So here I am at 25 weeks pregnant, and I can say that I finally and officially “feel” pregnant. Running has become more difficult, trips to the bathroom occur every half hour and people stare at my belly as I walk down the street. According to my midwife, my weight gain and size is “on point,” but perhaps most noticeable this week was that at 25 weeks on the dot on Sunday morning, I woke up with my arm draped across my stomach and could actually feel you moving from the outside. So of course I called for your daddy who came darting into the room, placed his hand on my belly, waited patiently and there you were… saying hello to him for the very first time. It makes the whole experience even that much more exciting now that he can be in on the fun!
Month: April 2010
Took A Spill
I took a spill yesterday while running in the new Brooklyn Bridge Park by the waterfront in DUMBO. Thankfully, my belly was spared but my knees were not! I guess it’s true what they say about your balance being off while preggers.
OUCH!
No lectures please, I feel like ass enough on my own. I was scared for a second about the bambino but as soon as I knew that part of my body was fine I got myself together and continued running. The more awkward part was making my way home with a burgeoning belly and blood dripping down my leg. The stares were interesting. One woman stopped me and offered me a crumpled up – if not used – tissue from her purse. It was a nice gesture, but seriously? I’m not eight! I’m a grown, pregnant woman who took a little spill! I’ll live, as will my baby.
Lesson learned: Watch my footing more carefully from now on. Especially while I run.
Ric O’Barry & The Cove
At the top of my dog Ella’s blog lies a quote from Ric O’Barry, one of my heroes. “We teach the child not to hurt the butterfly as much for the child as for the butterfly.” In my opinion, there is no saying more tender, more simple. Ella, a victim of animal cruelty, is my butterfly. She has given me the wings to embrace and advocate what I am most passionate about, protecting animals.
When I was a child I had dreams of becoming an ice cream truck driver. Luckily, for my waistline, those dreams later changed to becoming a marine cetalogist. I think I got off on telling people what cetology – the study of whales, dolphins and porpoises – meant. And no matter what, they always translated that into me wanting to be a dolphin trainer, like Ric O’Barry was to Flipper. Sure no one knew who Ric O’Barry was, but everyone knew who Flipper was. I would tell people that yes, I wanted to be like Flipper’s “former” trainer, but that no, I did not want to train Flipper, or any other dolphin for that matter. It seemed incredulous to me, even at a very young age, that anyone have the right to study these creatures anywhere, but in the wild.
Somewhere around 10th grade biology class, all my dreams of being a scientist, ceased. It turned out I was not very good at memorization, or test-taking for that matter, and so my apirations were rerouted once again.
I have always been distantly cognizant of the work of Ric O’Barry. The man spent 10 years in the 60’s working in the dolphin captivity industry training five dolphins to play the role of Flipper, and the next few decades activating against the industry. So it was of no great surprise to me that he’d be featured in The Cove, a ground-breaking documentary on the dolphin captivity and slaughter industry that garnered a wide theatrical release and went on to win an Oscar.
Even though the movie came out this past September it took being up thousands of feet in the air on a Virgin America flight last week, for me to see it. Sure, I cried — I’m not sure anyone can sit through this documentary dry-eyed. But watching these people band together to shoot this film… the courage, passion and extreme measures they went to, it was beyond humbling. And of course Ric O’Barry, remains, my hero.
The Mama Pittie And The Man In Red
I had just exited off the BQE on Sunday afternoon when I spotted them. A skinny, old black man and a mama pit bull with teets down to the ground. I was in the far left lane of a four-lane road with direct traffic that lead to the Brooklyn Bridge. Driving slowly, I couldn’t take my eyes off them. She was brindle, he wore a red tattered sweat shirt and they walked like a couple who had been together for decades.
I contemplated stopping but it seemed an impossible feat, not to mention that my motivation for stopping would likely turn out to be futile. At the same time, I couldn’t help but think that if I continued home, I would forever wonder about the mama pit and the man in the red sweatshirt.
