The Diaper Cake: I was BLOWN away by this centerpiece. My friends Leslie and Marlyne built it togther, from the diapers up.
The Phoenix: A caffeine-free Rooibos tea, with honey, caramel and vanilla. I’m so glad I had my own pot! I couldn’t have shared.
Go-Go: I need to get the babe some white go-go boots to go with this dress!
: This little doll recites The Lord’s Prayer when you squeeze it. Too cute.
: A girl can never have enough clothes!
Don’t tell my mom…: Lee gave the babe a Yankee outfit, which will surely make my mother unhappy but made my friend Sue VERY happy, especially since Lee was thoughtful enough to get a matching outfit for Sue’s little girl, so our babies could be Yankee “twins.”
My creation: On Thursday, we had our 36 week check-up. All is well with the babe but she is currently presenting breech. The hospital where I am giving birth has a policy of doing C-Sections with breech babies, so I am on a clock. The babe has three weeks to turn around before the section, which was scheduled rather swiftly, too swiftly for our comfort. Since then, I’ve been feeling an enormous onslaught of emotion. My fears towards the C-Section stem from anxiety about having surgery (which I’ve never had before, ever! I’ve never even broken a bone!), feelings of inadequacy, concerns about how this affects our insurance (stupid, I know!), and so on. I’ve been doing research online not just about C-Sections but about turning around a breech baby, in an attempt to gain some control and ownership over this. I’ve had a relatively easy pregnancy, no complications, no stress, not even any swelling in my ankles (heh). And now… it’s all catching up to me. One of the things I read online was that barring any other condition, a breech presentation can be caused by the baby feeling the need to comfort the mother by getting close to her heart, picking up on the mother’s anxiety and fear. This makes sense to me. While I haven’t felt stressed out these 9 months, I do tend to internalize my stress and pretend it isn’t there, or manifest the stress in other ways. In this case, I’ve had plenty of external, non-baby things to stress out about, like our kitchen renovation and our financial security (I quit my job in January). Taking a cue from Birthing From Within, I decided to do some journaling and visualization exercises to try and purge these feelings from my system— not just my feelings about having a C-Section but my feelings about being a mother. After journaling, I copied all the negative words onto pieces of paper, and Henry and I burned them in the bathroom sink, an exorcism, if you will. Now, I can begin to focus on using positive imagery to try and get the baby to turn, and barring that, take back control over the situation by having as much input as possible into the C-Section. Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.
