The Benefits of a Routine, Part 2

          After writing about my old routine, I realized that I don’t make the best use of my day.  I think that is the secret thing about being a mom: you really do have to learn how to be more efficient, or you end up drowning in stupid, boring, repetitive tasks.

          I revised some of the things we had been doing, hoping that it would free me up to have more time to do the things I like – ie, writing.  But writing is really hard to get done with a little kid underfoot.  Writing looks like you are taking a break, since you are sitting down and playing with the computer.  Writing, to a little kid, looks a lot like something that needs to be interrupted.  Sigh.

          We still start the day the same way, but now after my husband goes to work I do my best to get chores done around the house.  In a way, this makes the most sense as far as the house goes – I have the most energy in the early mornings.  So, before we leave to do something fun, I do laundry and dishes every day, and then so far I have been casting around for an area that has been neglected for a while that needs cleaning.  It beats trying to do three loads of laundry at 4pm.

          We still spend the morning out and about, trying to use up the kiddo’s energy.  Park, friend’s house, pool, etc.  We still come home and do nap/lunch/etc. in the early afternoon.  And I still earn Swagbucks while I’m checking my email during naptime.

          But after all those things, now I find that I feel better about the condition of the house and, therefore, my little universe.  Instead of having to clean up from the whole day, I only have to clean up after any one thing that happens – snacks or art time or whatever.  I am trying to encourage the kid to color or sort things or otherwise occupy himself while I’m cooking dinner, while before I would often turn on the TV just to get him out of my hair.  We still have, by the end of the day, plenty of time to run around in the backyard and read books and build with blocks and play with toys.  We just also get a lot accomplished.

          Yesterday, I dusted the living room.  DUSTED.  I had a small “holy crap” moment.  It’s been a really long time since I did that.

Lazy Smoothies

Or we could call these "drinkable yogurt."

The recipe is super simple.  Add milk by the tablespoon to a small amount of yogurt, any kind, until it can go through a straw pretty easily.  It cuts some of the sugar of flavored yogurts, it's less messy than feeding a cup of yogurt to a toddler, and it's a change of pace from normal.  And you don't have to get the blender or anything else, besides a spoon, messy.

Changing, Ever-Changing Thoughts on Breastfeeding

Before I had kids and while I was pregnant and even while my son was a small baby, I really thought breastfeeding was the ultimate choice, the best choice in feeding your kid.  And more than just that, I really thought formula was for wimps or moms who didn't care.  I didn't go around telling this to anyone, but I think for a lot of moms, especially those who are educated on the benefits of breastmilk for small children, that same feeling lurks around our brains.  Our ideal is to nurse until our kids are one year old or
two years old or farther, because that is how they do it in some cultures around the world, because there are proven health benefits in doing it so long; and when we can't live up to that, when we find ourselves adding in a little formula to cover when our breastmilk just isn't there, or when we find that we have weaned before we meant to and now there's no going back, or we reach that point where we just can't do it anymore because we are exhausted or ill or worn down or frustrated or in pain, we get down about it.  We beat ourselves up.  We feel guilt and shame.

Well, we shouldn't.


So, here's how my thoughts have changed over the years, and these changes have come about because other women, other caring mothers, have been brave enough to share their stories with me of how they fed their children.


First, let's look at the big picture.  Babies have to eat; they are demanding little suckers.  And for a lot of times throughout history, the job of moms for the first months/years was providing this food.  Moms maybe didn't work outside the home; maybe they could take their babies with them if they did; maybe they lived in a community where most of their friends or family members had young babies, too, and they could trade around nursing duties if someone had to go somewhere or if someone got sick; maybe they fostered out some babies to other families or hired someone to nurse them.  Other stuff happened back then, too -- some babies died; some went through their infancy hungry and underweight -- stuff I am glad I do not have to worry about where/when I live.  Around here, today, our babies still have to eat, and in a lot of cases, moms have to go to work without them.  There's nothing to feel shame or guilt about any of that; it's just how we live.

If you flash forward to, I don't know, the 1950's -- a time in our country when there wasn't yet mass-marketed formula, and people had stopped living in communal settings where you could pass a hungry baby around to someone else, and no one really employed wet-nurses anymore -- you know what they did?  They stuffed those babies full of solid foods very early.  My husband's mom has a note in his baby book, from the 70's, that says she was feeding him rice cereal at 6 weeks old, a practice that was probably pretty common, but is frowned on now (most recommendations are to wait until at least 6 months).


