birth

I would like to take a moment to alert our readers to the birth of Schenectady Marmoset ibn/bint FashionMujahid.

Please remember SM & FM in your prayers, as it was a very difficult birth and our dear FM will be out of commission for a while. Light a candle and say some prayers, people! A pregnancy has been successful and new life is in the world.

Schenectady, you're surrounded. Come out with your head down.
Alas, if it were that simple! My marriage taught me, among other things, that I cannot control another human being's choices or actions; the end of my pregnancy is teaching me that God and my child have plans that are better than mine and I have no say. That lesson will be reinforced many, many times in the future, insha'Allah, and it's also giving new dimensions to my patience and my impatience.

My due date is tomorrow. That will probably be blithely ignored by Schenectady, but the significance of how far we've come, and the journey ahead, is worth noting. There is another being, a separate soul, just beneath my rib cage.S/he will be born soon, alive and healthy, insha'Allah, and a fate I cannot begin to imagine has already been decreed for the life currently kicking me. When we began this journey, I was more naive, but sadder than I am now. I am more cautious, but also filled with joy.

With my usual gusto and willingness to swim upstream, I'm seeking to have a birth experience with a minimum of medical intervention. No person, including me, can really control birth, but we can control the choices we make and the professionals whose help we seek, for the most part. Alhamdulillah, I've a midwife whose care philosophy includes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", a precept that I wholeheartedly agree with. However, I had to erase the following from my birth plan, as she thought the nurses (or an OB, if my midwife gets held up) wouldn't like it quite so much.
1. Episiotomy: you cut me, I cut you. Capisce?
2. No, I don't want an epidural. But if you're offering pain meds, my sis would like a vodka and tonic.
3. As you didn't pick the position in which I conceived, you don't get to pick the position in which I will give birth. You try to muscle me into some uncomfortable position, you'll be sporting a foot-shaped bruise.