Little man has completely bypassed size 3-6month clothing and has jumped straight into the 6m size at a whopping 15lbs already! Those it’s a little frustrating, the clothes are all baggy around his middle, he’s just shot up TALL not so much chunky. The other day we were at a playgroup and he outgrew the setting on his car seat straps just in the four or so hours we were there. Other than some extra long nursing sessions it doesn’t seem to be phasing him any but I wish baby would stay baby just a *tiny* bit longer!

Chicken legs with mama made booties

http://www.childdrowningprevention.com/

I knew there were mommy and me swim lessons and the like out there but this is truly amazing. My six year old sinks like a rock. Makes you think. I wish something like this were more prevalent, especially in areas that do have lots of home pools.

I have mentioned I have insomnia. Said insomnia only gets worse during pregnancy as I have this tendency to pull the same muscle in my back every single pregnancy, and it makes it hard to sleep at night.

Ironically I got this little tip in my email this morning:

Rest Easy

Your third trimester is when your body needs the most rest. Ironically, it’s also probably when you are not getting very much good sleep. Between leg cramps, heartburn, and more trips to the bathroom, it’s no wonder that it seems like your body is trying to get used to sleep deprivation for when the baby comes! To get more and better sleep at night:

• Go to bed and wake up at the same time each day.
• Have a glass of milk before you go to bed at night.
• Avoid spicy foods within 3 hours of bedtime.
• Get a little bit of exercise or fresh air sometime in the late afternoon or evening.

Read more about how to slip into a steady slumber: http://www.babyfit.com/articles.asp?id=546

Oddly removing the baby doesn’t seem to be anywhere on that list. Probably because you still don’t get any more sleep with a newborn. Still, with a newborn I feel like I get a more solid sleep even if it’s less hours, and I’ll take that over what I’ve got now.

Anyway, enough whining and digression. I think about weird stuff when I can’t sleep. I often get these ideas stuck in my head and make it harder to sleep because my brain just won’t shut down around said ideas.

Here is where my disclaimer comes in.

I got to thinking about astral projection.  (Really, I’m not high)

I had a friend in college who was really into studying it. It’s an interesting concept and there seems to be a couple types of it. Both involve somehow leaving your body behind, connected only by a thin rope of spectral goo, to do one of two things- visit real time places and people virtually unbeknownst to  all, or to travel the astral plane among unicorns and dragons and the like.  The first is sort of a nice idea at first; say you’re separated from your beloved, you can easily go visit them. At the same time it’s the stuff that sci-fi movies are made of. Many an X-files episode dealt with people able to leave their body at will to commit crime, or movies of serial killers leaving their bodies to either possess another, or to jump from their body just before the moment of death to remain alive to torment others. Didn’t even Lord Voldemort do this in a manner of speaking, removing pieces of his soul to store in inanimate objects in order to remain somewhat immortal, or take the “Chucky” movies, with the killer possessing a doll in order to cheat death. Creepy stuff. Also there is the theory that while you’re out of body someone else can jump in and use yours, or that if the cord binding you to your body is somehow cut, it would bring on your death (Stephen King has a story floating around somewhere of little astral creatures that go around and cut the cord of living, in-body, people, that connects them to the cosmos in general.)

The second sort of travel to me is more a method of deep meditation. I meditate frequently myself and often a dragon or unicorn or other astral type creature may show up only because I like dragons and unicorns, feel they are creatures of protection and would make sense for them to be there. If you’re a big KISS fan your meditations might take place as a concert. To each their own. This sort feels more realistic to me, tho less a form of true “travel” and not as much a leaving of the body, and more a form of almost lucid dreaming perhaps. I do think that this mindspace may leave your self more open and susceptible but not to the degree that actually leaving your body may. Deep meditation is a part of many faiths, a place where enlightenment can occur. It’s often considered a necessity for health.

There is also a theory that we create an astral web of sorts, between all people we have connections with in our lives, and that in a way we are all interconnected with each other because of this.  If you start studying dreams and dream cycles (also considered connected with the astral plane), you’ll find cases of people having the same dreams as each other, which is linked to this theory of the great web we’re all connected by. (If you like this idea start reading Orson Scott Card’s Ender books, as you get into the third or fourth one it really starts getting into things like philotic connections and “realspace” and “no-space” and the drawing of souls to create life, etc)

Here’s where I get this somewhat on topic for my general blog subjects:

I got to thinking about how various sorts of astral travel relate to pregnancy. If you think about it, depending on when you feel the beginning of life (soul entering the body?) is, if you feel life begins as conception, then pregnancy is the only time in your life that two souls can sort of occupy one body. Some people believe in spirit babies, who circle us until it is their time to be born, and many mothers report knowing their babies before conception.  Some religious texts note that this soul enters the baby’s body at the moment of quickening, somewhat condoning abortive procedures before that point as the baby isn’t considered “alive” without it’s soul.  Either way, if you are truly able to leave your body to walk around the mundane world, if you are pregnant does the baby stay put, does it travel with you, is the baby able to take over your body in order to protect it from dangers of others willing to take it over, etc?

