38 weeks, some unsorted thoughts

Last night I had a dream that I was in early labor and my midwife suggested that I buy some very expensive mint chocolate chip ice cream and eat it to stay hydrated.

Ha!

When people talked about having swollen feet at the end of pregnancy, I thought they were complaining because their shoes didn’t fit and their ankles looked fat.  I did not know that swollen meant painful.  I did not know that after a couple of hours laying down, I would have to move very slowly to get up, because moving too fast would give me round ligament pain in my sides, because my balance would be off and my legs would be stiff, because it would hurt to place my swollen feet on the floor to walk to the bathroom.

Pregnancy becomes more surreal after 37 weeks, doesn’t it?  Try to grasp the idea that there is another person living inside my body.  She’s complete and ready to live outside my body, and if you could reach in and pluck her out, she’d be able to breathe and cry and send blood pumping through a fully formed human body.  But she’s living inside of me.  Look at me, and you see two people in one.

The pregnancy book I’ve skimmed through most recently is Birthing from Within.  It is kind of like The Artist’s Way meets pregnancy.  Written by midwife Pam England and psychologist Rob Horowitz, Birthing from Within is based on a childbirth class taught by England in New Mexico.  Focusing less on institutional procedures,  scientific facts, or the kinds of guidelines you’d find in “What to Expect,” Birthing from Within is a right-brained, zen-influenced guide to preparing for childbirth.  There were a couple of things I particularly appreciated about this book:

• The early chapter on creating art as a way of exploring your own feelings about giving birth is challenging, helpful, and unique.
• England emphasizes the reality of the pain of childbirth (Ina May’s books, in contrast, do make it sound too easy).   Birth pain is inevitable, but you can handle it.
• While American culture today focuses on the baby in birth, England shows how other cultures have also honored the re-birth of the woman as mother when she gives birth.  The late, most painful phase of labor and delivery, where the woman loses awareness of everything going on, knows nothing but what her body is doing, feels that the pain is too much and she will “die” — this England likens to the death of the former woman and the birth of the mother.  Mothers and Fathers are both accepting a “death” to an old life (of being free to go out to dinner, to the movies, to sleep through the night, to earn the same income, to career plans, etc.) and a birth into a new life.  An interesting thought, and perhaps especially important for women (like me, and like most women in the US today) who didn’t grow up imagining themselves as mothers.
• The most helpful chapter, overall, is the chapter on pain management techniques.  Of course, not having given birth yet, I can’t say how helpful they will be, but the chapter seems to me to be the most complete collection of natural pain management tools that I’ve found in a general pregnancy guide (discounting books that focus primarily on labor pain).