Then it occurred to me that I was sans husband, who would most definitely not let me cut across three lanes of traffic to approach a perfect stranger, and so I did it. I cut 90 degrees across, pissing off several cars in the process, and pulled over onto a side street. I double parked the car, left the emergency lights on and got out just as the man and his dog were at the corner.
He looked at me, nodded and said, “good afternoon ma’am.” And then I went for it. I spoke to him about his pit – who was timid and clung closely to him – and told him about mine. I also told him how I work with a non-profit organization that holds free spay/neuter clinics once per month. His eyes lit up. He was not only interested but floored that we offered the service for free. I told him it’s $100 for poodles and free for pits, and he had a good laugh.
It turned out my new friend, Rufus, has three pits. Mama who was with him, papa and one of their daughters who were both at home. They are older – 10, 10 and eight – and he explained that the births were accidental. He had kept mama and papa separate assuming mama was only in heat for a week to 10 days. Little did he know that it could last up to a month.
While it’s great news and was well-worth the drama it took to stop and advocate, his pups are older, and will need special clearance from a vet in order to be operated on. I wish this had a happy ending but we will have to wait and see what happens…
Switching From An OB/GYN To A Midwife
Me and my husband Jason didn’t know a whole lot about the birthing process when we got pregnant. So when we found out we were expecting, at about five weeks along, I looked up local OB/GYN’s in our Brooklyn neighborhood. I wasn’t working at the time so finding a local doctor close to my home was important to me. I found and met Dr. Scott Postell, an attending at Long Island College Hospital, which was a five minute walk from our apartment.
We began prenatal care with Dr. Postell but thanks to a woman I met and became friendly with in prenatal yoga class, I learned about midwives, doulas and liberal birth plans. She lent me The Business of Being Born, a documentary about how giving birth has gone from being a natural process to a catastrophic medical process in America. I had heard of midwifery before but assumed it was a phenomenon of the past, and common only in other countries. Unfortunately, I was right.
The documentary was an eye-opener and because I was considered “low risk,” it got us thinking seriously about a birth plan. We decided a liberal birth experience with minimal-to-no-intervention is what we wanted. We didn’t want to have a home birth (it felt responsible to be in a hospital) as many of the women portrayed in Ricki Lake’s documentary did, but we did want to bring our child into the world with a midwife.
I was 20 weeks pregnant when we severed our relationship with our OB/GYN before finding a midwife. Looking back, it was a terribly naive thing to do. I guess we thought finding a midwife would be as easy as finding a doctor, but we were wrong. Because I was already halfway though my pregnancy, it proved no easy feat.
Midwives take patients based on their due dates, so we needed to find one that not only had space in her calendar in August, but one that would accept our insurance and preferably have privileges to deliver at LICH, the hospital closest to our home. Phone call after phone call to midwife after midwife we were being turned away — until we got a call back from Beverly Woodard of Fruition Midwifery.
Beverly not only took GHI but also had privileges at LICH and space in her schedule for us. The only downside was that her office was in Chelsea, a short subway ride away. Gone was my office-within-walking-distance-requirement, but beggars cannot be choosers!
Before I met Beverly my impression of a midwife was someone who was was warm, maternal and perhaps a bit crunchy. Beverly was anything but that. She was a whippersnapper. She was autocratic, and she took great pleasure in shooting down our fanciful, liberal hopes for a drug-free birth. “Wait, what? Don’t midwives advocate for natural birth?” They absolutely do. But Beverly’s point was that first-time expectant parents shouldn’t rule out all birthing options, including drugs.
So I kept the option of having or needing drugs on the table, but it was important for me to avoid having a Cesarean birth if it was not medically necessary. One thing was for sure: Beverly would not scoff at me if it turned out I needed either of these interventions. Luckily we had found ourselves a midwife!
Has anyone else found themselves changing health care professionals during their pregnancy? If so, did the switch turn out to be a good one?