Light and Momentary

Seven Quick Takes: Birthday Edition

1. Today is my daughter's third birthday. Can you believe it? Three years ago I was still feeling a little stunned: I had an actual daughter, and she had arrived before Christmas. On the afternoon of the 22nd I was scrubbing blind slats with a toothbrush, expecting to be pregnant until the 28th. Or, you know, the end of time. And then -- kaboom! -- at 1am I had a real live baby in my arms.

2. This morning I told her she could pick any kind of cake she wanted. "Would you like a chocolate cake? or a yellow cake? or maybe a carrot cake?" "Red," she answered. Red velvet cake it was. I used the Pioneer Woman's recipe, mostly, except I subbed in a half-cup of cocoa for a half-cup of flour (because what good is a teaspoon and a half of cocoa?) and I used less food coloring because (a) that's all I had and (b) I was a La Leche League Leader for ten years and I didn't want the ghost of Edwina Froelich to visit me tonight, intoning, "...as close to their natural state as possible." Stella couldn't quite get the candles blown out but she had four willing helpers who pitched in to get the job done.

3. Something I want to remember about my daughter at exactly three: she loves to sing. She sings to herself every day and she carries a tune pretty well. None of the boys have been especially interested in music and so it warms my cockles to hear her singing while she goes about her business.

4. Another little quirk of hers: she says "dinder" and "doughndits" for "dinner" and "doughnuts." Are there other words with the structure /dVnV.../? She's been saying "doughndits" for a while but I just noticed "dinder" tonight. I'm curious about whether it's a phonological rule for her or just a fluke.

5. Remember the sweater saga, where I made her a sweater with the yarn she loved and she declined to wear it? I decided I would knit the same sweater for the dolly I made her last year. She thought this was cool enough that she agreed to put on the sweater briefly. I was going to post the pattern for the dolly sweater, but I am out of minutes to write it up. (It's really easy. I can probably get it done tomorrow. I should do it soon before I forget it.) I was looking for a dolly sweater pattern and found a simple little doll-sized raglan on Ravelry -- selling for $10. Ten dollars? For a doll's sweater? Nope. You can have my pattern for free.

6. My parents sent a dollhouse especially for her birthday. I am so glad they did -- a December 23 birthday gets short shrift. She's too little to care, but I'm happy that she had something special to open tonight. And she could not have been more excited to play with it. Still smiling about that one.

7. She gave me two gifts today: she slept through the night in her own bed for the first time, and she went to sleep peacefully at a reasonable hour. There are many many things I love about my daughter, but she is unquestionably the worst sleeper of the five kids. And none of them would have won any sleep prizes. When the boy who used to be the worst sleeper was a toddler I would tell myself, "Of all the things a kid could be bad at, sleeping is a pretty good choice." I am less philosophical about it these days and OH it was lovely to have an uninterrupted night. I'm not going to count on two in a row, so I'll bid you good night.

Find more quick takes here.

23

It's the twenty-third day of NaBloPoMo and my daughter is 23 months old today. This means...it's time for a guest post! My pal Jenny (Stella's godmother) was at her birth, and at Stella's baptism she gave me her account of it. Such a treasure! (All typos are my doing. Thanks again, Jenny!)

Scenes from a Birthday Party

Joe has been saying that we should make a potato cake for Stella's first birthday. (He thought the No Sweets For Babies rule applied even at birthday parties.) With sour cream, he said, and butter. She likes butterfat, our Stella does. So I made Fat Potato Fat Fat Casserole for the birthday dinner.

She approved.

The Polish side of my husband's family has an old old tradition for first birthdays: on a bench you line up a rosary, a dollar coin, a penny, and a shot glass. The baby toddles over and grabs one, and the tradition says that they're picking a destiny -- religious life, wealth, poverty, or alcoholism.

That last one strikes me as a horrible destiny to choose at the ripe old age of one, so we substituted coffee beans. My children are not allowed to get addicted to anything stronger than caffeine. Hear that, kids?

She picked the rosary. That's my girl.

Then came the cake! We practiced blowing earlier, with grandma and brothers and me all showing her how fun it is to make the flame disappear. She was willing to blow but doesn't have much puff. We helped her out.

