what are my options for pain relief when that time comes?

For many years women have went through childbirth without any type of pain medications or pain relief at all. Luckily we live in the 21st century where there are tons of options that you may not even realize.

Everybody knows there is the option of receiving an epidural when giving birth. But how many people know what an epidural really is? Are there any other options for me?

I have done quite a bit of research in order to enlighten myself, and complete a research paper for this English class, And I have found that there are options that are not as popular as the epidural, but also have less possible side effects.

There are always the natural options that do not really relieve the pain, but instead help you deal with it. Some of these options include breathing techniques, water therapy, having a focus point and massage or counter pressure.

Then there are medications that can be used that are less invasive than having a large needle shoved in your back, hoping it doesn't hit your spinal cord. Most of these medications are called narcotics and are only given to help make the pain bearable for a couple of hours, these medications are often times only given once due to the fact that they can slow the babies heart rate and/or lower your blood pressure. They also work less effective the more you use them which is another reason they are usually only given once during labor, so if you choose this route, make sure you are choosing to receive them at the right time!

The medication that surprised me during my research is Nitrous Oxide. This medication is more commonly known in the United States as laughing gas. I find it very shocking that this is the only drug on the list of drugs used during childbirth that has little to no effect on the baby at all. However this is also the only drug that is not hardly ever used in the United States for this purpose. It is commonly used in Canada and the United Kingdom, but The United States chooses to use medications which can and often do have negative effects on mother and baby.

Because of this research I am going to inquire more about Nitrous oxide the next time I go to the doctors, and when I take my childbirth classes. If it is as good as it sounds I might be going to Canada to have this baby!

Who is this Baby Inside of me?

I have one question that I have been repeatedly asking myself since I accepted the fact that I am pregnant. This question is "who will my baby be?" there has not been one day that this question has not crossed my mind in either one form or another. I find myself thinking it more and more now that I know my little baby is a girl and I have even seen pictures of her face.

There are the superficial questions like:
Will she be born with hair? What color will her hair be? Will it be super curly and nappy or smooth and wavy or possibly even straight? Since she is bi-racial, will she take after me and be super light like my 5 year old nephew, or take after her dad more and be dark skinned like my 3 year old nephew? When she gets older will she be skinny like her dads side of the family, or a little thicker like mine? Will she be a good sleeper (I really hope so she takes after me in this aspect).

Then there are deeper questions:
What will her personality be like? Will she be good in school? Will she be the "quiet" type or a talker like her aunt. Will she be athletic? If she is will she like sports like basketball or would she rather be a cheerleader and run track?

There is not one of these questions that I can answer right now. Many of them will take years before I find out the answer to them, there are obviously a couple of them that will be answered the day or soon after I deliver her this fall, and while I can't wait to find out, I am also not in a hurry for this whole pregnancy experience to be over. Every day when I see the other kids in my family they spark one of these questions. I love seeing each and every one of them showing more and more of who they are (I would say developing into who they are but I believe everybody is born exactly who they are, it just takes time for others to figure it out).

When my oldest nephew tells my sister he is staying at his grandma's and not coming home until school starts it makes me wonder, will she be a nana's baby? will she be a daddy's girl?
When my 5 year old nephew gets sad when he gets yelled at I wonder if she is going to be sensitive or more like my his little brother who acts like he don't have emotions, even though he has a baby that he takes care of all day every day.

Only time will be able to answer my question "Who is this baby inside of me?"

What is normal?

During pregnancy, especially your first, there are tons of changes you are going to experience. With most of them you will wonder "Is this normal?"

I do not believe in the word "normal" in the traditional since. I believe everybody has their own normal, particularly when it comes to pregnancy. No two people are the same and therefore no two pregnancies will be the same.

So far for me normal has been way different than normal has been for any of  my friends who are also expecting. 

I am currently 22 weeks along and I just started noticeably "showing" about a week and a half ago. Two other girls I know were "showing" around 12 weeks, both of these are NORMAL.

A coworker of mine did not experience any "morning sickness" at all, I was sick every night between weeks 4 and 12. Yet again both of these are NORMAL

I am the only one I know who has had constant migraine's as a side effect of pregnancy, even though I can't say I know anybody else who is or has experienced this it is still "NORMAL."

There will be tons of changes within your body as you go through the pregnancy experience. I can almost promise you, THEY ARE ALL NORMAL. Most of the time you will KNOW without a doubt if there is something truly wrong. The best way to know whether or not something is normal is to take the time to educate yourself. We are lucky enough to live in the time of GOOGLE where the answer to any question you have is only a few clicks away. 

