Introduction
I figured I would write about the first year of being a parent. I should have been more mindful of writing about this process while my wife was pregnant. I feel like the first couple of days have been interesting. We feel blessed right now. Hopefully this can provide some insight into the experience of birth or child birth. I chose the title as trail of tears, because parenting will be a journey, my wife is crying all the time for no reason, and they baby is crying. So there’s more tears surrounding me than I’m used to.
Pre Birth/Pregnancy
We have a jacked up perspective of birth. My wife works in the neonatal ICU and as a result she doesn’t frequently see normal birth. Not only has she seen bad outcomes for the child, but she’s seen bad outcomes for the mother. This has been amplified more recently by COVID and she’s had several mothers pass from COVID. As such we had low expectations during the pregnancy. Low meaning, we didn’t expect a healthy pregnancy, delivery or birth.
Pregnancy opens your eyes to the struggles of people. What we find out more and more is that people struggle in silence with fertility and the post birth time period. People are waiting longer to get pregnant, so they are more dependent on IVF. This means there’s more cost and stress around the experience. It took us over a year to get pregnant and there was a lot of stress around that. We felt like we had to get pregnant because I was leaving for months. People have miscarriages. I think this is more traumatic for those who don’t have children already, but I don’t want to belittle the experience for those who have miscarriages later on. I just wish that people didn’t feel alone in the process of birth. People deal with infertility, people deal with miscarriages, people deal with bio psychosocial stressors, people don’t have supportive partners. I just wish people had more social support when they go through these challenges.
I feel like in today’s social media/Hollywood world people also think people get pregnant as soon as they want and there are no bumps along the way. Not many things in life take place in a straight line.
The pregnancy overall went well for my wife. She follows all of these food blogs and generally eats healthy. She enjoys her job and worked up until the day before giving birth. She felt good on that day and picked up, and then called off, on the day she delivered. The best thing that she did during the pregnancy was continue to workout. What she did for the last 12 weeks was Jamie Eason’s 12 week program in reverse. This was a smart as it ended with the lowest volume and easiest workout at the end. We tried to go on walks every day and our dog demands it.
Prenatal visits. I’m thankful I prioritized making it to her appointments. I was deployed during middle two quartile of the pregnancy. I still would try to face time in from the other side of the world to make these appointments. I don’t think there was a lot of cool stuff that came out of it, but it was important to support her. My wife chose a new OB once she got pregnant. I think it’s important to pick an OB who you have a therapeutic relationship with. This will make the experience more enjoyable.
Apps
ProDaddy – I thought they appropriately timed developmental milestones. They presented information in a casual format. I enjoyed it and their hospital bag checklist.
Bloom – an ENT doc told me about this fitness App. It’s important for pelvic floor strengthening for mom. I think this is underutilized in most moms. They don’t exercise to begin with and they don’t work on prehabbing their pelvic floor before birth. There will be trauma and this is important.
Books
Baby 411 – good
Mayo Clinic Guide to Newborn to 1 – good. This is the most allopathic book. This one and the American Academy of Pediatrics books with the same title are similar and I would consider getting either one or the other not both.
Benjamin Spock – Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care – great
The Whole Pregnancy Handbook – Joel Evans – wife thought this was ok
Momma Natural – Wife really found this to be beneficial
Nourishing Traditions Childcare book – Cowan and Sally Fallon – started with this one and it’s the most natural.
Seeking Progress 