I pulled out Whole Foods for the Whole Family and made a whole-grain banana cake -- it was a little more wholesome-tasting than some of the kids might have liked. (But kids, I should have said, I left out the nutritional yeast and the wheat germ. Want to know what your first-birthday cakes tasted like?) Stella hasn't had enough cake in her life to notice, though, and it had more butterfat on top in the form of cream cheese frosting.

She thought it was delicious. (Dress by Tracy, by the way.)

Then! Presents! Look how wide her eyes are. She's saying, Can you believe this, Mama?

But you know, a girl gets really tired after all that excitement. And then she likes to put on her fuzzy snowman sleeper, and sit down with her mama in a quiet spot, and ease right into sleep.

Sweet dreams, darling girl.

Guest Post for a Birthday Girl

Last week one of my sons had to write about a memory associated with a room in his house. He said I could post it here.

I am a boy from a large family. I have one mom, one dad, three brothers, and one sister. This story is about my sister.

My mom, having been pregnant for nine months, and having put up with all the hardships thereof, was well and truly ready to have this baby. She had been through nausea, cravings, and a nesting instinct that made her clean the individual slats of our bathroom blinds with a toothbrush, and it was all drawing to a close. The night before, I had gone to bed in hopes that there might be a new sister in the morning. As soon as I woke up, I rushed to my parents’ room, only to see a new face looking up at me. I was filled with a mix of feelings that I cannot even begin to describe. I looked around the room, my eyes passing over the wood furnishings, and the one large bed that was the dominating feature of the room. On the bed were my mom, and all of my family. My mom looked incredibly tired, yet happier than I have seen her since. In a week it will be my sister’s first birthday, and on that day I will remember all day, this first day of knowing her. The rest of the day was blur of playing with the new sister, sending her first photos to relatives, and just being in an overall euphoric cloud that could only be replicated by the production of another sibling. 

Over the past year, my baby sister has grown and changed so much. She has my mom’s hair, and I am told she looks similar to me as a baby. She has gotten in a lot of trouble, and has learned so much. She has even started to develop her own tastes and opinions, and she looks like she will grow up to be a wonderful girl, and a wonderful woman. As we approach the end of her first year, and the dawn of her second, I cannot help but contemplate that wonderful day of December 23rd 2008, and the wonderful human introduced to the world on that day.

Happy birthday, sweet girl. We're so glad you're here.

What's In A Name

In 1909 a redheaded baby girl was born in Kentucky. She loved to bake and she loved to sing, and she grew up to have four boys. At each birth her husband said, "Now this one's a little redheaded girl for Mama." He was wrong every time.

19

Nineteen days, nineteen pictures. I only put a few of them in as thumbnails, out of sympathy for people with slow connections and uncertainty about how many pictures anyone besides my mother would really want to see. My camera is making me a little crazy lately and so the picture quality is not outstanding. But the baby cuteness is, so I'm posting them anyway.

This one is from a few hours before my labor started. I am standing on the toilet, cleaning the blind slats with my trusty toothbrush. (I haven't touched that toothbrush since.)

The next morning I washed the meconium out of her soft, soft hair. I don't know if it will be red, but I think it will be curly.

Dad needed a little help with the Times crossword and she was happy to oblige. 

Before I crashed on Christmas afternoon, the grandparents took the first picture of all seven of us. (I do not really expect pictures of all seven of us to get much better from here.)

Here she is a week old, helping me bake a clementine cake for her oldest brother's birthday. The birthday boy pronounced it good.

The next day was New Year's Eve, and we celebrated with a batch of chocolate fondue.

She is so new-looking in this one on the right: you can still see the broken blood vessel in her left eye from the birth squeeze, and the peeling new baby skin on her neck.

In this one I am multitasking: nursing the baby, knitting her a hat, and reading St. George and the Dragon to the two younger boys (Pete is wearing part of Joe's old dragon costume).

Here I needed to see if the hat fit. (It didn't. Ripped it back to before the decreases and added more length.) This is not a good picture, but I get a cozy feeling from it even though the top of my head is missing -- the Gladly females in their handknit sweaters. It makes me feel all Proverbs-thirty-one-ly. (That is totally a word.)

