Just Breathe

"Just breathe" are the words I hear often these days. My husband is so good. Everytime he see me wrinkle my nose, make a painful face, make a noise, or clinch my fists he calmly says, "breathe Alice, just breathe". I try to remember the words of my wonderful Bradley teacher (Jennifer), about centering my attention on the part of my body going through the pain, not to tense up the other parts of my body and make it worse. My husband read a great analogy in his Bradley coaching book. Think of a kicker for a football team. When goes to the field to kick, he is relaxed his whole body almost limp. As he stands in front of the ball, getting ready to kick it, he works to relax everything. He jumps up and down, wiggling his arms, rotating his shoulders forward and backward, rotating his head around and around. He then let his hands drop to his side. All of his energy is focused in his leg and foot, the part of the body doing the work. That is how it should be. This is how it should be for me while working through these contractions. I get it. I truly get the concept and I can do it, it just takes having my mind where it needs to be. I have to find that peaceful state. My peaceful state is the image of me laying there in God's great big hands. It works for me, it always has.


Sunday evening I had discovered I was leaking amniotic fluid. This is fine and to almost be expected late in the pregnancy, so long as you are replenishing that fluid. I don't think that women realize just how important it is to drink water during their pregnancy. I called my wonderful midwife, Linda to inform her. She reassured me that it was fine and asked if I was still having the contractions I have been having for a couple of weeks now and my answer was yes. I was to just pay close attention to things from here on out.


Monday I woke up to feel some pretty heavy contractions although they were not in a consistent pattern, I knew something was changing. I then called Linda again and she asked me to come on up to her (home) clinic (which is just past the Tennessee state line, about 20 minutes away). I called Donald, he left work immediately, ran by the school to pick up Calvin and came to pick me up! He was a little excited, it was cute! Once we arrived, Linda checked me over and determined I was definitely in labor and we would probably be having a baby that night or Tuesday at some point. We decided to head home to do most of the laboring there.

As we drove down the road, we were just super excited. Just past the state line we got a call from Linda, she asked us to turn around and head back to the clinic. Linda had realized after looking at a blood test I took in the beginning, that we had kinda lost site of how far along I was. Please understand, I have been measuring at two weeks ahead of time this whole pregnancy and that blood test was not taken with Linda, it was taken with the doctor we started out with. So it was easy for us to loose focus by measuring the uterus (my belly) and such. We don't a ton of ultrasounds to determine things. Sunday, I was under the impression that I was full term (37 weeks) along but it turns out I am only 35 (based off that blood test). Linda asked that we go home, relax and try to slow things down, if it did not stop, she believed the baby would be just fine, as did I too. I am completely confident that this is one healthy baby but ultimately in the end, only God knows and I truly need to listen to my midwife.

We went home a little frustrated but knew it was still a possibility to give birth soon. I then got a call a little while later from Linda, she asked that I try to completely stop the labor. To take a shower, drink 4 to 6 ounces of wine, and lay down. I got off the phone and just sobbed. I had taken my shower and I laid down for about 20 minutes (which was really all I could sleep) and no change. I reluctantly drank the wine, I just did not want to stop the progress. The contractions did not slow down until late that night. I was able to get a couple hours of sleep.

Here we are on Wednesday, my contractions have continued, although nowhere near as consistent as they were getting on Monday and I am still leaking amniotic fluid. My orders are to hold off for another week or two. I am to rest as much as possible. This is not my style. This is hard for me. I do not like to just sit here or sleep all the time. This will be a challenge. I have plenty of other things I need to be doing and heck I would love to see people! I feel like I am already here all the time as it is. I am ready to meet this little bugger. I know he is just going to be awesome! My boys are SO ready! They want him here now. Calvin loves that the baby responds to his voice in the morning. Donald will call out to him across the room and my tummy will ripple over and over again.

Ultimately, I know what I need to do. I need to suck it up and be patient. I feel torn. I am so anxious but at the same time I am SO glad that I have this time to prepare. I have this time to work on centering my attention on relaxing as I should. We all know I won't get much relaxing time after this little one is here.

SO to end this long blog, if you are bored and would like to just relax, come on over! We will sit here and drink wine (of course I will be cut off after one) and just breathe!