Thoughts on cord blood banking

I was curious about cord blood banking and felt what could possibly be bad about collecting this blood anyway... my main concern was cost both up front and on going, as well as could it even be done in a birth center?

The benefits touted by the companies selling this service, as well as sci fi movies I have seen and medical rumours we hear, I thought hey, saving her own stem cells make sense! What an amazing way to provide a biological safety net for her if she ever were to need to, I don't know, grow a new kidney or got a disease that we could give the means to cure!

Well I am learning very quickly, by NOT looking at the cord blood banking companies themselves but midwives and other sources about some of the downsides that I hadn't even thought of.

I started with this blog http://midwifethinking.com/2011/02/10/cord-blood-collection-confessions-of-a-vampire-midwife/ . She is a lady who used to collect this blood for hospitals and asked women to donate the blood to public stem cell banks, I was surprised to learn of just how much blood it deprives a newborn infant of! It far outweighs what you are allowed to take from a child at any other point in their life, and made me doubly glad that we are going the natural route, and not clamping the cord but rather waiting until after the placenta is delivered. This will maximize the blood and oxygen transfer and generally give our little girl the best start in life. Without that blood she would be deprived of a large amount of her blood volume, that doesn't sound like the way to go.

There was a link from that blog to a full blown medical article.

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/search/download;jsessionid=4t5e38eg7k9nh.alice?pub=infobike%3a%2f%2fspringer%2fjpe%2f2011%2f00000020%2f00000001%2fart00008&mimetype=text%2fhtml

Needless to say I have decided that this is not for us. I have since found out that there is an extremely slim chance if any at all that the blood could be preserved correctly, be needed and available by the right person in the family let alone the child herself. The risks and costs far outweigh the benefits with no guarantee that the cells could even be viable or useful if she or anyone else in the family were to need them.

July 28 2011 - Or The most eventful day - OR - Citizenship and Gender

So my day started at 6:10 with Ace of Base, I saw the sign. kinda strange and wonderful and it made the day feel even more momentous.



We then drove to the courthouse for 7:30 so I could swear allegiance to the USA and be done with the long expensive journey that is the immigration process. The courthouse was full, and there were 60 people becoming citizens at this time in Nashville, represented by 32 different nationalities. It took an extremely long time though. They called name after name, I think I was 48th or something, all I know is there were 7 rows of people, and I was second to last on the sixth row.



Jason and I sat in the back, and waited for over an hour for my name to be called, each time a name was called that person had to go up and meet with the USCIS representative and get our paperwork checked and our green card taken, and we filled in our 'new' names on the naturalization certificate. X 57.

We then had to wait for the judge and all introduce ourselves, name and country.



At last!



So believe me it took a while. Of course I officially changed my name yesterday too, so my new name is Sarah Christina Keogh Goforth. I could'nt drop the Christina, it's been with me too long, and to be honest, when we do 'overs' in Irish dancing to get longer hang time we have to try to say our full names... what can I say, I want GORGEOUS overs ;)

Ok so then we rushed home, I was just in time for my next meeting, and so the work day carried on. I got lots of congratulations on becoming a citizen which was wonderful, from my colleagues at my managers notification of my team of my big citzenship news.

But the day was just getting started. I ate lunch, did a little more work and soon enough it was time for our ultrasound. Jason had not eaten lunch and all he could think about was Taco's. He made me PROMISE not to get mad if I wanted a post reaction to the baby's gender and all he could say was 'burrito'. I promised I would not get mad, I know this stuff overwhelms him :) 

So we get there and go in quickly enough... and the ultrasound was supposed to capture a lot of different measurements for the midwife, baby's vital organs, so it wasn't just a peep show for us to find out what we were having. It was so nerve wracking let me tell you! This is Skywalkers little face.

Baby Face





As all baby's meaurements were normal we started feeling better about everything, but unfortunately 'skywalker' would not open his/her legs at all! We came back to it multiple times. We also tried to do the 3d imaging but baby's hands and arms, both of them, were covering the face, and so we were out of luck. 



These are baby's hands in front of the face



More hands in front of face ;)

Eventually with a bit of jiggling and scanning with me on either side and back on my back 3 times or so little baby goforth finally gave us a look. So we are pleased to announce that it's a

GIRL! This is so exciting and momentous and even trumps becoming a citizen of the USA. Sorry America, family first! The amniotic fluid was a bit low, but we will get a scan again in 3 weeks to make sure thats on track.

 

Thanks to everyone who was waiting for the news and it's so exciting to share it with you. The baby shower will be September 24th, which is the day of Jason's sisters birthday... and also, big shout out to my brother Jason, whose birthday it was on my big momentous day.

Nothing but good news... but man were we ever tired when we got home. We did get those burritos for Jason after all btw, and went home to call the parents and pass out :)

Knitting Sexy - and a work/life balance

This is how I feel on the inside ;) Thank you second trimester 'cravings'/Jason being gone for 5 weeks (sarcasm). Looking forward to him getting home.

Now onto the work/life balance aspect as represented in the title by the word 'knitting', and less of the innuendo'. I clicked through on this link (which is where I got the picture) and got all inspired to knit again and remembered that when I thought about my future pregnant self (now a current reality) I imagined myself knitting, and reading about being a mum (generally preparing), listening to music strapped to my belly for baby, and you know just generally preparing for motherhood and labor and delivery.

