With a Side Of: Random Thoughts on Cesarean and Formula.

With a Side Of Random Thoughts on Cesarean and Formula.

Hello, dear readers. Thanks for joining me on this highly controversial topic. I wish to talk (well type) about c-sections and formula feeding in regards of the immunological benefits.
Let me get this out of the way first: There are times and places for both of these things and, while they have negatives, they are both greatly help mothers and babies in certain situations.

Now. Here's my problems with them. When they are used too much and too often, they lower societies resistance to disease. I'm talking about the fact that about 30% of all babies are being born via section now (give or take depending on your area). Babies born via section have a lower immune system because they are not put through the stress and bacteria that vaginal birth gives. (IFL Science just did a piece on this). Add that with the fact that it's harder to start breastfeeding after a section (though not impossible) with the number of babies who are fed formula for whatever reason by six months and BLAMO! Societal declines in immunology.

Err... After thought: I am in no way an expert in any of the aforementioned subjects. These are more or less random thoughts that are based on some stuff I read about. Google the topics and you'll find loads of stuff. If this wasn't just ramblings, I totally would do proper research and stuff.

Thanks for reading :)

Book Learnin': About My Goals

Book Learnin' About My Goals

Hello Everyone! Been a while since I posted stuff. Been meaning to do this one for a bit lol.
Any who, a little bit of an update on my goals after I'm done my upgrading. I want to be a midwife. Honestly, being a IBCLC was a consolation prize for me. I still plan on becoming a IBCLC but my main goal is to be a midwife. I've wanted to be a midwife since I first knew about them (which was when my sister was pregnant with her first daughter). As I've said before, I didn't do so well in high school. Because of this, I didn't think I could ever become a midwife. But because of my upgrading, Goo, Olivia and my Dad, I know that I can.

I've been thinking about being a midwife more and more often lately. I want so much to be able to help women in one of the most amazing times of their lives. To be able to support someone like that, just the thought brings me so much joy.

I've become somewhat obsessed with birth lately (more so than before, as hard as that is to imagine). I dream about helping women in labour, about visiting them before and after birth, about guiding them through an amazing journey.

See you soon, readers :)

With a side of: Gender

With a side of: Gender

So I know I don't have very many readers at the moment but if you don't personally know me, this may be a little weird (and if you do know me but don't know this, it will probably still be weird).

*coughs*

You may have an idea as to what I'm talking about here. In my previous posts, you may have noticed I always say "Babe". Never husband. There's a reason for this. I don't really have a husband, per say. I am married. I married a man, yes. But my wife is transgendered. If you're not sure what that means, check here. (Wiki is very clinical about this stuff, YouTube has some awesome stuff if you look.) If you don't feel like clicking either, here's a quick, very vague description. Born a man, feel like woman in the head. Got it? Ok. It's way more than just that.
Anywho, she came out to me about a year ago (and to her facebook about a month ago). I was pretty confused in the beginning, which is understandable. It's different for me than for her (obviously). If I post about trans stuff, it's going to be from my point of view (if you're interested in seeing hers, here's her blog).
So, meet Olivia, my wife (or Wifu as we call each other lol).

Here's some Q&A's I've been asked lately:

Wait, I thought you were straight?
If I were to be honest, I'm probably more pansexual than anything. I'm attracted to pretty much any sex/gender.
But he won't have a penis any more.
There are more things to do in bed than penis in vagina. If that's all you think, I pity you, I really do.
Okay but won't he like men later?
Liv is very much only sexually attracted to women. As I am, in fact, a woman, I don't think there will be a woman.
But Goo won't have a father any more! He'll have two mothers!
GASP! A same gender couple raising a child?! What has the world come to?! *sarcasm* Goo will still have two parents who love him and care for him. He probably won't even notice until he has someone points it out to him that there's something odd there.

Are you sure you're okay with this?

To be completely honest, it still freaks me out sometimes. But, I find myself falling more in love with Olivia everyday as she becomes more open with herself. I know it will be hard, but I'm there for her and she's here for me. I wouldn't have it any other way. If there's something on my mind, I can talk to her about it and not have to worry. The opposite is also true. I'm here if she needs to talk.

So...

Does gender define us? Probably. Does sex? Depends on who you ask. I find myself coming more in tune with my gender as she does. I came from a family that isn't very comfortable with the female body (sorry Mum, but you're not). In my mind, it doesn't matter what you identify as. Others don't think so but that view is slowly changing.
Not sure what else to write... I could go on about my thoughts on this for a while but they tend to be quite circular. Have any questions? Feel free to ask Liv or I. If you want to know something, we're quite open about stuff. :)

Thank for reading, until next time!