I personally do not have many questions regarding pregnancy and all the changes that are happening to me, because I have always had a strange infatuation with pregnancy and what happens during it. My favorite classes were sex ed and other health classed that taught about pregnancy. I also took a lot of time to self educate while my sister was pregnant. All of those pamphlets they have at the doctors office can really teach a lot if you actually take the time to read them (yes I am one of those people who read pamphlets just because I am bored). 

Boy or Girl?

This day and age it is "normal" to find out the gender of your baby before you have it. That leaves you with another big decision, should you find out or should you leave it a surprise like it has been for thousands of years before.

I personally always said that I wanted to wait for the surprise, I did not want to go with "the norm" and find out halfway through my pregnancy. However since "my pregnancy" is not technically just mine, I am sharing this experience with my boyfriend/baby-daddy; and he wanted to find out whether we were welcoming a little baby boy or a tiny little girl into our lives. Because we both wanted different things, we compromised. He was okay with him finding out and keeping it a secret from me for the remaining 20 weeks. I was not okay with that.

So the compromise I came up with, was a "gender reveal party". Rather than sitting in a doctor office and having some ultrasound tech saying "It's a boy" or "It's a girl". I forced my sister to plan and execute a party where I found out the gender in front of all my close family and friends. In order to do this she got the privileged of finding out the gender before everybody else.

I really liked the way she decided to reveal the gender to me and the rest of the my family. She could have chosen to have a cake with pink or blue inside so I would be surprised when I cut into it, she could have simply bout a pink or blue article of baby clothing  and wrapped it and given it to me. There are hundreds of different options, but she decided to do scratch offs. Everybody at the party got one and we scratched them at the same time. These revealed whether my little stinker is going to be a boy or a girl.

ITS A GIRL!!!!! 

I love that I will be able save one of these scratch offs and put it in a baby book or shadow box with other baby mementos like the first ultrasound picture. This is definitely one experience I will never forget and in no way regret going against my first desire to not know ahead of time. I now have more time to prepare for having a little baby girl, which may be needed since we have not had any girls in our family in over 13 years. I have broke the testosterone streak!

What doctor should you choose?

When it comes time to choose an OBGYN to go to throughout your pregnancy a ton of factors arise that you may have never thought of before. Trust me when I say, unless you already have one, finding an OB can be a very daunting headache.
The first thing you should think about when choosing any doctor, especially and OBGYN, is the location of the actual office building. After all you will be going there at least 15 times within the next 9 months.
The next thing you should do is find out whether or not that office you think is convenient, accepts the insurance you have.
You think this whole process is over now? You have the doctors office that is only a few blocks away, you called and asked and they do accept your insurance (whoohoo because the only other OBGYN office is completely out of the way!!) Well your wrong, its not over yet, now you have to decide on an actual doctor. So that means yet another phone call or trip to the office to get a list of the doctors they have there.
Now is the time to decide, would you like a male or female doctor? Some women feel more comfortable having another women going to the most intimate private areas of your body. Some would rather have a male doctor because "its more natural". Then there are the women like me who really do not care either way, after all weather male or female, they are just doing their job, and have seen hundreds of other women's vaginas throughout their career.
Have you decided? Will you be going with a man or women? AAAHHHH your done now! Haha I was just kidding, there are still a few more steps before you can say you have your doctor. So now you have found there is an OBGYN conveniently located a few blocks away from your home, you have got a list of the different doctors, and thought long and hard about whether you would rather have a man or woman looking deep into your body.
Now that you have done all of that you must actually decide on one specific doctor, yup that's right, look at a list of names on a plain white piece of paper and decide from that which doctor you would like to have. This is where references from people you know or even reviews on the internet can come in handy.
After talking to your mother, sister, best friend with four kids and the random lady standing outside the office, you learn that everybody has a different doctor they absolutly love. So you then go to the internet where you spend hours looking at reviews of each of those doctors on that list you previously received. YOU FINALLY DECIDE on a specific doctor that seems perfect for you. Now you are almost done! Just two more steps!
Time to call and see if that perfect doctor for you is accepting new patients or not. If your lucky they will be and you can then set up your first appointment. If not, I am sorry. Hopefully you had a runner up on that list you can inquire about.

How do I tell them?

