Birth: Not So Sci-Fi Anymore

Ok... I admit that being pregnant to me, felt like more of a sci-fi movie than anything else. Here is this little parasite inside you, growing bigger and bigger with each passing second, with an insatiable desire to f$%k your stuff up and make you act like someone else. Suddenly you have more acne than you did when you were a teenager, you're starting to look like a Sasquatch, you're decided whether or not you should puke now or later, your hormones are so far off the chart that you are crying inexplicably and you take everything personally.

 Then you start wondering if you can have this or that, and you do some research and find out that if you take this or that, your baby's going to come out with a club foot or a hair lip or 10000000 other deformities, so you suffer through it all for the sake of the baby, and you are still unsure if you are going to wake up tomorrow and have your period. Some days you pray that you will, other days you feel like a monster for even thinking that.

Then you start looking at pictures of what your baby looks like as it's developing and once again, it seems so science fiction, instead of science fact. Your baby looks like a seahorse but it's only the size of a sesame seed. Then it grows eye spots, where eventually eyeballs and eye sockets will form; followed by arm/leg buds which will hopefully grow to be functioning limbs. Then, about week 8, your child starts developing things that seem a little out of the ordinary... things you would think would be kind of the last items on the list... fingernails. Uhhh... weird!

And the most sci-fi thing of all has got to be birth. It's such an alien concept to me (har har) I had watched a documentary on Netflix called BABIES and they show a woman giving birth and it freaked me out... I had not wanted to give birth at all....

But last night, cruising around on babycenter.com, I came across videos of live births. And different birthing methods. Intrigued- because now, birth is inevitable and starting to be wanted- I decided to watch them. I watched a natural birth, a c-section, the birth of twins, an induced birth. While they were very much nude, and there were vajayjays on full display... it wasn't graphic, really. There was some blood sure, but not this torrent I was expecting. And each woman was different. They were all in pain... but none of them were cursing, screaming, threatening to kill every one in the room like the movies make it out to be. Brian even watched them with me and he said "That doesn't look so bad."

The weirdest one to me was a water birth... the woman used hypno-baby techniques to stay calm and then gave birth under water... yep, seriously.

So we decided on a birth plan- no "Little Mermaid" water birth for me!

I'm going to go the all-natural, drug free way... unless for some reason the pain is so bad that I need something to take the edge off (Plan B). But I'm not keen on an epidural, because I've heard that it takes longer for the sensation to return to your body after delivery/complications can arise (use of forceps/c-section). Naturally, the pain disappears right after birth and from my mom and other women I've read about, it's like really really bad potty cramps... Like you really have to poop and you really have to go NOW. So I think I can handle that.

Plan C- Let's hope plan C doesn't happen, because that would be a C-section and would require 6 weeks of recovery from surgery. I'm not sure I'd have that kind of time off from my job (assuming, positively, that I am going to get a job!)

Anyway, lots of baby planning happening in our household and I am finally getting pumped for baby. I think it all started with that heart beat... I can't stop thinking about it. It makes me cry-smile every time. Aww.

So, moms, tell me your birth story! But please remember... too many horrible details will probably freak me out... so be kind in your editing! :) (as in, I looked up if Tylenol was safe and it said it could cause club foot, so I started researching that... then I freaked out... so please be kind!)