Well, our first child should arrive anytime within the next two weeks.
J reports that her obstetrician will start physically urging resolution to this pregnancy next Monday. According to advanced technology (measuring tape) our soon-to-be-first-born is rather large.
Good thing we are completely and utterly and totally prepared.
Posted in The Pregnancy, Third Trimester
Last night, J and I attended an iteration of The Happiest Baby Workshop. Some of you will know exactly what that means, and an image of a smiling Kevin-Kline-looking chap will pop into your head. I however, had no idea. My last minute google research turned up reference to a “fourth” trimester, which inevitably caused my skepticism bone to tingle.
Actually, it was a very interesting affair. For one, the presenter was articulate and engaging – which always helps – and the concept (that fourth trimester) isn’t actually too wacky.
The essential of what I learned was that babies need help in learning to calm themselves. This point in particular reminded me of a conversation I had several months back with a brand new first-time mom. She said she just assumed that when babies are tired they will go to sleep, but that she’d just realized that they haven’t learned how to go sleep and that they need a bit of help. And when I heard her say that, it made some sense. And here I was hearing it repackaged in another way: the missing fourth trimester.
Dr. Harvey Karp, the man behind the Happiest Baby, argues that human babies are born too early in their development. That other mammals give birth to more developed offspring (think of a foal rising to its feet almost immediately after being born). But human physiology prevents our babies from developing further in the womb. For one, their heads are still very flexible at nine months so that they can be squeezed along a rather narrow opening. A firmly set skull would require a c-section every time.
But one of the things that allow baby’s to survive at this stage of development is an innate set of reflexes. For instance, crying. But Karp also suggests there is an innate “calming reflex” within a baby. This makes sense if you think about a baby in a womb and waiting to be born. Babies are active in the womb, but they also settle down. If they didn’t settle down, and kept those arms and legs moving around, it would be very difficult to give birth. Likely most babies wouldn’t be head down, for instance. But something within the baby allows it to relax, to calm down. Karp argues that this reflex can be triggered postpartum through stimulation that mimics the baby’s womb experience. He suggests the Five S’s: swaddling, side/stomach position, shushing, swinging, sucking.
Swaddling, for example, recreates the closed-in feeling of the womb. Shushing reproduces the sounds a baby hears in the womb (mostly a near-whitenoise blend of heart beats and blood rushing).
The concept seems straightforward and reasonable.
In the execution of the idea, there are little quirks and techniques. For instance, you are supposed to follow the Five S’s in order (not jump to swinging, for instance). But I think we’ll give this approach a try.
Anyone had success with this approach? Anyone experienced utter failure?
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Image courtesy of creative commons on flickr.com and tedsblog
Posted in Parenthood, The Pregnancy, Third Trimester
Tagged baby, fatherhood, happiest baby, harvey karp, Parenthood, pregnancy
An article from the Saskatoon StarPhoenix breaks down the numbers and names of babies born in Saskatchewan in 2009.
The 14,465 births in Saskatchewan in 2009 were the most in the province since 1992, when families welcomed 14,992 new babies. There were 492 more babies born in Saskatchewan in 2009 than in 2008.
I’d say there are some surprising names in the mix. For instance the 17th most popular girls’ name: Nevaeh. And there’s still a good mix of classic names (Alexander, William, Elizabeth, Sarah). And I’d some are following recent trends, such as Lily, and Logan. But all of the names are pretty nice, actually. But we won’t be using any of them.
Here’s StarPhoenix reporter Janet French wrestling with the name game.
Here are the top-20 names for each gender, followed by the number of babies given that name:
Male (Female)
1. Ethan 93 (1. Emma 82)
2. Liam 77 (2. Ava 69)
3. Carter 72 (3. Olivia 66)
4. Jacob 65 (4. Emily 65)
5. Aiden 63 (5. Brooklyn 54)
6. Logan 62 (6. Chloe 52)
7. Hunter 55 (7. Madison 48)
8. Ryder 54 (8. Alexis 46)
9. Noah 53 (9. Hailey 44)
10. Owen 51 (10. Hannah 42)
11. Lucas 51 (11. Ella 41)
12. Benjamin 48 (12. Grace 40)
13. Matthew 44 (13. Lily 40)
14. William 43 (14. Elizabeth 38)
15. Joshua 43 (15. Addison 38)
16. Alexander 42 (16. Taylor 38)
17. Mason 41 (17. Nevaeh 36)
18. Carson 40 (18. Avery 35)
19. Jayden 40 (19. Abigail 33)
20. James 39 (20. Sarah 33)
Posted in Beginnings and Endings, The Pregnancy, Third Trimester
Tagged baby, baby names, saskatchewan
This evening, J & I watched the documentary The Business of Being Born. I read a little about the movie at wikipedia before we started it: “The film criticizes the American health care system with its emphasis on drugs and costly interventions and its view of childbirth as a medical emergency rather than a natural occurrence.”
