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My prenatals calm me down so much.
Oct. 1st, 2005 12:03 amAnd I'm never exactly freaking out to begin with, I am a fairly calm person - but I develop this building tension in between them that just sort of melts away after the appointments.
First I got adjusted so my hips will stop failing me and my ever expanding pelvis won't be killing me each morning. Then, today I got Joy, Shari's daughter. Joy is certified in herbal medicine and setting up a whole holistic store, as well as hosting a new "Homeopathy Hour" at the birth center, each Sunday. This turned out to be perfect - we reviewed my platelet count from last week, and I was SHOCKED - they're up to 127,000! I don't expect that to mean a lot to any readers here, but dang, I was hoping they would maybe stay at 108,000, or at least not be down below 100 (the big "danger point"). I haven't been at 127 since I was like 5 months pregnant! So yeah, the yellowdock is working :p And my hemoglobin is staying higher than normal, too - I've went from anemic to barely normal to low normal. Anyway, she suggested I pick up white sesame seeds to chew into a paste, daily, because they help with hemoglobin so much, and some liquid chlorophyll to drink 2 tablespoons a day of, as well as increasing my yellowdock to the max dose (I've been taking the median suggested dosage). The chlorophyll has the added benefit of cleaning out your GI tract, which will help with my Group B Strep stuff. I was very "Huh?", just thrilled to see such an improvement - but she totally has this idea that I could get up around 200,000 like a normal person, thusly drastically decreasing any chance of regular or internal hemmorage.
All this left me totally amazed. Like...real options that work? My DOCTOR's answer to low platelets was major surgery that necessitates twice as much blood loss as natural birth does! He never had any sort of ideas on how to RAISE them, it was just some kind of kamikaze, drastic immediate measure nonsense. He referred me to a "specialist" once who came in, looked at my chart, shook his head and went away (he also certainly never had a way to make my hips feel better). Joy also took down my number because she wants to do research on what causes low platelets in pregnancy and get back to me, as she believes that things that show up in pregnancy are just amplifications of issues we already had in our bodies - like how I have always had blood sugar issues, but get gestational diabetes if I eat sugar while pregnant. Signals we should pay attention to, for our long term health.
And she pronounced my cervix really, really soft and felt the baby's head - and then pushed on it a little a couple of times, and I could feel him bouncing in there! How amazing is that?! I have never had anyone reach into my vagina and feel a baby's head. Ever. At least not that they shared. Still no more dilation, but I really don't care. It's so awesome that my blood is thickening up and my cervix is soft and the head is right there. It makes it all seem REAL in a way that irregular contractions and vague hunches do not. And that keeps me from feeling impatient, and makes me feel like "Oh, wow. It's really going to happen in the next week or two sometime".
Talked with Grant on the highway about how OBs are paid by the birth, not by the hour, AND they get $10,000 for a half hour c-section, vs $2-3000 for a who knows how long vaginal, and there's no way to say that's not going to sway how things go down. They have to sleep, they're overbooked with patients waiting at the office...Especially when you add in legal liabilities that come in whenever anyone says they SHOULD have done a c/s, in their grief...(when a baby dies during/after c/s, it's more like "They did all they could").
Came home with a borrowed tape of the first two episodes of The Show. Watched half a dozen women give birth with no drugs or fetal monitors or IVs or troubles, in water, and pull their squalling newborn up onto their chests themselves. These are the randomly pre-selected couples the Discovery Channel chose to follow and interview starting weeks in advance, not "the lucky ones".
I am so done with western medicine. Unless bones are broken or cancer is diagnosed or something like that.
Did I mention that tomorrow is my due date, and I weigh what I weigh when Isaac was CONCEIVED?!
