Heavy cycling and trying to get pregnant

[FreshNewbie]

Thanks for clearing up, not married and have no kids, not for at least another couple of years.

[Nanci]

FN- my daughter was delivered by a midwife named Steve!! My entire prenatal care, midwife cost, hospital for two nights, -everything- was $800. (Back in the good old days!)

Nanci

[Lenusik]

FN- my daughter was delivered by a midwife named Steve!! My entire prenatal care, midwife cost, hospital for two nights, -everything- was $800. (Back in the good old days!)

Nanci

Nice! I am not sure if I will go this rout but now I am certainly considering it.
Thank you for great advice. I've been taking vitamins and fish oil for the last too months. I am not anemic a pretty strong, my cycle is regular. So, I am certainly hoping for good results.
Actually, i am planning my husband to pull the trailer. He would be the one doing the hard work after my "hard work" (pregnancy and delivery) is done.

[Lise]

mimitabby, great job explaining midwifery. Really nice. Wanna come live with me and go on my first dates and go to parties with me? Cuz I get a bit tired of telling the story over and over... ...but I will keep telling it. It's important for women to know they have the option to see someone who truly is a specialist in normal pregnancy and birth. Our colleagues, the physicians, specialize in complications, disease, and surgery. We're a good team, when each does what they're best at.

www.midwife.org --the website for my professional organization.

I got interested in midwifery when I was getting my degree in Anthropology at the University of Chicago. I wrote my research paper for Medicine & Culture on the history of midwifery in the US. You won't be surprised to learn that it was more economics and competition for business that lead to OB docs taking over the majority of births. Birth was not profitable until anesthesia became popular (1930s), and birth became a medical/hospital event. Then midwives became "dangerous" all of a sudden. Interesting.

Should some pregnancies and births be attended by docs? Absolutely. Should 94% of the births in this country be attended by surgical specialists? Probably not. L.

[margo49]

First of all,
You've got a great adventure ahead of you and I wish you joy every moment of the whole process of considering, conceiving, birthing, caring and mothering.
While I don't think pregnancy is an illness or even a medical condition; I think the best thing is to listen to your body and your heart. If you really feel like biking (or whatever) go ahead. If you are only doing it out of habit or worse because you think if you don't use it you'll lose it... maybe think about what you might *really* like to do.
I think pregnancy is also a chance to do or try *different * things than usual and in that way it can be quite liberating. It is an opportunity to take stock. You can go over your whole life and change in the light of the pregnancy.

Women's bodies are so dynamic.....
better stop b4 the ink turns pink!

[fixedgeargirl]

The midwife I hired for my pregnancy was great! Very intuitive and probed into personal issues with then-DP that went way beyond the mechanics of labor and birth, all stuff that needed to be dealt with.

Too bad she didn't get to attend the birth. After a really, really long labor at home, we decided to transport. We met up with a CNM at the hospital and tried some more. I wound up with a very medical birth, after all, but wouldn't even consider making an OB my first choice. Probably not even my second or third choice. Oooh, I've got my soapbox out, but I think I'll just not get up on it...

[Duck on Wheels]

Well! What was her first clue? Or, I guess, what was her SECOND clue?!

Yup, I am a midwife. I talk to a couple of women a year who thought "it" was something else--flu, whatever. Even the baby's movements and increasing belly size aren't always perceived as "pregnancy".

I've lost count. Third clue maybe? Fourth? Fifth? (no periods, slow pace, weight gain, back pain, tender breasts ...) I think her sports doc suggested taking a test, but I don't really remember. This was years ago, decades.

BTW, regarding the midwife/nurse title thread ... In Norway all hospital birth clinics are staffed with midwives. Doctors come through on rounds or when a midwife calls them, but they are secondary. Most birthing women deal pretty much only with the midwives. All municipalities are also required to have a midwife service for prenatal care, and some also have private midwife practitioners who offer home birthing. In the Netherlands, midwife-attended home births are standard, unless the midwife triages you to a hospital. And our few male midwives have chosen to keep the title as it is, because of the established honor of it.

Also in Norway, the majority of doctors graduating from med schools is now women, although the majority in the profession as a whole is still men, who are also the "seniority", logically. But the public image lags behind. I'm not a medical anything, just a humble sociologist who studies how they work, but when I'm doing field work in a health setting EVERYBODY -- including doctors, nurses, patients, administrators, etc. of both genders -- asks if I'm a nurse. The answer is no, I'm a doctor -- of sociology.

Do all of us TE women think we're beyond all this cultural baggage? Or are we part and parcel of the cultures around us? Try taking an online test of your prejudices. There are tests on racial prejudice (whom do you associate more with weapons, "black" faces or "white" faces?), sexual orientation prejudice (do you associate positive terms more easily with hetero images than with homo images?), and gender prejudice (do you associate men more than women with science terms?). Results can surprise you as your body responses may not correspond to what you intellectually believe. I forget the URL, but I'll look it up and edit it in here later.

[Lenusik]

Do all of us TE women think we're beyond all this cultural baggage? Or are we part and parcel of the cultures around us? Try taking an online test of your prejudices. There are tests on racial prejudice (whom do you associate more with weapons, "black" faces or "white" faces?), sexual orientation prejudice (do you associate positive terms more easily with hetero images than with homo images?), and gender prejudice (do you associate men more than women with science terms?). Results can surprise you as your body responses may not correspond to what you intellectually believe. I forget the URL, but I'll look it up and edit it in here later.

I think that this is a very interesting topic but may cause a lot of "trouble" on this board. If you wish start another thread. I would be interested to jump in.

[Lise]

BTW, regarding the midwife/nurse title thread ... In Norway all hospital birth clinics are staffed with midwives. Doctors come through on rounds or when a midwife calls them, but they are secondary. Most birthing women deal pretty much only with the midwives. All municipalities are also required to have a midwife service for prenatal care, and some also have private midwife practitioners who offer home birthing. In the Netherlands, midwife-attended home births are standard, unless the midwife triages you to a hospital. And our few male midwives have chosen to keep the title as it is, because of the established honor of it.

Many European countries function this way. It's certainly a more prudent use of health care dollars. My favorite word for midwife is the French, sagefemme, or wise woman! I learned it when I was in France visiting my cousin, struggling to converse with a train conductor in a mix of Spanish, English, and my very limited French. I said I was a "partera", an "obstetrice", and he said, "Ahhh! Vous et une sage-femme!" I loved that. "Ah, oui!", I replied, sagely.