So much for writing a birth plan...

Well I never did get around to writing that birth plan, because our beautiful baby boy was born 10 days early!  Turns out I didn't need a birth plan, as everything went wonderfully :-)

When I showed up at my yoga class 38.4 weeks pregnant the teacher looked at me and said: "Is your baby going to make it through the class?"  She was joking of course, but as it turns out she wasn't that far off!  Halfway through the class I felt a little pop and then a trickle... I discretely slipped into the bathroom and confirmed that I hadn't just peed in my pants... my waters had broken!  That was about 7pm.  I calmly drove home... I hadn't had any contractions so I was sure that I had plenty of time.  My wonderful husband had just cooked a lovely dinner, so I sat down and ate with him and our 4 year old.  Little did I know that our baby would be born less than 3 hours later!

By about 8pm the contractions had started, and I tried to time them but they never really stopped, just went straight from one to another, so my husband started packing things into the car and I laid down on the bed and listed to my hypnobirthing cd, with the calm, soothing voice of our dear friend Sue who is a midwife and runs calmbirth classes in Melbourne. We had arranged for Sue to come with us for the birth to help look after our son who really wanted to be present.  Who better to explain to him what was going on in a way that respects his intelligence and desire to see his baby sibling being born?  We called our amazing midwife Robyn and asked her to let the hospital know that we were on the way and could they please fill up the tub?  We met her at the hospital just after 9pm... after a quick check of my vitals (no internal exam thank god) and a brief listen to the baby's heartbeat I hopped in the tub.  The warm water brought instant relief from the non-stop contractions.

I quickly transitioned into stage 2 (pushing) and some serious screaming, or "vocalization" as I like to call it.  Our son was just across the hall in the birthing room with Sue, and he peeked in periodically to see if I was ok but he handled the screaming very well and calmly went back to watching his Wolverine DVD.  If I hadn't know he was in earshot I would have let some pretty severe obscenities loose at top volume, (apparently I did actually, but I was trying not to).  I paused occasionally to assure my husband that I was actually fine... I just had an uncontrollable need to scream at the top of my lungs... it helps the baby come out, it really does.

Conscious of how quickly it was all happening, I wanted to make sure that I had time to stretch adequately before the baby's head popped out... so I tried to slow things down a little bit and it helped.  The midwife was keeping an eye on things via a mirror on the bottom of the tub and a flashlight.    I didn't see much since I had my eyes tightly closed most of the time, but I could feel with my hand where the baby's head was, and I was able to wait and not push too much until the head circumference matched the exit circumference...apparently I didn't tear until the shoulders came out, but by that point I didn't even notice and it was just a little tear, so no stitches :-)

I pulled our beautiful baby out of the water and held him to my chest.  The midwifes covered us in hot towels and we relaxed in the water while with my husband while our son came in to say hello to his new Baby Brother :-)

We are all doing wonderfully at home, I'll write more soon, but for now... time to cuddle up with this adorable little fellow!

how to get pregnant

For us getting pregnant was a journey that started two years before our son was born, when I bought the book The Natural Way to Better Babies: Preconception Health Care for Prospective Parents by Francesca Naish and Janette Roberts. The book was also published in America as Healthy Parents, Better Babies: A Couple's Guide to Natural Preconception Health Care. Around the same time, my Mother-in-law gave me a copy of The Chemical Maze, which is published in the USA as Eat Safe: The Truth about Additives from Aspartame to Xanthan Gum. Together these two books changed my life more than any others. I already thought I was being pretty green and healthy with my lifestyle choices, but this was my wake up call that a lot of products I was using in my house and on my body were not safe for me or the planet, especially not if I wanted to conceive and give birth to a healthy baby.

When I actually started reading all the ingredients (or tracking down the ingredients when they weren't listed) I found that I had to get rid of about 90% of what I was using. It took me a whole year to find effective replacements for all the synthetic chemicals in my life... I threw out mountains of personal care products and had to find a safe way to dispose of most of my cleaning products. It was during this year that I tried everything on offer in every health shop in Melbourne (not a cheap exercise). I found a few brands that stood up to my new criteria, ie nothing toxic. This is harder than you might think. Most of the products that claimed to be "green", "natural" or "organic" were mostly the same old chemicals dressed up with a couple of new ingredients, ie greenwashing. I had to educate myself as a consumer, and learn how to read a label and de-code all the ingredient names. I checked everything against the Chemical Maze (you can download a free excerpt of it here).

