bearing blog

Babies mid-homeschool-year.

All the birth discussion in the previous post and the other post that wasn't originally about birth brought on a reader question via email.

...as a new homeschooler, I'd love to hear how you've dealt with homeschooling while both feeling terrible during pregnancy (I don't actually puke during my pregnancies but usually feel like I could and I sleep twice as much as usual) and then recuperating postpartum. 

But your last baby was definitely mid-school year. Did you stop school entirely for a month and make it up early/late in the year? Did you plan curriculum in advance that didn't require much micromanaging so you could go on auto-pilot when things were rough?

I feel like I've got a handle on homeschooling, planning meals, working a few hours a week ...  and going to a gym regularly, but throwing a pregnancy in with everything seems like it would be tricky.

 

I'm a control freak, so I get what you're saying.

Tricky, yes.  So far for us, impossible, no.

Since pregnancies and school years are the same length, if you are going to have a pregnancy in the middle of the school year, you know it with enough time to adapt your schedule. 

When I was pregnant with my daughter, #3, my oldest son was 5.  She was born in the summer, but the morning sickness and fatigue was midyear.   

If I was doing it over again I wouldn't even have worried about it (kindergarten!  sheesh!) but back then, since he was my very first homeschooled child, I felt some pressure to keep up the schedule.   I let the five- and two-year-old boys watch a lot of DVDs in the afternoon.  

One thing I did during a period when I felt guilty about how much screen time the two-year-old boy was having was to lay in a supply of good educational or otherwise quality DVDs.  That two-year-old was fascinated by nature documentaries, so I bought this huge collection of BBC nature documentaries.  

Yes, it was expensive -- I remember the sticker price, $180 at Best Buy back then.  (Same price at Amazon today).  In retrospect, because that two-year-old watched every single disc many times, it was money very well spent.  We also invested in a lot of  Signing Time.

When you have a plan to use DVDs,  you can show a lot of DVDs while you are napping and still feel like you are Sticking To A Plan.  At that time, I felt okay in the morning, so we did math and reading first thing and then I put on DVDs while I slept in the afternoon.   Here is a blog post I wrote around that time:

There is an unbelievable amount of stuff that has to get done around here.  My Ideal To-Do List is about twenty lines long.  My Real To-Do List is as follows:

• Get dressed
• Feed children
• Do math or reading
• Feed children again
• Take nap while children dump toys on floor and watch DVDs they got for Christmas that I haven't had time to screen yet (please, someone tell me that Madagascar is not too objectionable, because they've already watched it four times and I haven't seen it yet)
• Possibly make dinner

That's all that happened today.  Laundry?  Nope.  Clean up after breakfast or lunch?  Nope.  Schoowork prep?  Nope.  Packing any boxes (supposedly we're moving on Saturday)?  Nope.  Blogging?  Okay, one entry (other than this one), made while we ate breakfast. 

 

When I had my boy who is three years old today(!), the morning sicknessand fatigue came in the late spring, a time when I'm winding down anyway.  Once again I felt okay in the morning, so it did not cause too much trouble, as we could have easier afternoons.   Since he was to be born in late January, I planned my year to include an extra three-week break after the birth.   I started school on August 17th and my records seem to indicate that I stopped around June 14 or 15.   We always do sporadic lessons in the summer, so I never worry if I have to cut the regular school year short by a day or week here and there.

I operated on a somewhat reduced schedule for the first couple of weeks back -- my oldest was in fourth grade and could work pretty well from a to-do list, but I cut back to essentials (math, reading) for my boy who was in kindergarten.   H. and M. took good care of me on co-schooling days, which remained at my house for several weeks.

I'm always helped by my drive to "get back to normal" after a birth -- a few days in bed and I'm itching to get up.  Not so good for my pelvic floor, but good for schooling, I guess.

Being prepared for precipitous labor.

Yesterday I mentioned that commenter Jenny has a history of precipitous labor, and even though she typically gives birth in a hospital, she was interested in hearing suggestions for being ready in case of precipitous labor at home.

