On natural childbirth, etcetera

This is the post where I write down all the things I've been meaning to share about pregnancy, natural childbirth, and nursing. Let's start by acknowledging that I'm certainly no expert on this subject (maybe 5 kids down the road I'll feel more like one?). But when I was pregnant, I loved hearing people's experiences with pregnancy and birth, and after Jake was born, I would have loved to read what I'm about to write about nursing. Hopefully this post can prove useful to someone, if not just myself when it's time for round two. Forewarning that it will be rather long-winded and will likely contain a bit of TMI.


By the way, you can read Jake's birth story here:
http://ash-and-matt.blogspot.com/2011/10/jakes-birth.html. Okay, moving on.

On growing bellies:

My 6-year-old brother Joshie made sure to keep me humble. "Wow, that baby sure is growing in there!," he exclaimed when we visited Utah in July. Then, one month later,  I was Skyping my mom when Josh walked in and joined the conversation rather inquisitively.

"Um, have you been watching a lot of TV lately?," he asked.

"Nope, we don't even have TV," I explained.

"Then you must have been playing a lot of video games," he replied knowingly as he gestured to my big belly.

I laughed. "Actually, I've been making a baby -- arms, legs, you know."

"Oh! You're like a machine!," he concluded.

That's right, everyone. A baby-makin' machine.

My belly on my birthday, at 39 weeks exactly.

On exercising through pregnancy:

I highly recommend the book, "Exercising Through Your Pregnancy" by Dr. James Clapp. It makes a lot of sense. A healthy pregnancy is important for both the mom and the baby. I exercised throughout my entire pregnancy with Jake, and was jogging and playing tennis up until the day he was born. Even while I was on just-in-case modified bedrest (because of the IUGR) from 33-37 weeks, my doctor had me very slowly do the elliptical 3x's a week for circulation's sake. I felt a million times better on days that I exercised and it definitely helped with my all-day sickness, mood, and eventually, labor and recovery.

That said, there's such a stigma about exercising when pregnant. A sweet little grandma about died when she saw me out for a run last July. And when Jake had IUGR, I felt like everyone would judge me for having exercised and "hurt" my baby. Of course, my doctors -- including the high-risk specialist I saw multiple times a week during the third trimester -- assured me that was not the case. They were very happy with my weight gain (which, while I'm engaging in TMI already, was 29 pounds) and promised the exercise I'd been doing was good for me and my baby. I trust my doctors, and especially my perinatologist, and if they said my exercise was good, then my exercise was good. But people don't sit in my prenatal appointments with me -- um, thank goodness -- and therefore I still worry about those judgments regarding Jake's and future pregnancies.

On hiring a birth photographer:

Best thing I've ever done, ever. I highly recommend it to everyone. We got to capture those special moments for ourselves and share them with our far-away families, while allowing Matt to be totally in the moments rather than trying to document them himself. Letting Matt just enjoy it and having pictures of him doing so were huge selling points for us, and it was worth every penny for those reasons alone. He never had to pause and fumble around for the camera to get a quick shot of Jake being weighed, and when the nurse handed me my baby for the first time, Matt got to lean in close instead of jumping behind a camera lens. We have beautiful pictures of Matt meeting and holding his first-born son for the first time, and the pictures of the three of us as a brand-new family are priceless.

Interestingly enough, I told our photographer beforehand that I didn't really want many pictures of the labor part -- I just cared about pictures once the baby was born -- but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I treasure the pictures of those moments before Jake was born, too. Sandy captured the love, concern, pride and joy on Matt's face, and the pictures offer a beautiful little glimpse into our marriage. A few of our favorites can be seen in the slideshow on Jake's birth story post.

The few people we told about hiring a photographer before Jake was born thought it was a little odd, but I'm pretty sure they changed their minds when they saw the pictures. I know that one argument against birth photographers is not wanting to have a stranger in the room for such a special moment, but if you think about it, the room is full of strangers -- doctors and nurses -- already. What's one more? Sandy was a sweet fly on the wall, just capturing moments as they happened and giving us all the space we needed. We plan on hiring a birth photographer every time. (In fact, I already have my photographer picked out for our next baby in Utah. No, I won't be getting pregnant for awhile.)

