V-Day Updates

Looks like it’s been a while since I posted anything here. Here are some updates on my life:

• Baby is a girl, confirmed via both NIPS at 10 weeks and ultrasound at 20. NuHusband hasn’t agreed to a name yet; I want Lyra or Ada.
• I took a new job that’s 10 minutes from where I live and way less stressful than my old job (which was 1 hour from where I lived).
• Saturday was my V-day (24 weeks). Ironic, since it was the day after the other V-day (Valentine’s Day).
• I hired a doula, Betsy Weber. My last doula, Nicole Cison, has since retired from the business (*sob*). Betsy actually had Nicole as a doula for her last birth, so it’s cool that we have that connection.
• Due date is 6.6.20, but we will induce on 6.4.20 if baby hasn’t come by then.
• I just got my 3rd stripe on my jiu-jitsu white belt, which is good because I’m about to switch to observation-only when I hit third trimester.

Anyhow, I have begun getting baby girl’s room ready, and I can’t even believe that I’m going to have a real nursery for the first time (!). I have an entire 13′ x 12′ room to dedicate to just the baby. Going for a mint-and-pink theme. I still have Constantine’s 4-in-1 crib/changer combo (crib, toddler bed, changer, full size bed), so that’s already set up. DD (b. 2006) came in while I was working on the room yesterday and called the room “small.” I laughed so hard. She lived in a walk-in closet for most of her baby/toddler years and now lives in the original master bedroom of the house (18′ x 11′), and now she calls the baby’s room “small.” I died.

I got this unfinished dresser from Ikea this weekend and painted it. The bottom drawer is teal, the middle is mint, and the top is pink. I can’t wait to do the rest of the room!

Once More, With Feeling

Hello, Partus Melior, and here we go again. I currently find myself 9 wks + 5 days geriatrically pregnant.

Some updates:

• It turns out that my first husband was a serial adulterer, whose cheating went back to our first year of marriage. Life is full of surprises. [1]
• My divorce from my first husband was finalized 10-29-14 — one year to the date that I first requested it, which itself was one month after Constantine was born
• After a few years as a single mom, I remarried in June 2018 to a kind, gentle, softspoken man who has made me deliriously happy. He has no kids and had never even kissed a woman when we began dating. Sometimes, the guys who are shy and awkward with women are the right choice! We own a five-bedroom house together, a dog, a cat, a fish, and three hamsters.
• Constantine was diagnosed with high-functioning autism in 2016. He has had great success with ABA therapy. He is intelligent, verbal, precocious, and extremely energetic. His reading level is several grade levels past kindergarten.
• I never knew that life didn’t have to be perpetually stressful. I never realized just how abusive my first marriage was until I got out of it. My first husband may not have been hitting me, but he was verbally, emotionally, and materially abusive as well as coercive. I breathe a sigh of relief when I think of my escape.
• My first husband has pretty much been just as bad at co-parenting as he was at marriage. At one point he took off to Indianapolis and tried to dodge child support. I figured out where he was working and got a garnishment in on him. No one ever said he was a smart manchild.

Anyhow, NuHusband is now 40 years old, and I’m 37. I’ll be 38 when the baby is born and he’ll a few months from 41. Though I was ready to be done with kids, and he loves his stepchildren, he wanted a biological child of his own. So I agreed to do this one more time and we switched to not-trying-not-preventing in April of this year.

I found out I was pregnant on Columbus Day, after returning from my sister’s wedding in Houston. I had no idea how pregnant I was, but estimated I was 5 weeks. Did an ultrasound this past Monday thinking I was 8 weeks pregnant, but my doctor put me at 9 + 2.

We find out the gender via NIPS next week. NuHusband would prefer a boy; I told him I’m only doing this once and if he doesn’t get the gender he wants, to go pound sand. We’re not going to be one of those families that keeps trying and trying until we get the gender we want. (In my case, I’d kind of prefer a girl to a boy, but am A-Okay with either.)

