It's Almost Time!

36 weeks!
#1 on the left vs. #2 on the right

A week ago Sunday marked 36 weeks in this pregnancy. This past Sunday marked the start of my "birthing window," or the 5 week window where normal-term babies are usually delivered. When you hear about pregnant women, you always ask "when are you due?" They usually oblige and tell you a specific date. For me, that date is June 7th. What mother nature tells you is different. The "average" length of a standard pregnancy is 280 days. However, 280 days is just the average. What the actual length of a pregnancy is depends on the woman, her family history, the health of the pregnancy, the number of children she's carrying, and even if this is her first pregnancy.

Most first time mothers who go into labor spontaneously go just over 41 weeks gestation. That means no external interventions such as membrane sweeping, induction, breaking the waters, etc. With my pregnancy with Dan, I was certain that I would go to 42 weeks as I have a strong family history of "late" babies. My Mother was induced 2 weeks past my due date (which I'm happy about, otherwise my birthday would coincide with tax day). My sister was also induced 10 days past her due date as the doctors were concerned about how big she was getting. Funny enough, I was 8lb 1oz and my sister was 8lb 14oz (I think I'm correct on the ounces with my sister). Anyway, we were both very normal sized babies at our birth. Today, the average weight of a newborn is 7.5 pounds or 7lb 8oz. The range is between 5lb 8oz and 10lb. With more and more women being induced no later than 41 weeks, I can only imagine that this average weight is a bit skewed toward being lower than what the average newborn weight was before we had all these medical inventions and interventions being used in the maternal healthcare setting.

Don't get me wrong. I am so grateful for how advanced our maternal care setting has become. I find it rather unfortunate that many of today's doctors end up relying on the technology instead of actually listening to the mother and child and work WITH mother nature instead of pushing mother nature along faster than what is intended in some cases. I am a strong advocate for evidence-based practices not only in medicine, but especially maternal care. Upwards of 80-90% of maternal healthcare practices are NOT evidence-based. We are doing our mothers a very sad disservice all for policy, whether that policy is coming from the hospital or from the insurance companies.

This last statistic is my motivating factor to plan home births for myself. Under the careful eye of an experienced midwife, home births are just as safe if not safer than a hospital birth for normal, healthy pregnancies. I've been told many times how "brave" I am for having home births. I could say the same to those who plan hospital births. The thing is, there is risk in everything we do in life. It is up to each individual to determine their own perception of each risk, research and discuss those risks with their spouse and care provider, and determine what course of action they wish to take; what risk to take and which risk to acknowledge and pass over.

So, with all that in mind, back to how I've been doing with this pregnancy. We had our home visit yesterday with our midwife. She checked to make sure we have all the supplies that we need and checked on my health and the health of baby. We did the standard pee test plus we tested for GBS, or Group Beta Strep. If that test comes back positive, then there is a protocol that we use to eliminate GBS prior to delivery. If that test comes back negative, well, no worries! GBS can cause some issues in newborns who are not properly treated in confirmed GBS positive mothers.

Baby's heart rate was strong at around 120pbm. We didn't get the fundal height as our midwife misplaced her tape measure. Baby's head is still sitting snugly in my pelvis. Unfortunately he's a bit more posterior than anterior which I hope doesn't cause back labor when labor does begin. My blood pressure is still stellar. I believe it was around 110/68. Somewhere around there. When I was pregnant with Dan, my blood pressure was inching towards pre-eclamptic. It never officially got there, thankfully. Still retaining just a small amount of fluid, but again, nothing like when I was pregnant with Dan.

At this point, baby can come any day. Dan ended up being born one day before his estimated due date. Typically, subsequent pregnancies end up with labor beginning earlier than the previous pregnancy. I have a feeling that will hold true for this pregnancy. The question now is, will baby be born at the end of May or the beginning of June? He may really throw me for a loop and come after his due date! I doubt that it will happen that way, but you never know. What I do know is that I can't wait to get into the birthing tub again!

I hope everyone is doing well. Both Dan and Jason are well, as are the dogs. Looking forward to meeting our new little one. Hopefully it doesn't take long for the new chaos of being a family of four starts to become routine.

Take care!

Happy Birthday to Me!

I'M 30!!!!!!

OK - now that's out of my system, I must say I really don't feel that much older than I was just a few years ago. I definitely have gained wisdom over the years, along with extra responsibility that comes with being a wife and parent, but I really don't feel that much older than when I was in my early 20's. There's a saying that I see thrown around quite a bit on Facebook that has the general wording of you're only as old as you feel, or you may be a year older but you don't have to grow up. I don't do the quote justice.