On natural childbirth:

I believe in modern medicine and am certainly grateful for it. However, unless it was truly medically necessary, I didn't feel like medical interventions or drugs were right for me or my baby with this delivery. Of course, every person and situation are different, an epidural isn't the end of the world, sometimes c-sections are necessary, yada yada yada. You get the idea. If Jake hadn't shown barely-enough signs of growth at every appointment like he did and had to be born at, say, 34 weeks instead, perhaps things would have been different.

When I was a teenager, I remember saying I wanted to deliver my babies naturally so I could get up and shower immediately afterward. Then I grew up and developed a few more, well, "grown-up" reasons for choosing natural childbirth. Which was good, because it took a good seven hours or so to pry myself away from my baby and into a shower, so that reasoning would have proved rather faulty. I won't delve into all of my real reasons here, but I'd be happy to share those in another setting.

I ended up deciding that the Bradley Method made the most sense to me -- it's pretty basic and logical (I'm not one of those "imagine that you are floating on a cloud" type people at.all.). Luckily, I'm married to the most supportive human being on the planet. We ordered this book, which is fantastic. Fantastic, and a bit, um, graphic. Matt covered up all the pictures with post-its and dutifully read the entire thing with me (well, separately, but we both read it), and we prepared together. It made a huge difference to have a partner who understood what was going on and knew how to best help.

For those curious about the pain aspect, I won't sugarcoat it. The pain is real. Back labor is excruciating. A contraction at 5 cm is absolutely nothing compared to a contraction at 10 cm. There is honestly nothing like it. Believe it or not, the contraction pain seems to calm down a little bit during the actual pushing stage, presumably because of the adrenaline, counter pressure, and the fact that's when you're really working with your body. And then you have the baby and the pain is immediately replaced with the unspeakable joy of holding your little one. Oh, it is all so worth it. In the end, I was able to be very much "there" for every part of his birth, he came out wide awake and alert because he hadn't received any drugs through me, and I was able to have a pretty decent recovery.

On trusting yourself:

My two tips for anyone planning a natural birth are to be prepared and trust yourself. When it was time to push, the 5 well-meaning nurses around me and even my doctor kept giving directions, counting, and telling me to push when there wasn't even a contraction. In the craziness of the moment, I listened to them at first because you know, this was new to me and they've done this a thousand times and I had a baby trying to come out of me. But inside, I knew better. As soon as I tuned them out, trusted myself, and did things my way, there was real progress and Jake was born in minutes. Trust yourself.

On nursing:

It's been really frustrating, especially since things were so easy (albeit excruciatingly painful) in the very beginning and I feel like I messed things up for my baby somehow. And then I feel like it's not fair, because no one else seems to have such a hard time with nursing. I think that last sentence is why so many moms quit nursing--because they think it's so easy for everyone else and therefore something must be wrong with them. I'm here to tell you that nursing is absolutely not easy for everyone.

We've really been through the ringer with nursing. If there's a nursing problem, I guarantee you we have dealt with it. Cracks, bleeding, rawness, being required to exclusively pump for a couple days, Jake preferring the bottle after that, mastitis, pesky thrush, never-ending wrestling matches at feeding time, hyperlactation, and most recently, trying to maintain supply during a recent nursing strike. My doctor and lactation consultant told me they've never seen a mom as damaged as I was who actually continued to nurse.


There was a one-month period where everything possible was going wrong and it seemed like I did nothing but nurse, think about nursing, talk about nursing, or research nursing problems and solutions online. (PS: The La Leche League site and Kelly Mom are both helpful.) I was bound and determined to nurse my baby at least until the recommended 6-month mark if at all humanly possible. So despite all the pain and frustration, we made it and are still going strong. But I had to make little goals for myself along the way -- first 6 weeks, then 3 months, then 6 months. Now, we'll see.

When I think about having another baby, being pregnant, giving birth naturally, and recovering all sound fine. But doing this nursing thing all over again? That makes me want to cry. Of course I'll do it and hopefully it will go better the next time around, but oh my, I will not be looking forward to it. If you ever have any nursing problems, please feel free to call for empathy.

Ah, the joys of public nursing. At Disney World, no less, when Jake was 2 months old.

