As of now, I’m about 23 weeks pregnant, past the point when most women have gotten ultrasounds and found out if they are having a boy or a girl.

A few people have asked me if I know if I know what I’m having, and have been surprised that I said I don’t know because I try to avoid ultrasounds.  In this day and age, that’s become increasingly uncommon!  Why I have concerns about ultrasounds is a topic for another post; I did have one with my first two children (before it ever occurred to me to question standard obstetrical procedures), and then again with my eighth (when I was well-educated about obstetrical practices and their alternatives).

With my eighth pregnancy, it was the only time that I found out what I was having in advance.  At that point, I was five months pregnant when we were told by our midwife that there was a strong likelihood we were having twins.  Even though she said she couldn’t be sure, there was still disappointment when one month later we learned there was only one baby.  So much so, that knowing many of us were hoping for a girl (since we had four boys and three girls at that time), I wanted everyone to be emotionally prepared in case it was a boy.  I had an ultrasound to determine with certainty that there was only one baby (though my midwife was positive at that point), and what it was – and it was a boy!  I did miss the feeling of surprise of finding out at the actual birth, but it felt like the right thing to do in that situation – we all had time to shift gears mentally and look forward to our baby boy.

With this pregnancy and the boy:girl ratio at 6:3, there’s definitely a preference on almost everyone’s part to even things up a little!  At the beginning I was really hoping for a girl and was convincing myself that all the signs were there for a girl.  But it’s more likely that we’re having another boy (based on looking at the objective facts in addition to all the old wives’ tales! – though I can’t be positive).  The first night when I was honest with myself about the likelihood of a boy, I honestly felt sad.  You can say it’s silly or superficial, but that’s how I felt.  My youngest girl will be almost 12 when this baby is born, and I’d love to have another daughter.

But however shallow it seems, I think that experiencing minor to severe gender disappointment isn’t an uncommon feeling for many pregnant women when they find out what they’re having.  Along with the disappointment there’s often a feeling of guilt – we all know the most important thing is a healthy baby, so, we tell ourselves, how dare we be anything but happy regardless of what we’re having?

In my opinion, it’s important to allow ourselves to feel the disappointment without any self-criticism, which makes it possible to  then go on to embrace what the reality is.  It doesn’t matter that your dream of pink or blue may seem immature or selfish or downright wrong to others.  You’re entitled to your emotions, and when you allow yourself to feel your feelings, you can move through them and on to a positive place in your mind.  And from there you can move to a place of genuine appreciation for what you have.

Something else that helped after that point was focusing on what we’ll have instead of what we won’t have – there’s nothing cuter about a baby girl than a baby boy, really!  Every baby has its own sweetness, and every baby is a special blessing.  Dd15 commented that it will be so cute to have a group of little boys running around, and thinking about the sweetness of all of our boys was helpful, too. 🙂

How do I feel about having a boy at this point?  It took about three days to let go of residual feelings of disappointment about not having a girl.  But at this point, I’m one hundred percent at peace with the idea.  More than at peace – I’m really looking forward to our newest baby’s arrival!

Avivah

I mentioned in the comment section recently that my biggest challenge during the first trimester was tiredness.  But to call it just ‘tiredness’ is an understatement, I think!

Here’s what that tiredness looked like for me: I was going to sleep early (10 pm – very early for me, since I’m a night owl), and waking up with difficulty about 7:15 am.  I’d get the kids ready for school (or not – some mornings I just couldn’t get out of bed and the older girls would take over), and within an hour or maximum two, feel totally finished.

Back to bed I’d go, for at least two hours.  Sometimes four!  There were plenty of mornings that I was sleeping from the time I went back to bed (at about 9 am), until I had to go pick up the littles from gan, at 1 pm.  I was happy I could rest while almost all of the kids were out – I kept thinking how grateful I was not to be homeschooling during this time, because I would have felt very guilty to be so unavailable.  Ds2 is home with me, but he still needs a long nap during the day, so he started falling asleep next to me earlier in the day rather than at 1 pm, which worked out great.

Then you’d probably think after all of that sleeping, I’d be fresh as a daisy for the rest of the day.  That’s what I expected!  But by about 3 or 4 pm, I was exhausted again.  So I’d take a nap for 1 – 2 hours in the afternoon.  That got me through until 10 pm, when I’d go through the entire thing again.  This blah, no energy feeling was compounded by the cold weather and cloudy skies outside, being new here, etc.