The boys want to make sure she doesn't get lonely. Sometimes Pete leaves her a friend to keep her company. Joe thought maybe she'd like to try out his sword. Marty was busy reading, but he made sure she had a hand to hold. She doesn't have to worry much about being lonely, though.

Grandma came to visit for Epiphany and was treated to a big baby smile. It's very blurry, because those early smiles are hard to catch, but it warms my heart anyway.

One of my college roommates, who used to lend me her clothes back then, sent me a big fun box of baby things. I love the stripes.

And one more: here's my mom's eye view.

The Really Long Conclusion

The next stretch of labor was -- there's no other word for it -- fun.

In Which I'm Not (Do You Hear Me? I Mean It!) Going To Have A Baby Tonight

On Monday afternoon, the 22nd, I loaded the two younger boys into the van for what I hoped would be my last prenatal visit. I was anxious, yet again.

Introducing...

...the baby formerly known as Olga! She was 8#10 and 20 inches long.

We are doing pretty well here. I woke up on Christmas Eve with a cold, which was annoying but not a big deal, and got hit with some GI unpleasantness that night -- also annoying but not a big deal. But I think the dehydration plus my old friend oversupply set me up for the trouble that hit me on Christmas afternoon, which looked alarmingly like a case of mastitis. "This," I thought as I shivered under the covers upstairs, listening to the chaos below, "is exactly why I didn't want to be newly postpartum on Christmas Day."

In spite of a couple of teary moments, it was a very nice Christmas. I am much better after a little Aleve and a lot of Gatorade. And I'm so glad she's here that I can't even begin to complain about the timing of her arrival. :-)

Birth story is in the works...

At Midnight (in Mountain Time) in Piercing Cold

We were praying the St. Andrew novena for a safe and gentle birth. Our answer came earlier than I expected.

She's here. She's perfect. I am on top of the world.

FYI

The disadvantage to spending an entire pregnancy convinced that you're going 10 days past your due date is that when you start having contractions that are 3 minutes apart and you're only 4 days over, you find yourself deeply skeptical that they are going to result in an actual baby. We'll see, I guess.

My Daughter, Olga Korbut

In an attempt to coax baby to get her sideways head down and keep it there, I had been wearing a pair of bicycle shorts purchased when I was 21 years old and a skinny skinny thang. Apparently it's not uncommon to suggest that women wear an abdominal binder when there's concern about baby shifting position? It sounds kind of medieval to me. Tonight baby bounced back to transverse WHILE I was wearing those crazy shorts. Which is a good news/bad news thing, I guess. The good news is I'm not going to bother with the @%#$ shorts if they don't even work. The bad news is I still need her to get her head down and keep it there. At least she seems to have plenty of room in there.

Late pregnancy has never made me physically miserable, though this time around I am hoping for a speedy end to the symphysis pain. Emotionally, though, it smacks me around like a champion boxer in the ring with a meek and helpless bunny. (Don't ask me why the boxer is competing against a bunny. Just go with it.) Coupled with winter blues and Christmas stress, it has left me something less than a font of Advent joy. (<-Understatement alert.)

I have been telling people my due date this time, which was an act of madness repeated willy-nilly. When people know your due date, they expect you to deliver on or near it. They say, "Are you still here?" and "Didn't have the baby yet, huh?" and other questions that -- oh, how to put this? -- provide me with myriad opportunities to grow in charity and patience. 

Must I really grow in charity and patience?

My uterus woke up today, after a long snooze. Maybe as it begins to clamp itself down, the accommodations will get less spacious and my little Olga will not be able to complete any further routines on the uneven bars. Let's hope so.

Elwood P. offered to do the dishes and get the big boys to bed so I could go to bed early. I am going to do a quickie search for a St. Elizabeth novena and take him up on it.

The Merest Whiff of Crazy

Today I got together with some pals for our annual cookie exchange. (Number of cookies I ate while there: 0, and let me tell you I felt mighty impressed with my feat of self-discipline. Number of cookies I have eaten since they entered my house: 10⁴⁷, which is a neat trick given that I only brought home 60. So much for self-discipline.) Our hostess lives in a little town about half an hour away, and as I was driving home I was chatting with my friend from around the corner about carseats.