I am currently hunting for a doula as the one I had for Costa’s birth is retired, and I love my OB-GYN. Hot doctor finished his residency and went back to Canada in June 2014, and I’ve only seen him once since, though we remain friends on Facebook.

That’s it for now, until next time . . .

Why I don’t mind that my doctor “delivered” my baby

Folks who are NCB-inclined often object to the semantics of saying that a doctor or midwife “delivers” a birthing woman’s baby, insisting that it is the birthing woman who delivers her own baby. For example, Business of Being Born producer Ricki Lake said in an interview with Parenting magazine (c. 2010-2011):

My first birth was a success with a midwife in a hospital—I felt empowered, I did have my baby skin to skin right away, was able to breastfeed—all of those things that are so important. But there was this moment when my mother was able to see me right after the birth, and I said to her, “Mom, Mom, this is my midwife who delivered my baby!” And my midwife stopped me and said, “No, Ricki, you delivered your baby.” And at that point, I took ownership of what I was able to do.

This is one area where the NCB movement and I part ways. I don’t at all mind my doctor saying that he “delivered” my baby. I tried on the language of “I deliver my own baby” while I was pregnant with Constantine, but it just felt too awkward and wrong to me, and here’s why.

Skol v. Pierce: The Verdict

A few years ago, The Unnecessarean reported on a civil case, Skol v. Pierce, wherein the plaintiff alleged that the attending doctor (who was covering for the OB-GYN that had delivered her last four children) terrorized her and refused to give her an epidural or any other pain medications on account of the fact that he was angry at her for not calling his answering service before she came in. There was a spot about it on the local NBC News not long after the case was filed:

It looks like most of the sites that originally reported on the case never posted an update on the verdict, which was issued on March 1, 2012. The judgment was for Ms. Skol in the amount of $1,400,000.00, case “settled after trial for the [defendant]’s $1 million policy limit.” Some details and comments:

Birth Photography

Remember how part of the reason that I hired the doula that I did was because she did professional birth photography?

Well, those photos are finally in. Though a savvy person could figure out who I am, I’m still going to stay as anonymous as possible, so I have blurred myself out and excluded any pics that are dependent on my face (which means most of my in-labor pics). The rest are as follows (massive photo dump in one post):

Me at my baby shower, my daughter Harley opening Constantine’s presents for me on the left. Personally, I think I made being 8+ months pregnant look good. 8-24-2013

4 Months

Well, here he is. 4 months of age. He was weighed at 3 months + 11 days and found to be 16 lbs and about 26 inches. So I’m guessing he is now 17 lbs, 26-27 in. (He’ll have an official weigh-in at his 4-month check-up on Friday). His newest nickname is “Chunky Monkey.”

UPDATE 1-31-2014: 17 lbs exactly, 26.5 inches

C-Section & Episiotomy Rates in the North/Northwest Chicago Suburbs

I was curious about the c-section and episiotomy rates for the closest hospitals to me, so I looked them up. These are (as far as I can tell) all of the hospitals within a 20-mile radius of me that have maternity wards. Episiotomy and cesarean section were the two interventions that I most wished to avoid in birthing my son back in September 2013, so I wondered how the hospitals in my area stood on those. [1]

2012 c-section rates come from CesareanRates.com. [2] Episiotomy rates come from the Leapfrog Group; I believe the statistics were last gathered in Fall 2013, but I’m not sure. The Leapfrog Group recommends that hospitals have an episiotomy rate no higher than 12%.

I listed the number of births and NICU level because I imagine the hospitals with more births are larger hospitals with higher level NICUs, and are therefore more likely to see high-risk births. When a hospital was reported as being a level III center, I attempted to call them and ascertain whether or not they were also a IIIC, sometimes known as a level IV.