On sleepless nights:

Jake had a rough night about three weeks in and Matt sweetly stayed up to help me with him. Unfortunately, this caused him to sleep through his alarms and be late for work. He texted his coworker to let the office know he was on his way. Later that morning, Matt's boss came by his desk. "Sleepless night last night?," he asked. "Yep, and a sleepful morning," Matt responded. Thank goodness for an understanding boss.

Unfortunately, I haven't had a "sleepful" anything in what seems like forever. Jake was actually a decent sleeper for the first few months, waking up around 12:30 or 1:00, then 4:30 or 5:00, and then for good around 7:30. But then we went to Utah for the holidays and he turned 4 months old and it was all over. For the past two months, he has waken up every 1.5-2.5 (if I'm lucky) hours throughout the night. (Now that Jake's 15 pounds and 6-months-old, sleep training is on the agenda.) He typically wakes up happy, just wanting to hang out and snack and stuff. I haven't completed a single solid REM sleep cycle in more than 60 days and I feel like a zombie all too often. And yet, every time he wakes me up, no matter the hour, I can't help but feel happy to see his sweet little face.

Glimpse

Today, I braved my first track workout since Jake's birth. The weather was beautiful, the track was empty, and I couldn't help but smile as I pushed my limits. Oh, it felt so good to run hard again! But then, as I rounded the final corner of an 800M repeat, I noticed that I had company. And not just any company.
A big coyote stood about eight feet in front of me, eyes fixed on mine, mouth open.

This Google images coyote was not my running buddy, but you get the idea.

It, obviously, startled me and I let out a bit of a shriek. That's probably not the appropriate procedure when you encounter a huge coyote, but I didn't stay to find out. Which turned out to be a good thing anyway, because approximately thirty seconds after walking into the gym, I found myself standing over a toilet emptying my stomach. Afterward, as I finished my workout on the elliptical, I admitted to myself that perhaps my body still isn't ready to go quite as hard as it did pre-baby. (Also, that perhaps adding a leftover brownie to my pre-workout breakfast wasn't the best idea...) But hey, speaking of my baby, that's who this post is really about!

I'm still playing catch-up on here, but am happy to report that I should be fully up-to-date in two weeks thanks to a slower-paced January. That said, please enjoy random pictures of my Jake throughout the month of December.

He turned 3 months old at the beginning of the month.

One Sunday afternoon, we headed down the road a couple miles for a Christmas card picture session. Then we came home and cuddled.

The rest of the month, Jake did rather exciting things such as eat, play and sleep. Okay, he did more exciting things, too, but I've already blogged about all those. So, eating. Jake became enamored with eating anything that came near his mouth, such as his parent's fingers or his stuffed animals. His favorite thing to "eat," however, is his own hands (preferably two at a time) -- despite Matt's explanation that his fists will never fit in his mouth.

Playing is just as much fun for us as it is for Jake. We come up with all sorts of silly games all day long and Jake is all sorts of expressive, so it's fantastic.

Ah, and sleeping. The holy grail of babyhood. Jake was really good at it prior to our trip to Utah for the holidays, although he's always been closer to the minimum "recommended" hours of baby sleep. He likes to be awake so he doesn't miss anything! But if he has to sleep, he prefers sleeping on his parents. Or at least in his parents' bed. Or at the very least, with his mobile on, because clearly, being alone in bed when it's quiet is bo-ring.

We love that little guy.

A big oops

Alternate titles: "Oxi Clean is magic," "I still need my mom," or "Why you shouldn't paint the nursery during your third trimester."

See, painting while big and pregnant isn't exactly an easy task. Cutting the edges is the worst part by far -- climbing up and down stools to work on the ceiling edge is ten times more difficult and bending over with a baby belly to work on the baseboard edge is insanely uncomfortable. The edges took literally three times longer than they should have and left me with an achy back and limited patience. I was so excited to finally roll and get it over with! But just minutes into rolling, I was suddenly far too hot in the 72-degree room so I went to the hall to turn on the AC. The unthinkable happened when I walked back into the room:

I kicked over the nearly-full gallon of paint.

