Working 9 to 5

.... my backache is getting worse, i might ask he midwife on wednesday, but somehow i already know what she is going to tell me ...

but this is what happens to me at about 2 pm every day when i just can't sit anymore: ( i can only cope with this position)

40s pregnant micia

2nd antenatal class

... After the first amazing experience i was dreading this a bit...
the theme was pain relief during labour.... i have always been a strong advocate for epidural, when administered by a serious professional it's the best and safest way to have a baby.... let's see what happened in the class...

Strangely enough the first thing we noticed was that form the 11 couple of the first session only 5 were present.... hhhh the quality of the first lesson must have impressed them too much...

the theme of the day was

PAIN RELIEF DURING LABOUR

These are the options that were offered to us (we talked about these for 1 hour and 55 minutes) - I will try and be objective this time.....

• Gas ... yes the same one you can buy for one pound a balloon when you go raving.. you know the one that gets you high . apparently it is so efficient it comes in pipes directly into your birthing room and you can have as much as you want of it (cost to the NHS a maximum of £30 per person using it)
• Music ..  you must bring your own and you can play it as loud as you want (possibly to cover up you screaming your head off in pain.... cost to the NHS ..FREE)

(if you are clever and combine well number one and number 2 you can come up with your own little rave while pushing an 8 pounds baby out of your vagina, what not to like??)

• Aromatherapy - all of the NHS midwifes are now trained in aromatherapy massage, you can use a range of essential oils (general cost £ 5 pounds a bottle from amazon... i suppose they buy in bulk so it's cheaper) or bring your own (NHS cost = FREE)
• Hot water bottle - bring your own as it might not be there and you need a sleeve or you might get burnt as the pain of labour might be so severe you won't feel the burning  (once again cost to the NHS = FREE)
• Hypnoteraphy ... you need to do a course before it can cost up to £150 (which you have to pay for) or you can buy books on amazon (cost to the NHS £0 .... cost to you variable)
• Praying .... i refuse even to acknowledge this
• Reading .... same as before
• Walking up and down stairs ...apparently if you go up and down staircases sideways the rocking of your pelvis will help your dilation...does nothing for pain but it will keep you busy and might speed up things...
• Tens machines ... YOU MUST RENT this before from a pharmacy as the hospital will not supply this... 
• Opiates ... these are not recommended as they might pass through the bloodstream o the baby making it drowsy so could bring to complications in birth 

In he last 5 minutes we were also informed of another option... THE EPIDURAL ...
the midwife sniggered the moment she said the word, please note last week she refused to show us a forceps, or show us a birth video as it might scare people,
and then proceeded to extract from her bag of tricks the various implements needed for an epidural
the needle is very long look at it
and it has to go in your back think about it
and it might be that you get punctured
and you have to get a catheter fitted

... in other word she did everything she could to get us in the frame of mind that the epidural is really not a viable option.... (cost to the NHS ...varies, need to have a doctor (Obstetrics salary from, £29500) and a anaesthetists (Salaries start at £28000) and a midwife there as well)
also what really struck me is that in the uk the epidural is self administered... i mean the put the tube in and then they give you a button so that you self administer the pain relief drug when you are in pain....
are we serious????


In the rest of the world you have someone checking your anatomy and giving you the right amount of drug so that you do not feel all of the pain and still feel the need to push, making childbirth easier, and you are always checked by a doctor ....


So in the end we still do not know what we want to do... i think we will use the Chiesa-Canziani method we go and swing it....


