september mama

*dancing, prancing, and floating in the air*

they said i'm a great candidate that they think "will do really well" with the birth center! they didn't care about the FVL, all my exams were fantastic, and they said i have 'good genes' lol. NO HOSPITAL FOR ME!!!!

so. in addition to that wonderful news, can i just say that the freaking midwives there are totally amazing? i have a real problem with pelvic exams but she was so gentle and obviously compassionate that it didn't even upset me. she explained everything as if i had never had an exam before (which, while unnecessary, was kinda nice), and they even let me see my cervix! it's gross and weird looking, but no doctor would bother taking the time to do that. why should a woman know what her own insides look like? ha. her assistant was a little rough around the edges but i think she's a very new student, and she was nice, so i took it in stride.

the best part of the whole thing was when they were going to do the doppler thing and i said "wait is that an ultrasound?" the assistant really didn't know what to do with me and just immediately started to back off and put it away, but the midwife was not put-off and willingly explained the fact that NO safety studies have been done on it, and no studies proving that it is actually beneficial, etc etc, and she was very honest that the only reason to do it is to 'maybe' let me hear the heartbeat. so i promptly said "no thanks" and she was totally cool with it. no awkwardness whatsoever. yay!

and and and they have this great little library bookshelf and i checked out two books that have each already made me cry once: birthing in the spirit and naturebirth. they have all kinds of books on pregnancy, birth, child care, herbal medicine, and whatnot.

OH! and my insurance deductible for the birth and prenatal care? ZERO. $0. i get to do this whole thing from start-to-finish with a single payment of $25. wtf? i am soooo happy about that!

plus reggae shack for lunch, my day cut short for the 2-hour excursion, blueberry muffins for the boss' birthday...

today has been an awesome day so far.

so i found this blog (somehow) of a chick where she's writing about her pregnancy, and i really enjoyed this bit of post:

"It is not that I am not excited or happy, because I am, just not to the point where I am hyperventilating and all goo goo ga ga over everything BABY. I am also not very worried about miscarriage or infant death or anything of the sort. I am actually quite confident that everything is going to be just fine. I mean, what other way is there to live your life?

The thing is, before I got pregnant I totally pictured myself being BEYOND ELATED during pregnancy, that I would totally feel complete and whole, that I would love and cherish every moment of every day I had this little life inside me. I thought that every moment of every day would feel SPECIAL and EXHILARATING... Well, REALITY CHECK: Your life doesn't really change much AT ALL when you are first pregnant, except it kinda sucks more.

You still have to go to work every day, you still have to do your chores and run your errands. You still have to go to the gym and take the dog to the park. None of the mundane in your life changes because you're pregnant. You don't have a belly, you can't feel the baby, all you feel is nausea and headaches and dizzy and backaches and TIRED AS FOOK!! You can't take any medicine, you can't have a cocktail or a cigarette or goat cheese or sushi. You only poop like once every four days and your tummy hurts all the time. All you want to do is sleep and everything makes you cry, even the comics."

ah.. yep. lol. she forgot to mention a few things though:

1) mood swings of the totally unjustified sort (e.g., last night i nearly lost it because matt was 3 hours late coming home from school and all i could think is that he likes the girl who was showing them what dispatchers do... i woke up literally 10 minutes before he walked in, as if there is some kind of psychic connection telling me when he starts up the truck to come home. ...but in my suspicious defense, i honestly can't imagine the rest of those pre-cops stayed out that late.)

2) the insane dreams; sexual, emotional, narrative, and just generally v i v i d. (reference above: i had a dream that he liked a girl in his class, and now i'm turning it into a hallucinated reality.)

3) clothes that slowly stop fitting in total disregard of the fact that you have no money to go buy new ones yet!

