Friday, June 28, 2013

Honey I'm in labor....

This is part 1 of the "birthing series" and my perspective of having our newest member to the family, Magnolia Joy. I want to preface this by saying that this is not my typical posts about diet health and fitness and this may have a little more detail than most people would generally be comfortable with. I guess this my little disclaimer.


            So a little background on the birth my wife and I chose. We wanted a natural  birth. After doing a lot of research we decided that the hospitals are very quick to intervene in the birthing process. We learned that c-section births are about 40 percent  and most of those are not due to a medical necessity. My wife had a c-section with our first child and I can honestly say it was one of the hardest things that I have ever seen anyone go through. It is major surgery. They cut through several layers of your body and pull the baby out. This also causes a lot of unnecessary hormonal changes in the woman because it stops the natural process of birth and the way the body handles it. Now our first one "MAY" have been medically necessary but that's up for debate because our first child was breach (head up instead of down).

             Another part of the decision was the cost. Having it at home would cost a total of $3000 all together! This included all of the pregnancy appointments, postpartum visits, supplies and birth.  With our first child all together the cost was upward in the $10,000 range which included all of the same things and that was with insurance mind you. Plus we read about the care and the midwife becomes a part of your life during this period of time. They spend time with you and get to know you. The doctor process takes about 2 hours of waiting and them to see you for around 15 minutes and then send you on your way. Big difference.

             So home it was, that's what we decided and we got some crazy looks and comments about it, but we knew this was the right decision.We will now fast forward to Monday June 10th.

           I woke up around 7:30am  like I usually do and was getting ready for work. I had already not slept well because I had a HUGE interview scheduled at work for me, so I was focused on that. As I woke up my wife looked at me and said "I have been up since 5am, I think something happened". I perk up immediately and ask what happened, as I thought something was wrong. She told me that she had some water like stuff leak out. My first thought was " HAHAHAHA She peed per pants!" but she explained to me that she thought it was an issue and the fluid around the baby was leaking out which is a bad thing. I was concerned but dismissed it as she felt fine, although she had a few stomach cramps here and there, hell I had an interview to worry about. Luckily that day she had her final midwife checkup appointment and could check it out.

            From that point on I was at work and was preparing as much as I could for my interview. Around 11am, my wife went to her appointment and I was left in my own thoughts to stew on the interview. I get an email saying my interview was postponed until Thursday, which kind of left me disappointed but relieved that I didn't have anything high stress to worry about, or so I thought. I get a call from Sum, and she was kind of excited. She exclaimed " Honey, I am in labor!!" Oh that's fine honey....wait what?!" She told me she was in labor, and that leak she had was her water breaking. So much for not being stressed right? At this point I went into super husband mode. I was overly attentive and wanted to help her out. I had gotten visions of movie births where someone's water breaks and then they are flocking to the hospital and going nuts and have a baby within 10 minutes of screen time. Well I quickly learned that for the most part, this isn't the case.

             She got home from her appointment and I was all over the place, we had a place lined up for our 1st child and she went over there for our birth, we figured that the birth process would probably go into the night and i'd be able to get her in the morning or so. So she said she was having contractions but they weren't very intense so we could go eat and pick up a few last minute things that we needed. Yes you heard me right, we went to eat and to go shopping. First thing we did was go to a chinese place and have a full meal, then to Hobby Lobby and old Navy. Not your typical birth process right? She was starting to tire out so we went home and rested. The Doula and midwife were to show up later in the evening and so this point was to take it easy.

The next part of this series I'll continue the story and explain what a midwife and doula are. 

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

It's been a while.....

So it's been a good long while since I've posted anything on here. I wanted to give an update as to what I was doing currently and how I was doing.

First off, I gained weight....on purpose...well kind of......

I wanted to build some strength, and just get strong again. To do this I decided to forget dieting for the most part and go with the flow and just lift. I have been getting stronger but haven't been able to hit the gym as often as I'd like due to having our second child. I went from doing 225 on bench press 6 times for 3 sets to 300 3 times. I feel great with the progress. However I ran into an issue with my form. I have an online coach who took a look at my form and it was garbage. So having to re-learn how to squat and bench have been fun and I notice a big difference already.


As for my food intake, I haven't been completely paleo as of lately but 99% gluten free and I don't feel bad at all. The only bad thing is that I have put on a little too much weight. I am going to cut a little bit and try to stick more to a paleo style diet to get healthier and shed just a tad bit of weight. I wanted to warn people that my next blog posts will be about my childs birth. One thing that has pushed a lot of my training and dieting to the back seat is having a 2nd child. My wife and I went through a crazy journey and I am going to use this blog to post about it. After that I will go more into details about my workouts and diets etc.