After The Birth: Postpartum Challenges

I thought about if I would write this for days. I don't want the blog to be a place that feels negative; but after much contemplation I decided to tell my story. I think that other women (and their partners) who have a less than perfect postpartum period need to hear that they aren't alone.


I think I will start by saying that my pregnancy was a breeze. I didn't experience any of the first trimester nausea, the hormones actually made me feel good, my hair and skin looked great, I encountered no health complications and I was doing yard work, shopping, etc. up until the day my son was born. Sure, I had some heartburn and once I was the size of a house my back ached but overall I had a wonderful pregnancy. I really enjoyed it and felt a deep connection to my baby before I ever met him.


About a week before my due date I noticed I was leaking a very small amount of watery fluid. I noted the change but being so close to my due date I guessed it was normal. To be safe I called a nurse and was told I was fine and that it was typical of many women. I felt fine and put it out of my mind. Three days before my due date, I was leaking enough fluid to worry me. What if this is amniotic fluid? I dreaded the idea of going to labor and delivery to potentially receive unwelcome news but I hadn't come this far to let something go wrong. Mark and I packed our hospital bags "just in case" and headed to the hospital.


It took no time at all for the fluid to be identified as amniotic fluid. The bag housing my child and the fluid that was his current world had ruptured and was slowly leaking. I was told I would be admitted and induced. I couldn't leave. It was happening now.


I know a lot of women would have been happy and excited at that point; and really I was so ready to meet my son, but I wanted it to happen naturally, I wanted my body to decide when my labor began. I had said from day one that I would not allow pitocin during my birthing process to encourage contractions and here I was, three days away from my the due date being told I needed to do just that. I had already been leaking fluid for days and if I lost enough it could be devastating for my baby. How could I refuse knowing that? Off we went to a delivery room.


As I recounted in my last post, my birth experience was tough. It was long and exhausting and when it was over and my husband and our new baby an I were finally home I felt like I had been to battle and back. There was a lot of crying. Mostly tears of joy and gratitude but also from overwhelm and my hormones being out of whack! I had also fractured my tailbone during birth and sitting and standing up was (and still is) very painful. Throw sleep deprivation and learning how to care for an infant on top of that and I was really stressed. I credit Mark for getting me through those first days at home. He assured me that my hormones would eventually get better and I would feel like myself again. I kept my focus on the baby and allowed myself to process my emotions as they came up. I was coping and feeling better each day but I had a headache that just wouldn't let up. At my one week check-up I was told I was probably experiencing "nurser's neck" from bad positioning while nursing. Over the next few days I worked on perfecting my mechanics but the headache kept getting worse. It traveled from my shoulders up my neck into my head. After about a week and a half with no relief I made a call to the on-call nurse at around midnight. I just couldn't believe this was normal. She asked me to check my blood pressure to rule out postnatal preeclampsia. I drove to Walmart to use the blood pressure cuff but it wasn't working. With my head throbbing I grabbed one off the shelf and spent the forty dollars.


When I got home and checked my pressure it was ridiculously high. Something like 189/110 (normal is 120/80). We put Fox in his car seat and headed to the ER. I had no idea the nightmare I was about to endure.

At the hospital, in the ER,  I was put on an IV drip of magnesium. This was to keep me from having a seizure. They also started me on blood pressure medicine. After several hours my pressure was down a bit but not enough to release me. I was admitted back to labor and delivery.


In labor and delivery the lights were turned low to keep the room dark and I was put back on the magnesium drip and had a nurse in the room for constant monitoring. I wasn't allowed to be alone with the baby in case I seized. We hadn't eaten for hours and it didn't look like I'd be getting any food for awhile. They were going to keep me on the magnesium for 24 hours. My main concern was breast feeding the baby. I was told it was safe but that he might get drowsy from the mag. Of course this made me feel even more upset. The mag was making me feel awful, the way your body feels when you have the flu but worse. The thought of my baby feeling even a little bit that way broke my heart.

Several hours later we were transferred to ICU. Still on the drip, banned from leaving the bed, forced to use a bedpan and barely able to sit up to feed my child, I felt depressed. This wasn't how I wanted to start my new journey as a mother. It wasn't fair. I'd had such a healthy pregnancy...why was my body failing me now? I asked Mark to text my mother and let he know what was happening. When she arrived I broke down sobbing. I felt helpless.


