Whoever Started the Rumor That I Would Look and Eat like a Pig While Pregnant Was an Asshole. (I wrote this while hungry and pissed and still pregnant, so excuse any rants or discourteous statements)

   

It's not about NOT drinking soda ever, or never eating potato chips. It's about honoring that what you put inside your body on a daily IS WHO and WHAT you ARE. Soda and chips are a fake fix. There is magic energy within something that actually lives and dies, and I'm promoting more vegetable life than animal life. Our society dreams for you to continue to buy, to purchase their crap, their flavorfully processed long-ass shelf life fake food. And we know, blatantly, that they don't care about our health, they don't give a shit about the animals they slaughter or the diseased chemical shit they put in their feed. Nor do they care about their workers, typically illegal immigrants - am I wrong? They don't care about you, especially if you don't either, and we continue to fill our stomachs with their hatred . . .because we saw it on a fun commercial . . . because it's cheaper . .  because it's easier . . . because when push comes to shove we are lazy . . . we like our routine and changing one's lifestyle takes too much effort. Sometimes our complex America is as simple as this: we are who and where we put our money.

    Though I have always cared about my health, somehow I have become even more sensitive to the sad state of nutrition our America has evolved into since I've become pregnant. I have someone else to think about who is not tough or in their prime, and can't handle a night out drinking too much wine and eating decadent foods. I am nourishing a baby. Everything that I eat I see as nutrition, energy, and as the source of vitality for my future son. How can he live up to his father's dreams of him, Bruno Italo Giovannoni, becoming the next Italian dictator without having a healthy start?

    I have realized that there are many myths that come with pregnancy, and that honestly, most women don't know a shit about it. That was me, week one, thinking geez, now I'm going to start eating like a beast. Week one I started eating so much meat and heavy foods, and I thought wow now I can eat dessert everyday if I want to, because according to the myths I'm going to look like a fat pig no matter what . . . and then I started to feel sick and realized, "you know what? I'm an asshole." I'm not eating for two people. "First of all it's week one. The baby is hardly even the size of my nipple. Secondly, who started spreading the rumors that it was all of a sudden ok to start eating like a pig?" I knew it was wrong because my body was repulsed by what I had just done to myself and I wasn't even a month into pregnancy. Not to mention my relationship with the toilet all of sudden changed as well. Maybe I should be saying thank you to that experience because since then I have been scarred and find it very difficult to emotionally indulge in foods that are not healthy for me and my baby.

    I'm still just learning about this crazy pregnancy experience myself, because to be honest it wasn't always top priority after a full day of work, exhausted, hungry, hormonal, and alone (my husband works long hours). Sometimes I was just so hungry after work all I could manage to prepare myself was protein on a plate, in any form, just to get the energy to take the next step, perhaps some sautéed spinach, or a salad. It can get tough when you don't have help. But the real shit kicker is that if I didn't have the luxury of maternity leave, health insurance, and a husband who had a good job to financially take care of the family/household during this time, I wouldn't have had the time or the energy to have known a shit about shit. It's truly only in these last months that I've been able to scour the internet, or sit down to read books. How do single mothers do it on their own?

    In conclusion: we as a society need to be more educated. Research products before you buy them . . and this goes out especially to moms . . . just because something is made for your baby doesn't make it safe for your baby. I have recently realized that the 100% Urethane foam bassinet mattress that came with the bassinet I received as a gift is potentially toxic to my baby. Now I have to make the time to custom order a new organic mattress that will fit the bassinet. This has been a much more difficult task that I anticipated. It would have been nice to have assumed that the mattress that came with my baby's bassinet was safe and that I could just rely on products that are available to me and my baby to not be harmful. Sadly not true. And now I'm hungry again and pissed.
    My girlfriend asked me last night, "Have you enjoyed your pregnancy?"
    "Enjoy is not the right word," I said. "It's been a very important experience. It's been the most immense life experience, but it hasn't been easy."
         

Ahh! Bruno, a Whole Weekend without Anyone Busting Your Balls.

