Suzy Q Homemaker

You know, I kind of regret not having more (nice) belly shots during my pregnancies.  I never got my belly cast in plaster or had a magical blessing way ceremony where my stretch marks were painted with henna.  I didn’t make a placenta print.  In fact, I have a couple really horrible photos of me pregnant with Timothy from a few weeks before delivery and of me about six hours before delivery.  While I am writing this post, I’m considering posting them, but I don’t want to frighten you or make you wish you could UNSEE them.

Did I want any of these things?  Maybe.  I guess I just didn’t have enough hippie mom friends to invite over.  And it’s not like I could ask some random women from church.  “Hey do you want to come paint my stomach?  It could be fun!”  Honestly, I don’t know what happens in a blessing way ceremony.  I’ve heard OF them, but haven’t done any research otherwise.

Belly casting was something I considered in my early pregnancy but didn’t give another thought to until after the birth.  Obviously, it was too late by then.  I really don’t have anywhere where I could have hung a gigantic plaster replica of my belly, anyway.  I’m not saying “gigantic” to exaggerate.  I was HUGE.  Hey, I’m 5’3″ and my uterus was literally falling through the tear in my abdominal wall.

We weren’t really sure what we wanted to do with the placenta.  Since we had a home birth with Timothy, it was a little detail that we needed to take care of.  Obviously we couldn’t just toss it in the trash.  We have raccoons that come onto our front porch every night when Jamie doesn’t actually take the trash out TO the trash can.  I certainly didn’t want them to eat my body part.  I thought about getting it encapsulated and even had instructions to do so.  The burden of that fell to Jamie, though, and I think he just didn’t want to have to do it.  I’m terrible about taking my regular vitamins anyway, so remembering to take pills full of my ground-up placenta could easily have gone by the wayside.

In the end, we buried the placenta and planted a ginkgo tree on top.  It was most normal and practical thing to do at the time.  Jamie was uncomfortable with making a piece of art from my bloody placenta, so placenta prints were out.  I did get to look at it, though, and my midwife showed me where I had a slight previa that had gone completely undiagnosed.  See there!  Even with the ultrasounds, I had a complication that no one knew about.

So did you do anything special to memorialize your pregnancy and birth?  Did you do anything super crunchy like eat your placenta or make art work out of it?

You know you want to see these awful photos of me.  So, here you go.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

[View with PicLens]

My sister said it best in her interview with the Sundance Channel for her green wedding:

“A lot of people like to pick on the little things that you couldn’t do instead of looking at all the things that you could do. Because you can’t do everything; and just because you can’t do everything, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do something.”

What I couldn’t do:

Give birth at home. We couldn’t afford to pay out-of-pocket for a doula, midwife, and all the supplies that one needs for a safe homebirth. Had we been able to afford it, I would have been all for it.

What I could do:

Have as intervention-free births as I saw possible. I won’t go into my birth stories, but all my children were born vaginally: one epidural, one Bradley, one induced Bradley.

The homebirth/hospital birth debate is exhausting, to say the least. And I had set out to write this long blog post about it. I’ll keep it simple today, though.

Here’s what any mother could do:

1. Read. Educate yourself before you even decide to get pregnant. Know your rights as a birthing mother and make an informed decision. And I’m not talking about picking up a magazine in the doctor’s office or skimming the google search page after typing in “childbirth.” I mean REALLY READ. Get some books from the library, borrow some from a friend, and check out some websites that aren’t designed to scare women into scheduling their c-sections.

2. Don’t get caught up in statistics. While informative, they are often used as scare tactics and are a poor means of defending any point.

3. Ask questions. Doctors are humans and can sometimes be wrong! If you don’t feel like you understand why they are performing a certain procedure on you, ask. And check out your doctor’s c-section rate. Ask him or her about their stand on performing c-sections.

I want to hear about happy births right now. My mind is racing and I’m grateful for my husband who has to listen to me bitch about stuff I read on the internet!