Jenny writes,

My general precipitous labor story is thus: my body dilates and effaces without me knowing it, i.e, no painful or regular contractions. My doctor watches the progression over the last few weeks of pregnancy. When I am a dilated to a 6, she schedules an induction for that night or the next day. I arrive at the hospital, have my water broken artificially, and deliver the baby in about an hour. It's a little crazy!

IMO every woman preparing for birth, even in a hospital with an OB practice, should learn at least a little bit about home birth and about how birth unfolds when it's left alone.   It's not that uncommon for babies to come really fast when they decide to come, and once you pass a certain point it's much safer to stay home than to race to the hospital and risk giving birth in the car -- or, as one woman I know did, next to a file cabinet in the fire station in her neighborhood.

Wouldn't it be better to be prepared?

Here's my suggestions.  

 

Emergency Childbirth:  A Manual by Gregory White.     

My midwife would say that childbirth isn't an emergency unless you think it is, but she still recommends this slim handbook for all her birthing families. It was written mainly for people who might be expected to find themselves helping a mother who's giving birth outside the hospital -- police, etc.  It has some advice that's pretty doctor-centric (advising that the mother be on her back, for example) but what it's really good for is telling the difference between normal birth and birth with complications, and how to handle some of the events that might be unnerving, including what to do if something serious happens.

 

 

 

 

 

Double-make your bed.   You'll be glad you did this if your water breaks while you're sleeping.  This is one of the Great Secrets Of Home-Birthers.  It's also useful later if you have a chronically bed-wetting kid or someone's got a vomiting illness.

Have an extra, waterproof mattress cover (a rubber sheet's cheap, but there are more comfortable, breathable options out there now.)   Make your bed once with mattress cover, bottom sheet, and top sheet well tucked in.  Then put the second, waterproof mattress cover on top and make your bed again with another set of sheets and your blankets.   If your water breaks all over everything, or you wind up giving birth squatting on top of your bed, zip!  it all comes off and there's a fresh newly made bed underneath.  You can go to sleep in it (maybe with your baby) and someone can wash the soiled sheets when it's convenient.

 

Got a tub?  Clean it out.  Bathtubs are awesome.  Everybody should have one.  If you keep potted plants in your tub, take them out.  If your tub is gross, have someone clean it.  Or use some of that late pregnancy nesting energy to do it yourself.  There are worse places to give birth than a bathtub, and if you find yourself really WANTING to be in the tub, you'll be glad if it's all ready for you.  Skip the perfumed bubble bath.

 

Have some clean towels.   If you're perpetually behind on the laundry, set some aside.  Three or four big ones should do.  

 

Have a package of Depends-type underpads, a.k.a. "chux pads." This is another one of those magic tips for not having to clean up any mess, and they have utility later.   For the newborn period when I'm still resting a lot in bed and in chairs, I much prefer sitting/sleeping on one of these to wearing those damn postpartum pads.   I have been known to pull them out of my stash when the little one has their first bout of vomiting.

How does the midwife use them?  When the bearing-down starts, someone puts one on the floor (or bed, or whatever -- wherever you're squatting) between your feet.  From my POV, the chux pad magically appeared from nowhere just when I started to push -- really the midwife put it there.  Although frankly, if you're having precipitous labor you might not care very much, it might give your husband something to do.  "Stay right there honey!  I will protect the carpet!"

 

That newborn nose-suctioning bulb thing. 

 

Some kind of heating pad.  For the afterpains.  They suck and you won't want to be without your heating pad.  I like a rice bag, myself.  Here's a fancy one, but you can just use a tube sock tied shut with a knot.

 

Consider putting a flexible "telephone" shower head in your shower.  Well, I give this advice to every woman who is about to have a baby.