Dear Bruno,
 
    You have the weekend to relax! So kick your little feet to your heart's desire and keep developing those lungs because the doctor's said you are in perfect health!
    Imagine that! They were surprised too! When the nurse came back in after she hooked me up to the heart beat monitor she almost jumped out of her shoes when she saw your activity. "Wow, that's amazing," she said. "We look for that amount of activity in twenty minutes and he's done it already in half the time." She confided in me that they also call her the "granola" nurse because she believes in natural labor. We quietly discussed how some women just have a longer gestational period than others, and that giving women a specific due date tended to be a disservice.
    "When was your 'fabled' due date?" She asked me. She was inspired by me because I am 36 ("old" in the pregnant world) and she said, "I'm the same age as you and want to have children as well."
    She had checked my amniotic fluids and confirmed they are in abundance. "Your baby's in heaven," she said. I also, from the advice of my midwife, drank three liters of water yesterday to make sure my amniotic fluids would be at their peek, as according to my midwife, they naturally lessen as you get closer to labor.
    I then had a meeting with my OBGYN who as well was shocked at how healthy you were Brunino! She was surprised at how good I looked, how strong you were, and she still continued to discuss the possibility of having to induce you and if we did, we should use pitossin.
    "I plan to go as long as I can without induction as long as the baby is healthy," I said.
    "Yes," she said, "I'm just introducing induction in case we need to go there," she concluded.
    "Oh, I've heard about it many times," I assured her.
    So Bruno, you have a whole weekend to relax. No one is pushing you to come out at least until monday when we have follow up tests and for sure another discussion about the "worst case scenario." I just think it would be so nice if my OBGYN could just say to me, "I know you want to have a natural birth and I support you. We will continue to monitor you and the baby and I won't push you for induction unless I think it's really important for the health of you and your baby." Wow, that would be nice to hear, just once, once, from her.
 

"Do You Know a Cure for Me?"

"Do you know a cure for me?"
"Why yes," he said, " I know a cure for everything. Salt water."
"Salt water?" I asked him.
"Yes," he said, "in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea."
(Karen Blixen)

I truly believe that sometimes my greatest strength dwells within my ability to surrender to my greatest weaknesses and fears. I have taught myself to feel safe while melting into my vulnerability though I've also learned that you have to be careful who you share that part of yourself with. . . perhaps the key to sharing these intimacies is just that: share it. Don't make it someone else's responsibility to fix your weakness, to expel your fears, or to become your hero. That is often very uncomfortable for the other person, and most of us are not trained to know how to properly handle the gray wet claylike emotions that emerge from the pits of another person's soul. One reason I am a strong advocate of therapy. I wonder if there are therapists who deal with specifically pregnant women?

To be honest there are moments while waiting for Bruno to show signs of labor that remind me of how I felt in high school, sitting by the phone on my bed wondering if the boy I had a crush on was going to call me. Though in high school I didn't have the same level of emotional strength I have now. Those waiting by the phone days (when we didn't have cell phones) was truly painful.

But I think every pregnant woman can relate. We know it's going to happen soon. Our lives are on hold for the magic moment, now all we need is the magic bullet. Perhaps this is the reason why induction has become so common and mainstream. It is literally the magic bullet, the one thing a doctor has up its sleeve to play god and actually have any control - and though I am not against induction when used in the proper circumstances - in my humble experience thus far as an expectant mother I think we should use these soul searching vulnerable moments as just that - soul searching - let your shit come out, who knows, this might help baby come out too.

I've scoured the internet reading everything about those last weeks of due dates, past due dates, induction, natural induction etc . . . I myself am drinking red raspberry leaf tea, taking primrose oil, making love, doing squats, taking walks, and yes, I'm showing signs of oncoming labor - my mucus plug has dropped, I've had blood spotting, I'm getting minor contractions - and my feelings always come back to the same premise: birth is like dying - without any direct medical intervention - it is something that happens on its own clock, in its own magical or even tragic way. There is something about these two major life events that exist to remind us something about our own souls and selves, to remind us about our life in this world. Maybe we should take this time to worry less and listen deeper.

We'll see if I still feel the same way tomorrow after my doctor's appointment. It is now the time when they start monitoring the baby and turning up the fear pressure.  But today . . . I choose peace and calm.

"The Courage to Suffer" (Victor Frankl).

"But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest courage, the courage to suffer" (Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning).  

"In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as a meaning of a sacrifice" (Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning).

Part of the reason I am writing this blog is because for the first time in my life I have realized how much fear women confront throughout their whole childbirth experience. The fear starts at a young age too; at least it did for me, with the wonder: "Will I even be able to give life, to have children of my own?"

