The Mom Crowd

I had a great time enjoying my maternity leave from The Mom Crowd. Thank you so much for all the guest bloggers that filled in for myself, McKenna, Dawn, and Amelia while we either having a baby, going on vacation, or going to Eastern Europe to bring home a new adopted member of the family!

I LOVE hearing labor and delivery stories and I thought I would share how my second delivery went in my first post back. I love how having a blog forces me to write out my story. I know years from now I am going to be glad I wrote this story.

Roman’s Birth Story

I woke up March 3rd at 5:41 a.m. with my first contraction. I was already dilated to 3 cm and the baby was in -1 station before my labor began. The day before my lower back hurt really bad, but I still went walking with my friend Barb around an outdoor mall here in San Antonio to help induce my labor. Looks like walking worked!

For the first hour my contractions were every 10 minutes apart. I woke up my husband after the first hour and he began to time them. I am super thankful that my 22-month-old daughter had Mother’s Day Out (MDO) that day and my husband managed to get her there on time. We also made arrangements for other people to take care of her the rest of the day after MDO. I laid in bed all morning watching t.v. in between contractions.

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In August 2008, our three year old son, Andrew, was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. For weeks he had been drinking tons of water, urinating much more than he was taking in and was eating everything in sight. We knew something was going on and when we got his diagnosis we weren’t really sure what we were up against.

The first week was awful. Andrew spent the first day after diagnosis in the ICU because his blood sugar had been so high for so long that he was in Diabetic Ketoacidosis and had to be stabilized. (Diabetic Ketoacidosis occurs when the body cannot break down glucose for energy and in turn starts to burn fat. Ketones are an acid that results from this fat breakdown and an accumulation of these acids in the body can be dangerous and at times deadly.) The following three days in the hospital were spent learning how to care for him once we got home. We learned how to check his blood sugar levels, how to draw up and inject his insulin, how to calculate how much insulin he needs and to recognize danger signs of lows and highs.

We did not get much support from those in our lives we had hoped and thought would be there for us. I realized that a lot of it was due to the fact that people just didn’t understand what we were really dealing with. So, in my attempt to educate people in order to prevent someone else feeling what we felt, I compiled this list of things I wish everyone knew about Type 1 Diabetes.

1. Type 1 Diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the body attacks and destroys all of the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin. No one knows for sure what exactly triggers this autoimmune response, but it is currently not anything that can be prevented and is NOT caused by poor eating, lack of exercise or bad parenting.

2. INSULIN IS NOT A CURE!!! There is currently no proven cure for Type 1 Diabetes. Unlike Type 2 Diabetes (the more commonly discussed type), eating better and exercising won’t reverse it.

3. People with Type 1Diabetes will be dependent on insulin for their entire lives and must take it to survive.

4. Monitoring blood sugar levels is a must! Some people check their children’s blood sugar levels 10 or more times a day.

5. Exercise can cause high blood sugars or low blood sugars – and lows can happen up to 12 hours after exercise.

6. Children with Type 1 Diabetes CAN have things with sugar! In fact, they, like everyone else, need sugars to produce energy. While foods with rapid acting sugars like juice, candy and frostings are to be used sparingly, they can still be had.

7. Parents of children with diabetes NEED other people in their lives to learn how to monitor and care for their children in case there is an emergency or in the rare event they actually have a date night!

Please take the last thing to heart and when you hear of a family affected by Type 1 Diabetes don’t hesitate to ask questions and if possible learn the basics to help. The parents will love you and appreciate you more than you’ll ever know!!!

Sharon M is a full-time mom with two children, ages 4 and 18 months.  She and her family live in the Middle East, where her husband is a teacher.

Packing Boxes.  Shuffling through papers and toys, trying to decide what should stay and what should go.  Finding new friends, new work, new EVERYTHING.  Where do I shop?  Where should my kids go to school?

Most of us have experienced the stress of moving to a new place.  Now, imagine that you’re not only going away from the place you call home, but you’re also diving headfirst into an entirely new country, usually complete with a new language and new culture for you to experience.  Sound insane?  Scary?  Exciting?  Welcome to the life of an ex-pat.

We’re all living abroad for different reasons.  Some of us work for religious or non-profit organizations, a few of us have husbands who work for international companies, and many are working for the US government and are stationed overseas.  I’d like to talk a little bit about my corner of the world, the Middle East.  And what it’s like to raise what we call “third culture kids.”