The bar mitzva preparations fell out during this time, and I was very, very grateful that the bar mitzva itself was the very end of the first trimester.  It was a non-stop couple of days of work for me and was tiring, but at an earlier stage, there would have been no possibility of pushing myself.  I just couldn’t.  It was really a push to be up for an hour earlier on.  I guess I could have delegated everything but I was happy that after my older kids taking on more than usual during my tired stage, that I could be available  like my normal self for the bar mitzva.

During this time, my diet was pretty good, no processed stuff.  I actually was more careful than usual about what I ate, since flour and sugar make me feel tired at the best of times, and I didn’t have the luxury of any additional tiredness.  In the beginning, I was exercising a few times a week, in addition to my daily half hour walk to get the littles from school.  I did it in the morning before I ran out of steam, since it gave me more energy.

Unfortunately, my husband’s  laptop broke about seven weeks ago, and then he needed to use mine during the day instead.  Since I used my computer to play the dvd for my exercise program, it became too hard to logistically work it out, so I only exercised about two or three times in the last seven weeks.  I’m hoping to get back to it now that he has a new laptop (as of a week ago), and my mom went back to the US yesterday so I’d like to get back to my usual schedule.

It was hard for me to feel so exhausted and sluggish.  I felt almost embarrassed.  I knew intellectually that it was physiological, not because I’m a lazy person, but I had to keep reminding myself of that.  I’m grateful to have older kids who can help out, but I didn’t  like putting them in that situation so much.  Sometimes I wondered if  I was using pregnancy as an excuse to not get up and do what I needed to do.  But then the second trimester started, and the difference was so huge in my energy level that it was obvious I wasn’t taking advantage of having a good ‘excuse’.

My midwife asked if this was unusual tiredness for me, but I couldn’t say for sure.  I told dh a couple weeks before she asked me that I don’t remember ever experiencing this kind of exhaustion during pregnancy, but that might be since in the past I was homeschooling all the kids and didn’t have the option to rest as much as I did this time.  I remember feeling like ‘a slug’ last time, but I definitely wasn’t sleeping as much as this time.

I kept telling myself that this would pass, and of course I’m very excited to have such a good reason for being low energy!  I think part of what was hard mentally is that I expected that since I was eating well and taking care of myself, that I would have lots more energy than I actually did.

Avivah

Last week ds18 went back to Jerusalem after the bar mitzva, ds13 spent three days in Jerusalem with his best friend who is visiting from the US, and the rest of us at home got some more sleep to compensate for all we did in getting ready for the bar mitzva!

I also had a few one on one chats with our older kids who were home, since with all that was going on I couldn’t get everyone together for a family discussion.  And what I shared with them is the exciting news …. that our family will be growing at the end of July!

I told dd15 a long time ago, a week or two after I found out (which happened to be my birthday – isn’t that nice?).  We told everyone else last week, except the littles – I’ll tell them when it’s closer, and ds18, who I told when he called home last night.  The reactions ranged from disbelief and excitement (ds9, dd11, ds13), to a casual, “Oh, I had a feeling” (dd17 – she gets feelings about things before they happen, and I told dd15 two months before there would be no way we’d be able to surprise her).  I wasn’t expecting ds18 to have much of a reaction since he’s older and out of the house so it won’t affect him much, but his spontaneous excitement was really nice.  There’s lots of good energy floating around in our family about our news!

Besides for her ‘feeling’, I asked dd17 why she thought that, and she said she thought I looked pregnant at the bar mitzva (which was the very end of the first trimester).  This wasn’t what I wanted to hear – I was cringing thinking this was obvious at such an early stage to everyone there.  And this is really atypical for me.  What’s typical is this:  (someone says): “Oh, are you expecting?”  “Yes, I’m due in three weeks”.  “Due in three months?  You don’t look that far along.”  “No, three weeks.”  “Gasp.”

Seriously, I don’t usually show until five months, and in the winter, can usually keep it from being obvious until about seven months.  With ds5, I literally spoke in front of a room of people the night before he was born, and most of them didn’t realize I was expecting until they got my email the next day announcing his birth – this was very unnerving for some of them! I have lots of stories like this.   I can wear generally things tucked in until about six months as long as I wear a jacket over the blouse – and it looks normal – but to be showing now?  Strange.

