A Little Out There.

I have been thinking about having a doula at my birth. They specialize in ensuring your birth plan is followed as medically safe and massage your back or other points to help with pain management. I intend to try a natural birth, with IV pain meds at most because I'm terrified of the epidural. It can have terrible consequences on both the mother and child, plus who wants a giant needle shoved in their spine? Not this Momma. So having the doula could be extremely helpful. The problem is - insurance doesn't cover them and their services are not cheap ($500 is cheap). Just this minute, I found out that the hospital I will be birthing at has volunteer doulas available for any mother - if you go into labor on a weekend, hahaha. So, uh, Magoo, you want to try to time this birth from a Friday to Sunday please and thank you:)

Even further out there: placenta encapsulation. Also not cheap at $150, but I asked to be put on a sliding scale unless DH or I get a job and can afford the full price. What this entails is saving the placenta. I am asking for delayed cord clamping so the baby is born with all of the necessary blood - immediately clamping cuts off up to 50% of the baby's blood supply. Then the placenta is taken to a specialist who will dehydrate it, cut it up, mix it with herbs and shove it into capsules. I take a few a day and work my way down to one a day. Kind of disgusting, right? Ingesting your own organ. Some people just eat the damn thing raw. Ick. No thank you, just having to swallow the pill will be disgusting.

Why do this? Well it is proven to have a lot of benefits. Keeping your milk supply up, causing post partum bleeding to significantly lessen, boost your immunity, etc. The most important thing for me however, is that it is proven to reduce your chances for post partum depression/anxiety. As someone already diagnosed with generalized anxiety and only a few points away from meeting requirements of where they would be worried about me (in terms of pregnancy and anxiety problems), I run a high risk of post partum anxiety. If sucking it up and taking a few pills of placenta a day will keep me mentally healthy so I can maintain physically/emotionally stable relationships with myself, my new child and my husband, well I will do that. I've been so deep in anxiety/panic, I can't possibly imagine falling any lower and living through it. Maybe even thinking this can help will make a difference even if it actually doesn't. But somehow I will find the money to be able to eat my placenta. I have been on a low for a long time and I refuse to stay there.

This is me saying,  yes.