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Since you are preparing for the possibility of precipitous labor -- which is by definition fast -- you don't have to do a lot of the things that home birthers prepare for.  Like always having your fridge and pantry stocked with the kind of food you want to eat when you've been in labor for 6 hours.   And you won't bother with a lot of the postpartum care stuff, because if you give birth at home, sooner or later you will probably be (unnecessarily and at great cost) transported to a medical facility where you will experience standard-ish hospital postpartum care.  

I usually buy a custom birth kit put together by In His Hands Birth Supply from a list that my midwife gives them.  It has things like antiseptic, gloves, cord clamps, peri bottles, baby hat, gauze pads, and underpads in it.  In fact, In His Hands sells an emergency birth kit for $12.  They also sell Emergency Childbirth along with some other literature.  

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Add more thoughts in the comments - and if you have a story of precipitous labor of your own, please share!

Bleg: Preparations for the possibility of unplanned unassisted home birth.

In the post about weekends, we kind of went off topic in the comments!

Commenter Jenny mentioned that she had a history of precipitous labor, and I suggested that (even though she and her husband prefer to plan a hospital birth) it would be a good idea to make a few preparations at home in the event of a precipitous labor necessitating an unplanned unassisted birth.

(If baby's about to come out, you're likely to be much safer staying home than trying to race to the hospital.)

Jenny sez:

I would love some recommendations. When I first went to the OB with this latest pregnancy, she actually suggested my husband come in to get some birthing pointers, just in case.

My husband keeps plants in the tub in our bathroom (don't ask). During my last pregnancy in the last month, I insisted he get them out of there and clean up the tub. I was not going to be a happy camper giving birth unexpectedly amongst his plants!

Getting the plants out of the tub is definitely a good start.

I have some ideas, but as I'm about to rush off to the vigil Mass I'm going to put this up here and invite ideas, recommendations, and brief precipitous-labor stories in the comments.  Be back later!

UPDATE:  More here.

"It's better naked."

Marc Barnes, the freakishly young writer of Bad Catholic, has launched his new project aimed at spreading the word about NFP (mainly Creighton) to young people -- teens and college kids.

The site, 1flesh.org, is part "what you didn't know about contraception and condoms" and part "there is a better way."

Check it out here

Marc's blog post introducing the project is here:

Birth control has done nothing to reduce the rate of unplanned pregnancies, the Pill increases breast cancer risk, lowers female sex drive, and screws up the environment. We’re talking about how artificial contraception is one of the most falsely advertised products out there. We’re talking about how condoms ruin sex, how they’ve been remarkably ineffective in the fight against HIV, how they’ve done nothing to stop our modern explosion of STDs. We’re talking about the Pill and heart disease, about how the health benefits of oral contraceptives aren’t health benefits at all. We’re talking about the Pill’s potential to be an abortifacent, the bad philosophy behind artificial contraception, how contraception has increased the abortion rate, is linked to an increase in divorce, and how — in general — it’s been making relationships difficult for some time now.

And of course, we’re spotlighting the fact that there’s a much better way, all while having an absurdly good time.

I think there is still some cleaning-up to do, and I haven't had time to evaluate the evidence marshalled against birth control and condoms on the various arguments pages, but it looks like a really good start towards raising awareness among young people that, no, you don't have to take hormones or encase yourself in latex, and the benefits you are supposed to get might not even be, you know, real, let alone worth the cost and trouble.

Check it out. What do you think?

"Training for Motherhood."

Here's a ten-minute "functional fitness" strength-training workout for moms, designed to keep you strong enough to pick up your heavy kids, from Kara at Mama Sweat (and Ryan McDowell and Darcy Franklin of Crossfit Minnesota).  When Darcy demonstrates picking up an item like a medicine ball or a car seat and using its weight as resistance, she notes that you can use your child's weight instead.  I assume some of us would have to work up to that...

, 

I've been enjoying her blog so much, I'm really looking forward to when Kara's book comes out!