So my teen girls think it’s pretty obvious.  I thought they were overly aware of how I look, but last week, literally one day into the second semester, I went out with my mother.  I wanted to tell her our news while she’s visiting, but I didn’t get the chance to initiate the conversation, since she said, “Can I ask you something?  Are you expecting?”

This my tenth pregnancy and, no, she’s never asked before.  And that includes when I haven’t told her until after 5.5 months along!  So I guess the girls aren’t overly aware after all.  But when I expressed my discomfort to them about it being noticeable at this point, they asked me, “Is something wrong with looking pregnant if you are?”  And I realized they were right!

For those who are wondering, no, I don’t think it’s twins (though it’s a really nice idea and I’m at a stage in life that I would LOVE it)!  We’ll have a space of 3 years and two months between ds2 and the new addition, if the due date is accurate.  Those who have been reading my blog a long while know that ds4 was three weeks early and ds2 was three weeks late, so I make no assumptions about dates!

One really nice addendum – my only sister emailed me a few nights ago and told me she was expecting.  I emailed her back and told her I was, too!  I told her my due date and asked for hers, and it turns out she’s due just eight days after me.  We’ve never been in this situation before, and it’s such a nice feeling!

Avivah

>>I’ve also wanted to ask you…..How do you deal with all the wonderfulness of early pregnancy and still keep your household running smoothly? I’m talking about the all-day nausea and the overwhelming tiredness that comes along with early pregnancy as your body adjusts? This time, I’ve just found it so overwhelming to keep everything running smoothly – kids occupied, meals prepared and a semi-neat house…..any tips? It is a most wonderful time and I feel such gratitude for another baby …its just challenging to keep everything going when all I want to do is sleep :)<<

During my last pregnancy at about four months along, a friend who is now a grandmother told me I should write a post about how to deal with the early stage of pregnancy with a house full of kids.  I made a note of it, but with other questions actively coming in that I was answering and no one else who had asked about it, the topic didn’t make it onto my priority list.

With my last pregnancy, I was so tired and I felt like I didn’t do anything but rest.  I would look at things that needed to be done but not feel able to summon the energy to do more than look at them, not even enough energy to want to do them!  It wasn’t a great feeling that things weren’t running the way I wanted them to.  But the real issue wasn’t how the house was running, but how I felt about the house running!

We have to give ourselves some mental acceptance that at the early stage of pregnancy, you are supposed to be resting lots !  Your body is making a huge adjustment from non-pregnant to pregnant, and is expending a lot of energy on this process.  As long as your children are safe, it’s okay for the house to run at your absolute minimum standard.  It will only be for a short time, even though when you’re looking at the mess and it feels chaotic, it doesn’t feel like a short time.

But the reality remains that even if you accept that it’s the time to do less, there still remain other children needing to be taken care of, and a house to run at that minimum standard, so it’s not like we can pull the blankets over your head and stay in bed oblivious to everything else for three months until you’re feeling more energetic.  🙂   What I’ve written about the postpartum stage is relevant here – lower your expectations as much as you can, do the minimum, and accept as much help as you can.

Sometimes you can find a teenager that is available to help out which will drastically be of help – my dd14 and dd15 were helping someone in the early stage of pregnancy who has particularly challenging pregnancies almost every day this summer with her children and doing light housework.  The grandmother was happy to pay for it since she saw the house falling apart and the pressure it was putting on the couple.  If you have this possibility, use them to do whatever you need the most help with.  The woman they were helping really needed help with housework but was embarrassed to ask them or for them to see her mess.  I told my girls to just start doing whatever they saw that needed to be done, and gave them a script to convince the woman to accept their help that went something like this: “We enjoy cleaning – we do it all the time at home and we’re happy to do it now.”

If you can’t find a teenager or other paid help, or it’s not in the budget, then look for other areas to simplify.  Can you buy paper plates so there’s a minimum of dishes to wash?  What about making the easiest meals possible?  Cold cereal or oatmeal for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, cottage cheese and hardboiled eggs with vegetable sticks for dinner?  Ask your husband to keep the laundry running by putting a load in the washer before he leaves in the morning and another before he goes to sleep at night (two loads is what I need to do to keep things running smoothly but you probably don’t need that), and sticking each wet load into the dryer at that time.  Have him bring the dry laundry to where you can sit with the kids to sort it, maybe on the couch.