I took the kids up to Wild Oats tonight to get my sesame seeds and chlorophyll (which only ended up being $12 total! I was afraid, you never know what it'll come to once you head into the supplements...) and they were awesome. I held Isaac's hand, and he held Aaron's, and he held Annie's, to cross the street and go in, and I kept hold of Isaac's hand the whole time we walked through the store (rather than holding him or sticking him in a cart). They are just all so great. I got the requisite horrified looks from young people, for being SO pregnant and having all these little kids with me, but two older people came up and told me how beautiful my family is with joy on their faces :) And the employee who helped me find things cracked me up when, as she guessed ages, she suddenly stopped aghast, pointing at Isaac, and exclaimed "That one looks nothing like you at all! ...Or the other two! *blink blink*"
He stands at the end of the hallway now, and yells "Two...two...two - TWO!!" and then runs, turbo speed, to knock into whoever is in the living room :D
First I got adjusted so my hips will stop failing me and my ever expanding pelvis won't be killing me each morning. Then, today I got Joy, Shari's daughter. Joy is certified in herbal medicine and setting up a whole holistic store, as well as hosting a new "Homeopathy Hour" at the birth center, each Sunday. This turned out to be perfect - we reviewed my platelet count from last week, and I was SHOCKED - they're up to 127,000! I don't expect that to mean a lot to any readers here, but dang, I was hoping they would maybe stay at 108,000, or at least not be down below 100 (the big "danger point"). I haven't been at 127 since I was like 5 months pregnant! So yeah, the yellowdock is working :p And my hemoglobin is staying higher than normal, too - I've went from anemic to barely normal to low normal. Anyway, she suggested I pick up white sesame seeds to chew into a paste, daily, because they help with hemoglobin so much, and some liquid chlorophyll to drink 2 tablespoons a day of, as well as increasing my yellowdock to the max dose (I've been taking the median suggested dosage). The chlorophyll has the added benefit of cleaning out your GI tract, which will help with my Group B Strep stuff. I was very "Huh?", just thrilled to see such an improvement - but she totally has this idea that I could get up around 200,000 like a normal person, thusly drastically decreasing any chance of regular or internal hemmorage.
All this left me totally amazed. Like...real options that work? My DOCTOR's answer to low platelets was major surgery that necessitates twice as much blood loss as natural birth does! He never had any sort of ideas on how to RAISE them, it was just some kind of kamikaze, drastic immediate measure nonsense. He referred me to a "specialist" once who came in, looked at my chart, shook his head and went away (he also certainly never had a way to make my hips feel better). Joy also took down my number because she wants to do research on what causes low platelets in pregnancy and get back to me, as she believes that things that show up in pregnancy are just amplifications of issues we already had in our bodies - like how I have always had blood sugar issues, but get gestational diabetes if I eat sugar while pregnant. Signals we should pay attention to, for our long term health.
And she pronounced my cervix really, really soft and felt the baby's head - and then pushed on it a little a couple of times, and I could feel him bouncing in there! How amazing is that?! I have never had anyone reach into my vagina and feel a baby's head. Ever. At least not that they shared. Still no more dilation, but I really don't care. It's so awesome that my blood is thickening up and my cervix is soft and the head is right there. It makes it all seem REAL in a way that irregular contractions and vague hunches do not. And that keeps me from feeling impatient, and makes me feel like "Oh, wow. It's really going to happen in the next week or two sometime".
Talked with Grant on the highway about how OBs are paid by the birth, not by the hour, AND they get $10,000 for a half hour c-section, vs $2-3000 for a who knows how long vaginal, and there's no way to say that's not going to sway how things go down. They have to sleep, they're overbooked with patients waiting at the office...Especially when you add in legal liabilities that come in whenever anyone says they SHOULD have done a c/s, in their grief...(when a baby dies during/after c/s, it's more like "They did all they could").
Came home with a borrowed tape of the first two episodes of The Show. Watched half a dozen women give birth with no drugs or fetal monitors or IVs or troubles, in water, and pull their squalling newborn up onto their chests themselves. These are the randomly pre-selected couples the Discovery Channel chose to follow and interview starting weeks in advance, not "the lucky ones".
I am so done with western medicine. Unless bones are broken or cancer is diagnosed or something like that.
Did I mention that tomorrow is my due date, and I weigh what I weigh when Isaac was CONCEIVED?!
I took the kids up to Wild Oats tonight to get my sesame seeds and chlorophyll (which only ended up being $12 total! I was afraid, you never know what it'll come to once you head into the supplements...) and they were awesome. I held Isaac's hand, and he held Aaron's, and he held Annie's, to cross the street and go in, and I kept hold of Isaac's hand the whole time we walked through the store (rather than holding him or sticking him in a cart). They are just all so great. I got the requisite horrified looks from young people, for being SO pregnant and having all these little kids with me, but two older people came up and told me how beautiful my family is with joy on their faces :) And the employee who helped me find things cracked me up when, as she guessed ages, she suddenly stopped aghast, pointing at Isaac, and exclaimed "That one looks nothing like you at all! ...Or the other two! *blink blink*"
He stands at the end of the hallway now, and yells "Two...two...two - TWO!!" and then runs, turbo speed, to knock into whoever is in the living room :D