I don't know if it's an American cultural thing, but in my environment women didn't talk about childbirth, and children were hidden away when it happened. . . in addition, women didn't breastfeed. When my husband and I first made the decision to commit to having a baby I was shocked to discover how much fear I harbored inside of me, first in the worry of knowing if I could even get pregnant and second in the fear of the pain of childbearing -- no, the second was the worry if I would have a healthy baby. . . which still slightly tingles inside of me as I haven't given birth yet. Point being -- we worry about everything.

The most impactful people for me throughout my whole dance with fear were the midwives, doulas, and shockingly (to me at least) my chiropractor. I will write about them specifically in the future with their contact info and links, as they are just amazing. I witnessed how refreshing and healthy it was to finally have someone tell me that there is nothing to fear. To remind me and to educate me that the same hormone of love we experience while making babies: oxytocin, is the hormone that we naturally create while giving birth to them. 

How is it that I had never heard of this before? How is it that I've had to read books and actively seek out information to discover that making love as often as possible in your last month of pregnancy is perhaps the best thing you can do -- that there is nothing better to soften your cervix than semen or to stimulate contractions in your uterus as an orgasm. Maybe this is not government approved by scientific testing . . .and I forgive my OBGYN for not sharing in the good news . . . but why hadn't I heard this from my girlfriends, from other mothers -- through the feminine grapevine? Sure you can find anything on the internet nowadays, even my blog, but it makes a world of a difference when you hear it from women you know. The midwives, doulas and my male chiropractor were sharing information with me that blew my mind. I especially could not believe how much I had never known about childbirth and about breastfeeding. I didn't even know from word of mouth that contractions came in waves, or that women didn't produce milk in the first few days after birth but made colostrum instead. I am still shocked that the intimate information of childbirth is not more widely shared amongst women. What we seem to choose to focus on instead is our fear. How much childbirth hurt . . .but pain is relative and personal. Some women have been known to experience orgasms while giving natural birth. . .a reminder that one woman's birth experience is not guaranteed for the next. 

My wish is that we women take more of a stand in our birthing experience. Question your doctor. Know your rights. Demand more for yourself and from others. Our system will not change for us until our doctors are confronted with our voices, until our employers, co-workers, neighbors, husbands, children, friends and females alike are forced to face our concerns. This world cannot function without us. Let us honor and own our own power.

The "suffering" and personal growth I've experienced throughout this whole process has been one of the most empowering journeys I've ever embarked on in my whole life. I've witnessed my greatest fear transform into fairy dust right before my eyes . . . and I believe fear is the greatest pain and hurdle of all.

"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom" (Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning). 

*Victor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, is perhaps one of the most powerful I've ever read.

 

"Only Fools Rush In."

 

    While waiting for Bruno my girlfriend called me and asked if I wanted to take some pregnant photos. Thank you Kate, designer of Earthen, who took some photos of me practically naked on her front porch while consoling me that nobody walks by her house in her Napa neighborhood. I've thought about it over and over - how I would never have been shy wearing a bikini posing for photos, but for some reason bigger boobs and baby belly felt more risqué.  
    So in the effort of doing something for myself before Baby Bruno arrives, I also took a moment yesterday to gift myself a moment of considering the things that I want. I want:

•     To be able to bend over easily and paint my toenails again. Ok, let's make it more general: to be able to care for myself with ease again below the waist. I break into sweat just trying to shave my legs. I have newly developed ass and thigh muscles from the acrobatic ways I lift my legs while trying to put on my socks and shoes.
•     To never have to deal with the shock and emotional debilitation of sudden hunger pains and angst that I am usually not prepared well enough to satiate. After 40 weeks of pregnancy I still cannot mentally wrap my head around how much food a pregnant woman must eat. 
•     Sushi. I love you forever.
•     A bottle of wine and a plate of prosciutto in a room with just my husband and maybe some bread and a candle. Alright . . . and a negroni for after.
•     To wear a sundress and sandals - able to see my legs and painted toes - and while on the subject: to be able to fit into short shorts again.
•     To return to African dance classes. To vigorously exercise again. To feel sweat dripping from every gland and every muscle from deep within my soul (note* I've only had this experience from African dance classes in NYC with Djoniba. I miss you so much.).
•     And I miss loving the heat and the sun which currently melts me into discomfort, headache, and a bad mood.