...but it's all worth it in the end, yeah yeah i know. glad i'll be able to say that in 7 MONTHS. for now i just have to suffer like the rest of history's women. *sigh*

i feel wretched. as in, retch-ed.

ugh. where's my tea?!

well. yesterday i only had one cup of RLT and apparently only needed one! today i haven't had any and i do not feel sick. i am really, really tired though.

it's weird how now that i am expecting certain discomforts, i get a little nervous when they fade... i worried about the lack of nausea at first, since i'm only on month 2, but my boobs are still as sore as ever and my libido is still crazy. and i'm tired and getting emotional.

i guess i just didn't expect to be feeling better already. it's great--i hope it lasts!

crap! i just wrote a long post and--despite having decided to change it dramatically anyway--i am very frustrated that it just disappeared! *grumble*

i wrote all about how even though i have been "bad" with my diet i have been promising to go raw once i stop hating food again... partly because of this article, which a friend sent me today. and it's true, i agree that milk is for baby cows, not grownup humans. it's gross that we drink it so much and it probably does cause freakin cancer.

however... as i get older i am more and more drawn to what seems to be the wisdom of a totally self-sufficient "natural" diet, which includes raw dairy products preferably obtained from the family cow or goat. i've spent most of today confusing myself with totally conflicting points of view between raw foodists and the weston a. price foundation. i really like them, generally, though i detect moments of trying-too-hard to convince the reader of the sensibility of what they say. they're a little too defensive here and there.

i have been eating (organic and/or home grown) eggs for a long time, and i have no issue with seafood anymore, so i do not intend to cut them out, but dairy gives me a lot of trouble. i just don't know what to do with it. i think it's weird to eat it, first of all, but at the same time it never makes me feel icky or anything, and the research on its healthy-standing is bipolar depending on where you get it from. and now, being pregnant, i'm trying to make sure i ingest enough fats and dense nutrition as possible without resorting to 'organ meats' or cod liver oil *barf* so raw dairy seems like a wise option (much unlike pasteurized processed dairy). i think?!

the other problem is how fantastic i feel when i am 100% raw. it's like floating in a body of light, and i love that. but... but... is that state of mind somehow induced by a brain starvation of certain neurotransmitters i would otherwise be producing?

oh and to add another twist, pregnant women are "advised against eating any raw fish or dairy products" due to the risk of food poisoning that can cross the placenta.

*sigh* i'm sure i am thinking about this too much, and the good thing is that i do listen to what my body wants (which hasn't been much raw stuff lately), but this is a big deal with potentially huge consequences and i do not want to be accidentally failing to get the best possible nutrition because of some weird food phobia or misguidance on what is or isn't healthy for me and little bean.

ok--be logical. there's nothing wrong with eating tons of raw fruits and vegetables, some eggs and seafood, a daily dose of raw dairy, and not ingesting ill-treated grains or processed foods. i can do that.

time to revise the fridge.

**i wrote this to the stopping point, which is when i got distracted by the WAPF and wrote the next post because i thought i lost this one. funny how my perspective was so clear and then went bye-bye.**

well. i've mentioned how i have been eating non-vegan foods and whatnot, like yogurt, some cheeses, butter, and whatnot... and i've felt fine about it because i'm picky about what i buy and from whom, but it needs to stop. i've been telling myself that i'll stop when i can eat without feeling sick, but that's just a lame way of dragging this out.

a friend forwarded me this article today and it reminded me of all the reasons i gave up dairy 8 years ago... it's hard to think how i fell off the vegan wagon. it just kind of happened bit-by-bit?? but it's time to go back, albeit slightly modified.

the main difference now is that soy is on my list of banned foods as well, so it really is easier to just go raw than try to fuss with milk-substitutes. the exception to the "raw" food will be organic free-range eggs (preferably from the family farm) and fish/seafood, which i feel my body needs in small quantities. since i have been pregnant i feel less inclined to eat eggs--i don't need them and they don't make me feel great--but fish is a different matter. my body is very interested in seafood these days.

so i'm going with it... "mostly" raw except a couple of things that totally aren't. lol. the big thing is to get rid of the dairy. milk is for baby cows, not people. so gross. i'm not sure why i started to think it's ok.

(actually i do, it was the weston price foundation. overall, i think they rock, and it's not that i disagree with them per se, i just more strongly feel that milk is not meant for people. if you are going to drink it, do it raw and fresh, at least!)