Kara explains what is "functional fitness:"

 

You've probably heard the term "functional fitness" being thrown around a lot the last few years. (It's listed at #9 on the American College of Sports Medicine's Top 20 Fitness Trends for 2011 and is the main reason why boot camp classes are so popular.) What I once considered the territory of an occupational or physical therapist--using exercises to rehabilitate and strengthen specific muscles involved in their patient's particular activities of daily living--is catching on to the fitness masses. And why not? Why not strengthen your muscles in ways you're going to actually USE them?

Since ditching 5-lb. dumbells (because really, do I ever do 25 reps of bicep curls with a soup can before serving it to my family?) for a 45-lb, 65-lb, 85-lb and beyond barbell I am training for motherhood: Carrying a sleeping 7-year-old from the car upstairs to her bed; lifting my 5-year-old from the ground after a fall; playing airplane with my 2-year-old high above my head.

No doubt about it, motherhood requires some heavy lifting.

Follow the link to Kara's post to see another video in which Ryan (the male trainer), who has small twin boys at home himself, explains what "functional fitness" means for a parent of small children.

(I took a running clinic from Darcy a few months ago, held at that same CrossFit facility.  I was really impressed by the CrossFit philosophy, and I was very pleased with my results!)

 

 

Challenge.

On my post about explaining abortion to kids in the context of American history education, in which I wrote that I would treat the subject as part of a unit on the changing experience of American childhood, I received a good question from "emma" in the combox.  Here it is:

Do you also ask them to put themselves in the positions of their once-younger siblings, now grown older, and facing an unwanted pregnancy?

I gave a quick answer for the combox:

Emma, that's absolutely got to be part of their education, yes -- just as I ask them to put themselves in the position of all kinds of people facing challenges in life. I've tried to do that repeatedly as we've studied American history: asked them to put themselves in the place of marginalized people as well as in the place of people who've done terrible things. I've asked them to put themselves in the place of undocumented immigrants, in the place of people who supported immigration amnesty, and in the place of people who support strict immigration law enforcement -- so they can understand where everyone is coming from. I asked them to put themselves in the place of white antebellum Southerners and white antebellum Northerners and free blacks and slaves. Heck, a couple of weeks ago I even asked them to put themselves in the place of Richard Nixon. "Can you understand how a person could imagine that their political opponents were really *enemies?* And if you thought that, would it still be okay to lie and cheat to win elections?"

How else can "do the right thing, always" sink in, how can "never help people commit injustice, never" sink in, until you really understand that sometimes doing the right thing is terribly, terribly difficult? That sometimes contributing to injustice is terribly, terribly tempting?

 I think it's a question worthy of highlighting for further discussion, don't you? 

My point, in putting Roe v. Wade within a unit on the experience of childhood, is to point out that it affected the legal status of children primarily -- much more than it did the legal status of women.   Of course, this only follows from the notion that unborn children are, in fact children; but I am sure the commenter understands that this is a fundamental assumption in my homeschool.

As with all my educational theories, we shall see how it plays out as my children get older and ask tougher questions. My philosophy about imparting the conviction that the unborn deserve protection  is that it's necessary to go beyond "abortion is bad, so don't ever have one or pay for one or recommend one, try to help people who think it's their only choice, and vote against it whenever you can."  

What's more fundamental than that?  What's more necessary than that?  Well -- ask yourself why abortion is a bad thing, why people shouldn't have them, pay for them, promote them, why it's better to help people make different choices, why its legal status should change.  The only good answer is that the unborn are persons, children, and all those judgments follow from it. 

The Catholic novelist and short-story master Flannery O'Connor once famously said about the Eucharist, "If it's just a symbol, then to hell with it."  Well.  About the anti-abortion movement, I can say:  "If the unborn aren't persons, than to hell with it." 

And so the thing that must be imparted is the gut-and-brain knowledge that unborn children are nothing more nor less than children, younger than themselves.   A ten-year-old boy will protect his little sister like a Rottweiler:  I have seen it.   A four-year-old girl will carefully care for her baby brother:  I have seen it.  The whole family will gather eagerly around Mom's belly to watch for the tiny kicks:   I have seen it.  They know.  They mustn't lose this knowledge.