I am however more and more shocked by the witch doctor approach that has been offered to us... I am not sure all of the NHS is the same, and i am pretty sure it depends a lot from the midwife you have and her degree of hippiness...still I am very disappointed and a bit worried bout the well being of my baby... i have to trust people that seems to think that dancing naked in the moonlight is a valid medical technique....

the hospital

for all of my italian friends that are asking me why am i not giving birth in Italy, i thought i would show you the "amazing" hospital where i could be giving birth....
from the outside it looks like this:

however these are the toilets:

yes i know... traumatising...
and yes i did think
why on earth am i not going to give birth in italy, more than once
but it is a bit too late
and on the plus side
this is what the maternity ward looks like from the inside

30 weeks pregnant

It is week 30 ... only 9/10 weeks more to go

a quick count tells me that:

Ovulation date: Wed, October 5th ,2011
Conception date: Wed, October 5th ,2011
Implantation date: Fri, October 14th ,2011
Due date: Tue, June 26th ,2012
Still to go:

66 days to go 

OMG seems like an eternity and at the same time so close.... this week has been a bit hard, I think hormones were playing up a little and I am getting increasingly paranoid something might go wrong at the last minute... I even started a baby movements monitoring excel spreadsheet as i sometimes am to busy and fail to notice movement and then think baby is dead..... and a chart of my increasing tummy circumference (92 cm this week) as I feel i am not gaining any weight (would i ever imagined this might have become a concern of mine.....)

I am also increasingly disappointed and concerned by the service provided by the NHS, as i am not happy at all with the fact that i have not seen my "real" midwife for 4 months (why would i want to when i have even seen the obstetrician once!!!!) .. it seems they rely a lot on the stats... "97% of the times all goes well, so why should you worry" is the attitude i am faced with. 

I supposed it does do work when you are faced with the numbers they have to deal with; but what they really forget is the emotions that come with this experience, the uncertainty of it all. I have never had babies before, and never been in close contact with women that have, so i really miss emotional support, you jut need someone to tell you what you are going through is normal, and mostly i just want someone scientifically and medically trained to tell me baby is all right and not a middle age WW micro van hippy telling me to smell flowers.....

But enough ranting.... thanks to the internet and wasting a lot of time you can find all of the information you need and definitely more emotional support that you ever need to ...

this is what happens in week 30 of pregnancy:

Your baby now measures a little more than 39cm from crown to toe. Her growth in terms of her length will soon slow down but she will continue to gain weight until she's born. She probably weighs about 1.3kg at this stage. Your baby's lungs and digestive tract are almost fully developed. She continues to open and shut her eyes. She can probably see what's going on inside your uterus (womb), tell light from dark and even track a light source. If you shine a light on your stomach, your baby may move her head to follow the light or even reach out to touch the moving glow. your baby now has eyebrows and can bat her eyelashes! About a litre of amniotic fluid now surrounds your baby, but that volume decreases as she gets bigger and has less room in your uterus. As you and your baby continue to grow, don't be alarmed if you feel breathless, as if you can't get enough air. It's just your uterus pressing against your diaphragm. 

And it should look something like this, but i am not sure baby is turned exactly that way as yesterday evening we freakly felt something like fingers or toes through the tummy......

What i really would have wanted to know during my first antenatal class.....

What i really would have wanted to know during my first antenatal class, but i was faced with sillyness:


There are three stages of labour, and we'll go into each one in more detail in future classes but for now, this is what you need to know.
1. During the first stage your cervix, which is the entrance to your uterus (womb), softens and opens. You'll be having regular contractions: tightenings of your uterus. To start with, the contractions will be several minutes apart. But over time, they will get stronger and longer with less time between them. From start to end the first stage of labour can take a few hours or more than a day, and as things progress it can become a very intense experience.

2. Once your cervix has dilated to 10 cm, the work and excitement of the second stage begin. This is the stage of labour when you push your baby through your vagina and out into the world. At long last, you meet him or her for the first time. If you have had a baby before, the second stage may only take five or 10 minutes. If this is your first baby, it may take several hours. Either way, it's hard work! Have a go at the exercises in the section below - they'll help you to prepare your body for the challenge ahead.

