AlfieInspirationPregnancy
Tuesday 29 September 2009
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Investigating a Birth Goddess
Tomorrow is a big milestone in the history of the family - Alfie is 37 weeks, or more importantly, full term. It feels so strange to know that he is now cooked and that we have nothing more to do than just wait until he is ready to come and meet us. He clearly feels the excitement building because he's giving my ribs a daily workover, which in a funny sort of way is quite comforting.
We’re getting slowly more excited at FTC, Keith especially, knowing that any day could be birth day, while my own excitement is tempered slightly by the boom and bust of my energy levels (and blatant need to nest) and also the very disconcerting feeling of my cervix groaning under the weight of baby plus accoutrements.
One of my daily sanity checks is to go onto a forum and root around various groups to convince myself that I’m not going insane with my various aches and pains. Someone posted a thread yesterday about a lady I had heard of, but more in passing, because she is infinitely more famous across the pond.
This article was published in The Guardian about Ina May Gaskin who frankly is up there with such home grown birth goddesses as Mary Cronk and Shiela Kitzinger as people I would like to sit down and just listen to. Women of compassion and wisdom and calmness who have been so involved in the birth of new life, not in some horrible Disney, saccharine filled way, but accepting it for what it is in all it’s terrible glory.
My NCT teacher very kindly leant me some of Ina May’s books after class last night, namely this one and this one , the second of which I am already poring over like a starving man at a feast.
Actually, on the subject of the NCT and listening, I've just remembered something that happened last night at our class. I have to warn you, you’re going to be shocked at this .... Keith, as in my husband, I’m too cool for school, Batsford actually earned himself BIG brownie points with his detailed knowledge of breast milk.
I was shocked, teach was shocked, in fact I think there was a jaw left off the floor by the time he had finished proudly reeling off the facts and figures of colostrum, fore and hind milk. Please don’t be scared that he’s developed some kind of pervy obsession though, it just appears that the key to sledghammering information into Mr B’s brain is to stick it on a DVD.
In this case the DVD the midwife left when she made her home visit entitled “Bump to Breast” which I found a really helpful look at how different birth experiences can impact breast feeding and also the practicalities of feeding while still having a life, which isn't something you always see given a high priority in these matters.