    So Brunino, enjoy your last moments in utopia because you're coming out whether you like it or not.  My girlfriend texted me this morning and said she's happy he's taking time . . .because "only fools rush in."  

 

Italians Love Babies Even More than They Love Pasta.

To my little Baby Bruno,

    You have a lot to look forward to. Your father is not only so handsome, but he is Italian, from Tuscany . . . and Italians love babies even more than they love pasta . . . and do you know how much they love pasta? Sometimes they can't go a whole day without feeling a deep pain in their heart if they don't have a plate of it. So, just imagine how much your Babbo already loves you.
    His olive blue eyes water and redden at the thought of touching you. His hands move around in these frenetic Italian gestures at the thought of just having you right there in front of him. He has attended every single doctor's appointment with me. He holds my hand when the gynecologist sticks her own inside me to do a pelvic exam and he laughs every time she says anything about you. "His head has dropped down into your pelvis. I can feel it," the doctor said.
    "You can feel his head?" Your Babbo smiled and started hyperventilating in his unique way of giggling as if that was the most exciting news he had ever heard. Going to the gynecologist has never been so fun with your father by my side. You should have seen his face the first time we saw you as a little peanut in the sonogram, after the doctor zoomed in and we could see your heart beating a million miles an hour. That moment was one of the best in our lives. Your Babbo couldn't stop talking about your heartbeat for months and months until the next sonogram when he saw your penis for the first time. Talk about making a father proud. He always knew you were going to be a boy, even when everyone else thought you were going to be a girl.
    I am so lucky as well to have him by my side. This whole pregnancy has been a learning experience for the both of us. At first he whimpered at the mere sight or sound of a woman giving birth in a movie, but he pushed through that. We watched natural birth films together. We attended natural birth classes together. He's been by my side in a classroom for multiple hours studying breastfeeding and newborn care (not an easy feat for his type of attention span). Now he is ready to even cut the umbilical cord, something he couldn't even talk about in the past. Now he is prepared to massage me during birth, to be a force of strength right by my side, to hold you skin to skin unbathed and slathered in vernix immediately after birth if for some reason I cannot . . . and he can do all of this not only because of his immense love for both you and me, but because of the education we committed to empower ourselves with before your birth.
    But, "the proof is in the pudding." We'll see if he passes out or if I just start screaming: "give me the fucking drugs." Whatever happens Brunino, the one constant is that we love you and we've given it our best.
 

Baby Due Dates, like Black Magic Spells!

    Specific baby due dates are like black magic spells cast upon you. There. I said it. Whoever thought that assigning one specific date for a woman's pregnancy to end was a good idea was not a very smart or good person. Could they not have considered assigning a whole week instead of one pivotal day that see-saws your birth plan into its polar opposite realm of decline? Into entering the hair-raising stages of possible "induction."
    I would like to take a brief moment right now to say: "Fuck you induction!"
    Think about all the families who sit around their babies' "due date" wondering, "why isn't my baby coming?" Worrying, "is everything going to be o.k.?"
    It will take me many blog entries to unravel my experiences being transported through the baby factory, sometimes feeling like a herded animal, often times finding myself alone at my kitchen table amongst doctor handouts marketed with fear clawing at me between the lines and me, typically strong me, sitting there almost defeated, crying to myself, thinking, "one would need to go to medical school to begin to understand all of these tests and decisions I have to make." I was not 25 years old having my first baby . . . I was 35 . . . and this age in the baby factory is the first year of "old" and potentially "high risk". Eventually after feeling a bit helpless and surprised to discover that I grew up as a female with little to zero information about childbirth, I started to realize that my judgements, fears, and visions about birth had been formulated by American television and movies. My hand raised to my gaping mouth. "No! It couldn't be! Not me. I don't even drink soda. I'm not one of those!"
    "You are sweetheart," I said. "So what are you going to do about it?"
    "Well I'm going to make it my priority to re-educate myself, that's what I'm going to do about it sister."
    So I read books (Ina May Gaskin's are my favorites) and I asked around.  When I first became pregnant I thought your water broke and you rushed to the hospital. I thought you just took the epidural and lay on your back and let the doctors do their thing. Who knows, this may end up being me, but my birth plan is to have a natural birth. Like I said in my last blog post, I believe birth, like dying is one of the most natural things about life - the majority of time it will happen without complication when the baby is ready to enter the other side of its life. Why and how have we reached this condition where we are so interventive and fearful of possibly the most natural process of life?

