I May Have Gotten Distracted

Well, the third trimester of this pregnancy threw me for a LOOP and a half!  I got food poisoning/a stomach flu at 35 weeks and all the puking started causing contractions...  I had to be put on bed rest, my mom flew up to help, and it's been pretty crazy since then.  Once I hit 37 weeks, I was given the okay to resume normal activities, and I kind of expected baby Dez to come soon after.  He had been trying to come so much over the previous two weeks, and it seemed he was destined to be early.

Family Portrait on lovely hike.

Of course, in true Murphy's Law form, as soon as it was okay to have the baby, the contractions mostly stopped, or at least got irregular.  I went for a walk the other day and ended up having contractions every 2 minutes on the dot for an hour, but then as soon as I got home they stopped completely.  It's just been a lot of start and go.

As for going, I've been doing what I can to get things moving:  hiking, rowing, and biking at 38 weeks.  I'm 39 weeks now and sticking mostly to walking, especially after the incident with the biking.  It turns out, when you ride a bike while pregnant, the relaxin in your joints and ligaments can enable your pelvic bone to actually shift out of alignment.  That doesn't feel great, but luckily I have an amazing chiropractor and I realized I needed to call her.  I thought it was just the pelvic pain of the third trimester... No, that is not normal.

I finally realized that there was something I had been forgetting, like any teacher has experienced.  The thing that I impress upon my HypnoBirthing students is one of the most essential aspects of the program I let slip to the wayside.  I forgot to do a fear release.  So today I had my husband guide me through it, and I was surprised by how it went.  In visualizing myself and my true inner being, I actually saw myself at Violet's age, running through the surf on the beach in Hawaii.  There is a picture of me like this that I drew from, but then as I was asked to go deeper, I found that the image of Violet and I had become interchangeable, and that who I am at my core is made up of who she is as well.  My mother was also there, when I was told to tap into my inner wisdom about birthing, my "birthrite."

Another surprise was that when I had to face my fears, the first thing that really loomed for me was an image of my friend's birth who just had a baby.  While she and the baby are fine now, there was some time just after the birth where the baby required oxygen, despite being concious.  When my friend told me the birth story, I didn't realize that I had internalized that outcome, but clearly it was right there in my mind once I allowed myself to face my fears.  I'm so glad I did that and am feeling much better about the birth and anticipate it any day/moment now :)

For you viewing enjoyment, here are some videos of what my little munchkin has been up to:

Here's Violet demonstrating just how effective the Tuffo Muddy Buddy Rain Suit really is.