So, now we have formula.  If there is a hungry baby who can't breastfeed enough to satisfy her hunger, that is what we use.  We don't have servants like wet-nurses; we don't live in the same house as our sisters and cousins and all their kids; and we don't bring out the baby food before our kids can sit up by themselves anymore.  We COULD; we DON'T.  Formula, like breast milk, is a tool used to feed a kid too young to eat anything else.  And, honestly, if your other options are letting a kid be hungry or feeding them rice cereal, formula is a much better, healthier thing.

Of course, if that was all there was to it, maybe we wouldn't sit around feeling guilty all the time about using formula.  The other side of it I blame on the companies (and people) who make formula.  Breastmilk, which is free and more nutritious than formula, has no marketing team.  It's like buying apples versus buying apple juice (or maybe like growing your own food versus shopping in the frozen foods section, or maybe I should just let this metaphor die).  Breastmilk sends you no free samples in the mail.  It doesn't come in a handy container in the bag they give you at the hospital.  It doesn't come with coupons.  I went home from my very first *prenatal* appointment with my ObGyn, carrying a container of formula -- it was kind of outrageous.  What was I going to do with that thing other than stare at it for 8.5 more months?  I was totally irritated. Formula companies say they are always doing the best research to make sure their stuff is healthier than it used to be, and yes, of course, it IS (have you ever seen some of sketchy "make your own baby formula" recipes online?  Some of the old-school ones are mostly powdered milk and corn syrup.  Seriously.  I would pick evil Wal-mart's evil knock-off of evil Enfamil any day), but I think we all know that formula companies are also interested in profits.  Money.  Formula is expensive.  Sure, they love to send you free samples when your baby is tiny (or months away from entering the world), but that all stops long before your doctor will give the go-ahead to feed your kid regular old milk.  I remember getting the coupons in the mail when my son was young; at first, $5 off a container, and then a few months later, only $2 off -- they know if you have to buy it you have no choice.  If you buy into the marketing campaigns from the formula people, if you ignore your body's natural response to feed your baby, then you are locked tight into a money relationship with formula.  And it really can happen very quickly -- breastfeeding is call-and-response, supply-and-demand; take away the demand, the supply can be gone in a few days.  I do feel shame about this, but it's not directed at moms, it's directed at the people who market to moms this way.  It's not fair.

And another side of the issue is how we treat moms who breastfeed in public.  Where I live, it is illegal to tell a woman she can't breastfeed, wherever she is.  If she is legally allowed to be in a place, she is legally allowed to breastfeed there.  But not everyone knows this; stores and restaurants can kick women out for breastfeeding without a lot of backlash (and they do).  You get stared at when you breastfeed in public.  It's weird.  It's uncomfortable.  I had to do it during brunch one time in front of my father-in-law ... I was proud that I hadn't brought a bottle with us, knowing I could feed my baby the way nature intended, but that didn't make it any less awkward.  I never repeated it, either.  I tried to schedule things like brunches and outings with my relatives around my breastfeeding, when I shouldn't have needed to.  I was proud of breastfeeding, yes, but it was still an icky feeling to whip out a boob in front of grandpa.

There are other sides, too, and some of them make me really angry.  In my community, the best lactation consultant doesn't take insurance, just cash, and that limits her customer base to those who can pay.  LC's who work in hospitals seem to be, at least from what my friends have said, poorly educated.  I get angry when I hear that a trained lactation consultant being paid by the hospital advises using formula on day 2 -- like, sometimes it doesn't all come together *the day after you give birth* so why are you pushing formula?  I get angry when I hear about women hanging around the grocery store at 11:45pm, waiting for the calendar to change over so they can access next month's food stamps and get some more food for their kids.  Or, in a story related to me by my Bradley instructor, the mom who called the WIC hotline during a hurricane when all the stores were closed, wondering what to do when she ran out of formula (she was advised to breastfeed, since that isn't going to run out during bad weather).  Or moms who think breastfeeding will ruin their breasts -- when, really, time ruins your breasts and so does not sleeping in a bra, and also probably genetics; bank your formula money now and get surgery later if it means that much to you. I get angry when I read horribly mean comments in online forums like BabyCenter and WhatToExpect, anti-breastfeeding and anti-formula alike.  Especially when the nicer forums, websites that actually contain actual advice full of actual factual information instead of just a bunch of angry ladies, are not as heavily promoted, places like LaLecheLeague and Kellymom.  I am still, after two years, trying to unsubscribe from all the WhatToExpect emails, seriously.

