The last couple of months have consisted of more unpacking, a visit from Drew, Victoria, and Ayla over Easter, and another trip to Blacksburg to gather our remaining things...we finally have some porch furniture to enjoy this awesome spring weather on.  Malayna, Lucinda, and I are spending lots of time in our fun backyard and in the neighbor's yard.  The two random boys in one picture are 2 of the 3 neighbors Malayna plays with nearly every day.

Like everyone else, we are anxious to talk about our kids and their birth.  However, this time around we did much more studying and are motivated to spread the good word on natural child birth to our various friends who might be reproducing in the future.

For our pre-natal care and birth we opted for a midwife practice.  It's a great set-up as they are part of the UNC system.  The delivery occurs at the hospital with docs, meds, and emergency procedures available; however, if all goes well, you only ever deal with the midwives.  The difference was incredible.  Instead of check-ups revolving around tests and potential but unlikely disasters, they instead were concerned with making sure everything was in the range of normalcy and keeping me healthy, because then the birth is more likely to go smoothly and therefore the baby is more likely to have a healthy entrance into the world.

How she made her descent...Mark and I both finished working for the year on Friday December 19.  The following Sunday evening, Dec 21, we were attempting to meet more neighbors by delivering cookies and the contractions started.  Given that Malayna was induced way past her due date, we assumed this would be the same, so we figured the contractions were just brackston-hicks and would go away.  That night I slept, but was woken roughly every hour with contractions.  I got up the following morning and got the day going with Malayna as normal.  About 9am, I realized they were getting more painful and we needed to get our Malayna-accommodations rolling so we could deal with the contractions and decide if it was for real labor.  Fortunately my parents were on their way down that day, so we only had to tap our friends during the day.  Malayna went to one neighbor's for the morning and another for the afternoon and evening.  We really can't thank both families enough for helping us out in this way.

We started timing contractions that morning and they were a little sporadic, painful, but manageable.  The midwives said to call their pager when they got to 5 minutes apart for an hour.  Around noon, we called because they were averaging 5 minutes apart, although some shorter, some longer.  The midwife suggested I hop in the bath and then call back in an hour.  The bath slowed the contractions to about 8-9 minutes apart, so we hung out a little longer than the prescribed hour and then called back.  The midwife let us make the call on coming in.  She didn't want us to show up and be denied, but she also didn't want me to be in transition for the 40 minute drive to the hospital (in Chapel Hill).  When I got out of the shower the contractions sped up.  At some point we figured out that if I laid down the contractions came less often, roughly every 8 minutes, but were more painful, and if I was up and around they came every 3-4 minutes, but with less pain.

We decided this was real labor, we didn't want to deal with rush hour traffic or transition labor in the car, so we headed to the hospital, checking in around 3pm. 

At check in time I was at 8cm (out of 10).  We were surprised I was so far along, but executing the various positions we learned in classes, and especially the bath, really helped with the pain management.  At the hospital, we managed to avoid the hep-lock (sticking you to get ready for an IV) and continual monitoring.  Both of these decisions allowed us to just focus on laboring.  As noted earlier, it was much more manageable if I was up and moving around.  Changing positions every few contractions helped a bunch, as did spending a few in the shower. 

Having a midwife (actually 2 midwives... there was a resident midwife too, since UNC is a teaching hospital) was great!  We loved our midwife... she was really calm (which was therefore calming), encouraging, and good at setting the mood w/ the lighting.  Believe it or not, this really helped.  Her focus was on the natural birth and well-being.  Our last doctor's focus was on getting home from a long shift and speeding things up.  Another thing they allowed us to do was bring our iPod and a speaker in and play music, which also helped.  Just as it was getting tough, it was time to push.  Being on my hands and knees was the best position at the time to deal with the pain so the midwives encouraged me to stay in that position to push.  With Malayna pushing was a relief from the contractions, but this time it was more difficult (albeit, shorter)...not sure why the difference.  Regardless, neither the transition or pushing phases lasted that long, each about 10 minutes.  Pushing was only delayed by the midwives making sure it went slow enough to avoid tears or cuts, which I'm extremely grateful for now.  As soon as Lucinda was born I was able to hold and nurse her.  She latched on immediately and has been an eating champ since.

So why bother with this natural stuff?  We learned that the various interventions are a vicious cycle.  Once you do one, it's much more likely you'll need another, eventually inhibiting the post-birth process.  For example, if you do continual monitoring, your movement is restricted, when movement is restricted, it much more difficult to deal with the pain, when you can't deal with the pain you end up getting medications, which end up getting into the baby's system and of course mom's system.  The various medications reduce the body's release of hormones which enable the baby to be alert for feeding after delivery and enable you to deal with the pain.  Life is so much easier this time with a baby who learned how to nurse immediately.  My recovery was so fast that they released me the following morning, we just had to wait 24 hours for Lucinda to be discharged.  Aside from the health benefits, the process was a great experience and much more enjoyable than the first time.  With Malayna I didn't have an epidural, but a narcotic (sort of like hopped up motrin) that we swear made Malayna drowsy.  I was also stuck laying in bed the entire time out of my own ignorance as well as continual monitoring and an IV for fluids, which made it very difficult to deal with the pain, hence the narcotics.

