Birthdays and Brainwashing

We've been on holiday from work since 19 January. Poor D has to go back tomorrow on his birthday. He's not happy. He's got too used to spending every waking minute with his enormous wife. We were supposed to be getting the house in order while we've been off, and while we've done a bit of this, it's been a pretty lazy time. We've been lying in and lounging around. The bathroom is still not finished and the place is still a tip. But D has cleared out the attic. And then refilled it with different crap. And the poor soul has had to retire one of his mountain bikes as it's going to be too expensive to maintain it. He is still in mourning.

I had a lovely Lostie birthday in that I received the BEST gift from @andalone (THANK YOU!!!!!) which happened to arrive that day. It was a Dharma baby-gro and a t-shirt for me (which I'm scared I'll never fit into). And then later in the afternoon, I received my prize for coming 2nd in the Kharma Initiative raffle which was two posters (one being the Not Penny's Boat print from the second Lost poster event) and a 'Hurley and the Numbers' gelaskin cover for my Ipod Touch which was the giveaway item at the Damon, Carlton and a Polar Bear reveals. I now have 3 of those items. One from the Glasgow reveal and the other from the Chicago reveal. V. happy.
Also on my birthday, Dad and D went to Mamas and Papas to pick up our travel system, cheap(ish) buggy and cot bed. Today D put the cot bed up - it's lovely. I'm glad we didn't go for a real cheapy. The baby's room is small and we have real storage issues in this boxy little house. But people manage with less.
The one bit of useful tidying I have done is to sort out my Lost posters. Some have gone in the attic to be framed another day when there's more cash. The others I have set aside to take to the framers on Friday, the last of my days off from work. I'll get four done and the rest will just have to wait sadly. At least until some kind person takes us to Ikea where I might be able to pick up a frame for them.

Hypnobirthing has continued and we are still enjoying it. In class 2 we learned the principles of glove anesthesia where you numb your hand and then apply your hand to any part of your body you want to numb. I managed the hand but wasn't able to transfer it. If you perfect this, you can use it at the dentist instead of an injection.

We also learned that I can practise birth breathing while going to the loo for a number 2! If you can breathe out a bowel movement without pushing, you can do the same with a baby. Just lovely.
In class 3, D learned gentle touch massage which he can do for a while when I'm in labour (although he'll get sore arms if he does it too long). In the hypnosis session at the end of the class, I feel that I went under very quickly. We were in the deep recesses of our minds looking through a book of our lives so we could erase and rip up any pages which contained fear that might get in the way of our best possible birth experience. Most of my fears are not borne of any past experiences or stories I've heard - I've just made them up for myself. So I found it difficult to find relevant pages in my book. But I pulled out a few. I need to think of ways to visualise my fears so I can do this more effectively the next time I 'go through the book'. Do I sound sufficiently sucked in yet?

The technique to get you to go deep inside yourself seems to be to get you to count down, and use language like 'down' and 'deeper' until you are in a hypnotic state. When I was being counted down, I felt myself on an escalator, and then eventually on a rope pulley system (like in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves after Robin shows Marion the riches in the tree house and then they get down by rope, rather than by ladder). When I got to the bottom (or when the counting from 10-1 had finished), there was a huge lilac, gleaming diamond floating in the air in front of me. This wasn't something I was being prompted to see. It was the most vivid thing I've seen under hypnosis. The hypnotherapist made no mention of it and was telling me to go find a room down a corridor (the one with the book) . I tucked the jewel under my arm as it seemed too important to leave behind. I have no idea what it means. Perhaps it is the source of life, death and rebirth?
Eventually we were asked to visualise our new family once baby has arrived. I saw me and D and a baby. When the hypnosis was over, we were asked if we saw the sex of our baby. I hadn't thought about it while I was under, but I immediately replied 'yes' without hesitation. But I'd borrowed the image of the baby I imagined from a dream I'd had and that dream, I'm sure, was influenced by a picture of a newborn boy I'd seen at work the previous week.

On Friday, I spent a lot of time practising the hypnosis. D has also been given hypnosis scripts to read to me so that I can associate the sound of his voice with being relaxed.