Accept that it’s okay to be an adequate mother. I think a big part of what we beat ourselves up with is that we have these high standards and we feel inadequate about when we don’t meet them.  You don’t have to be doing tons of crafts, baking, or exciting outings to be a wonderful mother.  Take the time to be present with your kids when you are interacting with them, and they will feel loved and secure, even if you’re not up and about like usual.

Avivah

>>Wow. An unassisted childbirth. Sounds scary, but glad everything worked out great!<<

It actually isn’t scary at all, but I can see how it could sound like that!  I was talking to my dh about why people think giving birth without medical professionals present must be such a frightening situation.  A big part of this is because our society has bought into the belief that birth is dangerous and therefore has to take place in a hospital, because anything can and probably will go wrong in the absence of professionals.  But I don’t buy into this mindset of danger and fear.  I see labor and birth as a normal and healthy process, and generally when the birth goes so quickly, it’s because everything is fine.  So to me the fact that things were going so fast would in and of itself be reassuring, if I had been worried.  But I wasn’t.

I think giving birth in a hospital can be a pretty scary proposition – there are so many unknowns facing birthing women other than labor itself, factors that they would have control over in their homes.  But maybe it’s only scary if you know that the infant and mortality rates are higher in the hospital, infection rates are higher in the hospitals, all the intervention rates that lead to further intervention and are linked with other complications are higher in the hospital – most people think they’re safer and view the frequency that all of these things occur in hospitals as proof that they need to be there, proof that birth itself is dangerous.  “Imagine how much more dangerous it would have been if they hadn’t been in a hospital!” goes the reasoning.

A friend afterwards tongue in cheek asked me why I hadn’t called an ambulance.  Besides the fact that the idea didn’t even enter my mind, that’s another option that sounds unpleasant. I think emergency services are wonderful, but for helping women in childbirth?  Umm, that’s not exactly where their strengths are.  I can just imagine them rushing into my room in emergency mode, insisting on taking me to the hospital even after the baby was born to be sure everything was okay.

>>A friend of mine had an unplanned HB and is sooo traumatized by it.<<

Not being prepared for a situation mentally can make anything traumatic.  I also think that mental preparation in life tends to be one of the most important factors to being content.  (Mental preparation for labor is the most important factor in having a positive birth, in my opinion.)  That means working on accepting what is, rather than continuing to verbally or mentally hold on to your image of what you want.  This is something that we all get to work on every single day, every time your child, spouse, or even the person in the store does something that doesn’t match what you want.  I know that the more I can let go of what I think needs to happen, the more I can tune in to what H-shem wants and the happier I feel.

If I had mentally focused on how absolutely unacceptable it was to me that the midwife wouldn’t be able to make it in time, my insistence on my past plans would have kept me from being able to shift into being fine with what was going to happen.

>>Thanks so much for posting a photo for those of us who can’t be there to see him in person. It is a nice addition to your posts. <<

It’s my husband who’s to thank for this.  I’ve never had the patience (or desire, to be more honest) to figure out how to put a photo on the blog.  I also liked that he put it there – I didn’t ask him to.  Maybe now I’ll be inspired by him to post photos from time to time.  🙂

>>Birth is truly a surprise and an adventure, not matter how many
times you’ve been through it. <<

This is so true.  If I PG have another pregnancy, this is something I’m going to remember – not to think that I know what even my own normal is by virtue of being pregnant nine times before.  Being ‘overdue’ was a much needed exercise in humility and trusting H-shem’s plan.

>>You had your supplies, your midwife was coming anyway, but that sounds like such an ideal birth. If you’re emotionally capable of handling such a thing, and medically prepared just in case, that sounds so special!<<

It really was an ideal birth – I’ve always felt homebirths were amazing experiences, but this birth was on a totally different level.

