I have been enrolled in a Teleclass for doulas. Tonight was our last conference call of the series. This class requires very little note taking, which is good for me, because I just don't have two hours to sit still and listen to a phone call. I have to keep busy.
This is how tonight's call went:
I was still making dinner when the call started at 7:30. Dinner was late because my car's battery died while I was at the supermarket. In addition, Harrison has a friend sleeping over and I promised him I would make french fries. As the call started, I was dealing with a cast iron wok full of hot peanut oil and a bowl of spuds.
No problem. I can listen while I cook.
Dennis and the kids were really loud when they sat down for dinner, so I put the phone on mute and retreated into the bedroom. I folded a load of clean laundry that was on the bed. I advanced two loads that were in the washer and dryer and made a pile of sock widows. John's Hopkins research shows no improved outcome when inductions are done because of low amniotic fluid.
I had the phone on mute, un-muted it when I wanted to talk and re-muted it when I finished asking my question. Except there was a problem. The instructions that the moderator gave for muting and un-muting were reversed, so when I spoke they could not hear me. I tried it again, but by the time I successfully un-muted the call had progressed to a new topic. I muted again. I think. I was not sure. Could they hear me? I couldn't tell. Women who experience unexpected labor induction may have many different emotions. Some may feel their bodies have failed them and may have more difficulty adjusting to motherhood during the postpartum period. Others are just glad to finally get the baby out.
I went back to the quietest room in the house, just in case mute was not working for me. My washer and dryer barely hum, so I felt like that was the best place. I went to write something down, but my mechanical pencil was out of lead, so I had to leave the laundry room to get a pen. 33 % of labor inductions end in c-section, as do 31% of all labors in this country, so the chance of c-section is not statistically higher in induced labors since our c-section rate has more than doubled in the past ten years. Of course our induction rates have doubled too.
I dodged some nerf bullets as I came out of the laundry room. French fry fueled little boys were running wild. I put my index finger to my mouth and made a shooing motion to send them upstairs. Weekly sweeping of membranes at 38 weeks does not reduce the incidence of medical induction as per The Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, June 2008.
Dennis had done many of the dishes, so I got a pen, made a note, then relieved him of his kitchen duties and did the remaining clean up. The Woods method of due date calculation verifies Mittendorf's research from Harvard in the 1990s. On the average, first time mothers deliver 8 days after their due date, and second time mothers are usually delivered three days after their due date.
I went back to the laundry room and sorted and repacked my birth bag. The call was getting very interesting, so I scribbled some notes on which issues of The Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology I need to pull studies from.
Then I took a minute to Google one of the people on the call. Very interesting,..
Eden came downstairs in a huff showing me a red mark on her arm and crying "Harrison hit me!" Then she stomped off in a huff because I was gesturing for her to go tell her father because I was on a conference call! Why did I have these kids?
I fed Violet the dog and folded another load of dry clothes, still listening. Remaining sexually active at least four times after 36 weeks is proven to reduce the need for medical induction prior to 41 weeks.
Then I noticed the smell of something burning.
I went to the kitchen and discovered black smoke pouring out of the bread machine!
In an attempt to prevent the smoke alarm from going off, I opened all the windows and began frantically waving a towel around.
Then I unplugged the bread machine ran to the front door carrying it to put it on the front porch.
The front door was closed.
Smoke was still pouring out of the machine.
I was holding my breath so as not to succumb to the inhalation.
I couldn't balance the bread machine, continue to hold the phone to my ear between my chin and my shoulder and get the door open. I hoped the phone was on mute as I yelled, "HELP!"
Although the boys had smelled smoke, the smoke alarm did not go off, so they kept playing their video game. Dennis ran down and opened the door. I abandoned the smoking bread machine on the front porch.
I went back into the kitchen, sat down at the table and listened to the end of call. Women who are more than 1 cm dilated at the time their membranes are swept are at greater risk of having their membranes rupture prior to the beginning of labor.
Then I yelled at both kids for fighting, the boys for not reacting when they smelled smoke, and
Eden for coming to me instead of her father when I was on a conference call.
Confused, they looked at me and said, "You were on a call?"
Do I normally walk around the house with my right ear attached to my right shoulder, playing charades and gesturing for them to be quiet and leave the room?
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Monday, August 03, 2009
"Oh, oh, what I want to know, where does the time go?" Grateful Dead
When will this rainy springtime end? Wait, it doesn't feel like it, but it is actually summer.Where has this summer gone? I start school in only three weeks, and the kids start right after I do. We have only been to the pool a few times, and if you divide the number of times we have used the pool by the cost of the pool membership, it has been something like a hundred bucks a visit! What has happened to the sunshine?
I have several huge tomato plants, but no fruit on any of them. My zucchini plants are producing, but their leaves are soggy and yellow. My zinnias still have not bloomed. My peas finally gave off some pods last week. Peas in late July? It has been a very odd season.
We have noticed that there are very few coyotes this year. For the past two summers we have had a large pack of them yipping outside our bedroom windows at night, and I have seen them when driving both at night and in the wee hours of the morning. This year, my neighbors and I have not heard them.
We do have a resident mama deer and two fawns in our yard each day. We also see a mama turkey and her six chicks. Yesterday we sat at the end of the driveway waiting for them to follow the mama across the road so we could turn in. It was so funny watching them start to cross, then run into the grass, then start to cross, then run again.
