Ten Months Pregnant

I guess he just wanted to be a June baby.

As it nears midnight, I am approaching being four days past my due date. Six days past, if you are counting by menstrual dating.

I know this is only my second baby, but it is new (and odd) to me, not exactly what I expected. Hunter was a day early and pretty simple and straightforward. One afternoon I started having regular, very mild contractions. They increased in severity and closeness slowly but steadily for the evening until my water broke at eleven pm. Hunter was born six hours later.

With this little guy, we've been playing the waiting game for what seems like an eternity. I've been having contractions, but not regularly. Today, I have had a lot, but they come and go, being three or four minutes apart for a little while, then ten minutes apart, then none for an hour or two. Some are sharp and painful, some just like little cramps, other times I will just notice mild tightening. I seem to have lost my mucus plug. But we're still waiting.

I'm not in too much of a hurry. Things are happening, at least, and this morning the baby was monitored and is doing fine. We have family in town, though, and they can only be here for a few more days. My husband is getting a bit worried, wondering why the baby isn't here yet. I keep getting asked, "Anything yet? Any news?" from anxious relatives. I try to not let any of it get to me, but it's difficult.

Tomorrow afternoon, I am scheduled to be admitted to the hospital and given a cervix softener. That, in and of itself, will hopefully induce labor. If not, they are wanting to put me on pitocin, which I don't want. Either way, three pm tomorrow is waiting anxiously for me. Once I'm in, I'm not going home without a baby in arms. I worry if I'm making the right decision, but don't know what else to do. Hopefully, everything will go well. I have a feeling that tomorrow is going to be a long night.

"Baby binder", with developmental profile cover,
near bags to take to hospital

Our bags are packed, as they have been for almost a month. I have many materials made for the baby, but not all. The baby has plenty of clothes, toiletries, basic necessities. The house is mostly clean, the laundry mostly done.

I'm excited, ready to meet this baby, but so unsure of myself. Unsure of what to expect, in labor and delivery, in the first few weeks. I remember, but at the same time don't remember, what it is like to have a newborn. I don't know what it will be like having a baby and doing the Doman program, and trying to homeschool a first grader, and in a few weeks, trying to do all that plus work with daycare kids ten hours a day. It'll all come together, I'm sure, but I worry, I fear for my inadequacy.

The stuff I didn't get done, I try not to worry about. I know I might be out of commission beyond breast feeding and recovering from labor for the first week or two, but after that, I know that here and there, there will be time to accomplish other things.

Even with all my fears, doubts, and worries, I am as ready as I'll ever be to meet this little guy and begin this new adventure, this new phase in our life. I'm scared, anxious, nervous, but I know that, somehow, everything will be okay.

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted" 

Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

Hunter is 6 years, 2 months old
Baby boy # 2 is 40 weeks, 3 days gestation

My Take on Prenatal Stimulation

"The human body is such a miracle and even more of a miracle is the brain that runs it... Want some examples? If you happen to be pregnant at this moment and happen to know that you are, try looking at your watch for one minute. Do you know what happened during those sixty seconds? At the end of the sixty seconds, your baby had a quarter of a million more brain cells than he had when you began counting, sixty seconds earlier." 

-Glenn Doman, How to Teach Your Baby to Be Physically Superb

I am continually amazed by the miracle of human development.

When I first began discovering the incredible world of early learning three and a half years ago via Glenn Doman, this also led to the discovery of the interesting, semi-related topic of "in utero learning", or prenatal stimulation.

BabyPlus

While I recognize that the unborn human infant is most definitely a living, learning, thinking, growing, and incredible creature, I am leery of most commercial "prenatal stimulation" products promising, usually: smarter, more alert, better-sleeping, better-nursing, faster-developing, calmer, happier newborns, without any real basis for their claims.

BabyPlus comes to mind, for example. The devise promises all these results and more, by playing different heartbeat-style sounds for your baby for two hours a day. The website is filled with fanatical parent testimonials, but as I read I began to wonder - how do the parents know a difference versus what their baby would have been like without the $150 sound box? Isn't this a classic example of "placebo effect"?

I am not entirely critical or skeptical of the idea that playing heartbeat sounds could one day be found to be somehow beneficial to the baby (the idea is that the baby learns to differentiate between his mother's heartbeat and the artificial heartbeat, supposedly making him more aware of his surrounding and stimulating curiosity in his environment).

But for a product to make such hefty claims, boasting everything from babies that nurse better to heightened school readiness, seems to me to smell a little of snake oil.