If you know that an unborn child is a child, you don't need to be told that she needs care, not violence.

If you know that an unborn child is a child, you don't need to be told that a scared pregnant girl is a scared young mother with a baby, that a boy with a pregnant girlfriend is a worried young father.   I'll have completely failed any one of my sons if he makes it to adulthood without being able to imagine what it might be like, what it is like for too many American men: to fear that he can't care for his family.   I'll have failed my daughter if she grows up without putting herself in the place of a mother who's afraid she can't care adequately for herself and for her child.  

I believe that to awaken compassion for young mothers and young fathers and their children is to awaken a desire to help them all, not a desire to harm any of them.  Political positions come long after that.

Readers:  What do you think of Emma's question and challenge?  A good one, no?

Commenter ChristyP on blogtalkradio.

Link here to blog-friend Christy P promoting the Creighton model study that she posted about here in a guest post.  She explains a little bit more about what the study's for.  If you're interested or know someone who's interested, check it out! 

Here's the link - audio will play at the link.

A blog post with no audio here.

Especially if you know someone who's looking for a new method, or is engaged, you might want to recommend it.  This strikes me as a good way to broach the subject of NFP with an engaged couple you know.

MrsDarwin calls "bullshit."

On the mythical "orgasmic birth."

No, neither of us run a "family-friendly" blog.  Why do you ask?

UPDATE.  Christina in the comments helpfully provides references to orgasmic-birth stories. I link, you decide!

http://www.unassistedchildbirth.com/sensual/orgasmic.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5bm9-B6Ec4&feature=related

http://www.mothering.com/discussions/showthread.php?t=1218320

UPDATE AGAIN.  A poetic response from Bob the Ape .

Life in the fast lane.

I'm all for having easy, quick, natural childbirths.  But I like to take them a little slower than this one:

A Minnesota mother and newborn are doing fine after the mother delivered the boy while driving, the father steering from the passenger's seat.

Twenty-nine-year-old Amanda McBride felt labor pains at work last week and rushed to her car. She picked up the baby's father, staying in the driver's seat because he has a history of seizures.

She drove to the hospital experiencing mild labor pains. Suddenly her water broke and the baby "just slid out."

Yow!  It doesn't say whether that was her first baby...

Amen, sister.

Jamie schools the world in her latest post at Light and Momentary.

Here are two things you might like to know about the study published Monday in Pediatrics. 

1. The authors do not say anywhere that mothers are not trying hard enough. No one needs to read about this study and then run through the reasons why she stopped breastfeeding to make sure they're good enough. You in the pink shirt over there, relax. It's not about whether you suffered enough, not at all.
2. It's all about the fact that modest differences add up to big numbers in large populations. Because of the magnitude of the potential savings, the authors call for improved support and infrastructure for breastfeeding mothers.

Most of the blogosphere buzz about this article has focused on its calculation that six months of exclusive breastfeeding by 90% of mothers would save more than 900 children's lives as well as $13 billion annually. We can't have those kind of breastfeeding rates without paid maternity leave, people are saying, so what's your point, Dr. Bartick?

But they're not just talking about Breastopia in this article. The authors present a range of numbers, and the 90% values have gotten all the press because big numbers make big headlines. No one seems to be talking about the more attainable outcomes: if we could just hit the Healthy People 2010 targets, we would save still save billions annually (billions as in 2.2, but still, billions, plural) and 142 children's lives. Those are reachable goals: they specify that 75% of babies will begin breastfeeding -- a single attempt counts -- and 50% of babies will still be receiving some human milk -- even a tiny fraction of their intake -- at six months old.

We don't need to reform the whole maternity leave system to save lives and dollars. (Not that I'd complain if anyone wanted to tackle the vexed issue of maternity leave in the US.) Here are some things we do need...

Read the whole thing.