Thankful Thursday!

Thankfully it is almost over!

Holla! Ladies and gents, the countdown begins. I have 28 days (4 weeks) til D Day. Yup! Try to follow my convoluted thinking here: 4 weeks isn't that much and what is exciting about 4 weeks is that in 1 week it will be 3 weeks and at that point everyone who looks at you to think "Wow, she has to be due soon" will hear 3 weeks and feel reconciled in their thought. Plus at 4 weeks left, I have completed 90% of the pregnancy. 90% is an A and so I can give myself an A for effort. Also at 4 weeks left, my appointments become weekly which makes the time feel a bit faster. The funny thing is though now as the weeks are less and less - people start to act sort of afraid of you. Carefully talking to you when they hear you have not many weeks left, give you plenty of space to walk and generally tip toe around as if the slightest rushed movement or sound of theirs will cause the ticking time bomb that is your belly will go off. Ha ha ha - I just thought of something. I am a ticking time womb.

The only negative side of 4 weeks or less is that every time I sneeze, cough or laugh to hard I feel as though my body is trying to pop. Its like that children's game of trying to sit on the balloon to get it to pop. You cant squish it many times before it will pop. So everywhere I go I get these thoughts in the back of my mind of how horrible it would be for my water to break right there. Like worse place ever - in the pew at church. A lady I know said that she was grocery shopping when she coughed and her water broke. She said she stopped right in the aisle there, left her cart and tried to walk secretly out. Ha ha ha.

The nice thing is that I haven't hit that end of pregnancy "wall". Runners have a "wall" they hit during their run that they have to push past to get their stride. Its like that for pregnancy. You have to hit the "wall" where your just cant stand being pregnant anymore to get to the point where you would do ANYTHING to get the baby out. So because I haven't hit the wall yet I am still quite positive about it regardless of the aches and pains. This is good since I still have at least the 4 weeks, maybe a day or so longer, to be pregnant. Hitting the wall this early is disastrous because you are miserable every second wishing you were done. I usually hit my wall about a day or so before my due date when I am throwing up (still!) and thinking - "oh common! Enough of this already!"

One last thought. I am so thankful for hypnobirthing! This is the most amazing relaxation/natural birth preparation method you can use. I used it with Corilynn and you don't have to believe me but I didn't feel the pain of labor. It was a quiet, series of tightening sensations in my tummy. If you don't believe me still - I have video of some of the labor (nothing graphic - just me during the latter stages of labor before the birth - relaxed and looking asleep - despite having contractions every 2-3 minutes and in the hardest part of labor -transition). I am practicing a lot right now to prepare for birth. The basic theory behind it is that fear causes tension (because it triggers the flight or fight response in your body) and tension causes pain. Pain comes from the body moving the blood to the essential organs and large muscle groups in preparation for a fight or flight scenario. Believe it or not but your uterus isn't an "essential" organ. :) Therefore the lack of blood causes tension and the build up of lactic acid the muscles of the uterus causing the contractions to be painful.

So hypnobirthing teaches you deep hypnosis as a a relaxation technique to stay calm and work through fear, any perceived threat of discomfort and the misconception that labor has to be painful. Combine this with exercises that naturally stimulate endorphins (the feel good natural anesthetic) and there you have it - a relaxed, controlled mind floating in a sea of happy hormones. If you have ever been reading a book and someone called your name but you didn't hear it or visualized a good performance on some athletic event you were going to participate in then you have experienced self-hypnosis. You are completely alert and in command of your own senses. None of the nonsense of "when I snap my fingers you will squawk like a duck." Though that could be pretty funny.

Obviously natural birth doesn't suit everyone. We strive for it because I feel healthier and I feel the baby is safer from all the drugs you avoid. Birth isn't about how you get there - its about making sure the experience you have is a wonderful memory.

On a similar topic - I am thankful for the laughs I get from my kids. Just a few days ago I overheard Lyman talking to Corilynn. They were doing some kind of make-believe play and deciding who was going to be what. Lyman said to Corilynn, "do you want to be a boy?" She said "no, I want to be a girl." then Lyman said "If you are a boy then you don't have to be pregnant." Ohhh man - I laughed so hard about that. Apparently I have made the idea of pregnancy pretty terrifying for him. He has been scarred by seeing what I go through everyday. I may never get grand kids out of that one without some serious therapy bills. :)