The paint spread rapidly all over the drop cloth... and the carpet. A solid two-thirds of a gallon had spilled out before I was able to stop the carnage. Did I mention that pregnancy makes you (me) extra clumsy? Yeah. Sure does. Luckily, 90% of the spilled paint landed on the drop cloth, but there was still a good 18-inch diameter circle of thick, fresh paint on our rental home's carpet. I could have died.

I was a bit too preoccupied to take a picture of my spill, but it was a little bigger than this one, spread out on the drop cloth and carpet. Yikes!

Matt was leading group PT at the time and was therefore unreachable, so I frantically called my mom while I tried to scoop as much paint off the carpet as possible. She immediately rattled off a potential solution and then googled directions just in case. Google agreed with my mom (she's a smart one), so I blotted up as much paint as possible, kept the carpet wet, sent Matt to the store to buy a wet/dry vacuum as soon as he got home, and then got to work. After six hours of pouring hot water, adding Oxi Clean on every other pour, and vacuuming it all up with our brand new wet vac, our carpet was in the clear. Thank goodness!

I finally thought of the camera on one of our final rounds of Oxi Clean. That stuff has magical powers, clearly.

Want to know the best part, though? We had to let the water soak for a few minutes each time before vacuuming, so I decided to make the most of those free moments. I grabbed the roller, used the pile of wet paint on the drop cloth as my paint tray, and continued to paint the room. And what do you know? With the little bit left in the paint can, we had just enough to finish the nursery. Three cheers for that.

A day in the life

I always want to write more about our day-to-day lives, but I'm always so far behind in blogging about our activities and whatnot that I just never find the time. I should really fix that somehow, shouldn't I? Last week, my friend Tobi requested a "day in the life" post and I figured that's an easy enough place to start. Plus, my life has been so different over the past five months than it ever has been and ever will be again that it's probably worth documenting.

See, my daily schedule has been the complete opposite of a normal person's because of my work schedule... which is the complete opposite of a normal person's (3-12 instead of 8-5). So instead of getting up, going to work, coming home and then having free time, I get up, have free time, then go to work and come home. It definitely took a whole lot of adjusting. Here's the basic schedule I finally figured out, through the eyes of last Thursday:

(Note: Please add a huge "ISH" next to all the times. I believe in structure when necessary, but I would go crazy if my free time were actually scheduled to a "T." Or scheduled at all, really. This just tends to be about how it breaks down.)

*12:30 a.m.: Pull into the garage from a long day at work.

*1:30 a.m.: Fall asleep.

*7:30 a.m.: Matt wakes me up with a quick kiss goodbye as he leaves for work. I fall back asleep.

*9:30 a.m.: My alarm goes off after 8 hours of sleep. I eat breakfast and then snuggle up on the couch with my scriptures.

*10:30 a.m.: After reading scriptures and checking e-mail, bank accounts, etc., my stomach is ready for a workout. I turn on Jillian for a 20-minute warm-up and then lace up my running shoes and head out the door.

*11:30 a.m.: Shower and get ready for the day. I've never liked putting my makeup on in the bathroom--I always felt like I was missing out on the action at home--and nothing has changed. I tend to either use the mirror above the piano in the living room (because there's a ton of natural light in there) or just wait for the car (because I'm lazy).

*12:15 p.m.: Get a few things done around the house.

*1:00 p.m.: Matt comes home for a late lunch. He often has noon meetings but instead of taking a lunch, he chooses to starve himself and just wait for them to end. Otherwise, we wouldn't see each other at all--literally--on my work days. He's the best. We watch Chuck on Hulu as we eat leftover tortellini, and then Matt heads back to the office. I always love having dinner-type food for lunch because I'm only able to have lunch-type food for dinner. Trust me, sandwiches twice a day gets old.

*2:00 p.m.: Matt's back at the office and I have a little bit of free time. This is when I might play the piano, call a friend, blog or read friends' blogs (or I'll switch that productive morning chore time around with afternoon computer time), but this day I was busy with homework for the photography class I'm taking from UCLA. The assignment was focused on macro photography, which is something I never really do, and I chose fruit. I also never take pictures of food, so it was all the more challenging.

*3:00 p.m.: Gas up and hit the road for a soccer game that's an hour away. Get to the game early only to have it start late. Take notes while watching some pretty great high school soccer.

