frustrated!

Havn't blogged in a while

I caught a really bad cold over thanksgiving and sort of lost my blogging rhythm but I am back! Still haven't conquered this cold it just wants to linger I guess, haven't had any coffee in 10 days now.

I dreamt last night that Nessli, my parents black lab jumped into the back of a red convertible and wouldn't come back and this sleazy couple came out and drove away totally unaware of him. We were calling and calling and then Mr. T and I grabbed skateboards to try and catch up with him but couldn't catch them. It was sad being home without Mr. Ness around he was such a strong personality and a regal presence.

Lets see last I wrote our baby blob was running marathons inside me. I've since cut down to half a pill of synthroid and the baby's heartbeat has stabilized at 160, still a fast mover! I am finally officially in the second trimester I was starting to wonder if it would ever start. I am still peeing all the time even though your bladder is supposed to calm down after the first and before the third.

I applied for a job at the Moth this week, would love to hear back from them! Check out their podcast if you don't know it: www.themoth.org fingers crossed.

I applied for a scholarship to the food conference in CA which i am optimistic about. On Wednesday I volunteered at the office for a full day and was reminded all over again why i truly don't like office jobs! There's something inherently flawed and empty in office culture. It doesn't help of course when they ask you to come in and volunteer and don't really have anything for you to do. . .and you have too much time to observe the bizarre dynamics and personalities around you.

Yesterday I went to a maternity store to buy what I thought was going to be a giant rubberband but is really more like a mini skirt. The idea is that you don't have to button your jeans, you just put this over them and no one can tell that you can't quite get the zipper up! It should allow me to wear my favorite jeans for another few months so I consider it a good investment. The store was ridiculous. As I was trying to pay the woman asked for my address and phone number which I didn't give to her, "but we'll send you cool gifts closer to your duedate!" she insisted, no gracias! Then she tried to give me a "giftbag" full of coupons and told me that if I spend $75 they will give me a $50 gift certificate to some restaurants, imagine what those would be like! It's been so long since i was at a place that was so blatantly trying to gimmick people, and of course the stuff in there was super cheesy. The thought of having to go shopping for clothes that I will only wear for a few months is quite depressing.

I've been reading Ina May's guide to childbirth. She's a midwife who started a commune with her husband in the 70's in Tennessee and they still live there and provide a birthing center. The whole first half of the book is women's birthing stories, not the best reading before bed, unless you want to dream about "rushes" which is what they call contractions and crowning all night.