Congratulations Arcadia, and welcome back to the hb group. Wishing you a h&h next 7 months :)
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Congratulations Arcadia, and welcome back to the hb group. Wishing you a h&h next 7 months :)
whoop whoop!!! GO ARCADIA!!!!!!!! Congratulations!! Such splendid splendid news!
Ok, so the ms news is not so splendid...blergh....i had it really bad with DD3, it was so gross. it occupied the majority of my mind for the first months...as meow can probably attest :lol:
Man, i just checked out our HB list....(thanks HotI)...wooooo so many September babies on their way!!! September babies do rock out that's for sure ;)
Yay, congrats Arcadia!!
Hope the ms eases.
Congratulations Arcadia!
Just wanted to report back on the 'meet the experts' evening I went to. It was one of those things where all the professionals understand what it takes to get a good birth and what good newborn care is... and all the attendees are first time parents booked into fancy hospitals with an OBGYN who they love and "is going to let me do it however I want". Sure. Whatever.
I always find those things get me a bit frustrated and I end up just going quiet because they need to ask all their questions and hopefully end up finding a better experience. I did find out that the situation here is pretty similar to Australia, there are just MORE things to say "no" to in a hospital here. Homebirth transfer is apparently pretty good at the little "non-fancy" hospital that they all transfer too if needed and they will still be as unmedical as possible. But newborn care... you have to add to your list of "do nots" things like no antibacterial cream in baby's eyes, no bath or else they wash them before even handing them over to the mother! If you choose not to have your baby washed then it's a biohazard and all the staff have to wear gloves when they hold it. Oh lordy!
Anyway, we've pretty much decided we're not having a baby any time soon. I need too much energy to give my eldest the support he needs and I can't find a preschool that allows you to bring a baby during parent help. So we would have to have a baby at the beginning of the summer holidays so it is as old as possible before leaving it with a babysitter to do parent help and that means getting pregnant in a couple of months. Which we're not ready for at all. So maybe we'll wait another year or maybe we're done? I'm a bit sad about that and it is hard knowing that had things been different I'd be pregnant again already because I do want another one. That's life huh?
oh dear. my suggestion would be for them to stay away from my baby anyway.:
That sucks that you couldn't take a sibling to preschool. So many people wouldn't have a choice, and so they (and the kids) would miss out on helpers.
I agree, hands off the baby! Everyone wins LOL
The preschools I'm looking at are "parent participation preschools" so you HAVE to go and do jobs one session a week. The other preschools are way too expensive (no government subsidies here). Funny how the formula feeding culture permeates everything about society here. No one bats an eyelid that a mother has to leave her baby.
Yeah, the antibiotic cream is mandatory in most places. It's to prevent blindness caused by syphilis (I think). Apparently Helen Keller was one of those who pushed to have it required by law. It would be nice if they could just treat those who actually are at risk for getting the disease though! Needless waste of antibiotics and needless exposure to it too.:
And the "biohazard" thing is kind of annoying from a mother's perspective, but from the nurse's perspective, I can see it. You don't know what the mother may or may not have (or maybe you DO know, and that makes it worse!) and it's her bodily fluid on the baby. You wouldn't expect them to handle any of your other fluids without gloves, right?
oh meow :( that does suck massively :hug:
you will have another crack at having a baby, surely xx Move to LA and have a baby with the sanctuary people. if P!NK can do it (and me lol) then you can too :D
Also, there is, in a number of private hossys there the requirement to pump baby's gut after birth....making that first feed totally null and void. i was horrified and ran straight from that hospital.
Cricket: here in OZ midwives and OBs dont even have to wear gloves during labour and birth. there is no way that i would allow my midwives to wear gloves when handling my baby. i would think too, that the staff would know what you 'have' or dont have?? with routine BTs and all that jazz.
my babies have never really had a 'first bath'. we tend to think about it after 2 or 3 weeks. there is no residue or anything on bubs...maybe because i birth in water??
I'm not concerned about having a baby here. The homebirth scene is good, there would just be a couple more things to list on the birth plan if we transferred ;)
My non-waterbirth baby was born in a sea of muck as my waters broke as he was born and blood and gore even splashed up the walls... but he was dry and not mucky pretty much straight away. We didn't bath him for a week or so. The nurses should be washing their hands between patients in any case and it's not like a dry baby is gunky. No need for gloves.