Thrice the Back Story: A Doctor, A Vagina, and a Baby

Sorry. Been a little busy with the whole school/being a mum/wife thing. Probably going to be pretty sporadic with the postings and such. So, in advance, sorry.
Note: This post contains the birth story of my Goo. Duh. So if you don't wanna read that, don't :)

Thrice the Back Story: A Doctor, A Vagina, and a Baby.

Lemme start by saying, at first, I loved my doctor. She was nice. She seemed to have faith in me and my body. I was like "Hey! Maybe having an OB won't be so bad?" As my pregnancy progressed, she seemed to get more and more anxious about everything. I was labelled as high risk because I had "too much fluid" and threatened with caesareans because Goo was sideways until 37.5 weeks. I was so stressed out about him being transverse. My section day was for exactly 38 weeks. She wouldn't take no for an answer. I felt so pressured by her at the end. It was not a very good experience.
At my 39.5 week appointment, she said I would be induced the Monday after my 40th week (Feb 13th). In her defence, she did say that I could say no. I felt that I couldn't though. For whatever reason. That weekend, I tried every trick I could find to try and kick start labour naturally. Nothing worked.
We got up at 5AM on February 13th, 2012. We had to be at the hospital for 7. Babe and I showered and packed my bag (he wasn't allowed to stay overnight). It was myself, Babe, my Mum and my sister in my Mum's van. We had packed cards, Monopoly, snacks, books, Babe brought some notebooks and pens. I was reading "It's Our Prom (So deal with it) by Julia Anne Peters" (I have a signed copy!) Babe was reading "Misery by Stephen King" that he got at a book sale in the hospital. When we got there at 7AM, they put in this weird gel string thing. I had that thing in all day, nothing happened until about 7PM, when I started getting contractions.

They came on pretty fast and pretty hard. When the nurse checked me I was having contractions every minute. And they hurt. (duh). The nurse broke my heart though. Despite the contractions. Despite the pain. I was no where. I was at 1cm, the same I had been for weeks. I was so frustrated. She suggested I take some pain meds so I could sleep the night and start some pitocin in the morning. I was deflated. I said yeah, sure. Not like this pain is getting me anywhere anyway. My Mum and sister had to leave but (since the hospital was pretty dead that night) they let Babe stay. Thank god my nurse let him stay, else I would have been all alone while giving birth. 

The night part of my labour is really messed up in my mind. It was very fuzzy. I vaguely remember waking up with contractions every 5ish minutes, calling for Babe (who didn't wake up because he sleeps like a rock lol). At around 2:30 I woke up to the "pop" of my water breaking. I rang the nurses desk and not my regular nurse comes in a barks at me "Did you change your clothes yet?" After I said that my water broke. I replied "uhh, no. I felt it pop then called you." So I woke babe up, got him to help me out of my wet clothes and into the shower. God that shower felt good. The warm water helped so much with the contractions. I then got shooed back into bed by the nurse. (If you can't tell, I wasn't very fond of her.)

I woke up at 4:30 with the distinct feeling of "I need to poop" and if you've had natural childbirth, you know what my body was trying to tell me. I realized this and buzzed the nurse from the toilet. My regular nurse (yay!) came back and was like "You okay?" to which I replied "Pretty sure I need to push." She was like "Really? So soon? Come back into bed and let me check you." So I did. Went from 1cm the last time she checked me to a whopping 9.5cm the next time she did. Woke Babe up, he tried calling my family. Apparently the hospital's phones don't call long distance though and cell phones can't accept collect calls so we couldn't get a hold of them.

We made our way to the delivery room and I got hooked up to a contraction machine. (yay?) I was on my back (wish I had stood my ground on that one) with my feet in stirrups. What a fun way to give birth! It's the most productive way! (not) I was progressing pretty fast for the first bit. Was pushing just fine. It hurt, but not "scream at the top of my lungs until everyone around me needs hearing aids" hurt. Not sure if this was from the stuff she gave me 6 hours ago or what but the nurse said I was one of the quietest women she's even seen in labour. (This gave me a huge moral boost lol) At some point, my doctor came in and gave me local anaesthetic to my perineum. I tore. Both ways. (I still pee funny sometimes) It wasn't very fun afterwards but I didn't feel a thing at that point lol. TWO hours later, Goo was born. Born peeing, actually. He's never going to live that down MWAHAHAHAHA.
My Mum and sister got there just in to hear him wail as he came out. I didn't get my wanted skin to skin. My nurse quickly wrapped him in blankets and a hat. I wasn't able to do the breast crawl thing. I had no idea what I was doing for latching him. I kinda just put him on my boob. We were both very uncomfortable. He nursed a little but wasn't very interested in it. I got stitched up and sent back to my room (which suddenly wasn't just my room anymore).
More on my hospital stay next time! For now, I need to get some sleep. It's 9:45 and I need to be up at 5:15 to get ready for school and stuff (buses are useful but they infinitely suck when you have to make multiple stops). So Night all my readers (mostly Dad lol)