The idea of unborn babies learning to differentiate sounds seems like it's pretty obviously already happening - the differences in mother's heartbeat when she is resting, vigorously active, or somewhere in between; the difference of the intestinal sounds as mother digests different foods or when the digestive system is at rest; the different sounds of mother's blood flowing at different rates; the sound of his own self as he swooshes around in the womb; and, of course, all the different external sounds that he hears, from music to voices to the sound of traffic, or the difference in the noise level at daytime and night. Differentiation of sounds for the unborn doesn't seem to me like something BabyPlus invented.

Stimulation I Believe In

What shall we say then? Is the idea of influencing the unborn child laughable, or is there merit to any these techniques?

I understand and recognize from the growing amount of research how much of a "little person" unborn children are, everything from being able to dream, play, acquire tastes for certain foods, and enjoy Cat in the Hat. Unborn babies can hear, see light, feel, taste, and even smell. At birth they recognize their mother's voice and even can distinguish and prefer their native language. Certainly, learning is happening long before baby makes his exit from the womb.

So what is my take? I...

Talk to my baby  We all do. Mom, dad, and big brother. He's never too young to benefit from hearing language, and he is learning to recognize our voices, which will hopefully be a comfort and familiarity when he makes his entrance.

Play cause and effect  When he kicks, I like to gently poke back. And talk to him. It is a fun give-and-take little game, and often it actually seems like he is playing with me. Theoretically, he is learning about cause and effect, but I'm sure he is already learning about this in other ways too. I just see it as a fun bonding experience.

Play great music  No, I don't strap headphones to my abdomen. But since music, especially classical, is so beneficial to everyone, it certainly can't hurt to expose him to it now. Hunter listens to it daily already every afternoon for several hours, so little guy gets to get in on it too. Currently, we are on Tchaikovsky.

Read  Again, baby boy #2 gets in on the reading I do with Hunter every afternoon. Also, the "baby's chapter" is Proverbs chapter 3 (the first 24 verses), which we read every night. I got the idea from someone I read about who used to read Proverbs 3 to their boys and Proverbs 31 to their girls on the day of their birth. To me this is more preferable than the Cat in the Hat, and hopefully the baby will not only benefit from the beautiful language currently, but will recognize "his" proverb when I continue to read it to him nightly as he grows.


Even with these "stimulating" these that I do do, I still believe that the most important gift, advantage, and interaction I can give my baby is giving my body (and his) the proper nutrients (and keeping out as many toxins as possible), exercising regularly, and avoiding stress.

All these "stimulating" things are fun and I do know that my baby is already learning from his environment (with or without my help), but nothing can compare to the gift of health (which includes a healthy brain)! 

"For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy." 

Luke 1:44

Baby boy #2 is 25 weeks, 0 days gestation

Fetal Interaction

Baby brother's movements have been getting stronger and more powerful by the week.

Here is a little game we play - kick, poke back, kick, poke back.

Learning cause and effect? Maybe... It does seem like a lot of the time, he enjoys these games and tends to kick longer when I play.

But mostly I am just enjoying the bonding with my teeny tiny little guy.

"For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made..." 

Psalm 139:13-14

Baby boy #2, in video, is 24 weeks, 1 day gestation

And... It's a Boy

"By thee have I been holden up from the womb: thou art he that took me out of my mother's bowels: my praise shall be continually of thee." 

Psalm 71:6

Baby boy #2 is 19 weeks, 5 days gestation

My Unconventional List of Baby Supplies

My nephew, Jordan, at three months old,
gazing at a contrast board

Do you know what was the first baby thing I went out and bought when I found out I was pregnant?

Two large pieces of white foam board and a half dozen pieces of black poster board.

If you're a Doman parent you know exactly what I'm talking about.

If you're not I will just leave it as an inside joke for the moment. (hint: it has to do with the above picture)

Fast forward almost two months later, and I have finally finished scanning through my copy of How Smart is Your Baby? [the answer: very] I now have a shopping list of things to buy, make, or collect in preparation for baby's arrival.

The aforementioned Doman book is all about creating the ideal growth and development environment for your baby that helps them instead of hinders them. It is about intentional infant parenting practices, that recognize how to brain grows and caters to those ways on purpose rather than letting it happen by chance.

So, as such, my list of "baby supplies" includes strange things like black and white patterns for visual stimulation, a homemade crawling track, which is an ideal environment for tummy time and newborn mobility, a flashlight for developing pupil constrictions, and a wooden dowel for enforcing and growing the grasp reflex.

But, hey, what's wrong with a little unconventional?

