Author: Pam

Technology has brought us many conveniences, take for example computers. Don’t they provide us with wonderfully efficient, stress free support?…Medicine has also benefited from research and technology. We have learned that handwashing is a good thing and bleeding a patient not so good. There is the question though of how much of a good thing, is still a good thing. I work in the intensive care, I see examples of “just because we can, should we” daily.

Take for examples epidurals. They provide excellent pain relief in the post-operative patient. People are able to sleep (if sleep can be had in a hospital); we all know that sleep is required for healing. They help patients ambulate and deep breathe and cough which is the number 1 way to avoid pneumonia. However are epidurals necessarily a good thing for all labouring women? Epidurals are admittedly the best form of narcotic since they actually stop the pain messages rather then just altering one’s perception of pain, but should every labouring woman in the 21st century have an epidural?

As with every argument there are pros and cons. Reasons for an epidural; epidurals allow the mom to rest, why should one suffer through pain when they don’t have too, not all labours are equal depending on position of baby, some could just plain hurt more then others.

However an epidural will confine you to bed more then otherwise, taking away your body’s natural ability to use positioning and gravity to aid delivery. Epidurals by design block receptors, therefore there is less oxytocin released in response to pelvic floor stretch receptors, causing statistically longer labours and increased risks of medical interventions (like c-sections). I am delivering this baby in the USA; statistically they are the worlds highest at 25% of women having c-sections. Also there is some suggestion of increased difficulty breastfeeding and bonding after epidurals.

My goal for the delivery of this child is to have a “natural childbirth” ie: pain medication free (just the name of it sounds wrong), by publishing that fact here I have now committed myself. Now I know that I have never been in labour before, and many of the readers of this blog have been and used an epidural. (It has been said that the way to get comments to a blog is to publish something controversial) It may well happen that after the first contraction hits that I start begging for that epidural. I haven’t had very much success with relaxing while squeezing an ice cube in my hand for 1 minute (try it sometime), this strategy is supposed to prepare you for labour. My decision to go epidural free is not based on an attitude of “I am woman hear me roar” (I hope), at this point it is based on research which is all I have to go on right now. Wish me luck!

Since we moved to Massachusetts Lowell and I have been looking for a dessert and coffee shop to replace Baked Expectations, I think we might have finally found it. The Black Sheep does not offer cheesecake but I have found nothing wrong with the other sweets that they offer. Last night I had a Chocolate Eruption (rich and melt in your mouth) with a Vanilla Almond tea (I didn’t realize that they would be so enjoyable together) and to top it all off I finished reading C.S. Lewis’s “Till We Have Faces”. This is one of those times when I need a book club. “Till We Have Faces” is described as Lewis’s adult novel, it reads very simply, the story itself is nothing dramatic. However I picked it up looking for Lewis’s themes in keeping with “The Chronicles of Narnia” and I was not disappointed, maybe I wasn’t perceptive enough to find it earlier in the story, but it is impossible to miss it at the end. I still have some questions that I would love to discuss, but I have enough food for thought to percolate for awhile. I am not sure who to recommend this book to, I could see people not liking it and yet I think that it is worth the read. So to anyone wanting to read a rich book here is one for you, since I am not recommending it to you personally I take no ownership if you do not like it.

So I am 8 months pregnant and I look it. As one of the doctors asked recently “Is it safe now to ask if you are pregnant?” I realize that I am as big as a house, so people can’t help but notice me, but what gives perfect strangers the right to touch and talk to me? Some examples: I am walking down the street and a 20 something boy with dreadlocks is walking towards me as we pass he smiles and says “It’s a girl” and walks on. I am in a fitting room and the sales lady asks “Can I rub your belly for luck? (Did I suddenly become Buddha?) An older lady sitting on a park bench asks me “Are you feeling alright?” A man waiting to board the subway points rubs his belly and gives me the thumbs up. Alright, I could go on and on, you get the picture. Is there some primal instinct to care for the continuation of the species that comes out in people or are these people just weird? What is the appropriate response when a stranger in the grocery store comes up and says “Oh you’re pregnant” and touches my belly? I am not opposed to physical connections between people, I don’t mind being touched by people I know, but it is a little uncomfortable to draw this much attention. Thankfully I have always been able to smile and walk away and be thankful that this pregnancy is almost over.

So today I went to a memorial service for one of my co-workers who was killed in a car accident. I had not known him long enough to count him as one of my friends, but in many ways he was like some of the men that I am proud to call my friends, including my own husband. He was born in 1975, calm, confident, brillant, a lover of learning, who worked and played hard; one of the first conversations that I had with Jason was about WOW (an online computer game), in fact most of the conversations that we had were about World of Warcraft, he was a self confessed addict of the game. He and his wife (who I also work with) have a 2 and 4 year old. After the service I went to my midwife appointment and listened to the heartbeat of my unborn child. Two extremes, and yet are they really? Jason could have been me, he could have been Lowell; just starting to get a handle on the life plan. I must confess that my thoughts rarely dwell on the eternal and how long we have here on earth. Have I used my time wisely? In case my life is short what things do I value that I want my child to value and how do I teach my child these things.