Absolutely! Do you want the whole birth plan? I’ll PM it to you if so, my name is allll over it and I’m too lazy to delete it haha.
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Oh yes, it would have been worded very differently for a different practice/region!
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Slightly off-topic from the current birth discussion but since I’ve been finishing up my registry/wish list I thought I’d drop these lists in case anyone else is looking for a compilation of black-owned businesses:
A few specific Stores:
https://www.whattoexpect.com/baby-products/black-owned-businesses-selling-baby-maternity/
Black-owned Etsy Shops:
https://themadmommy.com/types/baby-kids/
This list has both black-owned business (some of them aren’t really baby-related), and rates mainstream brands on their recent responses to race issues in the US:
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Yes this is where I am at. Pikelet wasn’t absolutely enormous but she was 3.8kg with a very large head and I’m always the very smallest adult in a room, so we were mismatched. This baby looks to be the same after all the growth scans.
I had pictocin during labour too which wasn’t a positive experience for me.
At this point unless I go into spontaneous labour within the next week or so and baby isn’t quite so big yet, and things move at a reasonable timeframe, c section it is.
Your experience with the epidurals sounds very frustrating. I’m glad you got to have the c section without a general.
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My personal pain management differed. I was so looking forward to trying the ball and showering, but even though I insisted on leaving for the hospital immediately, once we got there I demanded a wheelchair, and then climbed straight up onto the bed and flatly refused to move from a curled up ball.
to all the other people who have also experienced contraction levels of pain during their periods. I wish we all could have gone without experiencing that. Though I did have a much better idea of exactly what my body was doing and could identify the stages really well!
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If I did my conversion right, Latte was 4.4kg 
9lb 10oz. Midwife was estimating 8lbs based on fundal height. Yikes. Needless to say, she had trouble descending!
For me, it was IBS cramps. Very analogous.
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What a great set of resources. I’m eyeing West Coast Dipes which seem to have very good reviews online.
Yes! Their website is pretty terrible, and we’re not going to start out cloth diapering (although it’s on the list of things to consider/re-consider around 6-10 weeks after birth) but I’ll probably get some wet bags from them in cute designs.
In my case labor was much better than what my body does during menstruation so I wanted to have a hundred more pregnancies! Nice boobs! No asthma! No terrible pain and GI issues 1/4 of every month! And babies! 
I feel differently about this plan now that I’m not in my mid 20s anymore 
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I’m late to the party, but I had all of three bullets on my birth plan (and some minor deets that were a mix of bog-standard for my hospital and “I’m a biologist, please explain everything”):
-alive and healthy baby
-alive and healthy me
-good pain control
The last one was vague because my pain tolerance is reasonably high, but also I’d never had labor before.
I managed until 9.5 cm, which coincided with being put on magnesium and thus the one position I thought would be nice (sitting on the ball) taken off the table due to being a fall risk. At that point I opted for better living through chemistry in my spine, and in retrospect, would have done it two hours and two centimeters earlier if I’d known what was coming.
But I’ve honestly never seen any data that convinced me that unmedicated leads to better, easier outcomes, but rather that better, easier labors are more likely to result in remaining unmedicated, so I had no motivation to go without, especially if it hurt a lot.
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This lines up a lot with the vast majority of birth stories I’ve heard so far and is an excellent way of phrasing it.
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I agree.
Anecdotally, most of the anesthesiologists I work with (who administer epidurals multiple times daily) opted and planned for epidurals during their own labors, in wanting to avoid needing further interventions.
Also anecdotally, I work in a hospital where a large number of my patients have chronic conditions due to birth injuries and there is absolutely a higher incidence in communities without access to some of the medical options that can make birth easier on moms/babies, including pain management.
I’ll admit that for myself at the time it wasn’t so much about the baby (I trusted my birth team’s advice completely so would’ve just done whatever they thought was best) but that my body reacts very strangely to many pain and anesthetic medications and I didn’t want that possibility to interfere with newborn care. Or sleep, more likely, haha. I got lucky that my care team had a lot of experience with unmedicated births and could direct my efforts.
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Same, to me it’s about whatever makes the birthing person feel safest/most prepared/comfortable etc. So having whatever options make that happen are maybe what lead to better outcomes because that person feels safe and able to do this big thing.
My cousin is due any day now and we’ve bonded over our similar desires for home birth and all that and she asked me how I made sure it was safe and I told her that all you can do that is to get providers who you absolutely trust who will honor your wishes but also prep you in the case that your wishes aren’t possible (like what happened to me). I was scared of being in the hospital, but I felt like that fear was really dampened by my midwife and her student being there and having such a good relationship with the hospital team. I knew that I had people in place who would help me adapt to any situation which is kind of necessary in birth since none of us can control it.
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Ugh, our AC went out today which is no good anytime but especially not at 30 weeks pregnant! (I’m in CA which is currently in a multi-day heat wave…temperatures in my city are hovering around 100).It went out in the middle of our 3-hour zoom birth class. Luckily we borrowed a stand-alone AC unit for the master bedroom a couple months ago because the insulation in that room isn’t great and it gets pretty hot so we prepared a ‘picnic’ for dinner and hung out in the bedroom all evening.
The landlord is going to try and get someone out here first thing tomorrow morning but said they’d need to enter our apartment which means two weeks in a row with people coming inside for repairs during a pandemic. Ugh…
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Is it romantic if I cuddle up really close and then belch in your ear, but the belch is from indigestion caused by a new life we’re creating together?
Asking for a friend.
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Yes. It’s also sexy if you lick their ice cream up.close and then wretch on them
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Yes also when you immediately return the nice healthy breakfast they cooked for you into the bathroom sink. Ask me how I know.
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My Ponder currently looks at me like this whenever I do anything. Anything. The power of a horrible first trimester.
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11 weeks along and uterus has popped out the front. Pretty sure you can tell I’m pregnant if I wear a fitted shirt now. Time to break out my super comfy maternity t-shirts for the belly to grow into.
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