It has been reported that last week, over near my cousin's house, someone in a small pickup stuck hit an 800 pound female bear. That's huge! Usually a black bears are between 250 and 350 pounds. According to the DEC an adult male could weigh 600 pounds, but this is rare. The locals here tell me that none of them ever remember hearing of a bear that large. The poor bear did not survive the accident.
One thing we know for sure is that there is a bear in our yard on a regular basis, although I am sure the one in our yard is much smaller. I know he is here because he does not seem to like to poop in the woods. He prefers to come over to my place to leave his scat.
Last week, early in the morning, Eden came running in the house exclaiming, "There's a bear in the apple tree!" So, I go wake Harrison (the boy who always sleeps late) and Dennis grabs his camera and his longest lens and we all tip-toe onto the front porch and look down the hill to the apple trees.
We see nothing.
We wait.
Dennis begins his walk through the yard to get a closer look. Nothing.
Dennis goes far enough down the hill to worry me, and I call him back.
He holds his ground.
Nothing.
We watch in silence for ten minutes. Finally, Dennis says, "There's no bear in the apple tree!" and turns to walk back to the house. He takes three steps and WHAM! The tree began to violently shake! I mean I thought it was going to rip apart. It did not look like there was a bear in the tree - it looked like there were a couple of gorillas shaking the tree! Dennis ran back to the porch and I almost wet my pants.
We watched this violent shaking of the tree on and off for the better part of the morning. Finally it stopped. Still, we could see no bear.
Eventually, we piled into the mini van and drove down to the street with our binoculars where we could get a better look. The bear had torn off some of the upper branches and made a nest. If one looked very closely, one could see black between the leaves, but he had woven this nest so tightly that if we had been just walking by, we would have walked right under the tree and never known he was there.
Eden suspected that it was two cubs, because we got motion from two parts of the tree. I think it was one bear and we could see the motion in two places because the limb he was on would shake while he ripped off the higher branches. Our apple trees are about 80 years old, and they are not in good shape. Sometimes I think they are only standing because the poison ivy vines keep them up.
We took shifts watching the tree all day. The limb he was on sank lower as the day progressed, until at dusk it was almost touching the ground and I was wondering if it was going to snap and dump him right out. Sometime during the night, he vacated. We never got a good look at him.
I have several huge tomato plants, but no fruit on any of them. My zucchini plants are producing, but their leaves are soggy and yellow. My zinnias still have not bloomed. My peas finally gave off some pods last week. Peas in late July? It has been a very odd season.
We have noticed that there are very few coyotes this year. For the past two summers we have had a large pack of them yipping outside our bedroom windows at night, and I have seen them when driving both at night and in the wee hours of the morning. This year, my neighbors and I have not heard them.
We do have a resident mama deer and two fawns in our yard each day. We also see a mama turkey and her six chicks. Yesterday we sat at the end of the driveway waiting for them to follow the mama across the road so we could turn in. It was so funny watching them start to cross, then run into the grass, then start to cross, then run again.
It has been reported that last week, over near my cousin's house, someone in a small pickup stuck hit an 800 pound female bear. That's huge! Usually a black bears are between 250 and 350 pounds. According to the DEC an adult male could weigh 600 pounds, but this is rare. The locals here tell me that none of them ever remember hearing of a bear that large. The poor bear did not survive the accident.
One thing we know for sure is that there is a bear in our yard on a regular basis, although I am sure the one in our yard is much smaller. I know he is here because he does not seem to like to poop in the woods. He prefers to come over to my place to leave his scat.
Last week, early in the morning, Eden came running in the house exclaiming, "There's a bear in the apple tree!" So, I go wake Harrison (the boy who always sleeps late) and Dennis grabs his camera and his longest lens and we all tip-toe onto the front porch and look down the hill to the apple trees.
We see nothing.
We wait.
Dennis begins his walk through the yard to get a closer look. Nothing.
Dennis goes far enough down the hill to worry me, and I call him back.
He holds his ground.
Nothing.
We watch in silence for ten minutes. Finally, Dennis says, "There's no bear in the apple tree!" and turns to walk back to the house. He takes three steps and WHAM! The tree began to violently shake! I mean I thought it was going to rip apart. It did not look like there was a bear in the tree - it looked like there were a couple of gorillas shaking the tree! Dennis ran back to the porch and I almost wet my pants.
We watched this violent shaking of the tree on and off for the better part of the morning. Finally it stopped. Still, we could see no bear.
Eventually, we piled into the mini van and drove down to the street with our binoculars where we could get a better look. The bear had torn off some of the upper branches and made a nest. If one looked very closely, one could see black between the leaves, but he had woven this nest so tightly that if we had been just walking by, we would have walked right under the tree and never known he was there.
Eden suspected that it was two cubs, because we got motion from two parts of the tree. I think it was one bear and we could see the motion in two places because the limb he was on would shake while he ripped off the higher branches. Our apple trees are about 80 years old, and they are not in good shape. Sometimes I think they are only standing because the poison ivy vines keep them up.
We took shifts watching the tree all day. The limb he was on sank lower as the day progressed, until at dusk it was almost touching the ground and I was wondering if it was going to snap and dump him right out. Sometime during the night, he vacated. We never got a good look at him.
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