Life as we live it here in this country, in my community, doesn't make long-term breastfeeding very easy.  Unless you get to stay home forever, someone is always irritated at your choice -- and sometimes, it's you yourself.  And we only get 3 months to stay home (maybe) before most of us have to go back to work.  Babies generally have a huge growth spurt around 3-4 months old ... you can feel like you can't keep up with your baby's appetite almost from the beginning.


I met a young mom last year who stopped breastfeeding when she went back to work.  She didn't get maternity leave; she was able to stay at home for one month using her vacation and sick time.  So, when her baby was two weeks old, she began pumping to prepare.  Well, nothing came out, probably because they were only two weeks into breastfeeding, which isn't a very long time.  She, probably rightly so, figured it would just be a waste of time, so they switched to formula.  Then they discovered that her baby was allergic to every kind of formula except the prescription kind that comes in a can and goes bad very quickly.  I think she said they were spending at least $30/week on formula.  And her baby was still very very small -- when his appetite grew, I'm sure they spent more and more.  This was a family who rearranged dad's work schedule so he could work at night, because they could not afford daycare.  She felt really terrible about 
how things were working out.  I feel terrible just thinking about it, but the blame doesn't lay at her feet.  It lays at the feet of her employer, who didn't have to provide her with maternity leave; and maybe with the government who won't make laws about maternity leave; and with the prescription formula people, who charge so much money for what is being used as FOOD for a BABY.  Could she have done something more?  Could she have made breastfeeding work for her and her family?  Could she have tried harder?  I feel like those aren't even the right questions to ask.

I used to think formula was for wimps and moms who don't care.  While I'm sure there are formula users
who are wimps and moms who don't care, that's not all I think about it anymore.  I think about it as a faceted thing with so many sides.  A lot of those facets, I don't really like and wish would change.  A few of them are probably completely unchangeable, just reality.  A few of those sides, I work to change.  If you want to breastfeed, study up; take a class; make friends with people who breastfed their kids; find out who the best LC's in your town are; scour the internets for helpful information; watch youtube videos; watch other people while they breastfeed; find places where you can ask questions; find the milk-share networks on Facebook.  If you're having trouble breastfeeding, get help from LLL or an IBCLC certified lactation consultant.  And if you are approaching that line in the sand, where you are so tired or you're struggling or you can't find a solution to the problems you face trying to feed your kid, give yourself a big hug and take a break from all the guilt.

The Benefits of a Routine, Part 1

I have been following with interest the series on Money Saving Mom about how to establish a routine for your family.  She has a lot of interesting points, one of which is how when you have a routine, you can make time for things that are important.  When you find yourself with five or ten extra minutes at some point in your day, you can spend them on something you care about, instead of wondering what to do.  I like that idea.

                Staying at home full time with my son has been challenging, and we have made a routine for our day basically just to stay sane.  He is a precocious kid – and active and rowdy and gets bored easily.  We need to have a plan when we go through our day, otherwise we are a little nuts by five o’clock.  We are probably a little nuts by then anyway.

                Here is our routine, in a nutshell.

                6:30 wake up – we get dressed, have breakfast and usually go outside to play for a while.

                7:30 my husband leaves for work and I try to avoid turning on the TV to occupy the kiddo.  It is really hard, because it’s too early to go anywhere but we don’t often have anything to do around the house.

                9:00 we go out and do something until nap time.  It can be hard to figure out what this thing is.  Usually, we hit a park or a friend’s house, or we host people over at our house.  One of our favorite things to do is the Zilker Science and Nature Center.  I like going to place that can occupy us for long periods of time, something more than just a simple playground somewhere.  It is absolutely essential for our afternoon that we get out of the house and do something somewhere else.

                12:00 we come home and the boy takes a nap.  I eat lunch, check email, try to earn some Swagbucks so that I can get diapers for free next time we need them.  It works, and is also probably a colossal waste of time.

                2:00 naptime is usually over, time for the kiddo to have lunch.  Sometimes he helps me do some chores or tasks.  Lately, in the afternoons, I have been trying to figure out some simple crafts and DIY things.  I am not crafty, but I’m not the biggest moron, either, sometimes I can figure things out.  Today, I made Larabars out of dates and apples.  Finn goes through phases where all he wants to eat are Larabars, but he skunked me out today by insisting on eating plain old dates out of the box.  If I knew you would eat dates, I would not be pulverizing them into bars, little one.

                4:00 ok, by now we are usually going crazy.  I am trying to straighten up the house again, do the dishes, clean up from crafty hour, and the boy is trying to get more TV time by whining.  We often end up outside again, even though it is the heat of day.