>>Can I ask what you do with your placenta? Do you bury it? If so, is it for halachic reasons? I have never gotten a clear answer if I need to bury mine or not.<<

Rav Heinemann was here this afternoon to check the baby (he was our mohel for the last two brissim, also) – too bad I didn’t read this in time or I would have asked him.  I’ve never asked a shaila about this – in hospitals, placentas are thrown away and I’ve never heard of anyone wondering what to do instead.  And until now, we’ve always thrown it away.

This time, the kids were talking about planting a special tree over it (they know a 20 year old whose family planted a cherry tree when she was born), which I thought was a beautiful idea.  Because of their enthusiasm, I was researching fruit trees before Pesach, trying to figure out what kind to buy and where to put it, but now it’s so late in the season that it’s not really the time to plant fruit trees.

We always put the placenta in the freezer, and then throw it away right before the garbage truck comes; this time I figure I can leave it there a little longer until I decide what to do with it.

Avivah

I know some people love reading birth stories, and some people are totally of a different mind set.  So I’m clearly labelling this so you can skip it if it’s not the kind of thing that interests you!

I’ll start with some details you already know, for the sake of continuity.  I was having contractions every 10 – 20 minutes from Tuesday morning and on, and by 3:30 am Thursday morning, they had turned into real labor – long and close together.  I thought it was about time, since I was officially 42 weeks and 6 days at that point!  These contractions continued for two hours, and just when I thought I was a few minutes away from having the baby, they started getting further and further apart.  After three hours of waiting for them to reestablish their previous pattern, I sent the midwife home.  You know all of that from my last posts – and that I was tired and discouraged.

After that, I took a nap, got up for a while, and was still tired later in the day so I went back to sleep for a late afternoon nap.    I continued having contractions while I was napping, but nothing different from the past days and nothing I couldn’t mostly ignore or take a breath or two and then fall back asleep.  Suddenly, before I was even fully awake, I had a massive contraction that I was totally physically or emotionally unprepared for, and I thought that I needed my husband that minute.  There was no way for me to call him, because he was two flights below at the end of dinner time and wouldn’t have heard me even if I was yelling at the top of my lungs.  But he must have heard my thoughts, because a minute later, he came up the stairs just in time for the next contraction (after hours of staying downstairs and taking care of the kids so I could rest).  I immediately had another contraction after that, and as soon as they were over, he told me he was calling the midwife to come immediately.  I didn’t know why he was so sure he should call her – usually he asks me what I think and goes with my opinion – but later on he told me he was timing them and saw they were 2 minutes long and that they were very different from regular contractions. 

As he called her, my water broke, and I went into the bathroom to get my head together and figure out what was happening.  Remember, I had just woken up and was kind of mentally foggy so I didn’t have a realistic perspective about how intense the contractions were.  My mind set had been that I was going to have to make a decision about taking something to get labor going again when I got up, and that was kind of hazily going through my head as I was waking up.  I was thinking that because I wasn’t yet awake I wasn’t mentally on top of the contractions, and that’s why they seemed so strong to me.  After a minute, I was able to clear my head and realized that I was going through the very end of transition and going to have this baby very soon.  I felt very calm by this point – it had been maybe 5 or 6 minutes from the time I woke up.  I told dh to call a friend of mine to come over because the midwife wasn’t going to make it.  But she wasn’t home and I wasn’t about to have him start searching my planner for her cell number right then.  🙂

While I was in the bathroom, he called the midwife again to find out how far away she was – she had had enough time from the first call to get to her front door 🙂 – she told him she’d talk him through it on the phone if he wanted, and reassured him that it wasn’t a big deal to catch a baby.   When I came out a couple of minutes later, he was rushing around trying to unplug the cordless phone from downstairs and bring it up to our room, but I told him to forget about it, that he didn’t need a phone or to speak to her.  Honestly, does that sound relaxing, to have someone on the phone listening to instructions while you’re giving birth?  I didn’t think so either. 