“Are you okay with that?” she asked. She knows I’m not very granola.
I said: “Yes. I’m already there.”
“You’re already there?” she questioned.
“Yes. You know that I don’t think babies should be born in hospitals.” Which is true – I’ve said it many times before. I’ve expressed a preference for some sort of birth centre – which, to my knowledge, doesn’t exist in Saskatchewan (but there’s one in Calgary, apparently, and one to open in Winnipeg).
But I could understand her reluctance to believe me. It was not all that long ago that I knew very little about pregnancies or, frankly, much else about female physiology generally (my specialty has been on the fun parts!). And I also had a preference for pain killers and anesthetic. Somehow things have changed.
In other ways my evolution makes perfect sense. I’m just enough of a contrarian and a libertarian that I’d rather not have doctors tell me what to do. Plus I’m a historian and I happen to know that billions of births have taken place outside of hospitals without complications.
Now it’s easy enough for me to have whatever opinion I’d like. I’m not the one giving birth. And besides, J and I haven’t really considered home birth, nor are we using a midwife. We’ve only really just started to feel educated about this whole pregnancy-thing. And midwifery in Saskatchewan is relatively new (Saskatchewan regulated midwifery on March 14, 2008 ).
We are planning on having a doula.
But I really think that if we have a second pregnancy we’ll seriously consider a home birth.
The movie was quite good. Quite even-handed. And there’s a helluva ending.
And now: the machine that goes PING!
Posted in Labour & Birth, The Pregnancy, Third Trimester
Tagged baby, Becoming Human, birth, birth centre, birthing centre, dad, doula, father, home birth, midwife, midwives, new dad, pediatrics, pregnancy
Happy New Year!
I was absorbed in offline seasonal activities for much of the past few weeks – as I hope you were too. But additionally I’ve spent much of 2010 in bed suffering from a cold with greater-than-average resiliency. And although I don’t usually put much faith in cold medicine, today I’ve finally given in and popped some Tylenol Sinus. I feel better. I can function, at least.
When I’m sick, I’m the sort of sufferer who basically wants the world to go away while I curl up on the couch napping, catching the occasional cartoon rerun. This approach has served me well most of my life – even through six years of marriage. This time, however, with a very pregnant working wife, it wasn’t so cool. Not that J complained much, just that she has her hands full with everything else and can’t pick up any of my slack. Which got me to thinking about how I can possibly handle being sick and having a kid to take care of. And what if the kid was sick at the same time too?
You’ll all agree that this scenario simply cannot work and therefore you’ll support the course of action upon which I’ve decided: I will simply not to get sick again for about 10 years. I’ll need lots of vitamin C and hand sanitizer.
My tongue is only partially in my cheek. It is beginning to hit home that I cannot afford to run my life in the manner to which I’ve become very comfortable. That is to say that in the past I could easily afford risking a cold or a broken ankle or whatever, because it didn’t really affect anyone’s life if I were bedridden – other than me. Even being married didn’t change that very much – sorry J, but you can look out for yourself if I’m ill, our kid isn’t going to be able to for a long while.
And, sure, J will be there to help out (lots), but things are going to change.
But in other baby-related news…
We had 25 voters participate in our baby-naming poll. The votes were very close, with no clear winner. And since we’ve found out that we are having a boy, we’ve gone back and reconsidered our name ideas. We are still happy with them, but we are also adding two new names for consideration. So if you’d like to have your say on the new names, visit the new poll.
Many of you will be aware of a greater naming challenge: the Last Name. As many of you know, J and I both kept our original last names when we married. We have been very happy with that decision, but this doesn’t give us any easy answers for what our children’s last names should be. But more on that later.
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image courtesy of flickr’s creative commons and destinysagent