Earlier this week I pulled the infant carseat out of our little detached uninsulated garage and was so horrified by its accretion of filth and insect egg sacs that I briefly considered putting it on the curb. I did not, because of environmental guilt plus deep-seated frugal instincts. Instead I put it in the basement sink. I worked off its liner and chucked it into the washer with hot water and an extra rinse cycle, adding some dishwasher detergent for the phosphates. (It sat in the garage during the 2006 house-painting, and I was worried about lead dust.) Then I scrubbed the seat and its base for half an hour with hot water and detergent and my husband's toothbrush. (I should really stop calling it my husband's toothbrush here because he is never going to put that thing in his mouth again, any more than he would clean his teeth with the toilet brush.)

But I wasn't happy with the cleaning job, because there were some crevices I couldn't quite plumb with the toothbrush and the thought of insect egg sacs lurking inside them gave me the heebie-jeebies.

"Oh, yes," my friend said helpfully. "They'll probably hatch all at once. While you're driving on a remote road like this one. And it would only take one spider bite to make the baby's throat close." She sounded so earnest that it took me a minute to realize she was yanking my chain

I said, "Noooooooooooo, that is not allowed. You're supposed to help me with the crazy, not feed the crazy. Do you know what my husband will say to you if he finds out you've been feeding the crazy? He will tell you there is quite enough crazy in his house right now thankyouverymuch."

Maybe that should have been my cue to talk about something different, like the madness of Rod Blagojevich or favorite gift wrap motifs. Instead I said, "The idea is just bothering me. I can't think of a way to destroy the egg sacs without running the risk of weakening the carseat. Would it be bad for me to soak the whole thing in bleachy water? Or put it in the oven on low?"

She said carefully, "I wouldn't put it in the oven. You might set your house on fire trying to save the baby from hypothetical insects." I started to laugh so hard I could scarcely drive, imagining the carseat melting like a Dali clock while I was off scrubbing something else. It seemed like such a good idea until I said it aloud. She went on: "How would you explain that to the firefighters? They would take you straight to the hospital. To the third floor. Which is not labor and delivery."

I don't know how funny the retelling will be on your screen, but I can't remember the last time I laughed that hard. I had tears streaming down my face, imagining the firefighters' bafflement as they confronted the deformed carseat carcass. In fact, just now I was typing this up, remembering and laughing (and still thinking, honestly, that it could work to put the carseat in the oven), when my oldest said, "Are you okay? Are you laughing? or crying? or having an asthma attack?" [I don't have asthma.]

I explained the baked carseat idea. He said, "I'm going to keep a ten-foot distance from you until this nesting thing passes." Of course, he had just taken this picture of me standing on the dining room table, obsessively cleaning the ceiling fan blades, so who can blame him?

After a long stretch with her head down, baby turned back to transverse last night. I am not terribly worried but I am hoping she gets the message: fuzzy end goes down, sweetie. Sideways is no good.

Chocolate on offer

Saw the OB this morning; declined an internal. He said, "Your prediction [that I would have this baby late like all the others] might be coming true." He said this baby will be smaller than my others, an assertion I also heard when pregnant with #2 (9#6) and #3 (9#12).

My mom says I'm going on my due date (the 18th), and that my baby will weigh 7#1. She bases this on the fact that all my babies were born in the waning gibbous moon. I don't want to know how long it took her to figure that out.

I cannot let myself think that I'm going early; I know from painful experience that it is the direct route to Crazyville. The Concorde route, even. I am guessing the 28th, and I am guessing this baby will be 8#8.

Want to play? I'll send chocolate to the person whose guess is closest. If it helps, my boys were born at 40w6d, 40w6d, 41w3d, 41w1d, and they weighed 8#14, 9#6, 9#12, and 8#0. As of today, all's quiet on the uterine front. I told a couple of people that I wasn't feeling very nesty, but then I realized that I spent an entire twenty-minute phone conversation cleaning baseboards with my husband's toothbrush. Maybe my definition of nesty is a little skewed these days.

