Preparing for Childbirth, Part I

Timothy Jeremiah was born to this 47 year old mom on January 12.  Yay!

What is even more "yay!" is how the birth went.  It only took 10 births to figure it out, but I had the best birth experience I'd ever had with him.  I will be sharing about the ways that I prepared for his birth.  I could not tell you the one thing that did the trick; they may all have worked together.  Being pregnant and laboring are not pigeon-holed activities, they are very holistic.  I think it all started with my midwife, Lindsey, saying, "You know, you don't have to wait until 7 p.m. to deliver."  You see, from baby number  4 to baby number 9, I delivered at between 7 and 9:30 p.m. and I was not looking forward to another 24 hour labor.  Lindsey's words made me realize that I do not have to have the kind of labor I had before; I do not have to have the kind of labor that I fear.  

Something that I discovered in Tim's labor was that I am usually ready to have the baby hours earlier, but something psychological was causing a conflict in me to where I didn't want to deliver.  I fought for hours, even as I was begging my body to deliver and I just couldn't until I reached "safe hour", the hour I felt safe to deliver.  All kinds of creatures will not deliver if they are afraid.  Alpacas, which we raised, live in the Andes where it freezes every night, even in the height of summer.  If they have not delivered by noon, they will stop labor.  Our only alpaca births after 1:00 have been dystocias which needed help to be delivered.  Since the baby is wet, if it doesn't have time to dry off before the air freezes, it will die.  Amish women come from a culture where sex and birth are not discussed in front of the children and most of them have a lot of them.  They almost always labor at night and if the baby is not born by the time the sun comes up, they will almost always tell the midwife to go home: the baby is not coming now.  Psychologically, because of their culture, they don't feel comfortable having a baby with children running around, so - they don't.  I didn't know what made me afraid to deliver until my "safe hour", but there it was: I didn't have babies until I was off the Mommy clock - 7:30, time for kids to be in bed.  

That was what started me wearing the maternity belt which made so much of a difference in my level of discomfort and in my continued activity.  I did slow down the last month: the weather was getting bad and, I don't care how active you are, nine months is nine months.  I did have some scary moments on the ice in December and early January.  The point is, wearing the belt got me started with a new approach to being pregnant.

 From Childbirth Wisdom, I found that most pregnant women in traditional cultures work very hard.  So I made a point of walking 1-3 miles every day or two and to bring up my heavy grain buckets and baskets of laundry myself, instead of asking a teenager to do it.  That was my second change in pregnancy approach.  I have a friend who is very careful of her diet and runs 5 miles a day, even when she's pregnant and she has a hard time getting to the hospital before the baby is born.  The Amish work very hard all the time and are famous for fast, easy labors.  Body strength and fitness can't help but prepare you for the heavy physical activity of labor.