It’s really a confusing concept, the idea of two souls in one body, and hard to explain to anyone who’s never been pregnant.

The second sort of “travel” to me always seemed to be a good way for the meeting of the souls, a way that you and your baby could meet in this astral/meditative space to talk with one another. A way for mothers to communicate with their unborn. Focus on a safe location for your point of meditation, call out to your unborn, and see if they come to you. May also be a good media for birth art, meditating first upon the possibilities you want to manifest (healthy baby, natural birth, short labor, etc), visualizing them to a point where they seem reality, and then placing them down on paper as a way to solidify them in the “real” world.

If you get into thinking about the philotic connections and astral web, then we, and our babies, and our spouses, and baby’s siblings, etc, are all connected all the time, and outward on for eternity. Deep stuff.

Do you see now why I don’t sleep? I just get to wondering all night about subjects that really don’t have answers because the subject itself may not exist in the first place.

Really, I swear I’m not high. Just sleep deprived. Coffee anyone?

(For what it’s worth ds1 weighed 18lbs at age 12 months!!)

Ok, if your baby weighs 17lbs I *guess* it’s ok to go ahead and have a cesarean for big baby. But no smaller than that (Although, with 11 other children I’m almost surprised she didn’t just shoot this one on out…)

Siberian woman delivers healthy 17-pound baby; has 11 other children
Published: Thursday, September 27, 2007 | 1:36 PM ET
Canadian Press: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/Oddities/070927/K092702AU.html

MOSCOW – A small Russian city just got a really big addition: a 17-pound, one ounce baby whose mother had already delivered 11 other children.

Tatiana Khalina, 42, delivered the girl by caesarean section at a maternity clinic in Aleisk, a town of 30,000 people in the Altai region in southern Siberia, a nurse at the clinic said Thursday.

Nurse Svetlana Gildeyeva also said the Sept. 17 birth went smoothly, and mother and the child were fine. She said the baby, Nadezhda, was transferred from the small clinic to a maternity hospital in Barnaul, a larger city.

The girl was feeling well and developing normally, said Irina Kurdeka, a doctor at the hospital in Barnaul.

The Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper quoted the local social services chief, Marina Alistratova, as saying the family had modest means. She said Khalina’s husband was on contract with a local military unit.

“We have presented them with a good washing machine, a food package and a card,” Alistratova told the newspaper. “We will keep supporting them in the future.”

An average weight for newborn babies is around 7 pounds, one ounce, according to international statistics.

Guinness World Records says the heaviest baby ever was born in the United States in 1879. It weighed 23 pounds, 12 ounces and died 11 hours after birth. Guinness says they heaviest surviving baby was born in 1955 in Italy, weighing in at 22 pounds, eight ounces.

I seem to get a lot of people looking for info on newborn suctioning. The good news is newborns should be suctioned a lot less than they have been. The bad news is most doctors and many midwives still suction on the perineum which can cause a host of issues on its own.

Here is some great info and links on the subject from the well researched midwife archives:

Suctioning

“Noxious stimulation caused by gastric suction at birth may promote the development of long-term visceral hypersensitivity and cognitive hypervigilance, leading to an increased prevalence of functional intestinal disorders in later life.”

International Guidelines for Neonatal Resuscitation: An Excerpt From the Guidelines 2000 – Of particular note is the change in guidelines for meconium – ” Meconium-stained amniotic fluid: If the newly born infant has absent or depressed respirations, heart rate <100 beats per minute (bpm), or poor muscle tone, direct tracheal suctioning should be performed to remove meconium from the airway. “  and “There is evidence that tracheal suctioning of the vigorous infant with meconium-stained fluid does not improve outcome and may cause complications“

Suctioning Not Always Benign

I do clinic births and home births and hospital births. I don’t really do anything different in terms of my management based on place (other than having to work somewhat harder at the hospital to keep things low key).I used to suction on the perineum. I used to suction automatically. I finally figured out that suctioning and stimulation are great first steps in a baby who is a slow starter, but that a baby who clearly getting it together on his or her own doesn’t need me to suction…. the baby seems to be quite capable of dealing with secretions on its own, and thus the suctioning is being done to make me feel better rather than because it is necessary. Now I wait, unless meconium is present. Then I suction on the perineum and afterwards, of course. But this in not the normal scenario. Still, it has been a hard habit to break……

The thing of it is, is that suctioning isn’t always such a benign intervention. There is clear evidence that over vigorous suctioning can cause babies to brady down which is not something we want. The other thing is that in my work as a lactation consultant, I have seen a few babies who seemed to develop oral aversions after really vigourous, deep suctioning, and this interfered greatly with the establishment of effective breastfeeding.