Term (sort of)

I am 38 weeks pregnant today, which technically means I could have a baby any minute. My uterus is much more quiet this time around than in my previous pregnancies, which is fine by me. With Pete I had so many interludes of regular contractions with a bit of an edge to them that I finally said to my uterus, "I am NOT listening to you, girlfriend. Talk to me when you've got something worth my time." This attitude resulted in my ignoring the first...um...seven? hours of my actual labor (hard to remember precisely because I was la-la-la-ignoring it so diligently), and in my midwife's arriving when I was almost 9cm dilated because I was only just beginning to think there might be an end to that pregnancy. Oops.

I suspect I've got a mind-body thing going, because I really really really do not want to have the baby before my prelim is over, on Monday at 3. No, I'm going to be picky: I do not want to go into anything resembling labor before my prelim is over and I am safely back in my own town. I was joking with my advisor about naming the baby after whichever town was closest when I delivered precipitously on the shoulder of the interstate, but really I'd rather avoid that whole scene.

Yesterday I shipped off the Christmas gifts. (You are only allowed to hate me if you are more pregnant and have more kids than me.) I'm a little worried that I mixed up the two Florida-bound packages, sending the one for my 2yo niece to my 10yo goddaughter and vice versa, but here's hoping I escaped that particular manifestation of placenta brain. I am going to put some knitting pictures down below the cut since knitting isn't everybody's cup of tea, but there are also a couple of full-term belly shots for anyone who's into those. I won't ask whether that's because they inspire pleasant broody feelings (we don't say "broody" in the US, do we? to talk about women feeling that they might like another baby? it's a useful word but I think it's a UK thing) or can't-look-away alarm. Please ignore the toothpaste splatters on the bathroom mirror.

Predictive Power?

"Your toothbrush is looking frayed," I said to my husband. "Wouldn't you like a new one?"

"Sure," quoth he.

"Great," I replied, "because I want to use your old one to clean the stepstools." Ooooh, it felt so good to get into every little groove and crevice and get them all cleaned out. Mmmmm, the memory makes me want to go scrub something else.

The stepstools were last cleaned when I was approximately this pregnant with Pete. I looked to see exactly when the nesting instinct had last whipped me into such a frenzy, and it turns out it was eleven days before his arrival. Now I wonder if I'm going to be having a baby eleven days from now, because it's a really bizarre urge.

The good thing about having a fifth baby is that we both know it's a temporary kind of insanity. In fact, all weekend I've been appreciating the familiarity that comes with years of marriage. We used to squabble a lot about holiday meals -- he thought I was too focused on the food. On Thanksgiving he mostly cooked while I mostly cleaned, and together we pulled off a delicious dinner with very little stress. (Let me say publicly that he was totally right about (a) the turkey, which should have gone into the fridge on Sunday and not Monday, and (b) the potatoes, because I wanted to be sure we had enough and insisted that he peel enough potatoes to feed the combined populations of Belarus and the Ukraine.)

Okay, I was going to say more mushy things about my husband, but he wants to go to bed and I asked him if he would wait until I was done with this post so we could do a Christmas present inventory. So I will wrap up hastily. The end.

Dear Appeals Committee

[My HMO refused to cover chiropractic treatment, but I am appealing. I am posting a draft of my letter here, in part because a major reason I blog is to get the goofy out of my system, but also because the cites may be useful to someone else who is pregnant, in pain, and dealing with a similarly recalcitrant insurer.]

I am writing to appeal your denial of coverage for chiropractic care to treat an injury sustained on 11/9/08.  Your letter states that you cover chiropractic treatment involving manipulation of the spine when a significant improvement can be expected from this treatment. Your own guidelines, then, indicate clearly that I should be reimbursed for chiropractic care.

I was referred by Dr. Sarah Swipich (=She Who Is Persuaded I'll Catastrophically Hemorrhage) for chiropractic treatment to address symphysis pubis dysfunction (SPD, alternatively known as Serious Pain in the Down-theres). According to Jain, Eedarapalli, Jamjute, and Sawdy (2006), SPD is the result of spinopelvic instability (do note the "spino-") caused by pregnancy-related hormonal changes. Treatment primarily involves manipulation of the sacrum, which is, as you well know, part of the spine. (I refer you to a little-known verse of "Dem Bones": "the S-spine's connected to the... L-spine, L-spine's connected to the...T-spine.") Peer-reviewed research has described excellent efficacy for treatment of SPD via spinal manipulation, with 100% of treated patients in one study reporting improvement (Andrews & Pedersen, 2003). More specifically, 25% reported full recovery, 62.5% reported moderate recovery, and every patient -- every last one -- reported a decrease in pain. An article in the Journal of Osteopathic Medicine also recommends spinal manipulation as a safe and effective treatment for SPD (Cassidy & Jones, 2002).