Treating everybody for a condition caused by a disease they don't have and assuming they may not know they have it because their partner is unfaithful is crazy. But I do get that it's ahrd to then only the treat the people you do suspect of being in that situation. It's totally unnecessary though as blindness can now be avoided by treating the pink eye when and IF it occurs. Giving antibiotics at a birth to a generation of children who already have compromised gut flora is shocking.
DH still reckons that cleaning up the birth pool after the birth was like a scene from the 'sopranos' lol. i told him to shuddup and keep cleaning lol.:
can i ask why a baby wouldnt be allowed to the preschool? here they encourage siblings at reading times etc.
i had to giggle at the info night first-timers. they are also prevalent at the MN info nights. and the calmbirth course that i attended. i giggle and cry all at once. i have become a little more feisty in showing them that i am 'normal' and like them but just choose to have a baby at home and why. it might not change their mind, but at least sows a seed or two....hopefully.
They're all about you being there to work when you do your parent participation hours and you have a job schedule for your entire time there so you're not allowed to be distracted looking after your baby/other child. We're currently going to a summer playgroup thing at one of the preschools and the people are lovely and the kids are all running around everywhere and there are some full-term breastfeeders and all that but I guess they just put you on the clock when you're there to work your shift.
I said a few things too to try and show the the other parents 'been there, done that, all still alive'... people we're like "but my ob is awesome, I've never met the hospital MWs and my husband is there for me... what do I want a doula for?" so at least I could say from a fellow mumma point of view that I agreed with the 'experts' that you DO want (at least) a doula and little tid-bits like that. But when they say "what's the best way for me to avoid a c-section?" and the experts say "have a homebirth!" then try and frame a 'helpful' response that is tailored to their birth care decision then I just shut up lol
i would of loved to have gone along with you! it all sounds quite fun and i just love birthy stuff lol.
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Interesting. What do they do on other floors? When I was in nursing school, we were drilled on "standard precautions" which meant you wore gloves any time you could be in contact with bodily fluids or open wounds. It was for your own protection and the patient's. And knowing how often hand washing gets forgotten or missed in the rush of a busy day, I think I'd almost rather have my nurse put on clean gloves before she touched my baby at the hospital.
Just another reason I'm glad to have my babies at home. :) Hospitals are gross and dirty.
My homebirth babies first baths have been the post partum herbal bath with me. The herbs they use are supposed to be good for healing the umbilical stump too.
double post...
maybe they are meant to in hospitals here...but not all follow it i guess :lol:
i too am soo glad that i have babies at home...sorts out all those icky problems quite easily :D
It is standard precautions to wear gloves when in contact with body fluids, as you never know what you or the patient may be carrying. Not everything is tested for. But I would also hope regular hand hygiene occurs. I'm taught to wash before donning gloves, nowadays a wash (when not soiled) can involve using an alcohol hand rub. Hence why I have crappy skin on my hands. Hand washing too much lol.
Okay, so, PZ and I met Jan yesterday. Ummm... Why did nobody bother to tell me just how NICE she is?! From everything I'd heard about her being a bit intimidating, I was a bit nervous to meet her - but she was so warm! The only slightly intimidating thing she did was sit just a touch too close to me, which given she's going to be watching me give birth in December, isn't that big a deal :rofl: The whole way back we just kept raving about how great we found her :) She even put on a dolphin birth video to distract Amelia. That was fun and slightly alarming (I wasn't expecting the birth part) :o
She shuddered when I said Ianto was born at the Northern, and begged me not to make her go there (:lol:), then we had a bit of a chuckle at a few things in my birth notes from them. I mean, who wouldn't find it at least slightly amusing that they wrote "seems depressed at situation" after observing me crying? Well, thank you Dr Obvious, I never would have known!
She did seem a bit tough on the student she was working with though. After asking me if I was going to have a 20w scan, she turned to the student and asked "why would I have asked that? What reason might a mother have for getting an ultrasound at twenty weeks?" - PZ and I were thinking it was forpeace of mind, considering we'd just been talking about Ianto, but she only meant in case one wants to find out the baby's sex. Poor student didn't know what to say, I felt a bit bad for her... But she certainly knows now :p