To have a natural child birth with a doctor appears to be nearly impossible.  You will be fighting an uphill battle the whole time.  Here's why:  Midwifery is focused on the natural process of pregnancy and childbirth (ie:  things going right) while traditional medicine is obsessed with certain things happening at a certain time (ie:  things going wrong).  Unfortunately, this obsession in the US has lead to one of the worst infant mortality rates in the industrialized world. We highly recommend using a midwife if you can and if you are a good canidate for a natural birth.  Obviously, it may not be or cannot be for everyone.  And things can go wrong - we were grateful for being at a hospital in case they did.  But we really enjoyed the process this time.  Additionally, the fast recovery combined with a baby that nurses well are huge payoffs.

It's been an incredible week for us... one that's filled w/ lots of "oh yeah" and deja vu's!  We're a bit rusty on this whole baby thing, but it hasn't taken too long to shake that rust.  We've had an easier time parenting the last few days since Natalie's parents took Malayna with them for a few days.  It's actually been relatively peaceful and calm around here! 

Lucinda has been doing great.... eating like a champ (ALL the time!) and sleeping reasonably well at night.  We can't get over how much she looks like Malayna did when she was a baby... I'll try to post some side by side baby shots soon.  In the meantime, there should be some updated pics of Lucinda posted.

Healthy baby girl. 7lbs 8.6oz born 7:32pm 12/22. No name yet! Everyone fine.

So Natalie is definitely in labor, so this may be the last update until we get to the hospital... which also may be imminent!

Here's a link to some of Natalie's pregnancy pictures:
http://blueroomphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/6790521_rVjLS#433900444_DUL3G

We're hoping to use this blog again to communicate to our family and friends on what's going on with the baby.

As of this morning (Monday, 22nd) Natalie's been having contractions all night.  Last time she went through this it was a false alarm despite the fact the contractions were coming under 10 minutes and lasting over a minute; however, they were kind of weak.  This time they're pretty strong, but not lasting as long and they're kind of all over the place time-wise.  We'll try to keep you posted. 

Hope everyone is doing well.. we've been enjoying all the cards and pictures this year!

Since we're attempting to poke our heads out of the sand, I'll try an update post.  "Fall" is in quotes because it's still getting in the 80s. However, we've enjoyed the last couple weeks since the extreme heat has broken and we can actually go outside again.  We've attended three neighborhood pot-lucks.  Two at parks and one block-party.  They are all out: great food, bands, moon-bounce, and this last one had a fire truck and horse.  We even met Mike Connell from The Connells...apparently he's all grown up turned into a lawyer and lives in our neighborhood.  We also have new neighbors as of the start of September and they have been a nice plus in our lives.  They have three girls, twins exactly Malayna's age and a 12-month old.  Malayna loves playing with them and the adults all get along great as well...amazing really.

Last weekend we were back in Blacksburg for homecoming with Mark's core grad school friends.  Everyone has multiplied a few times, so it was a crazy weekend, but we had a great time.  One friend the guys hadn't seen in 8(?) years.  Props to Kevin and Alex for hosting, organizing, and arranging babysitters.  We also visited Sinkland Farms (pumpkin farm) on our way out of town.  We've loved doing this in the past and got all nostalgic going back.  We have taken the same picture of Mark and Malayna on a tractor every year, so maybe I can get him to post the series.

I (Natalie) am working this semester at NC State.  It's been a good experience for all of us.  Mark gets Malayna up and going every morning and as a result they are much closer :).  For these last few months of pregnancy, I've been happy to sit a computer instead of chasing Malayna!  The work is pretty good and I'm happy to be learning some new stuff.  Looks like I might even be able to get a paper out of it all.  We've been thrilled with Malayna's school.  She loves to do art, gymnastics, and ride scooters.  She does an interpretive dance class and I got to witness some "moves" this weekend at the farmer's market band...very cute.   At home, she likes to play pretend life with mostly her cars, sometimes little people, and sometimes other random toys (this weekend it was the single-peg mega blocks that became ducks).  Games, puzzles, and workbook games like mazes and connect the dots, are also high on the activity list right now.  The constant development is a blast for us to both observe and participate in.

Last week we had an ultrasound and the baby is doing well and thankfully still looking like a girl.  We've barely begun the office move, but finally this weekend arranged the living room to accommodate enough office stuff to hopefully squeeze a crib into the current office.  We don't have much planned for the next couple months, so maybe we'll get the move done in time.  However, we're looking forward to having Mark's mom visit, maybe some others who have threatened to visit, and the annual "boo and the beach trip" to the outer banks.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!   Ahhhhh.....town is so quiet, almost too quiet.  However, we're enjoying the time and celebrating with our neighbors. 

For any new visitors to our blog (as a result of the Christmas card) we hope you enjoy your time browsing.  Check back as we update it frequently.  If you would like any pictures, contact us and we'll email you the high resolution versions.