It's A Boy! ... Oh Boy!

Everyone's been asking what's happening with the birth... on Tuesday the 24th of June, at 3:45am, Noah Orion Leopold was born.

It turned out to be a pretty long labour. Starting on Saturday the 21st, Frangipani's water broke in the afternoon, followed by some mild contractions. Seemed like labour was going to start, so we went out to keep active, and do some last minute shopping.

Frangipani was leaking gushes of amniotic fluids though a slow leak all evening, and by night she was starting to look like being in labour. I went to get a couple of hours sleep, and told her to do the same. Of course, not long after midnight I got up to find them awake, and timing contractions on this funny website; ContractionMaster.

Contractions were still quite mild and irregular, but coming every 5 minutes or so. At sunrise Frangipani decided to get into the birthing pool, but that slowed things down, and she ended up going to sleep for a bit.

All through Sunday, she was still losing water, but not really in active labour. I figured prodromal labour, but started suspecting asynclitism (when the baby's head is on a funny angle). Only I wasn't sure. Oh if only I had been more confident in what I felt!

A friend of Frangipany's came over to play with Littletree and keep her occupied, which was nice. By evening the contractions got stronger again, and we settled in to have a baby, with good contractions lasting more than a minute coming every 7 minutes or so, and getting closer.

Crazily, we passed the whole night that way, with no real change, and still irregular. Again, with the dawn, things slowed down a bit, and Frangipani got a chance to rest, but not really, with contractions waking her up every few minutes.

Monday, another friend came over to take Littletree to the Phuket Aquarium, and Jo had a sleep. I kept Frangipani active, but in the early afternoon we got a bit discouraged and decided to do a vaginal exam, though Frangipani had planned to be as intervention-free as possible.

She was at 9cm, with good descent! Thus encouraged, we decided to do some dancing to shift the baby out. It was great, to see Frangipany wriggling her way through contractions to funky reggae!

(ETA - I finally got the edited video uploaded, so i've put it in: note this isn't the same video that I posted earlier today, that one can still be seen on youtube if you search for sequoialittletree videos)
By evening, the contractions were getting pretty intense and closer together. Phew! Finally :)

Only by midnight, there was still no change. I still suspected that the head was deflexed (looking up rather than with the head tucked in) and asynclitic, so we did a bunch of postures and things to try shifting it, but no dice. I did another vaginal exam, only to find Frangipani was still dilated to 9cm, in the exact same position as 10 hours before! At least the baby's heart rate was fine throughout it all.

We tried a couple more measures to shift the baby, but in the end, suffering miserably from exhaustion, after missing two and a half nights' sleep, and trooping through such a long labour, Frangipani decided to transfer to the hospital.

We arrived into the ER at around 2am, and the doctor was called. The obstetrician came in and confirmed my diagnosis - baby deflexed and asynclitic, impacted at 9cm in a brow presentation. When I told him I'd checked her and she'd been at 9cm for over 12 hours, he called for a cesarean section, which Frangipani agreed to.

The nice thing was that the doctor and nurses were all very respectful, and totally accepted me as an authority. I managed to convince the doctor to let hospital policy slide and allow Jo into the operating room, and to take the baby as soon as it was delivered, rather than taking it off in a plastic box to the nursery, and also for no vaccinations, eye drops or vitamin K. They also agreed to let Frangipani have skin-to-skin contact and initiate breastfeeding as soon as possible. :)

It all went well, and Noah Orion Leopold was born, healthy and fine, 3.33kg and 54cm long. Though with his head dented in the shape of Frangipani's pelvis. The swelling went down really fast though. Now mama and baby are recovering well, bonding and breastfeeding like crazy :D

Sharing Creates Abundance

Essence of Life published my latest Natural Parenting article; interestingly-titled, The Right To Be You.

Well, I couldn't think of a good title, so I left it up to the editor. Yep, that's what you get.

check it out Here

Let Your Little Light Shine

Last night Frangipani and Jo got a Thai wish lantern for us, which was a lot of fun.

It's basically a big paper balloon with a small ring that you light on fire, which fills the balloon with hot air so it rises up into the sky.

Apparently it's a Thai tradition, and you make a wish when letting the balloon go. During the Thai Festival of Lights people set off thousands of them, filling the night sky. Pretty spectacular, though I wonder what happens to all those balloons when they finally hit the ground :/

Still, it was a lot of fun for Littletree, who made a wish that the baby will come, which looks like it's coming true, since Frangipani's water broke.

Fungus

Nothing like being in the tropics for a little fungus. Littletree has a ringworm on the back of her hip. It started out small (which I foolishly didn't take a picture of) and just got bigger and bigger.

after one week:after two weeks: I sprayed some tea tree oil on it every morning and now it's getting better, almost faded. It looked pretty gross - it's about 4 or 5 cm across, and Littletree said it was a bit sore and itchy, but it didn't really seem to bother her all that much.

We talked a lot about fungus, and how they spread and grow. Then we got into talking about parasites, including the botfly larva Littletree had in her butt cheek when she was 13 months old. That was freaky - she had this red-kidney-bean-sized flesh eating spiky worm abut 2.5 cm deep in her butt cheek. poor thing. If you're not squeamish, look on Youtube for "botfly".