I was not being crazy, I was just a bit ahead of my time. Since then (five years ago) there have been many more books and articles published on how chemicals can decrease our fertility and increase our chances of health problems after exposure in the womb. Just this week Newsweek published an article on how exposure to chemicals (including BPA) as babies can make us fat later in life. And Gabriela Rosa has written books like The Awful Truth About Cleaning Products And Fertility Revealed and Protecting Your Fertility.

The concept of pre-conception health care has become so mainstream in the last five years that now even major pharmaceutical companies such as Bayer, which makes Elevit and Menevit, has published a booklet on how to boost your fertility. Amazingly, they have included a paragraph on "going natural" which states that naturopathy, acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicines, homeopathy, and hypnotherapy have all had reported successes in helping couples get pregnant. I can vouch for that, we did everything (except the hypnotherapy, but we used that for childbirth!) and we got pregnant the first time we tried, but of course that was after four months of detoxing, and a whole year of research and preparation before that. Normally I wouldn't recommend trying so many different tactics, but there's no harm done here (except for the cost) because all of these things (especially the detox) will help your general health and wellbeing, even if you could have gotten pregnant without doing it all.

The other things which have become more mainstream (and are recommended by Bayer) are to stop not just smoking, but to also give up alcohol and caffeine before you start trying. They point out that high caffeine intake can stop a fertilized egg implanting. It's not just women who have to cut out the bad stuff, it goes for men too, caffeine can increase sperm DNA damage and smoking and alcohol also reduce sperm quality. This is not some crazy health-nut idea, this is a major multi-national pharmaceutical company telling you this: if you're thinking about getting pregnant, or having trouble getting pregnant, then try cutting out alcohol, cigarettes and caffeine. I would add to that to replace all of your household and personal products with safe, natural, certified organic versions, such as miessence and Seventh Generation. It also helps to eat fresh, local, organic whole foods, sleep well, get plenty of exercise, fresh air and good sleep. Stress can actually play as big a part in (not) getting pregnant as anything else I've mentioned. So make some big changes, but try not to stress about them :-) Your body, your baby and the planet will thank you!

how things have changed (for the better)

When I was pregnant with my son almost three years ago I had to search far and wide to find natural and organic products for him to wear, be bundled in, play with, eat and drink out of etc... now I get an email from Amazon today sending me a link to pages and pages of Organic Baby Products...

It's a great time to be having an organic baby! Lately I have been feeling a bit guilty about using my first child (and only child for the moment) as a bit of a guinea pig... as much research as I did the first time around, doing a full detox before conceiving, eating mostly organic food, using hypnobirthing techniques in a midwife-run birthing centre, breastfeeding him for two years, dressing him in organic cotton, etc etc etc... there are so many more things that I would do differently if I could...

I would...
- have less (or possible zero) ultrasounds (sonograms). I had three the first time... one at 10 weeks, 12 weeks and 20 weeks.
- delay immunizations longer (and maybe not get all of them?).
- not eat nuts while pregnant or breastfeeding (I ate a lot of hazelnuts and now my son is allergic to them, even though he's never eaten them!).
- use safer bottles/sippy cups.
- have a better bed for co-sleeping.
- have my soil testing before baby starts eating it!
- travel less (especially less radiation-filled airplane flights).

You get the picture... I will blog more on all of these topic later (hopefully sooner), but in the meantime if you have any comments, suggestions, questions, etc on any of the issues I've mentioned (or anything else) please feel free to leave a comment!

I want to give birth again!

We had friends over for dinner on the weekend, one of whom is pregnant, and I am jealous! I was very excited to hear that she is going to be learning the calmbirth techniques (also known as Hypnobirthing). We did this when our son was born and it was the best thing I've ever done! I'm so thankful that my wonderful osteopath harassed me until I called the amazing Sue (our hypnobirthing instructor) and booked into private classes with her. I will write more on my experience with hypnobirthing soon... just wanted to say that if anyone in Melbourne is interested let me know and I can send you Sue's details.