(Note to reader and especially to women who choose or have chosen not to have a natural childbirth . . . I have no judgement about what other women choose, as I myself have not even had my birth experience yet. . . my only wish is for women in our society to be better informed about what their options are: natural vs. drugs -- and the implications and responsibilities of each. In my experience I didn't feel like this important information was present enough at my doctor's office, or that my questions were welcomed, which is why I chose to hire a mid-wife as well.)

When Due Date Arrives Before Baby . . .

    I imagine giving birth is like dying. No one can do it for you. No one can ultimately help you, especially not your husband, so forget it. In these last forty weeks I've learned to surrender to my psychopathic hormonal changes, and that whatever I do . . . I CANNOT share them with anyone! It's the only way to save my marriage, my relationship with my OBGYN, and my family and friends. I needed to find a "healthier" way to proactively deflate my misery from having complete lack of control over this baby's birth. Which is why today I am starting this blog.
    Today is my official Baby Bruno due date and I'm powerless. The only things in my authority are having sex/making love, eating and exercise, and all of which must be performed in a careful radius of my house, my husband, a chaperone, or my car. Let's be real here, even pissing and shitting have graduated to being beyond my domain of discipline. What do I do with all of this newfound treasure of vitality within me?  First desire is to painfully torture my husband with verbal unwarranted attack but maybe even that's a bit filtered . .  . I'd really love to just shake him, hit him and cry uncontrollably. But I won't do any of the above. This is one of the only forms of control I still have left -- control over what of my emotions I choose to share and with whom. For the record, I haven't mastered this technique yet.
    One of the most poignant moments of realizing that I was truly pregnant was when I first started having these thoughts of physically hurting my husband. It was a morning like every other. He jumped out of bed at 6:30 a.m., then hovered over me and stared into me with his olive green and sometimes teal blue eyes, always with a gentle smile and said "Ti amo," sealed with a kiss.
    I then unrolled myself across the whole California King bed and continued sleeping for another half hour as he leisurely prepared his Italian style stove top Moka coffee while reading La Gazzetta dello Sport and La Reppublica. I rise from his second alarm, a sing song Italian accented lullaby, "Amore, coffee's ready."  It sounds more like a question than matter of fact. He is truly happy, and this pisses me off.
    That should have been the first red alert, but as a woman I am comfortable and quite used to inconsistent emotions and really don't hesitate or feel badly for my thoughts. I do know better than to share them with him though, that's why it's ok. The moment and desire to inflict physical violence on him came later that morning, after I had asked him, "Will you make me a boiled egg while I'm in the shower?"
    "Of course I will.  Would you like anything else?" He was so optimistic and helpful, even before he knew I was pregnant.
    "No, that's it." I didn't even worry about how he made the egg. Did he remember to turn it down from a boil to a simmer? Did he turn it off too soon before it was done and just let it sit in warm water? O.k. maybe I pondered these things but everything transformed the moment I walked out of the bedroom dressed and ready for work and I sighted U.V. kitchen light reflecting off a wet hard-boiled egg sliced in half with a perfectly cooked center instead of the matte surface of an unpeeled egg shell. All of a sudden I truly wanted to grab his head and thrust it against the kitchen counter top.
    "You peeled the egg?" I asked while wrapping my arms lovingly around his waist and kissed his neck. He was about four inches taller than me.
    "Yes. You didn't want to eat it before work?" He looked at me with those same soft morning eyes.
    "No. I was going to take it with me and eat it later." I fumbled around the kitchen battling this newfound emerging demon in addition to a schizophrenic appetite that I had never encountered before. I hated that egg. I hated him.
    "Oh, I'm sorry. I'll make you a new one." He would sincerely do it too.
    "No. No. It's okay." I looked at the sliced egg, drizzled with imported Italian fresh pressed olive oil from Montalcino, Tuscany, and already dressed with crushed Italian rock salt from Sicily and freshly cracked pepper. "Oh, you put olive oil on it?" I asked.
    "Yes. You don't like it like that?"
    "I don't know. . " and this is how pregnancy began. We had been "trying" to get me pregnant for a whole year . . . and the only sad thing is that once it happens, your hormones and first trimester nausea take hold of you so fast and so certain, like an experienced salsa dancing partner would do, and you can't do anything but follow its lead.
    Somehow, sharing this story has made my day brighter.