*5:30 p.m.: Halftime. Run to the car and turn the heat up full-blast. The high may have been 65 that day, but the sun was down and therefore the temperature was, too. It was probably just under 50 degrees and my layers and down comforter just weren't cutting it. (Translation: I'm a sissy when it comes to sitting in the cold.)

*6:45 p.m.: Once the game is over and I've interviewed the coaches and a couple athletes, I drive to the office and eat a PB&J sandwich for dinner as I write my story.

*8:15 p.m.: With my story saved into the system, I proceed to spend the rest of the night taking calls and writing little game capsules, proofreading other journalist's stories, pulling stories off the Associated Press newswire, and working on a feature article for another day.

*10:45 p.m.: We're getting closer to deadline, so we start proofing pages and making changes as needed. To help this all make more sense, here's a summary of the process: write stories in Text Edit, save to InCopy, transfer to copy desk where they're placed on an InDesign page, proof the InDesign page, send to FinalProof for (you guessed it!) the final proof, then send to the newsroom where it's turned into a newspaper.

*11:15 p.m.: This is deadline, so cross all of your fingers and toes that the pages have already been sent! After this, we'll head back to our desks where we'll wrap up stories that we're working on, put in photo assignments, go through e-mails, etc. This all takes place in our office, which looks a little like this but 40 years newer and with a whole lot of Mac computers.

*12:30 a.m.: Roll into the garage after a long drive home. Go give Matt a kiss goodnight and say couple prayers. Depending on how awake my brain is, I'll either get ready for bed, read, or catch up on blogs and whatnot (I'm sure plenty of you have seen a comment from me at one in the morning!). Finally fall asleep around 1:30 a.m. Repeat.

Once again, though, I'd like to point out that my life is SO not this structured. Some days the schedule works out about like this, other days it's totally different. And other days, I don't really feel like doing much so I'll just read my scriptures, work out, hang out and work. It just really all depends, you know? Oh, and one last disclaimer--this post is sort of already outdated because I'm swapping out my salary for student loans. (This is the only reason I felt comfortable posting any sort of schedule on the internet--the fact that it's no longer my schedule!) More to come on that later.

There you have it, Tobi! A regular, boring ol' day in the life of Ashley over the past five months :-)

When our bumper flew off on the freeway.

This wasn't the post I had planned to write today, but then again, you never really plan on your bumper flying off of your car while going 75 mph in equally strong winds on the freeway, now, do you?

Oh yes, you read that right. Matt and I were on our way down to LA for our romantic pre-Valentine's date (we always celebrate a little early and/or late, and he'll be TDY over the holiday this year anyway), when suddenly, we heard a popping sound coming from the back of our car. It was followed shortly by another loud popping sound. I immediately thought we must have popped a tire and turned to Matt to ask what it was. "Um, that was our bumper," he replied, and explained that he saw it fly off in the rear view mirror. Can you imagine? Thank goodness there weren't cars close behind us.

Naturally, we got off at the next exit so we could backtrack and luckily found our bumper on the side of the freeway. And what do you do with a bumper that has fallen of your car? Why, you stuff it in the back seat of your two-door coupe, of course.

We were laughing hysterically at the extreme ghetto-ness of our situation, and we weren't about to let it ruin our day. So with our bumper in tow, we continued our drive and enjoyed our date. When we got to a posh mall later that evening, we decided to try stuffing the bumper in the trunk. You should have seen the looks we got. Priceless.

Unfortunately, it didn't really fit, so back to the back seat it went... and remains, until we figure out what on earth we are going to do with it. Since Google told me that it's mildly illegal to drive without a bumper in California, we're going to have to solve the problem soon. Trouble is, the repair could potentially cost more than my car is worth. Oh geez.

*PS: Once upon a time, four years ago, a lady rear-ended me in a storm during midterms. She got a ticket for it because it was obviously her fault, and I started to file a claim with insurance but never finished. I was so busy with school and work, and felt so bad because she obviously didn't have a ton of money, that I never got my bumper fixed. Instead, I just jimmy-rigged it back in place and dealt with the looseness and paint marks. Go ahead, ask me how much I regret that decision now...