Let me sum up. Etiology of the problem: spinopelvic, emphasis on the spinal. Treatment of the problem: spinal manipulation. Likelihood of improvement with appropriate treatment: extraordinarily high. Criteria met for coverage under my plan: 3/3.

If you elect, through doublethink or pure bureaucratic bullheadedness, to deny this appeal, I must insist that you recommend an alternative treatment modality that would be covered. (I presume you are not in the business of telling patients suffering from incapacitating pain that they should just suck it up.) In more than a week of resting, icing, and taking Tylenol I noticed very little change in the pain, though I noticed an alarming augmentation of the piles of dirty laundry awaiting my attention. Should I take narcotics at 8 months pregnant? Should I stay on the couch with my ice pack, awaiting a miraculous healing and perhaps the miraculous ministrations of the Laundry Fairy? Should I plan a C-section if I cannot stand to keep my knees more than eight inches apart? Surely you could not in good faith suggest one of those as an alternative.

After you denied coverage I paid out of pocket to see Dr. Susan Swioug (=She Who Is Owed Undying Gratitude), who informs me that I have sacroiliac dysfunction and lumbar subluxations. Her manipulations of my lower spine were followed by the first real improvement I had seen in this pain in more than a week. This was accomplished quickly, comfortably, and non-invasively, with none of the risks of, say, narcotics. I came home and did battle with the laundry. (It's still winning, though. I will require further treatment before I can entirely vanquish the armies of dirty socks marshaled during my spell of couchbound convalescence.)

I expect to be reimbursed promptly for my visits to Dr. Swioug, since spinal manipulation for treatment of spinal problems is a covered benefit. If you have an alternative point of view, I will read it with the keenest interest -- as will, I am certain, the good people in the state regulatory office. Please reply at your earliest convenience.

Yours optimistically,
CJ Most-Gladly

Andrews, S., & Pedersen, P. (2003). A study into the effectiveness of chiropractic treatment for pre and postpartum women with symphysis pubis dysfunction. European Journal of Chiropractice, 48, 77–95.

Cassidy, I.T., & Jones, C.G. (2002). A retrospective case report of symphysis pubis dysfunction in a pregnant woman. Journal of Osteopathic Medicine, 5(2), 83-86.

Jain, S., Eedarapalli, P., Jamjute, P., and Sawdy, R. (2006). Symphysis pubis dysfunction: a practical approach to management. The Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, 8(3), 153-158.

Waiting

Last week I started to wonder if God was trying to teach me something about the blessing of health and the frailty of the human frame. When bronchitis laid me low I thought, "Once I am better I am going to get up every morning for the rest of my pregnancy and thank God that I can breathe freely." But it's easy to forget what a blessing good health is. I might have remembered for three days before I was taking it for granted again.

I haven't wanted to be a whiner but I have to say I'm looking forward to the return of a pain-free pelvis -- mobility is also a blessing. I thought about writing a post on the lighter side of a symphysis injury, about how I have to set my pants on the floor and wriggle my feet through the legs without lifting them. It took some serious contortions for me to get my stockings on for church this morning. And icing your symphysis? It'll wake you right up if you were feeling sleepy. I'd never tucked ice in my underwear before this week.

Tonight I was reading Lloyd Alexander to Joe while sitting cross-legged on the couch. When I got up to check on the potatoes baking in the oven, my feet were asleep. I started walking on my numb feet but apparently one of them rotated underneath me. I fell down, wrenching my ankle on the way. It hurt terribly -- for a minute I just sat there and keened. The boys leapt into action, bringing me ice (Joe and Marty) and patting my leg gently (Pete). After a few minutes of icing it I tried to get dinner on the table so the middle guys could make their pack meeting, but putting weight on that foot made me nauseated. Alex said, "Mom, you should sit down. I'll take care of the potatoes. I'll help you wrap your ankle in a minute." And he did. (Thank you, Boy Scouts.)