PS: Couldn't really find a place to put it in my ramblings, but I wouldn't have had nearly as good of a birth if not for my Babe. He was there with me, helping me out. He held my hand and gave me sips of water. I'm truly thankful for him. <3

With a side of: Being Below The Poverty Line

So a thought ran through my head today. To give y'all an estimate, I spend about $150/week on groceries. That's my limit. Any more than that and we are taking money out of what we use for bills.
Now, applying to college costs $90. That's 60% of a week's groceries for us. That is a common known fee. Another fee that I had no idea about was the fee to save your spot. The amount of this one depends on where you go. For Canadore? $160. For the other school I was looking at? $250. Do you see where someone with my family's income may have a problem getting into college? My grades are awesome, I know that. That part I will probably never have any problems with. The part I do have a problem with, and I suspect this is one of the biggest problems, is that I pretty much have to choose between starving my family or being on social assistance/minimum wage jobs my whole life.
Going to post-secondary is important. It's something that everyone should do. But I fear that many people have to make the same or a more harsh choice. Getting 90%s mean nothing when you have to explain to your toddler that they won't be able to have milk with breakfast. Or telling your school aged children that they only have bread and butter for lunch.
It sucks that this is the world we live in.
P.S. I know that there are food banks and such to help out. My situation just made me think of the worst possible one. The one where, even after trying so hard, you still fail because you don't have enough money to apply or get accepted to college.

Even More Backstory! Being all Preggo-Fish!

So. Third instalment of this. Third post. Yeah. I feel like we're getting somewhere. Okay. Maybe not. You realize I use periods a lot? My English teacher would hate my blog posts. [Side note: Apparently Google, who owns blogger, doesn't think blog is it's own word. Weird.] Anywho, back on topic? (We have a topic, right?)
So after finding out I was preggers, I moved back into the crap town I grew up in. Apparently pregnant me thought it would be an awesome idea. I wanted to be near my Mum. Mums = Awesome. Know what's not awesome? Said town I grew up in. Seriously. There is nothing there. The hospital I delivered in was an hour away. My OB was an hour away. I couldn't have a midwife because I lived, you guessed it, an hour away. In said town, I read boob juice stuff. I read cloth diapering stuff. I read blogs. And I slept. Yep. That was my pregnancy. And lemons. Lots of lemons. They were my craving during pregnancy. My Mum thought they would make me sick. I had like two to three lemons a day. Nom Nom Nom.
When I was about 4 months pregnant. My Babeh and I got married. It was on a Thursday in September. Weird, I know but it was our third year anniversary so meh. We were actually engaged before I got pregnant and planned on getting married in 2012 (because it was a Saturday) but we bumped it up so we could get married before Dangoo was born.
We lived in this crappy little apartment building. Our rooms were super cold. The front door kept breaking on us. If we used any of the outlets on the one side of our apartment, the entire apartment would be out of power until we could get a hold of the building manager. Fun times.
By the end of my pregnancy, I was anxious as anyone. I made a huge mistake. I said yes to being induced. Thankfully, I didn't get any pitocin but I still regret it. More on that next time though and I'll go into details about my labour and the first few weeks with my Dangoo.

S'more Backstory! The End of High School!

So in 2011, I was in high school. I had no interest in being there. I love babies. And breastfeeding. And cloth diapers. I didn't want to be in school. I wanted to be a Mum. My grades sucked. I missed a lot of school because I would get anxiety. I hated high school. It sucked.
In May of 2011, I got pregnant. I was excited. Yay! It was what I wanted! Seriously. It was the best thing that happened to me. I do think that I should have finished high school. Before I even knew I was pregnant, I knew something was up. I fell asleep everywhere. Getting dressed? Fell asleep. Going to the bathroom? Fell asleep. Eating? Fell asleep. I swear 60% of my pregnancy was spent sleeping. So naturally, I fell asleep in class. My already poor grades really dropped. I didn't even try to fix them. I was ashamed. So I just hid. I didn't go to school I found out. I figured there was no point. But DURR, of course there was. I totally should have finished that semester. At least then I would have my OSSD. But I can't go back and finish that. Or change it. I'm no timelord.
So. Moral of the story. You need motivation to succeed in school. Whether you just want those numbers or you have an end goal in mind, you need something. 'Nother moral? Don't get pregnant in high school. It's awkward. But if you are pregnant, and young, and currently reading this for some reason. Don't give up and just wallow. Seriously, it will get you no where. It may take some time, but don't stop searching for what you want to do with your life. If you want to be a SAHM, try and find a way to make that work. Love breastfeeding? Find something to do with that (like me!). Love those fluffy bums? Make your own line of cloth diapers! Dust off that old sewing machine you got from your weird, gender biased aunt.
Yay learning more about me!
Type to y'all later!