After the baby finished moving down and before there was any urge to push, there was a short lull, maybe three minutes.  By this point, he was also calm and and totally present in the moment.  The baby was born a couple of minutes later, another boy!  This was the first time my husband knew if the baby was a boy or girl before I did.  🙂 

It was a very beautiful and peaceful experience for us both, positive in every way.  I’m not even going to try to describe what a special time it was.  If you had asked me about that scenario as a possibility, I wouldn’t have felt comfortable with even the thought at all.  My husband has never been physically involved in any of my labors except to bring me a drink or some dried fruit, and hasn’t ever been in the room for the birth – I always sent him out and he would come back in after the birth had taken place and everything was cleaned up.  But it was really all perfect.  (And now, a couple of days later, he said he feels he was initiated into a private club of fathers who were unplanned baby catchers for their children – it seems there are a lot more of them out there than you would think.)  I also think it psychologically was much easier for us than for many people who find themselves in this situation because: we trust the birth process and mentally see birth as healthy and normal; were planning a home birth so already had the room set up and supplies on hand; were in the comfort of our own home, not in a car somewhere on the side of a road; have already had more than one child and knew what to expect when giving birth.   

Neither of us thought to look at the clock and see what time it was when the birth took place.  We had other things on our minds. 🙂  Later we estimated that the baby was born about 10 minutes after he first called the midwife, so we might have had a total of 15 minutes from when I woke up.  Basically, I had a two part labor – 2 hours in the early morning, a 13 hour ‘break’, and then the last 15 minutes for transition and the birth itself, when labor started again right where it left off early that morning.  The friend I called to come called back a couple of hours later when she got the message, and said she knows of this happening with other women who have had a lot of kids – something about giving the uterus time to ‘catch up’ after active labor is completed.  When I asked the midwife at breakfast Thursday morning what her thoughts were on why things slowed down, she said it sometimes happens when the baby is unusually positioned, and needing more time to get into the right position – and it turns out his positioning was probably military, looking at the molding on his head and the way he holds his head if put down on his tummy.  To me, both of these explanations make sense and are compatible. 

The kids had to wait over almost 40 minutes after the birth took place to come in, but they didn’t find that too long, since they didn’t know that the baby was born before the midwife got here; it was still only a half hour after she came!  My ds15 was at his baseball game – he left and I was napping with no signs of anything happening, got home and there was a new baby! 

The baby was our biggest by far at 9 lb, 7 oz (almost 2 lb bigger than the last two) – before this our biggest was 8.5 lb.  His birth has officially put the boys in our family way ahead of the girls, with six boys to three girls.  He’s doing great, nursing well and getting cuter every minute.  He so far has slept on a solid surface only at night when his siblings are sleeping, since otherwise someone constantly wants to hold him. 🙂 I’m also BH feeling good – now that we’ve gotten past the 48 hour mark, the afterpains are pretty mild (thanks to my super Chinese herbal blend and tincture! – but the first 48 hours weren’t easy), and I’m getting lots of rest.

I’m so, so, so glad that I didn’t do anything to ‘make’ labor go any faster or sooner.  It was an empowering experience that further reinforced to me that things generally go best when we trust the body and the labor process to proceed at the rate they’re meant to.  I would have missed out on that if I had agreed to even a mild or natural way of moving things along, and that would have been a huge loss. 

The shalom zachor was wonderful, with a suprisingly large turnout for when Shabbos meals end so late, and lots of women coming.  Thank you to those of you who sent goodies – it really enhanced the simcha! 

Avivah

Thanks, everyone, for your good wishes!  I’m not really supposed to be downstairs, but my kids are so excited about the baby that they’ve been carrying him around all day!  I called to them a couple of times to bring him to me so I could feed him, but they didn’t hear, so I came down to tell them myself.  And naturally, once I’m here I had to pop in!

I’ll share the fun and interesting details of the birth another time, probably after Shabbos.  I’ll just say that it’s very humbling to realize that no matter how many kids you have, there’s something new to experience and learn.  I’m feeling great and hope to see some of you who live in the area tonight!

And yes, it’s going to be another erev yom tov bris!  We’re on a roll with the last three boys!  The gabbai of our shul was joking the first night of Pesach with dh that he was waiting to hear that we were making a bris the next morning because of our past history.  He was off by the holiday, but not the basic idea! Ds3 was the first day of Pesach, ds20 months was erev Rosh Hashana, and now this baby will b’ezras Hashem be on erev Shavuos, which is also my husband’s birthday. 🙂  To do that they had to be born on very different time tables from all of their due dates – 2 weeks early, 3 weeks early, and 3 weeks late.  Hashem’s timing is perfect, isn’t it!

Have a great Shabbos!

Avivah