On a less gross side of life, I started making a wishlist on Amazon, which you can see here or by clicking on one of the fun buttons on the sidebar. I'll probably be adding new books to the list regularly; who would have thought that unschooling a small child and studying midwifery would require so many books!? But don't be shy! you too can be one of the first to Buy a Book for Majikfaerie!!!

Oishi Desu Ne!

Purple left, back to Israel a few days ago, but before he left, we all went to Oishi - a Japanese all-you-can-eat buffet...

OMG!! The place is AMAZING! Huge bars laden with all kinds of sashimi and sushi, and other Japanese dishes. We filled our plates so many times :)


Chinese steamed dumplings galore, and a huge area full of platters of raw meats and fish that you can select, and they cook them fresh and bring it to the table.

Purple took a plate of meat and they brought it to the table in a little pot of soup, that was cooked at the table. I stuffed myself on raw fish, Littletree ate HEAPS of sushi and some miso soup.

Littletree got out her lipstick and princess crown and made herself and Frangipani beautiful. She declared that Frangipani was the Queen of the Universe, and she was Princess of the Universe. Jo was King of the Universe and Purple was Prince of the Universe. And me? I was the Midwife of the Universe. Funny, all this time I had assumed the Universe was a Freebirther LOL We mostly just hung out for ages laughing and chatting, occasionally heading up to refill our platesThen Littletree discovered the restaurant had a playground! She even made friends with a little girl who was there, though they had no common language; the other girl was speaking Thai, the kids communicated and played together just fine :)

Phuket

We arrived to Phuket town bus station to be greeted by Frangipani and Jo. After our harrowing journey, I was so glad they were still there to meet us, especially since we arrived much later than we'd thought.

They took us home in their jeep, and showed us to our room so we could shower, rest and relax.

Wow! The house is absolutely gorgeous; they've been hard at work decorating, nesting for the new baby to arrive. The house is so full of plants and greenery, one could almost feel in a forest, and my room is decorated with really nice lighting and hanging baskets, cool and breezy in shades of citrus and green :)

Frangipani has set up her birthing pool and birth space in a way that would put the fanciest private birth centre to shame; surrounded by plants, in a cozy corner overlooking the ocean with candles and soft lighting.

The house is amazingly, right next to the sea, and in a kind of remote place with no near neighbours. For Phuket, it's a real paradise.

We all settled right in, and quickly made friends with Frangipani and Jo, enjoying leisurely breakfasts out on the patio. Followed by gorgeous sunsets from the upstairs living room.

We started catching up on our pre-natal checks, and now not much is left but waiting for the baby to come :)

 

Phuket

*This post simply wouldn't work (slow internet connection).
So I've re-posted and deleted it. See the next post :)

Back in the Land of Smiles

It's so nice to be in Thailand again. When you arrive in the airport, there's a big sign saying "Welcome to the Land of Smiles". It's nice.

Littletree enjoyed being back in a familiar place, and she asked to go to the dentist again to have her teeth cleaned (I guess in response to me taking a close-up photo of her teeth in a bid to get her to brush.

I took her back to the same dentist we'd been to about a year ago to have Littletree's teeth cleaned. They are really nice there, and very sensitive and patient with small children; I can't recommend them enough. (not to mention paying only $10 for treatment in a private dental clinic!) Last year when we did her teeth, it was also at her insistence, and it had gone very well. This time she had less tolerance for the procedure, but still, came out with a set of shiny pearly whites and a minimum of fuss.

Who would have thought that a child would be begging to go to the dentist?! I guess one who hasn't been exposed to cultural images of dentists being big scary menaces. LOL

After we spent 2 days in Bangkok, mostly recovering from the journey out of China, and with Purple right back to work, we booked ourselves in on the night bus to Phuket. Somehow, after taking a 16 hour overnight train in China, taking an overnight bus seemed do-able, but it turned out to be much worse than it sounded.

Naturally, the bulk of the difficulty was thanks to the travel agent not mentioning a lot of what seemed to me, pertinent information. Like, we were told that the bus would leave from Khao San Rd - where the travel agent was. They didn't mention that we would have to walk to the top of the street, and when they finally told us that, we were told it was just to the end of the street - a hop of about 150 metres. Only we were herded (with Purple hobbling on an injured leg, and us lugging 2 loaded backpacks, a suitcase, 2 full day bags, a guitar, and a bag of food - which we could just manage to carry, if it weren't for the wild card - SLEEPING LITTLETREE!) for about a kilometre! *groan*

Finally, getting to the place; some random spot on a big road, we waited about half an hour, then the bus came, and parked on the other side of the road, so we all had to lug our gear across in front of whizzing freeway traffic.

On the bus, no worries. we scored a full row to ourselves, and the bus was somewhat comfy - the seats reclined pretty far and had foot rests. 10 hours later, we arrived to Surat Thani, a big town in southern Thailand, where we all had to get off the bus, lug our bags to the other side of the road, and sit in front of another travel office, waiting for a mini bus to take us to Phuket.

For some reason, minutes after the entire bus load of people set their gear down, a guy came out with a hose and started watering our bags! Nothing would make him stop. Purple got red in the face and would have attacked the guy, I'm sure, if he hadn't been safely behind a fence.

We waited there for an hour, before a car came and took us to another travel office, where we waited another hour before a minibus took us 3 hours to Phuket, and then left us at another travel agent where we waited about 40 minutes for another car to take us to the bus station. The whole journey was about 18 hours.

Phew!

But we arrived, and our hosts, my new birthing clients, were there to pick us up :)