                4:30 I start looking over dinner options, see if I have to get anything started.  If I have managed to get any laundry done, I’m putting it away now.

                5:30 I start dinner in earnest.  My husband comes home sometime around here and takes over with the kid.

                6:30 dinner

                7:30 bathtime, followed by stories and bed for the little one.

                8:00 while we wait for him to fall asleep, my husband and I read and do quiet things.  If there is dessert in the house, we eat it.

                8:30 we get to watch TV.  I try really hard to stay awake past 9pm.

                I can see, looking at my routine, that there’s a lot of space for us to be more productive, especially in the afternoons.  But that is the hardest part of the day – it’s hot outside, and I’m usually wiped out.  I believe traditionally, this was the time of day when my mom used to make a second pot of coffee and whip herself into a housewiferly frenzy.  I could do that.  I suppose I could also make time to try to teach my son something useful … every time we try to do something where we sit down and work on something, like coloring, he tries to eat it.  Maybe I am doing something wrong for him to still be like that, I don’t know.

The Benefits of a Routine

               I have been following with interest the series on Money Saving Mom about how to establish a routine for your family.  She has a lot of interesting points, one of which is how when you have a routine, you can make time for things that are important.  When you find yourself with five or ten extra minutes at some point in your day, you can spend them on something you care about, instead of wondering what to do.  I like that idea.

                Staying at home full time with my son has been challenging, and we have made a routine for our day basically just to stay sane.  He is a gregarious kid – and active and rowdy and gets bored easily.  We need to have a plan when we go through our day, otherwise we are a little nuts by five o’clock.  We are probably a little nuts by then anyway.

                Here is our routine, in a nutshell.

                6:30 wake up – we get dressed, have breakfast and usually go outside to play for a while.

                7:30 my husband leaves for work.  The kid and I play outside for as long as we can, usually we water the garden or walk up to the corner to watch the buses.  If we run out of steam, we watch a little tv and I try to do some writing.  “Try” being the operative word.

                8:30 I start preparing to leave the house.  Maybe I get some laundry started, straighten up from breakfast, pack snacks and toys for the day.  The boy usually needs a new diaper by now … and sometimes just changing him seems to take half an hour and all of my energy.

                9:00 we go out and do something until nap time.  It can be hard to figure out what this thing is.  Usually, we hit a park or a friend’s house, or we host people over at our house.  One of our favorite things to do is the Zilker Science and Nature Center.  I like going to place that can occupy us for long periods of time, something more than just a simple playground somewhere.  It is absolutely essential for our afternoon that we get out of the house and do something somewhere else.

                12:00 we come home and the boy takes a nap.  I eat lunch, check email, try to earn some Swagbucks so that I can get diapers for free next time we need them.  It works, and is also probably a colossal waste of time.

                2:00 naptime is usually over, time for the kiddo to have lunch.  Usually we read some stories, play outside, he begs to watch more TV and I resist as long as possible.  Sometimes he helps me do some chores or tasks.  Lately, in the afternoons, I have been trying to figure out some simple crafts and DIY things.  I am not crafty, but I’m not the biggest moron, either, sometimes I can figure things out.  Today, I made Larabars out of dates and apples.  Finn goes through phases where all he wants to eat are larabars, but he skunked me out today by insisting on eating plain old dates out of the box.  If I knew you would eat dates, I would not be pulverizing them into bars, little one.

                4:00 ok, by now we are usually going crazy.  I am trying to straighten up the house again, do the dishes, clean up from crafty hour, and the boy is trying to get more TV time by whining.  We often end up outside again, even though it is the heat of day.  We are working up to riding his bike so we can take a walk around the block.

                4:30 I start looking over dinner options, see if I have to get anything started.  If I have managed to get any laundry done, I’m putting it away now.  Sometimes we go to the library or run some kind of errand very close to the house.  Traffic is getting snarly at this time, so we don’t go far.

                5:30 I start dinner in earnest.  My husband comes home sometime around here and takes over with the kid.  I check email and dink around online inbetween fixing dinner.  It is when I really feel like having a beer.

                6:30 dinner

                7:30 bathtime, followed by stories and bed for the little one.

                8:00 while we wait for him to fall asleep, my husband and I read and do quiet things.  If there is dessert in the house, we eat it.  If there isn’t, sometimes this is when I make my husband drive to Sonic to get me some ice cream.  Mmm.

