Baby Weekend

Last weekend was a baby filled weekend for us. We watched a couple of baby related videos (the Penn & Teller episode on Circumcision as well as the Business of Being Born), we had brunch with a local preggo meetup group, and we toured the birth center where Speck will be born.

I got the P&T video from my Doula, Miranda. She lent me this along with a Men's Health article on Circumcision. It has been a couple of weeks since I decided to stop fighting with Erik on this topic, which was apparently enough time for him to be able to take in this new info without one of us getting emotional. It helps that the P&T video was hillarious. I was quite releived by Erik's reaction and think we are now near a decision on this topic!

The birth center tour was interesting. I'm glad we did it, because it was actually not quite what I expected. It is great and I'm still happy with my choice, it was just a little bit different than what was in my head and I'm glad that those differences won't be a surprise on the big day.

Erik took videos of the facility with his iPhone and sent a really cute email to our families (who are still a little concerned about the mid-wife). I thought I'd repost it here to share...

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Hello family

Mom and Dad-to-be and baby Kubec had a fun day today. We met other families to be with upcoming births in March or April or May, and then we went to the University of Colorado Hospital, where we will be having baby Kubec: http://www.uch.edu/

This facility was built on donation from Anschutz. We we given a personal tour of the post partum, birth, and OR rooms of the facility. I am super excited after touring the facility. Floors 4 and 5 are dedicated to birthing, natal, neonatal, post natal, natal-natal-natal, etc. We will check in on the 4th floor, where triage is located. We will have an option of a wheel chair, and then we go to the 5th floor.

This is where the action will happen!

There are about 6 birthing rooms, 6 post partum "hanging out with the baby and family" rooms, and one operating room on this floor. On the 4th floor is the NNIC: the Neo Natal Intensive Care unit. There are an additional 2 Operating Rooms on this floor. We will have one of 4 midwives, a doula, and OB-GYN at the premises. The doula we will know, the midwives we will have met, and the OB-GYN we won't have met.

We are truly blessed!

The facility is state of the art and we feel that we are so lucky to have so many choices to commit to for our birth. We are blessed to have so much information and experience to draw upon. In the past 7 months, we have gotten to intimately know the medical and insurance industries. We have found a lot of inefficiencies and scary statistics.

In infant mortality, the US ranks #28: tied with two countries that are barely considered to be western: Poland and Slovakia. Yet we spend twice as much as anyone else on childbirth. We found some strange stuff as well too:

In Holland, there are something like 60% of births done at home. Yet their infant and mother mortality rate is half of ours.

The 'mother on the back position' is physiologically the worst position for a mother to give birth in.

There is a purpose for foreskin other than to donate to the tissue bank!

There is statistical evidence that doulas and midwives make birth go easier: lower deaths, lower emergency surgery, etc.

Of course, people die in childbirth all the time, and the US has a medical industry that is best when things are at its worst: premature birth, complications etc. 100 years ago, people would die from these things. Now, they don't (as much). There has been a cost, however. Births have gotten really expensive, and we are not as effective as many other countries that look at birth as more of a natural process than an automatic medical emergency.

We have learned that normally, there is a starting postion of the unborn baby that relates to is positioning. Ideally, our little guy should start facing opposite his mom and upside down and a bit to one side (preferably to mom's left). The baby begins to make his best corkscrew olympic dive imitation and squeezes the occiput (the soft spot on his head) into the cervical opening. This is assuming he is not coming breach, or forehead first.

A natural birth normally follows from here, but sometimes goes one of many other less travelled paths.

We want to give Gwen and baby Kubec the best chance for the common natural delivery, while being completely ready for consent we will give to facilitate the success of a birth that follows another path. Our doula, midwife, and google and can help us prepare for those paths as well, and the OB-GYN is right there should we need their marvelous skill set.

We have multiple paths to physically get to the hospital should a meteor crash into I-25, and I just put top of the line Michelin tires on our 4WD (Michelin has those baby commercials). So we are ready!

Love,

Erik