3. You might be surprised to learn that labour isn't over when your baby arrives. Your placenta, which has supported your baby for the past nine months, still needs to come out. This is the third stage of labour. Delivering your placenta is much easier than giving birth to your baby, and you can choose to do it naturally or have an injection that will speed up the process. We'll help you decide which is right for you in week six. 

and this would have been useful to:

Giving birth to your baby can be hard work but there are a few exercises you can do now to help prepare your body for what's to come. Of all the exercises for labour and beyond the most important are your pelvic floor exercises. You need to do at least eight squeezes three times a day. Here's how they're done:

• Place one hand at the top of your bump and the other on one of your shoulders. Breathe normally for four or five breaths.
• If your breathing is relaxed, you should find that the hand on your tummy moves up and down more than the hand on your shoulder. If this is not happening, try to stop your shoulders moving and let your tummy rise and fall naturally.
• Once you have mastered this, gently pull up and in "down below" as you breathe out. When you are learning, don't try to pull up so hard that you have to hold your breath.  Start with a gentle contraction until you have managed to co-ordinate your contraction with a breath out.
• Try then to hold a contraction for a few seconds while you continue to breathe in and out as normal.
• You may feel your lower tummy muscles tightening and this if fine. If you are tightening your upper tummy muscles (above your belly button), then you are trying too hard! Go back to the breathing exercise and start again.

You should aim to be able to hold a pelvic floor contraction for 10 seconds while breathing normally. If you lose your breathing control, stop and start again.

1st Antenatal Class

Today we went to the first antenatal class.
I did not know really what to expect, i was imagining a clean gym looking like room with mirrors and a nurse guiding us through breathing exercises, videos showing us what to expect, and a clear explanation of labour stages and what to do and when to do it...
something like this:

I was possibly  unreasonable and had seen too many US TV shows... or i was just naive...
as it looked much more like this:

I arrived first (why would anyone want to be on time?????)
Slowly the room filled up; there were another5 couples and 2 lonely ladies..... I couple looked like they were 12, but it is possibly just me being an old cow..... they did not seem like the brightest tools in the box.....
We then met our midwife, a nice middle age very English woman that offered us tea and biscuits.
After the meet and greet
(usual round around the room: "Hi May name is Barbara and i am pregnant" kind of thing )
we got down to business, we got divided in 2 groups and we were asked to write down any questions we had....
We spent the rest of the 2 hours discussing the questions and giving the answers.
(yes, you know that old training technique "if you do not know the answer throw it back to the room and someone will know the answer"????? That's exactly what happened)

What questions were asked.... ahhh so interesting and sooooo useful
"What sex position can we use safely?"
"will my penis hit the baby's head if we have sex?" (Yeah you wish man with a clearly too small penis)
and other pearls....
But to be fair we also learnt... we learnt that the baby need to have his head downward to be born (really???? I would never have thought so)
and that if by week 36 the baby had not adopted the desired position ( baby is engaged) we have a situation called breech; and it looks something like this:

 Clearly baby cannot be born this way, we need to have the baby turned....
how do we do it?
a- we can do a downward facing dog and hope the baby moves and turns
b- an obstetrician can turn the baby with his hands (do not worry they give you medicine before doing that)
c- you can have a Cesarean
or... the best option:
d- use Moxibustion

I will not report what Richard did at the mention of this as a viable option, but it was not pretty....

Honestly i thought it was an enormous waste of time, everything they told us i could have read it in a book or on the Internet and it would have possibly be more accurate...

Only 1 piece of info was actually useful, when i will go into labour i will not be admitted in the labour ward until the contractions are 3 to 5 minutes apart and they last about 50 seconds (this will mean my cervix will be 4 cm dilated)
or if my water break and there is blood i need to go in immediately ....

I am now looking forward next week class, where we will be advised on labour positions and pain relief options.... i am sure after the homoeopathy crap they will tell us about will be drafting the birth astrological chart of the baby.

I can't believe we live in the dark ages

Go epidural, go Cesarean