Tag Archives: home birth

Blue Green Mama update

It’s been a few months since I wrote about my struggles with postpartum depression (though not officially diagnosed, my symptoms and their duration seem consistent with actual PPD and not just postpartum adjustment disorder).  I met with a counselor soon after I wrote that post and continued to see her regularly for 3 1/2 months.

During that time, we worked on a lot of issues surrounding my derailed home birth plans, the unplanned Cesarean, and life as I’d known it being completely altered by the addition of a new little person.  After about ten sessions, I felt I’d accomplished as much as I could in therapy (at least for now), so I checked myself out at the end of February.  Here are some things I’ve learned in that time.

This caring for a baby shit is hardContinue reading “Blue Green Mama update”

Rolling toward the finish

Biking to lunch at 37 weeks

I hit the 37 week mark on Friday and breathed a huge sigh of relief.  From here on out, I am within the window for a home birth 🙂  Despite general increasing discomfort for me, the more time baby spends growing inside, the better, but it’s nice to know that if baby decided to come today, we could go ahead as planned with the birth at home.  (If I had gone into labor prior to 37 weeks, that would have been automatic cause to head to the hospital.)

I spent a good portion of Friday and Saturday doing some serious nesting, though, as with the kitchen, my cleaning efforts on the apartment as a whole seem to degrade quickly.  Oh well.  In general, things are pretty well set for baby’s arrival.

On Sunday, I helped Matthew as he showcased our garden in the Sustainable Backyard Tour.  He did an amazing job, giving inspiring tours to the more than 50 people who visited our garden over the course of the afternoon.  More on the garden to come later.

We have zee sheet

If you walked through our backyard yesterday afternoon, you would have seen a pretty set of blue patterned sheets drying rapidly on the line.

To justify driving the car to a Le Leche League meeting yesterday morning, I tossed in a couple of bags of clothing and home goods that were waiting to be donated and swung by Goodwill after the meeting.  The stop provided the perfect opportunity to look for a spare set of old sheets and some old towels — supplies for our home birth.

Other than being a bit threadbare, the sheets are really quite lovely, and one of the four “old” towels I bought there is nicer than some of the towels in our current regular rotation.

Between those purchases (yay for thrift stores!), and the arrival of our “home birth kit,” we are almost set.  The home birth kit contains all of the disposable supplies for the birth.  I knew that when I ordered it but was still rather horrified when I opened the box and saw all of the [soon-to-be] trash.  However, it is a relatively small box, and Matthew reassured me that it will be massively less waste compared to an average hospital birth.

In other green baby prep news, I received a cloth diaper donation from a friend.  While we will most likely still need more in the way of diapers, I want to hold off somewhat and see how the whole Elimination Communication/Diaper-free Baby thing works before going out and buying a bunch of new or used cloth diapers.

While cloth diapering is certainly better than disposable, it is not without environmental costs itself, so I would like to have an idea of the number of diapers we will need to avoid excess, especially if we’re buying new.