Pregnancy Journal: Working on Birth Experiences and Getting to Know the Baby

Yes, still 18 weeks…I keep forgetting to take a new picture!

This has been…quite the week, or so.  I can’t even actually share everything that’s happened yet, but rest assured that you’ll find out eventually!  I’m almost 21 weeks now and this is flying by.  I feel like before I know it, it’ll be spring for real and I’ll be nearly in my third trimester!  That’s just crazy to me, really.  I’m past the halfway point already and it also feels like we just found out.

Unfortunately, due to the stress of the last week or so, I got my very first cold that I’ve come down with while taking FCLO.  It hasn’t been too bad though: it’s been going away very quickly and I was never really miserable.  Luckily all my usual “tricks” are completely pregnancy-safe, so I don’t have to worry at all.  (That is, I took extra FCLO, lots of probiotics, got out in the sun, drank ginger tea, and rested.)

I am pretty sure that this baby is a girl now.  I have just felt “girl” through most of this pregnancy.  That I’m still kind of sick, the way I’m carrying, that I feel so sensitive and emotional…all says “girl” to me.  I’m sure I could be wrong, but that’s my gut feeling right now.  We really have very little idea on girls’ names, so I guess we better get to talking about it!

If you haven’t seen our new series on bonding, I hope that you’ll check it out and join us!  In the next couple of weeks we have some very excellent stories from moms who have struggled — some who are still struggling, and some who have overcome their struggles.  All of whom are committed to being the best mothers that they can!

That series, and everything that led up to it, has made for a pretty emotional couple of weeks.  It hasn’t been easy.  But it has been a good thing in a lot of ways.

As I’ve moved through my second trimester, I’ve felt like I’m just a bit low on iron.  This is normal, though, as blood volume expands.  I’ve focused on trying to eat plenty of grass-fed beef, and take some spirulina when I can (swallowing pills is not so easy for me right now).  Since I’ve noticed this in particular, and this is the first time I’ve proactively done something about it, I’m curious to see if my levels will actually be low when they’re tested around 28 weeks.  I hope not!

Speaking of eating grass-fed beef, I read a new study that really caught my attention last weekend.  It seems that moms who eat the most red meat, and consequently have the highest B12 levels, have a greatly reduced chance of having a baby who cries a lot or has colic.  The thought is that B12 helps neurological development, and that a lack of development can lead to excessive crying in newborns.  There’s more evidence that you need to eat some good quality beef during pregnancy!  I am just thrilled to hear this, because I have eaten better in this pregnancy than any, and I can’t wait to see how the health of this baby is (overall) as a result!

We also had our next midwives’ appointment this week.  Everything is still totally normal, my blood pressure’s low/normal, no swelling, measuring right on.  The baby is active, was transverse (not normal for me; my babies were always head down by 20 weeks before!) and heart rate was only 124.  The heart rate is all over, unlike my others, which were always around the same rate.  This one’s going to keep me guessing…I suspect forever! (And by that I mean…about different things, at different ages.)

We talked quite a lot, too, and I shared with them what has been going on, and lot of other private thoughts and feelings I’ve had this pregnancy.  They feel that since I had two such different birth experiences, that I “know what I missed” the first time, and it’s bringing up a lot of those feelings and I’m working through them.  They are helping me with it and have given me a lot of different things to try.  Daniel’s labor was actually much longer than Bekah’s, with 16 hours of “false starts” before things got going, and still hours of no progress (then fast at the end when I relaxed and concentrated…barely an hour from 4 to birth!).  They think that it may have been me being psychologically afraid of him being taken away and fearing the birth somehow, and so I was kind of “holding it up.”  I’m anticipating, as we do work through all this, that this birth will be entirely different and that I will then be able to “let go” of everything that came before and move on happily!

I always start to “get to know” my babies when they are moving consistently.  With Bekah, my thoughts were “stubborn” and “strong willed.”  Which she is!  She’d stick her elbows and knees wherever she wanted and if I tried to push them back (because they were hurting me in my ribs!), she’d stick them right back.  It still made me laugh, though, because I love the determination.

With Daniel I felt he was “gentle” and “sensitive.”  Which he is.  He didn’t move as much and he always seemed to be very careful, never hurting me, never sticking elbows out, like he was already aware of me.  And he is that way now, a sensitive person (a bit less gentle though, lol, as a rough-and-tumble toddler!).

With this baby, I feel “calm” and “serene.”  The baby moves a lot, more than the others, but is just so gentle with movements.  There have only been one or two occasions I’ve felt a really strong kick, usually after a coughing fit or something else that might have made the baby “mad.”  We’ll see if that really plays out in this baby’s personality at birth!