Posting Hiatus

I have once again come to a point in my life where, "something's gotta give." As someone who is deeply committed to multiple causes, I reach this point several times a year and have to take some steps back to assess my life's path and priorities! I read somewhere--and agree--that it is BORING to hear about how "busy" someone else is, so I'm not going to give a laundry list of all my other commitments, responsibilities, and callings (and perhaps some "excuses" as well!), but I do want to post this notification that I am going to take a posting hiatus from writing this blog until after my new baby is born in January. I have struggled a bit with writing this post, because the last time I wrote something similar (fall of last year), I then had a miscarriage at 15 weeks, followed two months later by a miscarriage at 6 weeks. I'm now 21 weeks into my fifth pregnancy and finally feel like I probably really will have a living, healthy baby in the next couple of months! A new baby brings necessary downshifting into one's life and I'm attempting to alter my schedule as much in advance of the birth as possible to be able to joyfully welcome new life as well as to take time for self-care and self-nurturing. I am planning another homebirth and look forward to yet another opportunity to experience this powerful rite of passage and life transformation. I also look forward to sharing the experience with my other children. This baby is eagerly anticipated and already much loved and there has been more heartache along the childbearing journey for our family than I could have imagined several years ago.

During my break, I welcome guest posts for this blog--they can be submitted to me here and I will gladly consider them. Please make sure any guest post is specifically relevant to midwives, midwifery, the midwives model of care, homebirth, or birth activism. I am not usually interested in "generic"/101-type posts about pregnancy or childbirth.

I will continue to post regularly to the Citizens for Midwifery Facebook page where I greatly enjoy hearing from midwifery supporters across the country. Please take a moment to touch base with CfM there!

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Molly
CfM Blogger

Thankful for Midwives!

Happy Thanksgiving to mothers, fathers, babies, birth activists, midwives, and advocates across the country!

Here is my birth world thankful list from 2008. I'm still thankful for many of these same things this year. I'm also thankful for two fabulously wonderful, amazing, enriching, inspiring new books. These two are true treasures and I'm thankful to have read them. The Power of Women by Sister Morningstar is an incredible gem and a testament to the strength and grace of birthing women. And then, Simply Give Birth by Heather Cushman-Dowdee (formely known as Hathor the Cowgoddess) is another new gem. I highly recommend both of them--what great holiday gifts for the special birthworkers in your lives. My complete reviews of both books will be published in the next two months, but for now, trust me. They are simply amazing and I couldn't let another minute pass without mentioning that fact.

Citizens for Midwifery has worked for over a decade promoting access to the midwives model of care. If you're reading this blog, I assume you're thankful for midwives in some way or another :)

I have never been so thankful for midwives as I was two weeks ago, following my recent second trimester miscarriage. The baby was born at home on Saturday, Nov. 7th, and by that evening I thought everything was all "over" physically speaking. However, five DAYS later I discovered that my placenta was still trying to come out, but would not fully detach (it was out of my uterus, but unwilling to leave my body). Obviously, I became very concerned because it had been so many days since the baby left us. After trying quite a few things to get it to come out, we almost dashed off the the ER, but my gut pulled me back. I did call the hospital, the OB floor, and medical clinic and they all recommended that I go to the ER for a D & C. Though I was concerned, I did not feel in danger. I didn't feel like the placenta really qualified as "retained" (because I could SEE it), I felt like a little bit of membrane/cord must be holding the placenta into my cervix and that it had gradually been working its way free since Saturday--not an emergency, but something I really desperately wanted to take care of. We had a scary night with little sleep worrying and trying to decide what to do.

The next morning, I decided to mobilize my other resources and for me that meant my midwifery contacts. It was very important for me to "do this" and avoid a D & C if at all possible and I couldn't believe I might be going to have to go that route after everything else I'd already done. I spoke with two wonderful midwives on the phone who helped quite a lot (and confirmed my own feelings about what was going on with the placenta). One of the midwives was able to ask her assistant midwife to meet me at her house and see what she could do. This midwife was incredibly kind and wonderful and gentle and helpful and helped me successfully remove the placenta--it was about the size of my fist and had deteriorated into large chunks and was being held in place by amniotic sac remnants, a little bit of which was still through my cervix and keeping it from being released (as I had suspected). I'm glad I trusted myself and my intuition. I'm also incredibly grateful for that midwife--we have no prior relationship at all, she had to drive 45 minutes one way to get to me (and I 40 minutes to get to her), and she wouldn't let me pay her.

Something that struck me particularly about this piece of the story is that this woman was able to kindly and competently do for me what the ER, the OB floor of the hospital, and my doctor's office said they could not do without surgery. How wonderful are midwives?!

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Molly
CfM Blogger

Grief & Taking a Break

Well, shortly after I posted last week my life took a sad and unexpected turn. I was 14 weeks pregnant with my third baby and we found out on Friday afternoon that the baby had died. Very early Saturday morning, he was born at home. Though it was different in some ways than a full-term birth, my experience of miscarriage was very much a birth--my water broke, I had "normal" contractions for about two hours, the baby was born, we saw the tiny umbilical cord, and so forth. I was surprised to discover that some of the same feelings of empowerment were also present after a "natural home miscarriage" as with a natural home birth--I felt strong and brave and like "I did it myself!" as well as amazed at how well my body worked and knew what to do. We learned the baby was our third boy and named him Noah.

I did have what I felt like was some excessive bleeding and ended up visiting the ER for about 4 hours on Saturday morning. Luckily, it turns out that I can lose way more blood than I ever imagined possible and still be okay (my trusty body DID know what it was doing). I am physically and emotionally wiped out, however, and will as such need to be taking a break from blogging here regularly. I was already trying to minimize my posts (while keeping to the once-a-week schedule I've faithfully maintained for quite some time), but now I need to just put this blog on "hold" for a short while. I may set up some posts to post automatically while I'm away, so it doesn't become too stale (I have some book reviews already written and waiting in a file, for example).

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Molly
CfM Blogger