So, my "nesting instinct" is filling my home with things like black, white, and brightly-colored poster board, large pictures, sound-making objects such as a xylophone and a triangle, grasping objects, fabrics of various textures, and flashlights.

I'm also working on making (some of) my own baby equipment. Instead of an exersaucer, bouncy seat, jumper, swing, play yard, walker, bassinette, and all the multiple other things that we contrive to contain babies in their pre-walking stage, we are going to simply have a (homemade) crawling track. And a floor. Much cheaper, and much better for baby's development. We might also have a sling for when the baby is being held.

For the bed, baby will most likely sleep with us (or sleep in the crawling track next to us) for the first couple months. Then I am thinking about devising some sort of Montessori floor bed with a mini brachiation ladder over it, for when the baby is a bit older, like we had here. Again, a little unconventional. But that's ok.

I'm actually really excited. About the new possibilities. The new understanding. The new adventure.

So, here's to the unconventional. 

Which just may be the new normal in 50 years.

"For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding."

Proverbs 2:6

Baby #2 is 11 weeks, 1 day gestation

Hello, World

"I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother's belly." 

Psalm 22:10

Baby #2, in picture, was nine weeks, one day gestation

Prenatal Stress... and Babies with Sleep Problems?

Hunter, sleeping at age one

A recent interest of mine (for pretty apparent reasons) has been the whole body of research behind the idea of fetal origins. That is, how research continues to show just how much life in the womb can effect pretty much the entire rest of your life (especially when it comes to health), often in surprising and substantial ways.

One such way is the link between prenatal stress and sleep problems when the child is a baby and toddler.

From this study:

"...children born to mothers who were depressed or anxious during pregnancy experienced more sleep problems. For instance, mothers classified as clinically anxious 18 weeks into pregnancy, compared to their non-anxious counterparts, were about 40 percent more likely to have an 18-month-old who refused to go to bed, woke early, and kept crawling out of bed. The child’s rocky relationship with sleep often persisted until he or she was 30 months old."

The connection continued even after controlling for multiple other influences. Forty percent is a pretty big number, don't you think?

And sleep, as I've been recently discovering by the available research, is really important for little kids.

"...sleep ranks as one of the most highly regarded indexes of healthy development, and plays a critical role in consolidating memory and facilitating learning, regulating metabolism and appetite, promoting good moods and sustaining both cardiovascular health and a vigorous immune function."

They also hypothesized that the poor-sleep connection may also have something to do with why "mood-disturbed" pregnancies are often related to children with "behavioral disorders, like depression, hyperactivity and anxiety"

"It remains to be seen if the sleep problems we witnessed may play an active, causal role in priming the path for these children’s emotional and cognitive problems in later life [listed above], or if both conditions merely fall out of the same stressful pregnancies."

You can read the full story and the details of the study here.

Maybe it's time I quit stressing about my stress level, don't you think?

"The LORD will give strength unto his people; the LORD will bless his people with peace." 

Psalm 29:11

Baby #2 is 8 weeks, 0 days gestation

Baby Sibling, 5 Weeks Gestation

"Before you were conceived I wanted you. Before you were born I loved you. Before you were here an hour old I would die for you. This is the miracle of Mother's Love."

 Maureen Hawkins

From babycenter.com:

"Deep in your uterus your embryo is growing at a furious pace. At this point, he's about the size of a sesame seed, and he looks more like a tiny tadpole than a human. He's now made up of three layers — the ectoderm, the mesoderm, and the endoderm — which will later form all of his organs and tissues.

The neural tube — from which your baby's brain, spinal cord, nerves, and backbone will sprout — is starting to develop in the top layer, called the ectoderm. This layer will also give rise to his skin, hair, nails, mammary and sweat glands, and tooth enamel.

His heart and circulatory system begin to form in the middle layer, or mesoderm. (This week, in fact, his tiny heart begins to divide into chambers and beat and pump blood.) The mesoderm will also form your baby's muscles, cartilage, bone, and subcutaneous (under skin) tissue.

The third layer, or endoderm, will house his lungs, intestines, and rudimentary urinary system, as well as his thyroid, liver, and pancreas. In the meantime, the primitive placenta and umbilical cord, which deliver nourishment and oxygen to your baby, are already on the job."

It's amazing what can be accomplished in just a little over two weeks since attaching to the uterus, from such a tiny little creature, no?

"...thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well." 

Psalm 139:13-14

Baby is 5 weeks, 1 day gestation

Double Pink Lines (Wordless Wednesday)

"Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward... Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate." 

Psalm 127:3, 5

Baby is 4 weeks, 6 days gestation