When I was first contemplating TTC, I knew with 100% certainty that I wanted to breastfeed, but I was paralyzed with fear over childbirth. I did not want to experience pain, and casually mentioned to my mom one day that I just wanted a c-section. My mom, knowing that I’ve always been wary of the unknown, wisely told me to research my options before making a decision. I took her advice and dove headfirst into researching all my childbirth options. I read books and birth stories, talked to friends, strangers, doulas, doctors, and midwives. I watched movies and YouTube videos. In the end I decided that I wanted to arm myself with as many resources as possible and let my body try to do what it was made to do. Ironically, above all, I wanted to avoid a c-section!

Midway into my first trimester, I stopped reading others’ birth stories and tried to clear from my mind the “horror” stories I’d read and heard. I decided to do my best to make it the most positive experience possible. I educated myself on all my medicine options for pain and the procedures for emergencies. Then I focused on how to support my goal of a vaginal birth, unmedicated if possible.

During my research, I found several statistics that pointed toward fewer incidents of c-sections when a mother is assisted by a doula. Mr. S didn’t want to spend the money on a doula and was confident I could do it without one, but left all decisions concerning my body to me. He agrees now that hiring a doula was the best baby investment we made. I interviewed a few local women and when I looked at my watch during my meeting with Juli and realized two hours had passed in the blink of an eye, I knew she was the one. We got along wonderfully and she made us all laugh!

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Four months before baby S was born, I switched to the care of the midwife within my OB’s practice. I hadn’t realized before that the OB practice partnered with several practices within the hospital, and that on any given day my labor might be attended to by any one of a dozen OB’s outside of my practice who I’d never met. The one midwife in my group attended all her births, but still had the support of the OB’s should something go wrong. I knew that I’d feel more comfortable if I knew the person attending to my labor and delivery, so I set up an appointment with her to discuss my options. She takes a limited number of patients due each month and was completely booked for December, but because I had a doula, she agreed to take me on. Since I had already met all the OB’s in the practice, all of my appointments from September on were with the midwife.
Around the same time, I went to a breastfeeding support group with a girlfriend and her 4 month old baby. I always thought breastfeeding was the most natural thing and that after a steep initial learning curve, I’d happily put my baby to my breast and all would be good.

As I sat there in the room of about 20 women, I realized just how difficult breastfeeding can be. The woman sitting next to us shared that her baby finally latched well for the first time that week… the baby was 6 weeks old. The room discussed the techniques she used to mentally get through the previous six weeks. The next woman talked about how she was just finishing up a course of antibiotics for mastitis. And another discussed natural remedies for thrush, a yeast infection of the breasts. They talked about side lying position for night time feeds, nursing with flat nipples, pumping and supply.

I had walked into the room with the intention of just spending an hour with my girlfriend and her baby, and walked out realizing I had a lot to learn to prepare myself for breastfeeding. I bought books, talked to lactation consultants about my inverted nipples, researched the LC options at my hospital, and scheduled the hours of a local breastfeeding support group into my phone’s calendar. I knew I wouldn’t have time once baby Stroller arrived, so I made it my mission to read up on as much about labor and breastfeeding before he arrived.

In November, five weeks before baby S was due, I took a weekend childbirth class independent from my hospital that was taught by a midwife and mother of nine(!!!). It was heavily focused on pain management techniques, and ways to cope with the unknown and ever changing circumstances that childbirth can present. It taught me how to play the mental game that is labor, childbirth and breastfeeding.

We practiced pain management techniques by plunging our hands into bags of ice for 30 – 120 seconds at a time, while practicing techniques like silent visualization, visualization while our partners discussed a funny memory, a calm place, a made-up location (eg the beach). Meanwhile our partners pushed or massaged pressure points, etc. until a couple hours had passed, and we each started to form an understanding of what techniques might work during game time.

As the feeling returned to our hands, we learned how to cope with the unknowns of childbirth by using birth flashcards. The flashcards also served to help Mr. Stroller and me draft our birth preference list. Each flash card was printed on the front and back with something childbirth related and its opposite. For example one card said “unmedicated birth” and on the other side, “medicated birth.” The exercise involved arranging the flash cards in front of us, and really helped us understand what may happen on the big day. Stay tuned for the child birth flashcard exercise and how you can make your own!