The next day we were moved to the postpartum unit. I was finally off the magnesium and my blood pressure was at a safe number. We spent the next two days in that room while my vitals were monitored every hour. I felt scared and didn't understand how something so life threatening was expected to just correct itself. Would I always be monitoring my blood pressure now? How long before I'm off the medication? What other illnesses does this put me at risk for?

In the postpartum unit after being taken off the magnesium. Fox is in the bassinet behind me.

That was weeks ago and I'm still taking medicine to keep my pressure in check and I have to check my numbers every day. Now that I'm past the 6 weeks postpartum period my care is being transferred to a cardiologist because it's no longer considered a pregnancy related issue. Does that change my situation from postnatal preeclampsia to flat out hypertension? Does that change the outlook for my recovery? I hope to get some answers when I see the new doctor next week.


For now I am trying really hard to focus on the positive. The medications I am taking make me dizzy and give me the feeling of being weighed down but they are keeping me from having a seizure or a stroke so I can deal with it.


I tell you this story because it is important to be truthful about our experience of birth and the postpartum period. It is a way we can support one another. Women need to know that it might be hard or overwhelming or even scary if you have a health issue; and our men, our partners, need to know what to expect too. I also tell it because this is a personal blog and this is my life right now. This is what I have to share. Things haven't gone even close to what I had imagined but I am still lucky. My baby is perfect and beautiful and the most wonderful gift I could have ever imagined. Every day my body gets stronger and my thoughts more positive and my heart swells greater with this new love for my little guy.

Home with my little love.

~ Love & Light ~

My Birth Story

Art by Amanda Greavette

On the afternoon of November 15th, a Sunday, Mark and I drove to labor and delivery at the hospital. The hope was that we would be sent right back home, but intuition told me we better pack our overnight bags. I had been leaking watery fluid for a few days by that point and had the fear that it might be amniotic fluid. Everything I read online told me I would definitely know if it was amniotic fluid but that wasn't the case for me.

At labor and delivery a quick test was done and we were told that I indeed had a ruptured water bag and would have to be admitted and induced. My heart sank. This was exactly what I did NOT want to happen. I knew induction meant the use of the synthetic oxytocin hormone called pitocin, and I also knew that in many cases pitocin was the first step in a series of interventions...the exact opposite of the natural birth I desired. To add to my dismay, my doctor wasn't there and I would have to be attended by a doctor I had never met.

Once in the delivery room, we were given permission to attempt getting labor started naturally. This came as a relief and gave me a glimmer of hope. We were provided a breast pump and spent the next 24 hours trying every natural method we could. I managed to dilate from 1cm to 5cm in that time, which is actually pretty amazing progress, but unfortunately it wasn't enough to satisfy the doctor (It was now Monday and my doctor had arrived). She was hoping I would have reached at least 8cm at that point. That is when she said that we needed to start a very small amount of pitocin to try and bring the contractions closer together. The baby wasn't showing any signs of stress, but after so many hours (days) in a leaky bag she was concerned he could get an infection. I had read over and over during my pregnancy that pitocin causes very painful contractions, so I was really upset that it had come to this. I was determined to bring my son into the world without pain medications that could leave us groggy and detached from the experience so I would just have to endure the pitocin pain. Luckily our doula was with us during this time and helped me keep it together. She talked to me between contractions and reminded me that Mark and I were the ones in control and that we had choices. Although things weren't playing out how I had imagined, she was there to remind me that it was okay.

Soon after the pitocin drip was started I could feel the contractions change. I was managing them quite well before, but now they were getting very painful. This went on for several hours but my labor wasn't progressing so my doctor broke my water and said things should really start moving now. She said we should have the baby within the next four hours. This was very exciting and I felt re-energized. But four hours came and went, the pitocin was increased, and then another four hours came and went. I felt like I had been in labor for days.

The doctor increased the pitocin one last time and put me in the SIMS position. I was in terrible pain at this point, the contractions were miserable and the SIMS position was excruciating to be in...but it worked. Within what felt like minutes of being in this position I was ready to push.

I had heard many women say that once they reached the pushing stage they felt relief, that the hard part was the hours of contractions. This wasn't true for me. Pushing was painful and hard work! I mean VERY HARD WORK. And then after maybe 20 minutes, on the evening of November 16th,  our son was ready to be born. The most rewarding part of the experience is that Mark caught the baby. He was the first person to touch Fox and was the first face our baby saw. He brought him up to my chest and I said a prayer that our son was healthy and finally in my arms. What a miracle!

