Good morning! It is a lovely
sunny day out! And we are hovering at 12 or 13 degrees Fahrenheit with a
feels-like temperature of -2°F. Groovy. I’m thinking we should all go outside
and do a rain dance or something...
Yesterday was a pretty okay kind
of Sunday. We went to church and delivered a few bags of potatoes. We came home
and had corned beef. I did the potatoes and carrots the way Paul likes but the
cabbage the way I like. Paul’s way is to put everything in the pot at the same
time. My way is to put the corned beef in for a couple of hours then add the
potatoes and carrots for about an hour and then the cabbage about 15 minutes
before time to eat. I don’t know how anyone can eat and actually LIKE the
vegetables so mushy that the only reason the potatoes hold their shape is
because I didn’t peel them. That’s just grossly disgusting.
After lunch, we had ice-cream. I
know, brilliant idea when the temperature outside feels like 0°F. Too bad 0
means really cold instead of nothing. I mean, I like winter. I do. But the
reason I like winter is because I like snow. It is quite possible to have a
lovely winter with lots of snow and not get below 25°F. Maybe even 30°F.
Anything lower for more than a few hours is just absolutely ridiculous and
makes keeping the goats watered really difficult when their heated bucket
decides to quit working.
I made a cocoa cake with crushed
candy canes in it and made mint frosting for it. It’s yummy and turned out well
but it either needs more candy canes in the cake or less mint in the frosting
(and I didn’t think I put that much in). Amena and the boys watched a movie
while I worked on invitations for Young Women in Excellence which turned out to
be quite an endeavor because I ended up going through the whole list of girls
and comparing it to names, addresses, and phone numbers in the ward directory.
Paul took 20 bags of potatoes
down to Worcester to the Storehouse and said it was lots of fun driving the van
home in the wind. It was really windy last night. Really windy. Would have been
perfect for sound effects for Halloween.
At church yesterday, I took out
my sweater to work on it and Cedric said, “I want to knit.” I thought about
telling him I’d teach him at home but sometimes the best time is when interest
is expressed, not when it is convenient. So I showed him how to purl since that’s
what needed to be done. He caught on pretty well. When we got home I did get
him started on a scarf. I don’t know how far it will go but it was kind of
cool.
Did you know that not only do
epidurals not guarantee complete pain relief but they only work on the
sensations of contractions? When a woman gets an epidural, she is confined to
bed because of the catheter stuck into her back and she has to have the
monitors on, further restricting movement. According to one study, 15 percent
of the women who had an epidural experienced no pain relief and most women
report that they have decreased pain but that it is not complete. So, you have
to be confined to your bed and you may or may not have some degree of relief.
On the other hand, I have seen
women who received an epidural and because they were not feeling the brunt of
the contractions, they were able to relax more and thus the contractions were
more productive.
When babies are posterior
(face-up), they often will turn during the course of labor to an anterior
(face-down) position which is more favorable for birth. When mama receives an
epidural, baby is less likely to rotate. This leads to more interventions
including more drugs, forceps or vacuum delivery, and cesarean birth. Kind of a
give and take there heavy on the give.
Perfectly healthy babies often
end up in the NICU simply because of the drugs their mother’s received. In
order to be sure that baby is reacting to a drug and does not have a serious
problem, they must go to the NICU. NICUs are wonderful when needed but it is a
waste of valuable resources when healthy babies must go there because they’ve
been drugged up, often at the encouragement of medical personnel.
Administration of epidurals
often leads to further interventions and the risks inherent to their use. I
already mentioned the fact that when mama gets an epidural she has to be hooked
up to the monitor. Continuous electronic fetal monitoring (EFM) results in
increased cesarean births. And as the baby is affected, the heart rate often
drops enough that fetal scalp-blood sampling is warranted.
Administration of an epidural
means that mama’s blood pressure must be much more closely monitored because
she can experience a drop in blood pressure. This decreases the amount of oxygen
the baby gets which causes fetal distress. In order to counteract the drop in
blood pressure, IV fluids are given. While this helps that problem, it also
creates swelling in mama’s feet, legs and breasts. This can be and often is a
problem when mama wants to breastfeed her baby and baby can’t get a good latch
because the breasts are too full of fluid.
When an epidural works, mama cannot
feel the signals that indicate she needs to urinate. Because she is also
receiving IV fluids, her bladder is filling up. A full bladder interferes with
effective pushing and can cause other problems because it is in the way of baby
getting out. This leads to catheterization which leads to an increased risk of bladder
infection. In the case of bladder infection, mama will need antibiotics which
kill good bacteria as well as good and do affect the baby if mama breastfeeds.
Sometimes, an epidural will,
because it interferes with the intricate hormonal feedback system of the body,
cause labor to slow down. Pitocin is the next step in such a case which is
another reason for continual EFM which leads to increased interventive births.
It is interesting to note that a
woman who has either an epidural or Pitocin and an epidural, will take longer
to push her baby out than a woman who remains unmedicated. The difference is 83.3
minutes compared to 47.7.
As mentioned above, epidurals
often lead to delivery with forceps or vacuum. Even when a hospital or doctor does
not heavily use episiotomies, an episiotomy is almost always used with forceps
and vacuum deliveries. This increases the chance of deep tears which are
painful and take longer to heal than smaller ones. They may also cause future
fecal incontinence and painful sex.
When a woman receives an
epidural, she loses the ability to sweat in the affected area which is often
more than half of her body. This leads to an increased basal temperature and it
also leads to an increased fetal temperature. An infection in a newborn is very
serious and one of the indicators of infection is increased temperature. When
mama has had an epidural, baby is often born with an increased temperature and
medical personnel do not know for certain if it is just because of the epidural
or because of infection. Due to not being able to tell, the baby must be
treated as if infection is present which cases more pain, more anxiety, and
increased expenses.
Finally, epidural anesthetics
actually do cross through the placenta and have been found to be as high as
one-third of maternal blood levels. It takes a full 48 hours for a newborn to
eliminate the drugs from its system and it takes up to five days to overcome
behavioral effects which include trembling, irritability, and immature motor
activity). The aftereffects of the drugs can have an impact on a mother’s
relationship with her child if she perceives her baby as being ‘difficult’ in
some way during the first hours and days after birth.
Had enough yet? Want the
low-down on Pitocin? It won’t take long but I think I’ll spare you for now.
Have a great day!
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