	Hospital	# Births	Cesarean Rate	Episiotomy Rate	NICU Level
1	Adventist GlenOaks Hospital	380	34.2%	8.2%	II
2	Advocate Condell Medical Center	2540	34.6%	NR	II+
3	Advocate Lutheran General Hospital	4122	35.8%	NR	IIIC
4	Advocate Sherman Hospital	2823	26.9%	NR	II+
5	Alexian Brothers Medical Center	2301	35.6%	26.2%	II+
6	Centegra Hospital – McHenry	842	22.1%	6.8%	II
7	Elmhurst Memorial Hospital	1395	28.2%	5.1%	II
8	Evanston Hospital	3357	26%	6.1%	IIIC
9	Gottlieb Memorial Hospital	732	39.2%	15.1%	II
10	Highland Park Hospital	1183	31.4%	15.5%	II
11	Northwest Community Hospital	2997	35.2%	22.8%	III
12	Northwestern Lake Forest Hospital	1590	32.6%	14.0%	II+
13	Presence Resurrection Medical Center	945	34.3%	26.2%	II+
14	Presence Saint Francis Hospital	761	28.9%	7.6%	II+
15	St. Alexius Medical Center	2984	35.9%	34.6%	III
16	Swedish Covenant Hospital	2079	27.1%	14.6%	II
17	VHS Westlake Hospital	1012	26.9%	12.0%	II
18	Vista Medical Center East	1045	29.3%	4.1%	II

Observations:

“Operating Room Services”

I went over my hospital bill. By far the largest charge on the bill is a $4,292 charge for “operating room services.” This confused me as I obviously did not have a c-section.

I asked my doctor about it at an appointment yesterday. He said that, when I got to pushing and my son was having decels into the 70s, and did not seem to be coming out (there had been one pop-off on the vacuum extractor), they had told the c-section team to get ready. Considering that my son was out 5-10 minutes later, pretty amazing that they charge so much for just a few minutes of c-section prep that was ultimately not needed.

Posterior?!? WHAT?!?

I just received a copy of the hospital records for my induction, labor, and birth of Constantine. Turns out that the little brat did come out posterior. How come nobody told me this? Do they not realize that birthing a 9 lb 5 oz posterior baby vaginally makes for some serious bragging rights, and that this is the female equivalent of bragging about penis size?

I’ve modified all past posts to reflect this.

Anyways, here’s some interesting notes from my records:

• They had thought he was in occiput anterior position with a “compound presentation” (hand, arm, or foot by his head). It wasn’t until after he was out that they realized he was “direct occiput posterior.”
• The vacuum was applied when he was at a +5 station. I almost had that little troll out on my own. I’m betting I would have delivered with an intact perineum if he hadn’t been posterior or if I’d had more time to push, but they wanted to vacuum him out due to decelerations into the 70s.
• It took three pulls and one pop-off to get him out with the vacuum.
• My bishop’s score on the morning of induction was 3-4. The initial examination by my hot doctor found that I was dilated to 1.5, posterior (cervical position), firm, 50% effaced, and -3 station. His attending’s exam a few hours later bumped me up to a 2 and 60% effaced, but still a -3 station. A bishop’s score of less than 5 means that the induction is likely to fail, so I think I was right to fear going through with the induction.
• One note says “will offer pudendal block.” Not sure why they decided against trying to talk me into that, but they never mentioned it. I would have declined.
• The plan was definitely to start me on magnesium sulfate during the active phase of labor. Not sure why they decided against it (maybe because I blitzed from a 3 to a 7 in two hours and they realized things were moving fast enough that I wouldn’t need it?).
• These records say “oligohydramnios” all over them. That just annoys me. I was a 6.3! That was normal. Low end of normal is still normal. Grrr.

I’m glad that I pulled a copy of these for my records. I’ll have to ask Sark some questions about my delivery next time I see him.

New baby photo dump

Constantine doesn’t have craniosynostosis.

And now for some pictures of him, in no particular order, because I’m too lazy to arrange them:

3 weeks.