“Does this food give my baby and me nutrients or just calories?”

If your answer is the latter, then eat something else!

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends that pregnant women in their second and third trimesters should eat 300 extra calories a day and nursing mothers should add about 500.

It isn’t as much as you might think…

Three hundred extra calories is roughly equal to one cup of whole-milk yogurt plus an apple. Add two slices of whole-wheat bread to that and the total jumps to 500 calories.

For great information about nutrition during pregnancy, read this articlepublished by the University of Rhode Island’s Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program.

To learn more about children’s nutritional needs, visit the Children’s Nutrition Research Center. Look under “consumer news” and nutrition on the web site. They have a great electronic newsletter that you can sign up for too.

Photo credit: James Gathany/CDC

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My labor had already gone on for 20+ hours, and I wasn’t much more than 5 centimeters dilated (although I was fully effaced, which is often overlooked). With each passing hour, everyone, except for my husband and doula, including me, was steadily losing confidence that I was strong enough to deliver my baby naturally.

We felt very prepared for birth. My husband and I are both researchers by profession, so we had read all the books, watched a lot of birth videos, taken birth classes and felt comfortable with the hospital and midwife practice we had chosen. What I didn’t expect was that my midwife would be busy with another patient who had to have an emergency c-section. Her backup was a hospital doctor I had never met and who was clearly not supportive of natural childbirth. All this happened in the throes of a very long labor that had left me weakened and feeling unconfident, scared and vulnerable. I felt like I was slowly succumbing to the doctor’s pressure on getting epidural, pitocin and the possibility of c-section. It is very difficult to continue with a natural (I chose to do unmedicated) birth if the staff is not supportive. When my midwife came in to introduce me to the new doctor, my labor pretty much shut down.

Women who are in labor make a very characteristic moaning sound, as if they are half delirious. I was sitting upright on the toilet moaning, feeling sorry for myself. when I started to notice an involuntary guttural sound punctuating the end of each moan. This pushing sound is what Vicki heard, time and again, during the many births she attended. It’s a signal to her, she told us, that a woman is getting ready to push the baby out. “Your body knows it’s time, whether or not you do,” she said.

Play this recording of my silly attempt to recreate the moan and the push noise!

There I was on the toilet. At first the noise was faint, and I didn’t really notice it. But with every contraction it got a little stronger. I remember telling everyone,”Wait! I’m making that pushy noise!”

Whether it was true or not, I felt like all talk of a c-section ended. My body had taken so long to dilate that I thought the end would never come (or the begining, depending on how you look at it!), yet here I was making the pushy-noise that seemed so ridiculous in class.

Active and intense labor followed for maybe another hour before my son was born. But making the noise alone was enough to re-assure me I was built for birth. How lucky I was that Vicky was observant enough to pick up on this sublte and overlooked clue.

Did you make the pushy noise? Or was there something else that gave you confidence to have a natural childbirth? Let us know. Leave a comment. It is valuable information for many women.
Thanks

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Technorati Tags:
home birth, child birth, epidural, caesarian

While watching “The Business of Being Born” film, I found myself feeling defensive of the medical establishment. Much of it was cast in a poor light, and yes, much of it rang true for me. But I don’t believe that obstetricians are all “Cesearean Samurais” anxious to rush women to the operating room.

Unfortunately, similar to the environmental movement, showing the worst problems or scariest issues in order to make a point and get attention on these incredibly important issues can be quite effective. Perhaps very balanced reporting of the issue would be too boring to garner worldwide attention. But the downside is that they (the makers of BOBB and extreme environmentalists) lose credibility; or it may have the opposite of the intended effect: such a one-sided view can make the viewer reject the premises all together, which is pointed out by Slate’s Dana Stevens in a recent review of the film.

Unfortunately, Stevens is so caught up in describing weaknesses of the film (admittedly, there are many), that she doesn’t explore the simple notion that there really might be an institutionalized, growing problem in hospitalized birth.

The increasing rate of c-sections is extremely alarming and well documented. Unfortunately, how your individual birth takes place is largely dependent on the practices of the hospital you are in. If the hospital gives 99% of women epidurals then you would be very naive to think that you’ll be able to “choose” not to get one if that’s what you desire. Or if the hospital has a 40% c-section rate, then realistically, you have a good chance of being pressured to get a c-section. Women in labor are very vulnerable and easily influenced. Do you think a hospital staff would rather a) sit and wait for your natural labor to slowly progress (24+ hour labor is very normal), or b) break your water, give you Pitocin (and then an epidural to deal with the increased pain from the harsher contractions caused by the Pitocin) to get things moving along?

Hospitals will rarely advertse the fact that:

• epidurals don’t always work
• there is sometimes breakthrough pain
• whatever drugs you are getting your baby is also getting
• sometimes it takes several attempts to get the needle in the right place
• you may feel pain in your spine for several months after the birth
• your lower half will be deadened and you may need assistance to get the baby out (by suction, episiotomy, forceps, etc.)
• you may not be able to walk for a brief time after you have the baby
• your labor could stall or temporarily shut down after getting the epidural, which may lead to a c-section.

Having opted for non-medicated birth, I won’t fault anyone for getting an epidural – as long as they fully understand the benefits and risks. That said, I must point out that doctors often make you wait until you are quite dilated before you can even get the epidural, which is good because an epidural can stall labor. But what most people don’t know is that when labor gets to be just about intolerable, you are so close to being finished and holding your baby in your arms! Another benefit of unmedicated birth is that once the baby is born, for the most part you are ready to eat a sandwich, put your clothes back on and hold your baby (and take a Motrin). Of course, every birth and birth experience is individual and unique- so maybe you will just feel like crap.

“Ultimately, the business of being born ain’t nobody’s business but our own.” is Steven’s conclusion, but I doubt that Stevens would draw the same conclusion if she had bothered to scratch the surface of the more complicated issue of hospitalized birth in the United States. Stevens might find comfort in hearing her doctor say something such as “I graduated first in my class at Johns Hopkins,” but most of these new doctors have never witnessed anything close to a non-medicated, non-intervention, vaginal birth–something pointed out in BOBB. Doctorsaren’t in the habit of sitting back and watching as nature takes its course. They are trained to do something. The idea that a woman is quite capable of delivering her child with minimum of intervention is lost. If the staff does not believe in you, it is very difficult to believe in yourself and your body while you’re delirious from labor.

And yes, of course, thank goodness we have the doctors and trained staff there waiting in the wings if something goes wrong. Then I would probably be thrilled to learn that my surgeon graduated top of her class at Johns Hopkins.

[Photo Credit: Paulo Netto]

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