What A Beautiful Life!



The Princess at 12 weeks gestation. Sorry for the blurry picture of a picture.

The Princess at 23 months.

My friend's daughter at 9 weeks gestation.



Miss N at almost 1 and a half.


 

I don't think I've done a post on my change of heart from pro-choice to pro-life. It's a difficult and heated subject to talk about. The overwhelming majority of the people I know are very passionate about it regardless of which side their personal stance falls on. In my opinion, abortion affects us all. I have no idea about the actual stats on it, but I'd imagine most people either know someone who has had an abortion or has had one themselves. This post is not about judgment. It's about my private struggle that lead to me believing all life has value.

Our Birth Story: The Princess

John Dempsey Hospital at the UCONN Health Center, where The Princess was born.

This is the final post in a series of 3. This is The Princess' birth story, as best I can remember it 20 months later.


In 2007, we decided to try for more children. Ok, so "we" in this case means myself and God. I had become what I felt was stronger in my faith, and while I trusted God for a multitude of things, I did not trust Him to give me only as many children as He had planned. I convinced Mr. P. that it'd be a fine idea to give up birth control and trust God for our fertility.
That year had been fairly good for us. Mr. P. was working hard and we were on the verge of being able to get off of welfare. Both our marriage and our family life were growing stronger each day. Faith in God gave us a sense of peace about our lives. It seemed a good time to add to our family.

Our Birth Story: Tank

Bristol Hospital, where Tank was born.

This is the 2nd in a series of 3 posts. This is Tank's birth story, as best as I can remember it 9 years later.

2002 was the beginning of a series of rough years for our family. By then, Mr. P. and I were engaged to be married, raising our toddler son, and really struggling to find our feet as independent adults. Due to MonkeyMan's traumatic birth, I found myself unable to stand upright much of the time without excruciating pain, and thus unable to work. Even though Mr. P. worked full time, we were still on welfare. We lived in a one bedroom apartment downtown, and did what we could to have a "normal" life. Unfortunately, we both come from childhood backgrounds that did not fully prepare us for family life and responsibility. In late August of that year, we found ourselves homeless.
In a panic and not knowing who to call for help, I contacted our DSS (welfare) worker. She was able to get us 2 months stay in a local hotel covered. I will be forever grateful to her for arranging that. It gave us a bit of calm before the storm. We moved into the hotel room in the next town over, and tried to come up with a solution to our problems. Because we did not have a car to get him there and no public transportation available, Mr. P. lost his job. We soon found out that because we had no permanent address or phone number, he could not find a new job. That led to being unable to find a new apartment because we had no income and no permanent way to contact us. So much for starting over fresh in this new town.

Our Birth Story: MonkeyMan

St. Francis Hospital, where MonkeyMan was born.

One thing I've noticed in all my reading of online mothers' boards or groups is that people really like talking about the day their kids were born. I've also seen a certain pattern emerge. Stories of natural birth, particularly homebirth, are long, detail filled, and often use very descriptive language. Stories of hospital birth, particularly c-section birth, are often shorter, less detailed, and often the mother writing sounds quite unhappy or even traumatized by the birth of her child. Now I know that this is not true of 100% of birth stories. Blogs like Happy With Hospital Birth and Hurt by Homebirth show that my simplified analysis is not always true. That said, I've decided to share my 3 birth stories over the course of 3 individual posts. Here's the story of MonkeyMan's birth, as best as I can remember it 11 years later.

Homebirth matters more than you'd think.

Back in April '11, I found myself in a position to have many of my notions of homebirth in the USA challenged. I want to share what I've learned because I don't think many people understand what goes on in this seemingly underground birth movement. Before last year, I assumed all midwives were CNMs (and if the initials after their name differed, I assumed it was a state-to-state difference but same education/qualifications), and that all homebirth moms were just plain selfish. The people I knew who had a homebirth loss, or even just the ones I'd read about online, well, I could not muster up any sympathy. From where I sat, they valued their "birth experience" over the safety of their child. As for the midwives who attended these infant deaths, I just didn't see how it could be their fault. After all, they were educated and trained nurses first before becoming midwives, right? Must've been something to do with the mother, perhaps not disclosing pertinent medical information.