So, as you can tell, it's pretty much occupying my thoughts at the moment.

And that's the way it needs to be if it's to work. I'm also getting more keen on the idea of a home birth. However, it is remarkable how sinister some people think hypnosis is and how foolhardy they think a home birth is. They think it is hippy dippy nonsense. These people are the ignorant ones but sometimes it's difficult to hold your ground. Especially when these people have given birth themselves and think that makes them experts on birth in general. It makes them experts in the birth of their own children and not a lot else. Granted, I'm not even an expert in that yet but I'm more expert in self hypnosis than they are. So there, see!

This week, according to the iPhone app of pregnancy wisdom, the baby is the size of a... cucumber. Que??

Today I am 10 stone and 6.5 pounds. YIKES!

Hypnosis! (And not in preparation for my impending kidnapping by Ethan)

This week our baby is the size of 2 juice boxes. That's according to one of my American pregnancy iphone apps. This was a deviation from its usual fruit and veg reference points. I quite often have to Google these. For instance, a couple of weeks ago, baby was the size of a spaghetti squash. Say what now? Equally puzzling are the assertions that baby is the size of an avocado or 'an ear of corn'. But what sized avocado and ear of corn? And we all know those transatlantic cousins do things bigger and better than we do. So a 'giant' ear of corn? Or just a sad Scottish ear of corn? Do you get Scottish ears of corn? Anyway, I was delighted about the juice boxes because as of Season 5, episode 11 of Lost in 2009, I know what a juice box is. No need to Google (ooh - unless US juice boxes are bigger too?). We call them 'wee cartons of juice'. So, although it triggered a fairly dramatic series of events, I'm glad Aaron changed his mind from milk to juice.
The crochet is going well but I'm waiting for a new consignment of wool in my preferred colours so the blanket is on hold for now. But I am 'well into it' and am determined to produce at least two blankets by April. For now, I have swapped to making a silly hat but I haven't got the tension quite right and have made it a bit too big and have consequently run out of wool in that colour. I've been crocheting away while we watch Still Game, episode after episode as we've just got the box set. I'd only seen a couple of episodes on telly but thought it was worth the purchase. We love it.

Today we were at our first HypnoBirthing class. Just beforehand, neither of us wanted to go. I dislike new situations and D just prefers the path of least resistance. This means he agrees to my mad cap plans months in advance for peace, then when they approach implementation, he wishes he could just stay in the house. The added 'threat' of being hypnotised was not helping his frame of mind. Although he was mostly joking when he mentioned being made to run around like a chicken.
But it was actually a really nice afternoon. We watched a video of women just 'breathing' their babies out. No pain, no pushing, no screaming. Very very hard to believe. But you have to believe it for it to work. You have to train your sub conscious to believe it. I therefore have to listen to birthing affirmations everyday and also self-hypnotise every day. At today's class, she put us under at the end. It worked quite well for me first time and I stopped being aware of my body - it was a bit like floating. Most of what was said made sense and one of the appealing things about it was the supposed effect on the baby once it is born. If you are relaxed and sending the baby endorphins because you are happy, then that will be the baby's natural state. If you are stressed, worried, etc, you'll be sending it all those stress hormones and then that will be its natural state. So when it's born, it will cry more to produce those stress hormones it is so used to. So HypnoBirthing proponents claim that HypnoBabes are happier and eat and sleep better too because they like to have those happy endorphins in their bodies. It makes sense to me.

What I believe a little less is the chances of really having a calm, pain free birth. I think that hospitals whip you up into a state of anxiety and then you are on their conveyor belt production line. Someone on the class said that her sister in law's midwife wouldn't believe her (over the phone) that her labour was as far advanced as it was because she sounded too calm. She'd been doing hypnobirthing techniques and was completely relaxed and under control. However, one of the NHS indicators for judging the advancement of labour is how stressed you sound. That's just super, isn't it?

This week I have broken the 10st barrier. Eek! I remember how hard I worked to get below that marker. I am 10 stone, 1.75 pounds. This is a gain of 8.25 pounds (I think - it's late and I'm tired). The NHS don't seem concerned about weight but the interweb says I should have gained more than this by now. Ach, well.