A few minutes after Fox had been earth side, Mark cut the umbilical cord. Our lives were now changed forever. We had become a family.

~ Love & Light ~

Fox Orion

Fox Orion joined us earth side on the evening of November 16th 2015. His father and I think he is the most amazing thing ever. 

I really am excited to blog about our experiences as new parents and everything we are learning along the way, but as anyone who has had a newborn knows, our focus right now is getting sleep when we can and trying to create some type of schedule again. 

I hope you'll keep checking in at the blog and following our little family as we go along. 

~ Love & Light ~

A Room Of His Own

We finally finished the nursery! What a relief to have the space exactly as I had originally planned. I know he won't be sleeping in there for the first few months but now it is there for him when we are ready to start having him sleep alone at night.

View from the door.

A blackout shade keeps the morning sun out.

Funky cuckoo clock.

Handmade wooden toys.

Dresser details. 

I love the glider. 

Woodland animals.

The crib.

The changing station.

Apparently the Wild Things are on the changing table.

Fuzzy friends.

.

38 weeks today! 

So there is your little glimpse of the baby room. Thanks for stopping by!

~ Love & Light ~

Arrangements: Exploration #33

Exploration #33


ARRANGEMENTS


Go out and collect any item you can find in abundance (leaves work well for this in the fall). Bring them home and come up with as many different ways of displaying and arranging them as possible.


I have been avoiding this assignment from How To Be An Explorer Of The World: Portable Art Life Museum by Keri Smith for a long while now. I just wasn't inspired by it. Today, however, I decided to use the abundance of Lantana seeds all over my kitchen floor to get past this task and move on to the next one. At this point I'm determined to finish all of the projects in the book no matter how long it takes! Now, I didn't "arrange" the seeds per say, but I collected them in a tiny jar to store them until spring and I will display them in the kitchen hutch. So that counts.

Lantana Seeds.

I have a bed of lantana in the front yard that we planted for the butterflies. A volunteer plant decided to take root but was way too young to make it through the winter, so we potted it and brought it indoors and will plant it outside in the spring.

A blur of seeds.

Of course, now the plant is dropping seed all over the kitchen floor.

I like to toss any seeds I collect over the back deck onto the cliff. I love that random weird plants grow there over the river. 

"When I'm working with a material, it's not just the stone [that] I'm trying to understand, not a single isolated object but nature as a whole- how the leaf has grown, how it has changed, how it has decayed, how the weather is affected by it. By working with a leaf in its place I begin to understand the processes. - Andy Goldsworthy

~ Love & Light ~

The Birth Plan: Readers Questions Answered

Many of you have had questions about how I am planning my birth; and so in today's post I will answer a few of them. I guess the first thing I will say is that these are just my vision for my ideal labor and birth. I am keeping a very open mind, knowing that things often don't go according to plan, AND these are just my preferences. If you chose to or plan to birth differently, I am not passing judgement. We are all unique and so are our choices and experiences. Now to the questions.

1. By far the most frequent question I get is whether we are doing a hospital or home birth. We put a     lot of thought into this decision and even interviewed a midwife, but ultimately we chose a hospital birth. Our doctor was a major reason for that choice. She is the best! I know she will take great care of us and I'm happy with our decision. 

2. I think the next question I get is if I plan to do a natural birth. The answer is a big YES! Honestly, I am terrified of a c-section or epidural! I have never had a broken bone or a surgery so yeah, I'm a big baby when it comes to medical interventions. I'm also a realistic person, so if I feel like pain medication is necessary of course I will use it. I'm not trying to win any medals! I just want to have the best birth experience for me, and right now that means a natural non-medicated birth. 

3. Did we hire a doula? Yes! She is kind and down to earth and very supportive. Her name is Kirsten Sengupta and for anyone in the Springfield area who needs a doula, she comes highly recommended by me! You can contact her at Shanti Birth Services. For those of you who don't know, a doula is a birth assistant. Someone who has gone through formal training and is with you through the labor and birth process to offer support that ranges from massage and other natural methods of pain management, coaching you through breathing and visualizations, bringing you water, food or chap stick, help with breastfeeding etc. etc. etc. For us, one of the main reasons we hired Kirsten is for Mark. Now he has someone there to support him and give him breaks and help him to help me. Having a doula is definitely a luxury, but I like knowing we will have someone outside of the hospital staff with us who is well aware of our birth plan.