                8:30 we get to watch TV.  I try really hard to stay awake past 9pm.

                I can see, looking at my routine, that there’s a lot of space for us to be more productive, especially in the afternoons.  But that is the hardest part of the day – it’s hot outside, and I’m usually wiped out.  I believe traditionally, this was the time of day when my mom used to make a second pot of coffee and whip herself into a housewiferly frenzy.  I could do that.  I suppose I could also make time to try to teach my son something useful … every time we try to do something where we sit down and work on something, like coloring, he tries to eat everything.  Maybe I am doing something wrong for him to still be like that, I don’t know.

D's Birth Story

It has been a while since a post has appeared.  But I have an excuse.  A new person appeared in my life.  Here is his birth story.  More posts, hopefully about things other than how people make their way into this world, to come soon.

On my due date, Aug 5, I woke up thinking my water had broken.  Or was leaking -- there wasn't much coming out, but it wasn't normal.  I waited around most of the morning to see if I had any contractions, but I didn't.  In the afternoon, we went to the birthing center to make sure and Ros was there, the same midwife who had delivered F.  She determined that I had probably lost my mucus plug, not broken my water, but that the baby was moving down and I would likely be in labor that evening.  We called my in-laws when I started having contractions at dinnertime.  But ... the contractions went away at bedtime and I didn't go into labor at all.  Boo.

On Monday, the in-laws came over to play with F. and nothing much happened to me.  On Tuesday, however, after I had sent them back home, I started having contractions probably around 1:30pm.  At 3pm, I called my husband and asked him to come home.  At five-ish, we went to the birthing center and midwife Samantha checked us out -- she said I was dilated to 3cms, which isn't much, and we went back home.  The contractions continued.  I went to sleep until about 1:30am, when they became harder to sleep through.  At 3am, we went to the birthing center again.  Now, I was dilated to 5cm.  It wasn't as much progress as I wanted.  And the contractions were already getting very uncomfortable.

I got into the tub and managed to doze through the contractions for another hour or so.  Then I hopscotched around the room, trying out different equipment.  I was afraid the contractions were getting too powerful, so Sam gave me some herbs to calm me down.  One of the herbs was valerian root, and I think that made me drowsy.  So drowsy.  I slept in the tub again, I slept on the toilet, and I slept in the rocking chair.  I would wake up every five minutes or so for a contraction, and then fall right back to sleep.  It wasn't exactly a pleasant sensation -- I was very disoriented when I woke up and would nearly panic nearly every time, because the pain would increase so quickly.

At 8am, Ros came on duty. I hadn't had any idea she would be there, but when she saw me, she laughed and suggested that the baby and I had been waiting for her to arrive. She suggested I try to lay on the bed and labor down that way.  I could tell after a while that things were progressing, because I could almost feel the baby moving lower with each contraction.  These were very different contractions than what I remembered with F.  With his birth, the contractions were quick and frequent and powerful until I became overwhelmed -- that was transition -- and then the pushing was like a relief to my system because the sensations were so different.  This time, however, I felt immense pressure on my lower body, almost like I had to fart or poop to a very extreme and painful level, the whole entire time I was having contractions.  Basically, it was like the end or the transition of F.'s labor was the whole labor this time.  By the time the baby was laboring down and I was in the bed, I felt panic set in at every contraction.


And still, I was falling asleep between every one and waking up as crazy waves of pain fell in on me.
But Ros was onto bigger and better things, telling Ben to grab my leg back and me to dig in and start pushing.  I was not ready for this, but she made me do it.  I cried and whined the whole time, just wanting her to leave me alone (probably to go to sleep again) but she wouldn't let me.  I managed to give her three really good pushes and by then I could tell there was no going back.  I could feel him right at the edge of coming out.  Another two pushes and his head was out and I could hear him starting to cry.  I thought they would just pull the rest of him out, but Ros kept telling me to keep pushing.  The pain was intense, but suddenly it popped like a little bubble and the baby was out and on my chest.
The baby and my husband took a nap before we went home, but not me.  I was surprisingly well-rested.

I also felt like it was taking forever.  Finally, at 10am, I decided to quit watching the clock because it was just making me crazy.  My contractions were still only five minutes apart, and Ros was convinced they weren't really doing a whole lot of work.  She was ready to make me work it out -- I could tell when she came to check my progress that she was going to make me walk around the room or something
dreadful.  But instead, she said I was 9cm and asked if I would like to try an experimental push.  She still 
had her fingers wedged up there and I think she helped break my water at that point.  She said the baby was right there, his head already molding -- and that was a good thing, I remember thinking, because that meant he was actually in the birth canal part way and maybe I would only have to push him part way.


