This might have been our fifth birth, but I learned a lot of new things, like:
- When I feel sick and tired (especially during the first trimester), I will feel even more sick and tired if I try and muscle through instead of giving in to a nap.
- Eating a high (good) fat, real food diet, low in grains, actually made me gain less weight than any other pregnancies.
- Pregnancy prep herbal tea works. I avoided pregnancy teas with my other four because every ingredient was a uterine contractor and can send early pregnancies into miscarriage, but I did some reading this time around, and learned it's best to start drinking it at 31 weeks, working up to three to four cups a day. The tea linked above has alfalfa included in it which is said to help prevent hemorrhaging after the birth. All I know is I bled remarkably less with this pregnancy, and doctors told me women are more likely to bleed out the more babies they have. I continued drinking it after the birth and I'm having a really smooth recovery. Yay for alfalfa!
- When you are speed walking around the trampoline with your kids to encourage labor and your parents are watching, your dad might get video footage of it and forever hold it ransom. Be warned.
- Staying vertical as long as possible can help speed labor up. When I had hospital births, I always got so frustrated that contractions seemed to slow way down or even stop once I had to lay down so they could hook me up to the monitors. With this labor, I was standing, walking, or sitting on a birthing ball until it was time to push, and I went from zero centimeters to holding my baby in four hours; much faster than the other four labors.
- Having a home birth really brings things... home. My oldest son ran to the kitchen sink to wash his hands so he could hold his new baby brother, only to find a placenta in a bowl, sitting in the sink basin. All the color rushed out of his face and he quiveringly whispered, "Is that like... blood or something?" A half hour later he said, "I'm finally not woozy anymore from that... I can't even say the word. The 'p' thing." That day's homeschooling lesson was entitled, "Hands-On Childbirth." Just kidding.
- It really is easier having a newborn with older, capable siblings eager to help with the baby. Moms of big families assured me of this when I was "in the trenches" with three kids three and under. I know what they mean now. Many hands makes the work light. And happy.
You might think I'd have it all figured out by the fifth child, but it goes to show you can learn something new with every new baby.