Overall, the day of my birthday was very pleasant. I had gotten up early in hopes to bring Dan to the library for story time. Unfortunate for me, Dan slept in until 9am. With story time at 9:15am, there was no chance to make it in time. We had fun playing and watching sing-along videos that morning. Nap time was a bit later, around 1pm, as Dan slept in. For the last week I had not been napping with Dan so I could get some extra stuff done around the house. That day I decided to take a nap with him. Everything was all fine and dandy until we woke up. We both woke up around 4:25pm. It took me a few minutes to realize that I needed to be at the yoga studio 20 minutes away for my 5:15pm prenatal yoga class that I teach! So I ran as quickly as I could to get myself and Dan set to go. Jason had been held over at work so I had to bring Dan to class. Thank goodness for the front desk lady! She is such a sweet heart and kept an eye on Dan while I was teaching class and Jason was on his way to pick him up. After class we went out to eat at a local restaurant called Dublin's. Delicious food as usual. Oh, and Dan was such a ham! He flirted with all the female waitresses whenever they walked by.

One thing that has changed over the years are my gift preferences for birthdays and holidays. Usually there is one or two "fun" items, while the rest are practical. This year, Jason is gifting me a raised garden for the vegetables that I'm growing. Being that I'm a stay at home mom right now, even with another baby almost here, I have more time on my hands to tend to a larger garden than when I had last year. Additionally, it will save a bit on our grocery bill by growing some of our own veggies and it will be a great opportunity to start teaching Dan how to grow food, take care of plants, and all the other wonderful things you can learn while tending a garden. I'm not expecting much to stick at this point, but it's never too early to start learning!

So here are a few pictures of the progress of my garden. For my tomato plants, I'm using wash buckets - one bucket per plant. Half I got from the dollar store while the other half I got from Menards. After spray painting the outside of them, I punched several holes in the bottom of the buckets to allow for drainage. Side note - the dollar store buckets are much more fragile than the Menards ones. Some of the buckets may or may not have large cracks in the bottom. Drainage is drainage right?!

For the tomatoes

The seedlings along our back porch.

The rest of the plants are going into the raised garden. The one spot that gets just enough light is behind the tool shed, which is located behind the garage. As of this post, we're a bit farther along with the construction of the garden but I haven't gotten out to take pictures yet. So here's where we left off this past Sunday. We got 3 sides of the garden complete. The final shape will be a U with an additional square planter in the middle of the center opening. We'll have one gate to get into the middle and the outside will have wire mesh to help keep the rabbits out. I know we have at least 2 rabbits in the neighborhood. The tailor full of dirt was from a fellow officer who lives down the block. He just so happened to be working on a home project and dug up all this dirt. This will fill the majority of the raised garden which saves us a ton of money on getting dirt to fill the planter! As of Monday, we have the dirt transferred into the garden, but still need to do a little more construction before I can transplant the peas that I have growing. The rest of the veggies need to be started yet. If all works out, we'll have 2 kinds of tomatoes, peas, carrots, broccoli, red peppers, spinach, cucumber, zucchini, and summer squash. I may have left out one or two veggies, but this is what I remember picking up. We'll see how the garden turns out!

Here are the rest of the pictures of our garden project.

We are building this out of cedar and do not plan on staining or painting the wood. This outside frame has 4-1x6 planks. The inside portion will only have 3-1x6 planks. We also picked up a gutter to run along the side of the shed so the extra rain water that falls off the shed doesn't erode the soil directly under it.

As far as baby is concerned, he is still kicking and healthy. He's sitting pretty steady in my pelvis right now so who knows if he'll be early, on time, or late. Only time will tell! My home visit with the midwife is in 2 weeks. That is also the start of my birthing "window." A normal term pregnancy can last anywhere from 37-42 weeks, which is the birthing window. Of course there's a part of me that's really excited to see our baby, get to know him and all his quirks, introduce Dan to his baby brother, and so on. Then there's another part of me that's a bit nervous how the labor is going to go. Each labor and delivery is different, yet they all have similarities. How is this one going to be similar? How is this one going to be different? Same with the personality of our new little guy. Will he be an easy baby like Dan was? We'll find out soon enough! Then there's the happy part of having a new baby in the house, getting to experience all the "firsts" again. At the same time, there's a sadness as Dan will no longer be an only child. He will no longer get 100% of our attention. His life is going to drastically change with the addition of his baby brother. So many emotions!

I hope everyone is doing well. This coming Sunday will be my second to last belly picture. After Sunday, the next picture will be on Labor Day. 35 weeks down, 5 or so to go! Take care everyone :)