Pride, prejudice and pizza

My name is Ashley and I just ate a whole Totino's pizza all by myself. At one o'clock in the morning. And I liked it.

See, in the middle of my 9-hour workday, I went to the freezer to pull out my Lean Cuisine only to find that my dinner had been thrown away by the fridge police. It was an extra busy day in the office, with 34 local high school games and a staff that is still two people too small. This meant I didn't have time to leave to get food, so I settled for Gardetto's instead. It was the "healthiest" thing in the vending machine, but it was a bad choice. So I'm starving and my stomach hurts from the crappy vending machine "dinner," and we're working away to make deadline... and then we miss it. By 12 minutes, which is like a week in newspaper time. Everyone was about as happy as my tummy when I finally left the office at midnight.


Matt, being the awesome husband he is, cheered me up and agreed to cook up some cheap pizza so it'd be ready for me when I got home 45-minutes later. It hit the spot.

This reminded me of the last time we ate Totino's pizza (it really isn't often, I swear!). I covered a daytime wrestling meet on a Saturday in December and was miraculously able to be home from work at 8:30 p.m.--just in time for a late dinner. It had been a long, long day, though, and I didn't feel like cooking (which made me feel guilty because I'm never home to cook dinner anymore). So instead, we popped some Totino's in the oven, grabbed some hot cocoa ice cream (heavenly) and cuddled up to watch the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. At that moment, I realized that I am either the worst wife ever, or Matt is the best husband ever to subject himself to such an evening. I think I'll go with the latter.

A new normal

This is old news by now, but my dear friend Tobi's comment on the last post reminded me that I've yet to share. Perhaps you've noticed a decline in my commenting on your blogs in the past while? Be assured that it has nothing to do with how much I love you. Rather, I've been busy devoting 40+ hours a week to a dream job of mine and figuring out how to balance the rest of my life with its somewhat odd schedule.

Let's skip the suspense, shall we? I'm now a full-time journalist, working as a sports reporter for a Los Angeles County daily newspaper. I cover prep sports in the area and am suddenly fully immersed in every corner of our community. Five days a week, I hang out with an awesome group of coworkers, attend sporting events, talk to people from around the Valley, write about it on tight deadlines, and see it published the next day. To put it simply, I am having the time of my life.

(Matt took this picture of me writing and submitting a story from the football field.
I had exactly 32 minutes after the game ended to whip out an article before deadline.)

It's quite a shift in lifestyle, though. Sporting events don't really conform to the typical 9-5 schedule, so I work a lot of afternoons, nights and weekends. It has definitely taken some getting used to for me, Matt, and my sleeping pattern. The good news is Matt gets to tag along for a lot of the events! We've spent many Friday nights under the lights of high school football this fall.

Of course, we always follow those chilly games with hot cocoa on the couch after midnight.

If you're surprised by the cold weather apparel in Southern California, don't be. Fall is a terribly bipolar season here. It requires shorts in the daytime and wool coats at night. Even the daytime temperatures can be drastically different from day to day, though. For example, two Saturdays ago I covered cross country prelims all day. I was wearing a cardigan but had to take it off because it was NINETY degrees outside. So hot, in fact, that a runner passed out from heat exhaustion a mere fifty yards from the finish line of the 3-mile course.

This past Saturday, I covered the cross country finals at the same course. But this time, I had to don these babies:

That's because it was FIFTY degrees and raining all day, just seven days after the heat exhaustion incident. Today, it's back up to 75. I told you the weather is bipolar here.

Matt and I spent a glorious six hours in the pouring rain on Saturday. Not only was I watching the races, interviewing coaches and athletes, and writing three separate articles that day, but I also took pictures of the event for the front sports page because it was too far away to send a photographer. Matt was a huge lifesaver who diligently held an umbrella over himself, another over me and the camera, and also toted my purse around when necessary. I sure love that man!

Of course, one of those umbrellas decided to break at the end of the day right as we decided to take a couple pictures. Thank goodness it lasted that long.

So there you have it, folks--a real update in the regular life of Matt and Ashley. Lest you be concerned that my work schedule is "cramping our style" too drastically, though, I promise that we still pencil in time for fun! I have a nice, long backlog of activities that must be blogged to prove it. Here's hoping I can get caught up soon!