A crying baby (or even not crying, but pink and good nurser) will clear their own lungs in my experience. My former partner has a big time problem with rattly sounds in newborns and always suctions with a vengeance. When she quit, I got to do things my way and rarely found the need to suction anymore. At my own niece’s birth this past year I intended her to have as gentle a birth as possible so instructed that there be no suctioning by my assistants (including my former partner). The kid didn’t cry at all (gentle birth accomplished!) but she did breathe well and needed no help. She did sound kind of rattly and “mucousy” though for the first half hour. My partner was as nervous as could be and kept on me about it to suction her. When she was about an hour old (after everyone had held her and she got the opportunity to be at the breast a few minutes), I finally relented and listened carefully to her lungs. I heard nothing and asked my partner what she was so worried about. She said “You can’t hear it?!” I said “No, show me where she sounds mucousy” So she listened but it was gone. She couldn’t believe it because she had just listened to her lungs about 10 minutes prior and had found it “unacceptable”.

I do still suction on the perineum for mec though. I can’t break that habit yet, but am not convinced it is necessary.

Suctioning May Cause Sticky Shoulders

A midwife friend and I were talking, and we both observed that we see slow shoulders a lot less since abandoning routine suctioning. We think that the suctioning changes the pattern a bit; you get into a pattern of sort of “hold-everything-while-l-suction-the-baby-now-push.By allowing natural drainage/clearing, the mom can pay more attention to the clues to push the shoulders.

Just speculation at this stage, but she’s liking what she thinks she’s seeing!

SO…. What magic thing happens after the baby is out? If suction can trigger vagal response once the baby is out, why should we think it doesn’t when the baby is still in?

If one wanted to, one could see vagal response on most babies by watching it appear on the fetal monitor (if it’s still reading) when you suction on the perineum.

The theory behind suctioning on the perineum is that the babies mouth. throat, nose are filled with gunk and the baby will breath this into his lungs. If suctioning on the perineum worked to avoid meconium aspiration, then I don’t think we would have ever seen a case of MAS during the decade or so of obsessive suctioning on the perineum. Wouldn’t MAS have almost disappeared with the introduction of the technique? It did not. The incidence hasn’t changed at all has it? So… why are we still doing it?

That said, I would still wipe, suction and drain a heavy mec baby — starting on the perineum — as the first step in anticipated resuscitation. I think it has an appropriate use there. [Editor's NOTE - the NRP 2000 recommendations would recommend NOT suctioning a vigorous baby just for me.]

BABIES

If you’ve been shopping at toys r us or babies r us for bibs you might want to take a closer look, many have just been recalled for high lead levels (much like everything else these days.) The stores are offering a refund for vinyl bibs bought at any time from their stores.

http://www.mothering.com/sections/action_alerts/september2007.html

I just got a whole bag of gently used bibs as a hand me down, now wondering if I shouldn’t walk into babies r us and just ask, ok pick out yours and throw me some store credit. thanks.

I often get asked this question. The easy answer is I’m a long term insomniac, which is true.  However as of late I have a better reason. From early on, this baby has decided to kick up his boots promptly at 1:30am every single night.  Now that he’s moving pretty much all day as well one would think I would go ahead and sleep but I don’t. Others would also probably want to discourage baby from this pattern because what they do in, they often do out. But  here’s a little secret: as much as sleep deprivation sucks, part of me loves and truly enjoys those little night time meetings with baby. And really, that time in their life is so fleeting.  These 1:30am kicks are a time when this baby is still truly mine. No one else is awake, no one feeling or looking at my belly to look for bumps.  Same with when they’re out, if not even more so.  For those sweet moments late at night (when, as a long term insomniac I’m up anyhow…) that baby is all mine again, singing lullabies, watching independent films with the closed captioning on, playing patty cakes and gurgling nursies, it’s our time, one on one, that will slip through my fingers all too fast and soon. I’ve often read to hold your child’s hand, read to them, put away work and play with them when you have the chance. I admit I’m sometimes guilty of not always following through on that. But for those late night moments, I soak up every second. You’re up anyway. Instead of lamenting over baby not sleeping through the night, cherish every second that they still need you, want to be by you, and for a short moment more, are all yours.