Archive for May, 2007
I don’t know Webster’s first name…
But I could just kiss him.
OK I just looked. His first name is Larry. I really don't care. All I know is that the Webster Technique is fab. I've been madly in love with my chiropractors for quite some time, but this just tops that.
With all of my pregnancies I've had pain in my pelvis and pubic bone. I'd heard about symphysis pubis dysfunction, but I thought it was only when it actually separated and the woman was in EXCRUCIATING pain that it was considered a "problem." I thought what I was experiencing was normal and just one of those annoying things about late pregnancy.
Come to find out, it's NOT normal and is considered a mild form of SPD. A common treatment of SPD is the Webster Technique, since SPD is often caused by the pelvis being out of alignment.
I've also mentioned the current funky position of my little babushka. The Webster Technique can sometimes help with malposition as well. (Small comment/rant here: I've come across some websites trashing Webster because they claim that Webster is held out as this "cure-all" for getting a baby to turn. That is so not true. Webster is about getting the mom's body lined up straight so that if the malposition is caused by some misalignment in Mom, it will be corrected once Mom's body is back where it should be. It is NOT a guarantee, nor do Webster practitioners claim it is. So these websites are spreading incorrect information.)
I found out that one of the chiropractors at my current practice is Webster certified, so I got in to see her yesterday. Webster is totally different from the typical "back popping" manipulations that chiropractors do, and she told me that first thing. She first looked to see if my shoulders and hips were straight (they weren't). Then she had my lie down on my belly on the blessed table with the middle dropped down. (It was so nice lying on my belly again, even for such a short time!
) She looked to see if my hips were straight - one side was tilted up, and they were actually rotated somewhat too. So she felt around on different ligaments in my sacrum area and could feel some tightness on one side. She also felt around on some on my occipital bone. Not sure what she felt exactly, but I guess that's why she's a chiropractor and I'm not. She applied some pressure to a couple of those ligaments, and then that was it.She had me roll over on my back, and then she felt around on my round ligaments. (Oh yeah, I've been having trouble with them too, which to some extent is normal during pregnancy, but apparently what I've been experiencing is somewhat abnormal...who knew?) She felt that one side was tighter than the other (the opposite side that was tight on my back, which she said made sense and is usually the case). So she applied pretty strong pressure to those ligaments for several seconds and then released them.
That was it!
It was so non-invasive and minor that I figured it wouldn't do much.
Well, I can't say for sure that it did anything for baby's position (although I do think she is head down this evening!), but my pelvic pain is nearly GONE today. It was already gone yesterday right after I left the chiropractor's office. Even today when I sat on the floor to do school with the kiddos, I had no problem walking afterwards. Typically I am in SEVERE pain after doing that. Not even close today.
Hence why I LOVE Dr. Webster.
Definition of the day
Definition:
- A daily record, especially a personal record of events, experiences, and observations; a journal.
- A book for use in keeping a personal record, as of experiences.
Word being defined: diarrhea
(Courtesy of L, age 6.5)
The Two-Headed Baby
AKA the little one I'm carrying (still no for sure name, by the way).
Who knows which end is up on this kiddo? She's been flipping back and forth between vertex and this breech-ish/transverse lie for a while now, and it's getting semi annoying LOL. Today my midwife had a hard time distinguishing whether her head was up or down and declared that she has two heads. (No, there aren't two babies in there.
) We actually wonder if she flipped while we were sitting there talking. Apparently there is plenty of fluid in there, so she is just swimming all around, having a big ol' time.I've been reading some at spinningbabies.com on some things I can try. The trick is actually being able to do them. Inversion is a good possibility...if my arms can manage to bear my massive weight (I weigh more now than I ever have in my entire life, and I was HEAVY when I delivered #5). Swimming is out - I don't have access to a pool. The ironing board technique has potential, but I've heard it's pretty painful, and I don't have anyone around to help me up/down. (That's another glitch with the inversion technique - it takes someone else to help you not fall as you get into/out of position. Basically if the technique can't be done on my own, I can't do it.) The Webster Technique is another possibility - I need to call my chiropractors and ask if any of them in that office are trained in it.
And so on and so forth.
I guess she'll just keep us guessing up until it's time, huh?
Tales of the Traveling Pregnant Woman
I'm home. I got home a day late, but I'll get to that later.
The flight to Ohio was uneventful. I ended up in a BRIGHT red Pontiac G5 - the zippiest thing I've ever driven, I think! LOL! Once when I was getting into it, a guy even commented on how red it was. It. Was. Red.
The hotel I stayed in was very nice. The kid at the counter (OK, so he was probably 18-20, but that's a "kid" to me now ROFLOL!) was so helpful. When I checked in and gave him my name, he asked, "Your parents are supposed to be here too?" I answered yes, and he told me that my stepdad had said to tell me they were right across the hall. I dunno...I just thought that was nice of the kid to actually tell me that.
