Thursday, June 7, 2012

A Little Pregnancy Post

I'm 17-ish weeks pregnant with my little new one. Things are going well, growing as they should, and evolving nicely. Baby-Bug can hear a little, and seems to be something of a kick-boxer. We have had two prenatals with our midwife - the same midwife who was present for the delivery of the Little-Bugs - and have heard a strong heartbeat both times. It's nice to know that Baby has a circulatory system!

I thought an peek into my style of pregnancy might be fun...

*We do no internal investigations. No ultrasounds, no tests, nothing that invades the baby's special space. We would do these things if the midwife or my intuition suggested that it might be important for my and the baby's safety. But as things are progressing normally, we see no reason to fuss this very busy little individual. Baby knows what it's doing and we're trusting the process.


*We are planning to have a homebirth. I will write a longer post about chosing homebirth sometime in the near future, as well as sharing Brother & Sister-Bug's birth stories. We will transport to a hospital if the midwife or my intuition recognizes that as the safest option, but with two wonderful and successful homebirths behind me, I am confident in my body's ability to do this thing.


*Brother-Bug and Sister-Bug will attend the birth, with loving support from a couple key members of friends and family to care for them. I deeply believe that the presence of siblings at births makes the birth a normal part of their lives and the expansion of their family. I loved having Brother-Bug present for Sister-Bug's birth, and now I am delighted as he shows his sister the ropes - explaining the prenatal process to her, telling her it might be loud while I'm having contractions, and generally supporting her. He is owning his knowledge and that is awesome.


*I am still nursing Sister-Bug and will continue to nurse her and the new baby. I am, in fact, nursing while I type this post. This is called Tandem Nursing. Brother-Bug nursed till Sister was almost one. It's a wonderful way to teach sharing, and the connections that they had early on (holding hands while nursing) were magical. There will be a longer post about Tandem Nursing coming soon.

Those are the essential points. Some of them are considered controversial by some people. I'm not writing this to cast judgements on those who make different choices than me, and I hope you keep any judgements you make to yourself. These are choices that work for our family.

And now that the interminable morning-noon-and-nighttime sickeness is done, I'm looking forward to growing bigger and loving the many adventures that each pregnancy brings with it.

4 comments:

  1. I think this is a great post, but I don't hope people keep their judgments to themselves. I think there's value in engaging dialogue with folks who would jump to judge the choices our family makes, and I think it gives us an opportunity to demystify some of the ways that we choose paths other than the mainstream. So judgment in the spirit of open inquiry, for me at least, would be welcome. And I won't sweat the haters. You, of course, are your own person.

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  2. Thank you for inspiring me to clarify. I love dialogue and debating different ideas, and encourage that in the comments. What I won't tolerate are people who judge without willingness to discourse. As you said, Samuel, "judgement in the spirit of open inquiry" is always welcome.

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  3. I'm excited to read the tid bits about your 3rd pregnancy journey.

    I'm interested as to how you prepare children for experiencing a birth. So many people remove their already out-in-the-world children from the experience. Which I must admit seems unnatural to me. I would like to at least give my children a choice as to whether or not they would like to be witness or just hang around near by or if they would prefer to be somewhere else entirely.

    Our Brother Older has stated to me that if we have another child that he wants to be there and even assist in the delivery. Whoa Dude! That's pretty awesome! However I would like Dad to deliver the babe. Brother Younger shrugged his shoulders and said, "yeah, I guess I'll be there?"

    Obviously we don't want to push our children in one direction or another. And for both of our boys it would take a lot of finagling to get them to us for the event...

    I'm interested in a guilt-free way of expressing to them the all seriousness of a once in a lifetime experiencing such as a birth of a sibling.

    I may be preparing for nothing but it is interesting nonetheless.

    Cheers to a new Baby-Bug :)

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  4. Instead of a lengthy reply to your question here, Nico, I'm working on a blog post that will address that very topic. Keep your eye out for it!

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