I was still trying to find some humor in it ("Note to placenta: Dial down the relaxin production already. If these ligaments get any looser, the baby's going to fall out on her head.") but the fact is I am feeling clumsy and vulnerable. Tonight Elizabeth Foss posted the story of her daughter's arrival and it made me cry and cry -- it is a beautiful story, but it underscored those feelings of vulnerability and uncertainty.

The fact is that I do not know what the future holds for me or my baby. (Inner control freak shrieks NO NO I HATE NOT KNOWING.) I cannot even predict how bruised and swollen this ankle will be in the morning. But I know that God is good, and sovereign, and that suffering offered up can be extraordinarily fruitful. And I know that I will be able to face whatever difficulties await me tomorrow more cheerfully if I go to bed instead of staying up and fretting. That's probably a better plan than sitting here and editing this post.

Oh, yeah, and some good news too

Baby's head was down today, though she still seems to be bouncing around like a Pong target. She likes to lie transverse and s-t-r-e-t-c-h out. The doctor did a quick ultrasound to confirm position and measured her head as a smidge smaller than average. (What she said was "Her head is 34-3," causing me to gasp, "34 CENTIMETERS??" That would be a big dang head for this stage of the game. What she meant was that baby's head measures at 34w3d, and I am exactly 35w today.)

(My worry, pervasive enough that I hesitate even to type it because it might seem like the foreshadowings of doom later on, is that she is tangling herself up in her cord with all these gymnastics. If she has worrisome decels in labor, of course we'll go right to the hospital. But what if she gets into trouble before that? Sometimes I poke her when she is sleeping quietly, just to make sure she kicks back.)

Also, I beat the anemia! I figured my hemoglobin was up because I no longer have that beaten-down feeling in the late afternoon, like I just cannot hold my head up until bedtime, but I wasn't expecting it to jump up by a whole unit. I am crediting the folic acid/B6 regimen, because I was taking plenty of iron before. I might be wrong but it wouldn't really matter -- some combination of things did the job. Let's hear it for normal!

An Earful

I wanted my insurance to cover chiropractic treatment for this symphysis trouble, which is much improved but still painful. (I am under strict instructions from my midwife not to do laundry, because carrying things up the stairs is a prime way to make it worse. Yes, ma'am! That's an instruction I'm happy to comply with. Now all I have to do is sustain an injury that sidelines me from washing dishes and I can kick back and lead a life of leisure.) I called my doctor's office to see about a referral, and they told me I'd need to come in first.

Today I saw the other doctor in the practice, and OH MY GOODNESS is she different from her partner. Remember my conversation with him about the risks of homebirth? Lather rinse repeat, minus the friendly. The weird part about both conversations is that they've focused on the risks to me: I could die because nine years ago I had a not-enormous and easily controlled postpartum hemorrhage. Neither doctor has mentioned the risks to the baby, which take up much more space in my head. The studies don't support the idea that the risks to babies are greater in planned attended homebirth, but things do go wrong sometimes. I find myself thinking about that a lot just now.

Since I've had this conversation before, I responded pretty calmly. Nine years ago I had clear risk factors for postpartum hemorrhage: untreated anemia, long first stage, long second stage. This time my hemoglobin is solidly in the normal range (up a whole unit from six weeks ago! I am practically Popeye!) and it is very unlikely that I will contract hard for 24 hours or push hard for two (please God). I have had more babies than the average woman, which is an additional risk factor, but I have also had two perfectly normal third stages, with not a glimmer of trouble, since that hemorrhage. Hm, I'm thinking I probably said all this in that earlier post and you guys aren't the ones I want to argue with anyway. I'll spare you the part about the drugs my midwife carries and how close I am to the hospital where I have already pre-registered.

I am still a little wound up about our conversation, though. It made me want to come home and blast Enya while brewing a pot of red raspberry leaf/shepherd's purse tea and soaking plaster strips for a belly cast. I don't actually own any Enya or any belly-casting materials, but I think I will put the kettle on.