It's a rather new hotel - everything was fresh and clean. Gotta love clean hotels. The funeral went well (for a funeral). My grandma didn't look like herself (but do dead people lying in caskets ever look like themselves?). We figured out it's because she had her glasses on and her teeth in, something she hadn't had in a few years. I also think it's because she wasn't smiling. Back when Grandpa passed away, he didn't look like himself either. He was in a suit. Grandpa didn't wear a suit. He wore polyester pants, a white T-shirt, and suspenders. They had trimmed his mustache. And they didn't put a flyswatter in his hand in the casket either. Therefore...he didn't look like Grandpa.
After the funeral and burial, Mom, Stepdad, and I went and visited my other grandparents (my dad's parents). (Yes, yes, Mom was visiting her ex-husband's parents and her current husband was there too. Let's just say our family could EASILY be on Jerry Springer.) Grandpa had just taken some Percoset before we got there, so he was asleep when we arrived. Grandma seemed a little down - got teary-eyed a couple times.
After about an hour Grandpa woke up. Stepdad met him at the doorway to the kitchen, but Mom was across the room. Stepdad said hi and such, and Grandpa looked at Grandma and said, "You know who he looks like? He looks like B!" (B is Stepdad.) Stepdad said, "That's because I am B!" Grandpa was thoroughly confused. Stepdad pointed out Mom across the room, but evidently Grandpa couldn't see her. So she came closer, and finally he could see her. When he did and recognized her, HE got all teary-eyed. And then he realized what he had said about Stepdad looking like B and got a big chuckle out of what he had said. The Percoset was still in effect, and lets just say he was feeling pretty good. He was singing all sorts of children's songs in German, pretending to play his cane like a guitar. A couple of time Grandma commented on how those pain pills must be really working.
Stepdad got a video with his camera at one point - I can't wait to see it again.Somehow we got to talking about this tape they made, singing a duet. I had never heard about it before. Evidently back in the mid-fifties, Grandpa's sister (who was still in Germany...she didn't come to the States as he had in 1951) was getting married. As somewhat of a wedding gift, Grandma and Grandpa went to a little record studio and had a 45 made of them singing a duet a capella. When they sent it over, Grandpa's mother fell down the stairs because she thought Grandma and Grandpa were really there.
At some point they had a tape made of this record, and Grandma played it for us. :shock: Oh. My. Word. It was sooooooooooooo cool. Here are my grandparents, now in their very late 70s/early 80s, singing when they were MY age (or thereabouts). I didn't understand a single word (since it was all in German), but that didn't matter. I'd heard about my grandma's singing voice (which is no longer due to smoking like a chimney for years and years and years), but I had no idea my grandpa could sing like that! And their reactions to hearing the tape again...choke choke sob sob! They'd close their eyes and just sing along. It was soooooooo neat. I CANNOT WAIT to get a copy of that tape!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Tuesday I had quite a bit of time to kill because my flight wasn't leaving until 6:45 pm. At the cemetery on Monday I'd seen some of our ancestors' graves, so I went back to the cemetery and walked around, looking for others. I knew that a lot of our ancestors had been buried in that cemetery, due to the genealogical research I've done. So I walked and walked and walked and actually found some of them! Took lots of pictures. That was super neat.
I got on my plane in Cleveland and sat. And sat some more. The pilot thought a bird had hit the outside of the jet, and it had created a dent. He thought it would be OK, but he wanted to make sure. So he was having a mechanic come out and look at it. Well United didn't have their own mechanic at that airport, so they had to bring over one from another airline. Then the mechanic had to send measurements of the dent to some engineer dude, to make sure it was OK to fly. Everything FINALLY got cleared, and we took off about an hour after we were supposed to.
Oh, did I mention that I only had an hour to make my connection in Chicago?
The pilot said he was "giving her all she's got," so we should land about 10 minutes early. But when we got to Chicago, they made him go around and land on another runway, which added 10 minutes to the flight. So when I got off the plane and checked the monitors, my flight to Spokane wasn't even listed anymore. OK NO flights to Spokane were listed (which is what I figured - it was about 8:15 pm and Spokane does not have a big airport - it's not like there are tons of flights going in and out there!). So off I went to the customer service desk for United (along with a ton of other people who had missed their connections).
To make a long story short, United put us up in a swanky hotel in Chicago for the night and gave us a small voucher for breakfast the next morning. I didn't have my bag though (it was in some holding area), so I had to borrow a toothbrush and toothpaste from the hotel. And I had to sleep in my clothes. Ack!
The next morning I caught an 8 am flight to Seattle. Unfortunately the gal who had rebooked my tickets didn't see that I had purchased Economy PLUS seating, so I could have extra legroom. She booked me in the back of the plane, in a window seat.
She also didn't notice the basketball under my dress because on the flight from Seattle to Spokane she put me in and EXIT ROW! So when I got to the airport I pointed out that I had purchased extra legroom and could I switch seats, and if not, I was gonna raise a stink to get my money back. They were able to switch me on that first flight, but it was still a middle seat.This proved to be quite miserable since I couldn't move my legs very much (and they were already bothering me from not being able to put them up much the day before). I could feel my ankles swelling, and my left leg especially just ached something terrible. Sadly I had to disturb the man on the aisle once midflight to use the restroom, but at least I was able to move around a bit more - that helped a bit.
