How To Bourne

 I went to the Korean Spa with my daughter yesterday.  If you haven't experienced a Korean Spa- find one near you! It is a series of pools of different temperatures with jets that massage different parts of your body. There is usually a set of co-ed pools in one area and a set of gender separated pools in the locker room that is mandatory nudity because they don't want bathing suits messing up their pool systems.  They also have a huge co-ed room with lots of saunas and sweat lounges to just relax.  It can be very awkward your first time getting in a pool with a bunch of naked ladies and then you develop a sense of empowerment and freedom.  I like taking my daughter every few years to help her understand that we are all unique in our bodies and they aren't something we should be ashamed of.  It isn't everyone's cup of tea but I love it.  Anyway, in all of the five hours I was away from my baby, I developed a painful lump in my breast. I immediately kne...

 I took my first pregnancy as an excuse to eat whatever I wanted.  I gained 60 pounds.  With my following three pregnancies, I tried to eat healthy and that included eating as much fresh fruit as I could.  All of those babies were nine to ten pounds. My fourth delivery was extremely difficult. He was huge and I really had to work to get him out.  I was in fantastic shape, I did yoga every day and I could bend myself into whatever position the midwife requested to help ease the baby out. It is helpful to be limber and strong when going into your labor (more on this in another post) but it is equally important that your baby is a healthy size as well.  While I was in the "agonizing about whether or not to have another baby" stage of my fifth child, I called my midwife to see if it was safe for me to have one more. I remembered my labor to be quite difficult and I was worried about future shoulder dystocia, potential cesarean sections, gestational diabetes, et...

When we decided to move to Texas I had negotiated with my husband to let me have two more kids.  Its not that he didn’t want more children, our lives were just very busy in Virginia since I was working 60+ hours a week as chief of an anesthesia department that was almost an hour from our house.  We moved to Texas for Adam’s job that would give us more financial freedom and allow me to work part time. He was totally fine with having more kids if we had the emotional room for them to feel as loved as they would be.  We spent a few weeks in Florida on our way down from Virginia to Texas.  I called my midwife from Judah’s birth and went over a few fears I had.  Mainly, how long and difficult Judah’s birth was and how terrified I was of having an even larger baby with shoulder dystocia. She told me to act like I had gestational diabetes, educate myself about it and eat to build a healthier sized baby.  She also said my birth was uneventful to her and that I prov...

I had my first two sons via cesarean. My recovery from both of the cesareans was physically easy.   I did have adhesions that I felt over the next few years.   It was emotionally rough to hear about perfect vaginal births that other women experienced but I just said to myself and others “My body needs to have babies cut out and it is so much easier anyway.”   I became a nurse after I had my second son.   I worked on many c-sections and vaginal deliveries.   I always cried with the c-sections.   I thought it was the “miracle of life” affecting me until one day I realized I never cried during the vaginal births- I think it was hitting a chord that I still wasn’t fully aware of.   I ended up being an ICU nurse and leaving the labor and delivery realm.   In the ICU, we see the worst case scenario quite a bit and my perception of reality became somewhat skewed.   During a lecture in nursing school, we had a lactation consultant come and talk to us...

I had wanted another little girl.  We had two healthy boys and a lovely daughter and I wanted to finish our family with another baby sister.  I used the Shettles method, which is what we used to conceive our daughter and I followed it perfectly.  On the night I ovulated, which is the worst time to conceive a girl, I had the most insane urge of my life to be with my husband.  My body was not going to accept anything other than getting pregnant right then- I have never felt anything like it.  That is how we conceived our perfect little boy.  He was totally meant to be from the second he was created.  There was nothing my planning and controlling nature could do- he was the one for us. I must admit, after meeting him, that he is the only baby I wanted and I couldn’t imagine it any other way!  We did not find out the gender of this baby until he was born.  It was a fun guessing game but we have a lot of clothes to buy! I had a midwife appointme...

 When Luca was nine months old, Adam and I were out on one of our first big nights out as parents at a bar where I used to bartend.  I was new-mom drunk on like 1.5 drinks and I asked Adam how he felt about giving Luca a sibling.  YES! YES? YES!  We were both so excited!  Luca was the easiest baby in the world, we both had good jobs at the bank with benefits at this point, and we were feeling more confident as new parents.  Four weeks later, I snuck into the bathroom at 4:00 in the morning to take a test. Positive.   This pregnancy was very easy.  I was in school again.  This time to finish pre-requisites to start a graduate nursing program. I was working full time and going to community college at night.  Adam was an amazing father and partner.  We had a home daycare for Luca that we liked.  Since w e were on a new private insurance plan we decided to find a new doctor.   I had heard about VBAC and asked about it at ...