These kids (TCKs for the rest of this article) have grown up a significant portion of their lives overseas outside their parents’ culture; they build relationships within all of the cultures they come in contact with, while never really having full ownership of any.  Translation: Someone asks you, “Where are you from?” and you answer, “Uhhhh… (thoughtful silence)… America?” They tend to connect best with other kids that have had a similar childhood, and they are generally more mature than American kids their age.  Mave, a mom of five (with #6 on the way), lived overseas for nine years with her family before returning to the States.  She said:

Four of my children are settling into school in the US now.  Three of the four have been naturally drawn to the “internationals” in their classes.  My eldest son enjoys his friend from India.  My second daughter enjoys a Korean- American and my youngest son plays with a boy from the Netherlands.  I don’t know if this would be the case if we had not lived overseas.

Initially, language acquisition is the biggest concern for us as parents, because there is no way that these kids will ever feel connected to the locals if there isn’t some proficiency in the local language.  One of my friends (a mom with three children ranging from 11 to 4) expressed frustration with a local private school – she had to “fight the schools to accept [her] children and school them as though they are nationals” when she first moved here.  The kids have tutors every day, but she is so proud of them because they have learned the language.  Her eldest sounds just like a local kid!  Another friend of mine has a six year-old son who is rather shy and understands Arabic, but rarely speaks; he gets embarrassed when he doesn’t know what to say, and in a culture where boys are encouraged to be bold and aggressive, it can be a struggle for him.

As Americans living in the Middle East, our children stick out; the light-colored eyes, fair hair and fair skin practically scream “I AM NOT FROM AROUND HERE!”  When the kids are young, it’s actually a wonderful way to meet people.  I remember meeting one of my neighbors through my son.  He saw her children playing on the patio, walked in the gate, said “Marhaba!” (hello) and joined them!  And since people in general here are very hospitable and love children dearly, it wasn’t at all odd or rude.  However, as the children get older, it is more and more obvious that they don’t look like everyone else, and it can be uncomfortable for the kids.  Every mom I spoke with said that it is so important to have a strong family life, not too burdened with extra-curricular activities, and to connect with other moms who are living like you are (I call it “the sympathy circle”).   This is important whether you live abroad or not, but as a mom who has lived in the US and overseas, I can tell you, it’s a necessity for my sanity!

We all love to see our kids eat “weird” things and like them.  And when you’re outside your home country, it’s guaranteed that your kids are going to have to try the local food at one point or another.  My fellow blogger Um Tulip said this about her son:

He likes foods that American boys wouldn’t touch.  I remember taking him to a Middle Eastern restaurant with friends when we were back in America and he gobbled up the grape leaves.  Our friends were astounded but it’s one of his favorite foods.

And remember, these TCKs are also growing up in the USA.  They tend to be the children of immigrants or diplomats; they are Hispanic, Indian, Middle Eastern, African.  While they might grow up to look and even to sound American, they have parents with a different set of cultural values, and who (often times) have built a little “home away from home” with other people from the same ethnic background.   Many of them are grateful when, say, a co-worker invites them over for dinner or a mother they meet at the park arranges a play date.   Being among strangers in a new country can be intimidating, and a simple gesture by you can make a world of difference in their lives.

For more information on this topic, I highly recommend Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing up Among Worlds by David Pollock.

Have you experienced the life of an ex-pat, either as a child or an adult?  Have you been able to reach out to the ex-pats in your community, make them feel more at home where they live?  If you’ve lived overseas, what sort of advice or encouragement would you give to other moms in a new cultural and linguistic environment?

Did you clean and organize a lot more than usual while you were waiting for your little one to come? According to Pregnancy Weekly nesting is  “an uncontrollable urge to clean one’s house brought on by a desire to prepare a nest for the new baby, to tie up loose ends of old projects and to organize your world.” I like this definition because it is not limited to just cleaning the house.

With my first baby the closest I came to nesting was labeling everything on my desk at work as I prepared to pass off my workload and washing some onesies. With my second I have had incredible urges to have projects tied up, The Mom Crowd taken care of (thanks Dawn!), the house scrubbed, and all necessary baby items cleaned and ready to go.

Mamashealth.com says that while doing household chores is normal, “when a woman is nesting, she will probably carry out the tasks more meticulously and persistently than usual.” Yesterday I cleaned and shined the toaster oven inside and out. Something I would never normally do! My husband helped me clean and I gave him clear instructions on how the toilets should be cleaned and how the playroom should be picked up. Thankfully he puts up with me and cleaned accordingly.