I imagined myself at work too, a little embarassed about my belly and how unreal that would feel. In my mind it would still be me without all this hormonal chaos, but in fact I am kinda halfway in between being who I was who I am going to be (a mum) and the life I am going to live. Certainly disrupted, and certainly not all my own, because that is already happening, but also the joy, excitement, and all the possibility it will bring.

So I am in a chrysalis mode right now, and it's a good thing, but the transition is mostly difficult at this stage, awkward to deal with alone, and I am learning a few things.

I need to relax more and focus on being the pregnant person I wanted to be, because the vision I had of what I wanted to do and be does matter, and the only person hurting because I am not doing it, is me and baby. So more knitting, and decluttering and putting away of the clothes that no longer fit.

I am having to be more realistic at work too which is difficult. My first instinct is always and has, up until recently been, 'I can do that!' and I immediately sign up, but the reality is it leads to working every weekend til late, and some evenings, keeping up with commitments I made possibly rashly. Add to that the regular 'being an adult stuff' (dealing with phone companies and tenant issues), and dishes sitting around in the kitchen for WAY too long, and WAY too many for 1 and a bit persons and you get a bit of an overwhelming situation that it's hard to imagine anyone being able to help with.

So for my work life balance/sanity, I am going to live as I mean to a little more each day, and that means working as hard I as I can during the work day, setting goals and timelines for each task and really doing only what I can within the timeline because I have to move onto something else I promised tomorrow. That should free up my evenings and weekends substantially. Lets face it, I am much more tired than usual atm and the stress of working so much has not been good for me thus far or for my long distance relationship with my gorgeous hubby.

I am also trying to subscribe to the happiness project edict of 1 shelf at a time, of cleaning and organizing, swapping out my clothes, and getting enough rest. I am not going to 'commit' to more goals in the personal realm such as more knitting and exercise etc, because that will just create further stress, but I will say that 'soon' I will be knitting and dancing, reading and feeling good about my progress at work and around the house. That's it for my lofty goals until I have the baby. Persistent, one step at a time, 'stress less' and 'enjoy more' attitude daily.

BTW upcoming events milestones are for July 28, we find out sex of the baby, and I get to become a US citizen.

Skywalker/Little Dancer

I am 15 weeks pregnant and weigh 11 lb's more than I did before I got pregnant! This blog has a few cobwebs in it that I have to clean out because I want to share my progress through pregnancy with family and friends overseas, as well as hopefully others in the same boat as me. I follow a few mommy blogs, which are all really interesting but to be honest adjusting to the thoughts of kids is surreal enough and I wanted to capture all of it and hopefully get some feedback on what being pregnant meant to those that read this also.

So we have had 2 scans, and my original due date based on actual date of conception was pushed out from Dec 11 to Dec 20th, so it is looking very likely that we are having a Christmas baby, great for me, sucks for baby.

I was in Ireland and visiting family and friends and even doing a bit of travelling through Europe for a week with my little sister and all the while unbeknownst to me, beginning to grow my very first baby. Through a bit of luck and fate I got to visit with my best friend in Birmingham right before I got back to the US, at which point I was 5 days late on my period. Thanks to coming off of birth control, and using family planning method (or the timing method of birth control) I have known exactly when my period was due.

I wasn't sure I was ready to take a pregnancy test but J was too excited about it and sang "I think you're pregnant' and made me take tests, I swear it she made me do it. Well the lines were fuzzy, and inconclusive, but it started the idea of you tingling in the back of my mind. I decided to let Husband know that I was late, but we would take a test when I got back to know for sure.

I told my mum, dad and sister, (who had just given birth) that I was getting a fuzzy line on a PG test and that I was late, mostly because I didn't know when I would see them again, and I wanted to tell them in person. I was glad I did, and when H picked me up from the airport he asked me if I wanted to get a test, I wanted to but also wanted to know how he was reacting to all of this. Well after the 3rd suggestion after we got home from him of 'do you want me to go and get a test' and me responding 'do you want to go get the test?' I finally said go get the test from Walmart, so at 11pm on the night I got back from Europe we got a clear 'pregnant' on the digital screen of the PG test.

H and I took a while to let it sink in to be honest, not to say we werent happy about it, because I think deep down we both really were, but just to bask in the surrealness of it, us, as parents, surely not! could it be?

That feeling has burned slowly out and I am still experiencing some of the afterglow of it, it has not totally worn off, some days it feels real and others, I just wonder if feeling the movement will really be the start of the belief. The ultrasounds were both wonderful, seeing the heartbeat on the screen, watching you go from 3 cm to 5.7 in 2 weeks was surreal, and when you got up and walked around in my belly and reacted to the shaking and jiggling of the ultrasound tech it was an extremely profound and touching moment. H later wrote about how it made him feel, and even though I don't get the responses when I need to see them *H likes to ponder stuff, I got what I needed in that letter, along with a name for our bump, dubbed skywalker from here on out, because skywalker got up and skywalked in the middle of my womb. It could be dancing or moonwalking, but in the end skywalker really works for us, because we don't know if its a boy or girl, and doncha know but it could be a luke or a leia so that works out great too!

Look forward to more updates, and here is the 'skywalking shot', sorry we don't have the video...