Okay, now that I have talked about why I chose pregnancy to write about, I would now like to talk about how I answered one of the first questions that popped into my head when I found out I was expecting. Since I am here now talking about my whole pregnancy experience I am going to skip the first question I mentioned in my previous post (whether or not to keep the baby). Obviously everybody knows my answer to that decision.

So onto the next question. How will I tell my family and friends, specifically the babies father and my parents?

Lets start from the very beginning. On the night of February 10th I decided I should get a pregnancy test, due to the fact that I could not drink an iced tea from McDonald's like I normally do. I was too nervous to take it that night (plus your first morning urine is more accurate) so I waited until the next morning to take the test. That day I had plans to run errands with my sister so while we were out and about I casually brought up the question "So what are the chance of having a false positive on a home pregnancy test"? I already knew the answer to this question, so we made some detours and went to get my pregnancy "officially documented" for my insurance and stuff. Telling her was the easy part.

After all the questions from the doctors and such, I had to think about how and when to tell my boyfriend. I decided that since it was so close to valentines day I would wait until then to tell him, I spent the next three days trying to decide HOW I was going to tell him and trying to avoid him so I did not "let it slip" before then. This was extremely hard, and he knew that I was "up to something". On the night of the 13th while I was at work I FINALLY decided how I was going to tell him.

I stumbled across a pocket sized baby name book that we sell at my place of employment (surprisingly enough I had NEVER seen this book before this day). As soon as I seen it I knew right away that was it! With Valentines day being the next day I stopped at dollar general and bought a small gift bag as soon as I got out of work. Him and I already had plans for dinner and I already had a couple other gifts I previously purchased for him.

The next evening after I got out of work on our way to dinner I gave him his "real gifts" and told him he had one other but it had to wait until after dinner. We had to wait over an hour for a table at Red Lobster (we originally planned on going to Lucky's but there was a three hour wait there) this wait was antagonizing for me, after all I was keeping one of the biggest secrets in my life. By the time we got a table, I was so nervous (and my "morning sickness" always came later in the evening) I could barley eat anything.

After we packed up most of my food, we went back to his house. As soon as we got in the house I sat the little gift bag on his chair and told him I was getting in the shower, before I could actually get into the shower I heard him yell "OH MY GOD, what is this!!!?" "Is this forreal?" "Your not lieng are you?".. That night he was very excited as he has been talking about trying to have another child for a few years...... Now that hard part was over.......

Why I am Blogging about Pregnancy

Pregnancy is an experience that a lot of women get to experience. For each and every women this experience is different. It can be good, bad, excruciating, depressing, exciting or just plain boring.

Not only is pregnancy different for each woman who experiences it, each pregnancy the woman has can also be unique. You may have a terrible pregnancy with horrible morning sickness all throughout the entire process and have labor complications with your first pregnancy. Then when or if you decide you would like to suffer another 40 weeks of agony and pain you may find out that this pregnancy will go down a completely different path compared to the last one. It just might turn out to be one of the best experiences of your life.

While the pregnancy experience itself is always unique, so is everything else that comes with baring a child. From whether or not the insemination of one of your precious eggs was actually planned, or your birth control failed and the condom broke and wha-la your now going to be spending the next eighteen or more years supporting another human being. All the way too whether you decide to give birth naturally or opt for a c-section. EVERYTHING can be different.

There are sooooo many choices and questions before, during and after every pregnancy. First off should I keep it? (this can be an easy no-brainer question, or one of the hardest decisions you have ever made in your life). How should I tell my boyfriend/husband/guy I met at the bar last month (Crap what was his name? Does anybody know his last name?)? How should I tell my family and friends? Should I and if so what kind of prenatal vitamins should I take? What doctor should I use? Should I choose a male or female doctor? Will I feel comfortable with a male doctor looking into and feeling the depths of my vagina? All of these are questions that can and most likely will arise within the first week of finding out you are expecting.

I am here now experiencing all of these changes, choices and decisions. Since the morning I peed on that stick my brain has not stopped. There have been constant questions, debates and decisions that only I can make. There have been tons of emotions and what if's. The best way to make these decisions and put the worries aside is to talk to other people, connect with other mothers or mothers to be, share what you are going through and realize that just because your pregnancy is different then your sisters was last year, YOU ARE NOT ALONE. Every women who gets pregnant whether on purpose or accident has to make these same choices and have legitimate reasons as to why they made the choice they did. I am here to share my experience with you!