FINALLY I got to Seattle, and I was able to put my feet up a bit while I ate lunch. I got moved out of the exit row (honestly they would have HAD to have moved me - I'm not ALLOWED to sit in the exit row as pregnant as I am) - whew! Little did I know that the lady had rebooked me onto a prop plane though - UGH! (One of the many things I like about Priceline - I think all their flights are guaranteed to be jets.) Props are always so loud and jittery. And landing...let's just say that I'm glad it wasn't much hotter on the plane or I would have ended up using my barf bag!
My bag wasn't on my plane with me, BUT IS IT ANY WONDER??? I would have been amazed had it made it. So I filed my claim, and a few hours after I got home, some people delivered it to my house - it had come on a flight from Denver
shortly after my plane landed in Spokane.I spent the rest of the evening on the couch, with my feet UP. This morning my ankles are looking MUCH better - now I just look like I have posts for legs rather than balloons at the bottom of them.
All in all, a decent trip.
I've decided that our family simply MUST go on vacation to northern Ohio. Period. 
How I am :-)
Holly, you are so sweet to ask!
First of all, very large LOL. All that weight I lost right before I got pregnant? Gained it all back PLUS my normal 40+ pregnancy pounds. :-P It's pretty annoying that not even my normal maternity clothes, which have always fit, do NOT anymore.
I'm 34w5d...but who's counting?
Baby has no name yet - we've NEVER had this much trouble coming up with a girl's name before!!!! I know that she does have a name, and I'm just praying that God would reveal it to us at least by the time she's a week old LOLOL!!!
She also has decided to be Miss Acrobat. For a good long time she was transverse, and then for several weeks she has been head down. Day before yesterday I started feeling kicks in the wrong place, and sure enough, when I went to the midwife yesterday she had flipped to a breechish-transverse lie (so not even a frank breech
). Evidently she has tons of fluid in there to swim around in, and we know she CAN be head down ;-), so there is a good chance she'll flip on her own. If not though we are tossing around the idea of an external version. I'm still doing lots of research since I've heard it's not the coolest experience and carries some risks. And in the meantime I'm trying all sorts of tricks to get her to flip on her own.I think she may have flipped back around somewhat today - kicks are back up high again. I guess we'll see. I just hope she doesn't keep us guessing right up until the very end!
I am leaving to go to Ohio again on Sunday...my grandmother passed away yesterday morning. Her husband is the grandpa who died back in February. I think it is so neat how they passed away just 3 months apart, after 66 years of marriage. Grandma had had pretty severe dementia for quite some time, and she wasn't fully aware that Grandpa had died. But the night before she died, the last thing she said to the nurses was, "You need to get me dressed up. I need to be wearing my good clothes. Lewie is coming to get me."
The funeral is Monday, and I'll fly back on Tuesday. Got a great deal on tickets on Priceline - yahoo! My mom is having a mini cow that I'm coming, but I saw the midwife purposefully to find out if I can go, and the midwife gave me the all clear. (Things are shut up tighter than Fort Knox, which isn't too surprising for me. I am not known for delivering babies early, that is for sure.
) I have copies of my records, so I'm all set. In fact, the midwife was only concerned about my trip as it relates to the whole breech thing - she thought I was going to be there for a week. Once she found out it was just a 2-day trip, she told me to have a great trip. Meanwhile, I'm trying to cram as much school as possible into our days LOL. I really wanted to have the kiddos do at least their reading, English, spelling, and math while I was gone, since they use BJU HomeSat for that and can do it without me, but dh asked me to please not LOLOLOL. Doesn't he realize I have a deadline, and I don't know exactly when that deadline is??????
The weather is finally warming up here, and we actually have some blossoms on our strawberry plants. I can't WAIT till our crop comes in next month!!! Store-bought strawberries are good and all, but WOWSERS!!! Our little strawberry bed has spoiled me! :-) I'm not planting a garden this year - the last thing I wanted to be doing at 38 weeks pregnant (we still have some freezing temps at night, so we can't plant much yet LOL) is planting seeds, and I also didn't want to have to worry about picking stuff AND adjusting to a new baby. So our little garden is getting a rest this year.
Other than that...not much new going on. ;-) So sorry I haven't done a better job at updating my blog...it seems I either have too much to say and no time to say it or nothing to say at all LOL.
Do you ever wonder
Just what is the point?
So many issues that I have opinions on when it comes to the way our country is run, but I figure, why even bother? I know that's not the best attitude to have, but yeah right, come on. Like calling my Respresentative (whom I actually do like) would make a difference. The lobbyists are the ones who really run things. I think that nowadays we are a "representative government" in name only.And I can only imagine how far my opinion would get if I had a representative that disagreed with me. Sure, I could call and write, but that's as far as it would go. He/she would not give a flying flip about me, their constituent, since it's all about agendas. (That's how it is with my Senators right now.)
The whole system is so messed up. What started out so glorious and amazing...well, it ISN'T anymore.
So that brings me back to my whole "why even bother" thoughts. It's frustrating and sad that my voice won't be heard on certain issues, but what is even more frustrating and sad is that it's not heard at all thanks to the way our current government operates.