4. Will we do a water birth? I really wanted to have a birthing tub available, but our hospital doesn't allow them. We do plan to labor at home as long as possible and I will use my own bathtub. It's kind of a bummer but it wasn't a big enough issue to sway me from birthing at the hospital. 

5. Will I breastfeed? Yes. 

6. Will I keep the placenta? No. But we will do delayed cord clamping, skin to skin right after birth and no bathing, eye ointment etc. until baby has had his first feed, rooming in (that means no nursery in the hospital, the baby stays with us at all times) and we will go home as soon as we can! 

I think that about covers it. I am always happy to answer any questions you have. Have a great week and thanks for stopping by! 

~ Love & Light ~

Fox Medicine

Three times this summer/fall a gray fox has crossed paths with me. He lives in the forest behind the houses across the street. Having started my pregnancy with the daily visits of the bald eagle pair who winter on the river, it feels special to have this magical time draw to a close with the presence of this fox nearby. I, of course, believe that when animals make an appearance for us, that we can learn lessons or harness spiritual medicine from them. Here is what I've learned from this fox.

The following information is taken from birdclan.org.

"Fox is a master at the art of camouflage. Like all members of the canine family, they make exceptional parents. The fox's keen sight and hearing make it an excellent predator. Its tail serves as a balancing device when it stands on its hind legs to peer over the tall grass in search of a mouse, gopher, or field rat. It is a survivor, able to exist in the unpopulated countryside. Its ability to be unseen makes it a superb family protector.

Fox medicine involves adaptablility, cunning, observation, integration, and swiftness of thought and action. These traits may also include quick decisiveness, and sure-footedness in the physical world.

The Fox's ability to meld into one's surroundings and be unnotices is a powerful gift when one is observing the activities of others. This allows it to be the protector of the family unit. If danger arises, Fox is johnny-on-the-spot. Great Spirit has honored Fox with the duty of keeping the family together and safe. Fox accomplishes this through the ability to observe undetected, without making others self-conscious. Fox is always concerned with the safety of family members and is an excellent tailsman for those who travel.

Its keen eyesight also has the ability to see movement and objects on the very edges of the field of vision. Those with active fox medicine can often see Spirit, and the beings "between worlds". If this is an ability that you'd like to develop, practice at twilight and call upon fox energy to help you. With fox's super-sensitive hearing, you may also be able to hear Spirit.

With Fox medicine you know instantly what will happen next. After observing for a while, you will become aware of a certain predictability in given situations and be able to quickly make your move. Fox medicine teaches the art of Oneness through its understanding of camouflage.

Much like the clowns in the rodeo, Fox can keep the raging bull from stampeding a friend or family member. Fox can use silly tactics as a brilliant comouflage move. No one could guess the sly power behind such ingenious maneuvers.

Fox is considered to be persistent, yet is gentler and less aggressive than the wolf. Fox teaches us about feminine magic, but this does not imply that it is a totem for women. Rather, both men and women who have the fox as a totem are being told to stay in touch with the feminine side of their personality and character.

If fox shows up in your life it is a sign that you are to be aware of the actions of the world around you. The world is shape shifting and growing into new patterns all the time. Use the art of camouflage and keep cunningly silent about who and what you are observing. After observing for a while you will become aware of certain patterns of predictability in situations and you will know what to do. Fox's medicine of camouflage teaches Oneness with all."

I love all the mentions of fox being a family protector as Mark and I embark on a new chapter as parents. I also appreciate that fox teaches us about feminine magic, the ability to see spirit, and adaptability; all things I will be drawing on as a new mother. 

Below is a photo (although not the greatest) of the fox that visits me. He finally held my gaze long enough to allow me to snap him. The first time I saw him I thought that he was a very dirty red fox, but after seeing him a few more times I realized that he is definitely a gray. 

One of the best things about our decision to move home to the Ozarks has been the abundance of animal life that we encounter regularly. I always take the opportunity to learn about the animals spiritual aspects and reflect on what that means to my life at that time. Nature offers us so many gifts.

~ Love & Light ~