I do apologize, the blog is going through some hormonal fluctuations. She has taken a mind of her own and developed an attitude. She should be in working order very soon! I am off to offer her some chocolate as a peace offering.

During labor it can be hard to relax. It is painful and our natural instinct is to tense our bodies. This tension can have a very negative effect. When we experience pain and allow it to bring fear, our fear brings tension which creates more pain. It is a cycle created by Grantley Dick-Read to explain how emotional responses contribute to pain. The opposite can be true too. When we experience pain if we can manage our fear, our tension is reduced, and we will experience less pain.

With fear, our fight or flight response is activated. The adrenaline our body releases begins to give our limbs more of the blood supply which takes away that blood supply from our internal organs (i.e. where baby has taken up temporary residence). Also, our bodies produce epinephrine. This causes the the muscles near the cervix to tighten which prevents the cervix from dilating. Back when we were cave women, this would be useful. The body naturally sought out a quiet, safe place to birth the baby. When that safety was threatened, we needed to find another safe place to birth our baby.

Skip ahead to modern day. Stop and think what this could do to your labor. What happens when the cervix doesn’t dilate? It can make the labor process take more time or cause doctors to intervene. The doctor may give pitocen to speed things up, he may even send you home saying labor hasn’t progressed far enough. Sometimes the doctor may say we have stalled and we are rushed in for a cesarean surgery. If there isn’t enough time for an epidural to take effect, the anestheologist would then knock us out. How would that make you feel if you didn’t hear your baby’s first cry?

This is the sad truth for some women. It can also have long lasting negative feelings in the new mommy. Sounds like a rotten way to begin motherhood, huh? It is incredibly important to have a support team you trust. If there is a particular aspect of childbirth that you fear, seek out evidence based information. Knowledge IS power. Oh, and hire a doula (my shameless plug). A good doula is well worth the money!

This is a copper plate engraving from 1774 by William Hunter (anatomist) and Jan van Riemsdyk (artist).

Want to save a buck AND look fabulous?  With simple fabric and an ingenious idea, Denim Therapy has done it.  You send them your jeans, they fix ‘em up to fit your growing belly, then they send them back to  you.  After your little one is born, and you have gotten back to your prepregnancy weight, they will restore them back to the jean’s original fabulousness.

Great idea because:

1.  save money

2.  look amazing

3.  motivation to not go back for another round of ice cream

This particular picture disturbed me. I am a Facebook junkie (just ask my hubby). I am a fan of a Doula service in Pennsylvania. She always posts such great articles she comes across. Apparently the doctors who run this joint don’t do much research. I can understand how some doctors are weary of doulas. Some of them can be pushy, however, most are not. HOWEVER, the Bradley Method? Really?! I used this method with my 2 natural births without even knowing it and have done some research on it. Docs should be encouraging it to make their job easier. Here’s the pic, you decide……..

I am a Mad Men lover. I have been catching up online and recently watched the episode where Betty has the new baby. I am reminded what having children used to be like. I hear the stories, however, it never seems real because I wasn’t alive back then. It was a “condition”, they wore huge tents, they only guessed at the sex, and fathers weren’t involved. Now we have 3D ultra sounds, celebrate our womanly curves, and the fathers are right next to us hopefully giving encouragement. I am constantly amazed at technology! This reality wasn’t very long ago,and to see how far pregnancy has come. I watched this episode with a heart of gratitude. It wasn’t long ago NAIT was unknown. My condition wasn’t discovered until the mid 90’s and even then doctors weren’t sure how to treat it. If I had been just 10 years older, I would only have one baby instead of my magnificent 4. Every time I am reminded of this, tears come to my eyes.

If you are pregnant, know someone who is, or just had your baby, ponder this. Have a heart full of gratitude that medicine has come so far, and daddies are now included. Oh, and there are some really hot maternity clothing.

What person wouldn’t want the excuse to eat a pb&j sandwhich every day?  There are kids who have been prescribed this exact therapy.  The parents of these children wrote off having any peanut products in their home due to severe allergies in their children.  Recently Duke Unversity and Arkansas Children’s Hospital have conducted small studies to find a way to desenitize children to peanuts and help their immune system to change and recognize peanuts differently.  They started with a peanut flour consisting of one-thousandth of a nut.  Gradually they increased the consumption to approximately 15 nuts a day.  Now these participants are to continue consuming some form of peanuts every day.  This is hope for the 1.8 million people who fear eating outside their home, and the 6-8% of parents with kids under four who fear snacks at playdates.  The next step will be finding what causes the allergy, creating a test, and fixing it before the allergy presents itself.  We have been advised not to feed peanut products to children under one.  Maybe during this first year we will be able to test children for a possible allergy.