I have heard my friends say that they have tried to rearrange huge pieces of furniture by themselves and hyper-cleaned the house when they were pregnant. I am curious, have you done anything crazy while nesting? I would love to hear your nesting stories in the comments!

- photo courtesy of zippaparazzo!

I sometimes feel like my huge belly is not advertising, “There is a baby inside here.” Instead my belly says “Please comment on what you think the status of my baby is and ask me lots of questions!” One of the questions I often get asked is, “Where are you delivering?” I explain that I am having my baby at a Birth Center and I like to watch their faces as they receive the news. I even avoided telling my own mother for months, because I feared her negative reaction. When I finally told her she reacted exactly as I expected. So let me explain why I chose a Birth Center instead of going to an OB/GYN and delivering at the hospital.

I had never even considered a birth center until I read Amelia’s article, “Are Birth Centers Safe?” here at The Mom Crowd.  I feel very fortunate to have had a textbook delivery with my first with no medicine in the hospital, so I felt like I could consider another option when I got pregnant with my second.

Cost

The main consideration about where I delivered mostly depended on the cost. When my husband decided to start his own business we opted to buy Health Insurance without any Maternity coverage. It is cheaper for us to have a lower monthly payment and pay for any maternity costs in cash.

We called my OB/GYN and the hospital where I delivered to get their costs. My OB/GYN would be $2300 for 14 prenatal visits, plus $218 for a sonogram and $142 for each Non-Stress Test. The total cost of going to see my OBGYN would be around $2660.  I don’t have the exact numbers for the hospital, but when we called a normal delivery with no epidural or c-section would be around $5,000 in hospital costs. Going through the same care that I had with my daughter without insurance would be around $7,660.

We then called the new Birth Center in San Antonio and found out that they offer a cash discount. $3500 would cover all my visits and my delivery. This only includes up to 6 hours of care after delivery. Any additional hours will be $20 each to cover the cost of the staff. I have to pay extra for any  tests and my sonogram. At the Birth Center they only require 1 sonogram and even that one is optional. For less than $4,000 we feel like we are getting a great deal!

There was also a question of if I had Gestational Diabetes again. My OB/GYN would make me go to a Specialist that would cost about $250 a visit and I would have to go about 10 times. The Birth Center would not make me go to a Specialist if I could control my gestational diabetes with my diet as I did last time. Thankfully I barely passed my diabetes test this pregnancy!

Freedom, Comfort, and Options

My husband and I took a tour of the center, before we signed up. Everything was clean and we got a “good vibe” from the office. It is really peaceful there, almost like a spa. We especially like how I don’t have to have an IV when I am delivering if I don’t need one. I can move about and eat and drink, as I need.  Also, I like that can choose to birth in a bed, use a birthing stool, use a birthing ball, or get in the huge Jacuzzi tub.

The main benefit for us is that my husband wants to catch our second child. He felt like he didn’t really have a part in my first delivery other than rubbing my back and holding my leg. Also, two friends want to be at my delivery and I feel like the center is perfectly okay with extra folks in the room.

Benefits I Have Found Since I Started Going

The three midwives are incredibly nice and not intimidating at all. I have never felt like any question is stupid one. I can ask about my file any time. They also give me feedback on my pee tests. With my OB I always peed in the cup, but never knew why.

I also like that they are pretty flexible with appointment times and I can change my appointment time if I need to. I feel like they know me personally and really care about my health. I never feel like they are rushing me out the room when I have an appointment. I have never had health care providers be this kind and excited for me.

The Few Negatives of my Birth Center

As I mentioned before the mother only stays at the center for about 6 hours after delivery, so there is no overnight nursery care to catch up on your sleep. Also, my Pediatrician is not familiar with the new birth center and the extensive care that newborns receive at a birth center, so she not very encouraging of my decision. I will also have to take a special trip about 48-hours after delivery to have my baby examined at my Pediatrician’s office.

Amelia mentions in her article about what happens if something goes wrong and you need to be rushed to the hospital. Like her birth center, mine is located in the heart of our medical center. They said that most of the time they move a mother is because they have been in labor for a very long time and just want the baby out. It was a very small percentage of women who actually do get rushed to a hospital.

Peace

My husband and I considered every angle that we could come up with. In the end we are excited about our decision. My husband likes to call it “the hippie center” even though they have no tie-dyed clothes or incense. In fact, the center is very nicely decorated. He wants to order a pizza while we are there, just because we can! We will see how it goes. I will be sure to write up another post and let you know how the delivery goes!