We named him D. and he weighed 9 pounds, 1 ounce.  Ros declared his feet looked like a 39 week baby, not a 40plusafewdays baby, so I guess I just need to cook them a little longer.  He looked a lot like F. looked when he was born, just fatter.  He pooped all over the place in the minutes after his birth. His fingernails were so long we had to trim them that same night.  He had four sucking blisters, two on each hand.

A Birth Story

I've been inspired, now that I am expecting another baby, to revisit the birth of my first.  Most of this was coming from memory, but I did make a lot of notes in the first few weeks of being a mom.  My tone in those notes was, um, a little more freaked out.  I was probably not sleeping.

One thing that I do remember was my due date: June 1.  I loved that date because it was my dad's birthday, and my husband and I were secretly talking about kind of naming the baby after him and it all had such a sweet symmetry.

But, of course, as a first time mom, people told me to expect to go past this arbitrary date.  I had a visit with the midwife the Friday before my due date and she told me that she didn't think the baby would come on time.  "He hasn't dropped yet," she said. "It's pretty normal."  My due date was a Tuesday and it came and went with no baby and no contractions.  I went back to see the midwives later that week and again, they told me the same thing.  I was dilating well, probably around 1 cm, but he hadn't dropped into position and I really couldn't expect too much until he did.

On the Tuesday after my due date, when I was officially 41 weeks pregnant, I went  back and they told me the same thing again.  But by now, they were starting to look a little concerned about it.  I was still dilating, but nothing was happening.  I called my mom and gave her the update.  She had gone into labor with me and my siblings about a month early each time, so for her, this all seemed impossible.  To her, I was already six weeks later than she had been expecting.  She was coming to visit in a week, supposedly to help out with my weeks old baby, but I told her that maybe she would end up being there while I was in labor.  I wasn't really looking forward to that.

Wednesday, I returned to the midwives where they hooked me up to the fetal monitor for twenty minutes, just to see if maybe I was having contractions that I couldn't feel.  I wasn't.  For the whole pregnancy, I never even had any Braxton-Hicks contractions.  My sister-in-law had them for a month before her baby was born, and we all thought it strange that I'd never had any.  Now, it was seeming even stranger.  The midwives conferred with each other as they looked over the printed strip from the monitor.  Not that there was anything to look at.

They sent me home with castor oil and instructions for how to drink it.  Castor oil is the age-old midwife treatment to get a labor going.  I mixed mine dutifully with a bunch of ice cream and ate it for breakfast on Thursday morning.  Nothing really happened.  One of the midwives called me that afternoon to see how things were progressing.  "Come in tomorrow," she said.

So, back I went on Friday.  It was almost mid-June and the weather was just crummy.  Hot, humid, thick.  I had gained over 50 pounds during my pregnancy.  I spent most afternoons at this point laying on the couch, the fan pointed directly at my nether regions, drifting in an out of uncomfortable sleep.  I stopped calling friends to go to lunch with me, because every time they answered the phone they thought I was in labor.  No one wanted to hear, "I'm just bored, come meet me somewhere."

Jean was the midwife who saw me that Friday.  She stripped my membranes, which meant that she got what looked like most of her forearm into my pregnant body and swished it around a bunch of times.  "I feel like I can get you to dilate easily," she said.  "I bet I can get you to four centimeters just with my hand, that's great.  But the baby still isn't really in position."  She was frowning at me when she finished and sent me home with this dire warning.  "Call me tomorrow at two.  If you're not in labor, I think we'll just have to take you to the hospital."

I cried all the way home in the car.  I had been planning to have my baby at this birthing center, with the midwives who had been caring for me during my pregnancy.  Everyone who knew about this plan thought it was crazy.  My mother still said the word "midwife" like it was some foreign language.  She thought my fears of drugs and needles and unnecessary surgery were out of whack with reality, even while she refused to read anything on current statistics.  Other friends who had children already looked at me with wide eyes, and I could see them mentally spinning their fingers around their ears: I was coo-coo.  "Why would you ever try to have a baby without an epidural?" one of them said to me.  When I replied that it can be healthier, she scrunched up her forehead, as if the thought had never occurred to her.  That afternoon, when I broke the news to my closest family, that we were looking at a hospital transfer, everyone had the same paliative response: "A healthy baby is the only thing that matters."  Which, especially right then, was not what I wanted to hear.  It sounded like, "See, we all told you this was a crazy plan, now maybe you'll listen to reason."  I felt like everyone was treating me like a child, one who was due some kind of punishment for straying into this unknown territory.

