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 Whether you plan to have a hospital or home birth, you need to have a bag packed for the hospital.  For a home birth, you need to be ready for the possibility of a quick transfer.  You can pick and choose from this list for what you think would be most important.  For a hospital birth, you are essentially moving into the hospital for a few days and want to have everything you need to make yourself feel safe and comfortable.  The hospital can accommodate anyone with the basics.  We have had had many patients come in  straight from their doctor's office with an unplanned labor and we have all necessary supplies.  The hospital bag is more for comfort and familiarity.  In order to birth, we need to feel safe.  Having familiar sights, smells, and textures can make a big difference.  Chapstick- Your lips get super dry with all of the breathing.  Hospitals are also drier due to the climate controlled air.  Music- make your playl...

After I had my third baby , a homebirth after two cesareans, my midwife drew a bath for me and the baby. After over 24 hours of grueling labor, the warm water on my skin felt so soothing.  My muscles were so tired and I felt like I could just melt.  She placed the baby next to me in the water as I drank a smoothie and occasionally nursed.  It was amazing.  After my fourth child , my midwife added a blend of herbs and spices to make the most amazing postpartum bath.  I definitely recommend this special time of relaxation after birth, it is such a transformative experience.  Religions throughout history have used water to signify rebirth, cleansing, transformation, and washing away.  This is a perfect way to usher in a new part of your life and let go of that which does not serve you. This is a picture of my most recent bath after my precipitous labor with my fifth baby . The Ritual After the placenta has detached, baby has been checked and weighed, and ...

 In graduate school for anesthesia, I did one of my large projects on the topic of the Gentle Cesarean. I presented the topic at multiple conferences to rooms of people who were a little confused about why this was an anesthesia topic. The truth is that every person in the room for a cesarean needs to be on board for an idea like this in order for it to work.  It can also be any member of the birth team that pitches this idea and gets buy in from the rest of the team. Often, the person pitching this idea will be the patient.  Below, I have included the major concepts for a Gentle Cesarean, why this method is important, and how you can talk to your provider about this birth option.  This is a pretty academic post since it is mostly made of a graduate paper. Feel free to leave any questions or check the references at the bottom for more information.  What is a Gentle Cesarean? Vaginal birth offers benefits to the mother and baby that cesarean births do not innatel...

Around 38 weeks pregnant, most women start to feel totally done being pregnant.  They want the baby in their arms, they feel big, they are tired, they are done. Most OBGYNs are happy to schedule an induction for their patients at 39 weeks.  Due to the ARRIVE study, they can do this with "evidence" behind their decision. This new study found that being induced at 39 weeks decreased your rick of cesarean by 3% and decreased the risk of developing hypertension after 39 weeks.  Providers will justify the induction at 39 weeks for advanced maternal age (over 35), "big baby" on scans (these scans are often wrong by quite a bit), maternal discomfort, provider convenience (going on vacation, having plans over the weekend), and pretty much any other reason you can think of.  When you are told you can have an induction, it is so exciting!  You will meet you baby soon! Unfortunately, there are so many things about induction that moms don't realize.  There is a standa...

This blog is for my best friend, my sister, my daughter, myself, my colleague.  I spend at least a few minutes a day texting out advice for a friend or re-researching something for myself.  This was made to put it all in one place.  If you don't know me or my blog, welcome and thank you for reading! About me. I am science-based . I am a Nurse Anesthesiologist .  I am an independent anesthesia provider in a hospital where I place epidurals for laboring moms and attend to cesarean sections. I also do anesthesia for a few plastic surgery centers in my area. I love labor and delivery.  I love my job. I have a bachelor's degree in English, two Master's degrees in Science, and a Doctorate in Nurse Anesthesiology. I can read a research study.  I have common sense .  When you google anything related to being pregnant or having a baby, the answers are very cautious. Never get in a hot tub, never sleep with your baby, never have a home birth.  Everyone is a...

Going back to work after having a baby can be so stressful.  My first day back to the hospital after four months out, I got a call from our nanny that baby was refusing bottles and hadn't had any milk since I left.  Six hours ago.  I agonized about what to do with this stubborn baby.  One of my colleagues heard me complaining and told me to just go home and nurse him.  They would cover for me for thirty minutes.   He tried to do the same thing the next day.  We just waited him out.  Finally, he got thirsty enough to take the bottle.  I learned a couple of lessons from this.  The first, that a baby will eat if they are hungry.  They won't starve before they will drink from a bottle. The second, that I need to introduce the bottle earlier than the day I go back to work.  If you are choosing to breastfeed, there are a few things you can do to make this transition back to work much easier.  1.) Establish a milk stash....

It is ironic that a woman with four sons and only one daughter would write a post about how to have a girl baby.  This post could also be titled "How to Have a Baby Boy".  I learned everything possible on the topic of gender fixing/gender swaying when I was preparing to get pregnant with baby number three.  I had two sons born by cesarean and I thought this might by my last baby.  I really wanted a girl.  I read lots of wives tales about how to prepare your body to gave a baby girl: eat lots of sweets (if I must...) have sex on a full moon, outside is best (like normal people) be relaxed (I'm historically so good at that) As awesome as these tips were, I wanted to see if there was anything scientific to swaying the sex of the baby.  That was how I found the Shettles Method. You can read the whole book here .  Quick recap on how a baby's sex is determined:  we each carry two sex chromosomes we get one from each parent we automatically get an X...

 When I was in graduate school, I kept getting tight pains in my chest.  I couldn't take a deep breath, I felt like there was a band around my lungs.  One day, my heart was racing and I was having the chest tightness.  I had convinced myself I was having a pulmonary embolism. I went to my professor and told her what was going on.  She very calmly and sweetly told me that the chest tightness was probably anxiety and this new feeling was most likely a panic attack. Great. Shortly after that, I read this article in Oprah magazine about a woman's experience with Bikram yoga. Bikram= Stay in a 105 degree room for 90 minutes doing 26 yoga postures with no music. She was totally transformed by this grueling practice.  She was able to stop taking her high doses of depression medication. I wanted to be transformed.  I had two babies, newly diagnosed postpartum anxiety, an intense graduate program, and countless unresolved childhood problems. I wanted to feel n...

I was active on a mommy message board for about five minutes in 2016.  I was blacklisted.  There are rules for mommy message boards. Everyone is mean to everyone all of the time.  This is always framed as concern, knowledge spreading, or advice from someone who knows way more than you will ever know. There is usually a group of OG moms who know one another (online) from the TTC (trying to conceive) message boards. They run that place.  They are allowed to talk to anyone in any fashion, they DO NOT want to see any pregnancy tests, and the birth month message board is really for them only.  They tolerate the presence of others who happen to have a baby due in their baby's month but advice from the newcomer mothers is inevitably wrong.   I lurked on these boards for all of my pregnancies and decided that by my fourth baby, I had enough experience under my belt to comment here and there. I was completely wrong. A first time mom posted saying she felt like ...

 I google everything.  I want to know everyone's advice before making a decision.  When I plan vacations, I spend months making sure we aren't wasting time on tourist traps or food that we could just get at home.  The biggest thing I think I am trying to avoid is regret.  I don't want to make a choice that is going to cause me to regret it one day.  The most stress-causing decisions of my life have always involved the question of having more children.  My first baby was a happy surprise.  Our second was an easy decision since his brother was so easy.  We hit a rough patch in our marriage and in our lives in general after that.  I was in graduate school and working nights in the ICU as a new nurse.  Adam was working a full time job as well and trying to keep our kids quiet on weekends when I needed to sleep during the day to work at night.  It was very tough.  On top of that, my mother moved in with us and we were raising m...