I went for three walks the next morning, trying to finish them up before the oppressive heat settled in for the day.  I could get a few cramps going if I walked fast enough, but when I fell asleep around lunchtime, they went away.  We went in to see Jean again, my husband with me this time since it was a Saturday, and she fired up the ultrasound machine.  My fluid levels were good, she said.  The baby was healthy, the placenta was still functioning properly.  She stripped my membranes again, and again she commented on how easily I was dilating.  "But it just doesn't look like he's dropped yet," she said.  Then she gave me another day.  I had until 3pm on Sunday to go into labor naturally and then it was hospital time for real.

I called my mom and told her not to come, even though my parents were already on the road to my house.  I asked her to visit my sister for a day and said she could come on Monday, when I expected I would be in the hospital, hooked up to various IV's full of induction drugs.  On Sunday morning, I took more walks and was able to get a few contractions going.  But by the time we were in the car to visit Jean yet again, they had faded to nothing.  We were pretty quiet in the car.  We had our bag of baby stuff for our stay at the birthing center, but now I was rethinking everything.  We hadn't packed for the hospital; we didn't have a birth plan.  I looked at my husband and said, "If something happens, promise me you'll stay with the baby no matter what.  I'll be ok, but you have to stay with him.  Promise me."  He promised.

The birthing center was dark and quiet and we had to search through the hallways to find Jean.  She did another ultrasound, checking fluid levels again, and then she laid out our options.  We could go to the hospital right now, get some pitocin and see if that jump-started things.  She said she would come with us.  We could break my water at the birthing center and then, if that didn't work, go to the hospital at the end of the day for pitocin and more regulated monitoring to keep an eye out for infection.  "You have about a day to have the baby if we break your water," she said.  "If it doesn't work, they may want to give you a c-section as soon as you show up.  The longer we wait to go over there, the more chance you have of going right into surgery."  I said we might as well try breaking my water first to see what happened, and then head over there later if it didn't work.  I was pretty calm when I reached this decision.  It was true that I had been fearing and obsessing over an unnecessary surgery for months, but by this point, I felt like we had literally tried everything we could think of to get the baby out ... if this last ditch effort didn't work, then maybe surgery wasn't going to be unnecessary anymore.

We moved from the exam room to a birthing suite.  Jean set me up on a big comfy bed in the afternoon sunlight and explained everything she was doing as she broke my water.  Then she made me a castor oil milkshake, dosed me with a tincture of herbs, and hooked me up to a breast pump.  Within minutes, I was sick to my stomach and wanted to get out of bed.  The breast pump was making me feel like throwing up.

I walked the halls for about an hour, chatting with my husband and looking at the pictures of new babies tacked up to the bulletin boards.  He kept track of my contractions, which started to come about every five minutes.  They were crampy and uncomfortable, and a few of them gave me pause.  We watched a movie, but about halfway through I found I couldn't concentrate on it anymore.  I spent ten minutes or so in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet, feeling nauseous again.  Jean tried to get me to lay down, but every time I did, I threw up, so I just kept walking around.  I heard her on the phone with another midwife, saying that I was having contractions, "but not the real doosey ones."  I didn't believe her.

It grew dark outside.  My in-laws arrived with dinner for us, but I couldn't deal with seeing anyone so my husband talked with them in the kitchen for a few moments.  While he was eating his dinner I asked if I could have a tiny taste of a cookie.  I threw it back up.  I had a drink of water and threw that up, too.  Jean went home around 8pm and another midwife, Roswitha, came on duty.  She had just spent the previous night at the hospital with a difficult birth, so she went to lie down for a while.  She checked on us about once an hour, sometimes scolding me for sitting down or my husband for dosing in his chair, sometimes reminding us of the equipment we could use: the birthing chair, the exercise ball, the shower.

Because my risk of infection was greater since my water had been broken, no one checked how dilated I was until about 11pm.  Around 9 or 10 at night, things started to get very difficult for me.  Jean had told my husband that maybe, just maybe, we would have a baby by morning and I couldn't get those words out of my head.  Maybe by morning?  I would have to do this all night long?  I sat on the birthing stool until it didn't help anymore, then I sat in the shower until that didn't help anymore, then I leaned over the excerise ball propped up on the bed until that didn't help anymore.  Finally, I was leaning against the back of a chair while my husband pressed inward on my hips.  Until that didn't work anymore.  And by work, I mean, these things stopped even easing the pain.

It was getting hard to concentrate on anything.  I felt claustrophobic.  I wanted to take a break from my body.  I wanted things to slow down, I wanted them to speed up and be over.  I wanted to go somewhere away from the pain, but my legs didn't work like they used to and moving was so difficult, I don't think I could have gone anywhere even if that would have helped.  I burrowed into myself.  I thought my hip bones were breaking from the inside out.  The room was so still.  It was the middle of the night and I was all alone, leaning against part of the bed, trying to imagine how long it might be until morning, until the baby came, until Jean said maybe he would be here.  My understanding was limited to about five minutes into the future; everything farther away than that was just blackness that I could not comprehend.  I kept telling myself that I could make it for five more minutes, until all of a sudden, I knew I couldn't even do that.  Maybe I could make it three more minutes.  Maybe one more contraction.  If someone had offered me an epidural, a c-section, a pill, ANYTHING, at that moment I would have taken it.

Roswitha came in shortly after this, probably around 11 or 11:30.  She grimly helped me onto the bed and did a cervical check.  I think she was planning to tell me that we had to go to the hospital now that midnight was approaching.  But instead she beamed and patted my leg.  "Good girl," she said, "you're at nine centimeters.  You can get into the birthing tub now."

Oh!  The tub!  I'd forgotten there was a tub!  Jean had told me I couldn't use it since it sometimes slowed down labor, something I couldn't afford.  I got excited.  Water birth!  Something new to make the pain go away!  I heaved myself across the floor with lots and lots of help.  I managed to get into the tub and Ros turned on the water for me.  I braced myself against the side of it, and before the water was much past my knees, something changed.  "Something's different," I called out to Ben and in that moment, my voice dropped about three octaves.  I think I may have mooed the end of that sentence.

A birth attendant showed up and turned off the water.  Ros was there, trying to tell me how to brace myself against the side of the tub for the pushing that was coming next.  It was difficult to get leverage in the water, so out I came again, and up I went on the bed.  The pushing was very confusing to me; I didn't understand what was going on.  The contractions felt different, they didn't feel painful anymore, but like a rising in my chest, like adrenaline or that moment when you go down a roller coaster.  Ros was yelling at me to keep pushing, but I couldn't do it as long as she wanted me to.  The birth assistant was very encouraging and my husband was holding my hand the whole time, telling me that I was almost done.  "One more push should do it."  He told me this about twenty times.  When the baby began to crown, they left me feel his slick little head.  I could feel my face going red with all the effort.  It was so hard to use the right muscles, all I wanted to do was kick out my legs.

But finally the baby's ears came out and then the rest of him.  Then they were heaving this creature onto my stomach, still covered in birthing goo, and I was holding him.  He cried and then he calmed down and he looked at my husband who was right in front of his face.  We were covered in blankets to keep warm while Ros and the assistant finished up.  They gave me a shot of pitocin to get the afterbirth to come out; my contractions faded away immediately after the baby came out, even though my husband said it seemed like I was too distracted to keep working.  He cut the umbilical cord shortly after that.  It was a little after two in the morning.

I had a first degree tear and although Ros offered to sew me up, I was done with people messing with that part of my body.  They said it would heal up in a week or so, as long as I took it easy at home.  They showed me the placenta and Ros said it was a very good one.  They pushed down on my puffy stomach to get out some blood clots.  Then they rubbed the baby and me off and settled us under a comforter while we nursed a little.

The baby was born with a tongue-tie and Ros told me a little bit about what that meant.  Not a birth defect, she said, just something that happens sometimes.  Then she said that she didn't think my due date had been right.  The baby, she said, didn't look like a post-term baby at all.  She had noted the amount of vernix covering his skin and had counted the wrinkles on his feet.  "You said you were sure about his due date," she said.  "When did you actually take a pregnancy test?"

I had thought we had gotten pregnant in mid-September, my last period had been at the end of August.  But when I told her I had taken the pregnancy test the first week in October, she declared that I had probably gotten pregnant around October 1.  "Those tests work a lot faster these days," she said.  "You can get a positive result very soon after it happens now."

As the sun came up, the baby was weighed and measured.  Eight pounds even.  We filled out his birth certificate information and made little baby footprints on a piece of paper.  We took pictures and texted everyone.  Then, the three of us laid down on the bed together and fell asleep.

UPDATE: The midwife noted in my chart that I only pushed for 45 minutes.  I swear it felt like 4 hours.