Thread: *~*MrsMangoBabe (Brittany's) birthing lodge!! (prenatal)*~*

Welcome to your Lodge!!!

Welcome to you lodge!

Welcome! Welcome!!

Welcome to your lodge!! Not much longer to go now and you'll be holding your precious bundle!!!

Welcome and congrats!!!

I look forward to reading about you here. I hope your lodge is filled with plenty of pleasant memories that you save after the baby's birth.

Welcome to your lodge!!

Thanks for the welcomes, everyone! I'm so excited to have a lodge! Thanks for making it for me, Cindy! I'm working on typing an introduction in microsoft word (less likely to get lost in internet land) that I'll be posting soon!

Here’s my introduction:

My names is Brittany and I am 22 years old. My family moved around a lot when I was growing up. I was born in Georgia, but I consider Tennessee where I went to high school my home, and my parents still live there now. I moved to Utah when I started college and met my DH Tiatia in the second semester of my sophomore year. We started dating in April and were married December 30, 2005.



I finished my degree in Early Childhood Education (teaching certification for pre-K to 3rd grade) a year after we were married (It only took me 7 semesters instead of 8 ). It was a crazy time, and because I finished my student teaching in December (the middle of the public school year), it worked out for me to take a part time job at the child care center for children of employees of the local hospital (at which I am not having my baby, because it is a large teaching hospital and midwives don’t attend births there). I am still working there now while DH is finishing his bachelors in Business Management: Corporate Finance. He will graduate this April. He has decided he wants to pursue grad school, so things are kind of up in the air until he gets accepted somewhere.

I felt it was right to start TTC our first child last October while I was still student teaching. I went off birth control and stopped having AF. There was a lot of stress surrounding a false positive HPT in November (it is possible…the brand of tests I was using got recalled because of high reports of false positives, but I didn’t know that until later) And then the gynecologist at the student health center put me on provera to get my cycle started. It made me have one AF and then nothing. The gyn did some blood tests and the hormone abnormalities he found led him to diagnose me with PCOS. He prescribed metformin and told me to chart my BBTs. I o’d after about 2 and a half weeks at my recommended dose (they have you gradually increase it because it’s hard on your system) and 2 weeks later I got my BFP! (That was the end of May)

my chart



I had a “threatened miscarriage” (painless, red vaginal bleeding) at 6 weeks. The OB I had my first appointment set for the following week with had us come in and he did a u/s that showed a tiny heartbeat. He put me on bedrest until the bleeding stopped. After that everything was fine, but he never did anything to try to find out what may have caused the bleeding.

I used to be one of those people who just says they’re getting an epidural without looking into any other options, but then I thought about it and I realized I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted. I remember being frustrated looking at the childbirth education classes offered by the hospital and discovering that Medicaid (which I am on because I couldn’t afford insurance at the time we got pregnant…still can’t) will pay for the hospital’s basic prenatal class, but it doesn’t cover the Lamaze class they offer. We ended up taking the basic prenatal class because it was free and also taking a supplementary Breathing and Relaxation class (which we went to tonight, and I think it was really helpful for DH because a lot of the other stuff I’m doing is researching more on my own).

Around the time we finished the basic prenatal class (in November), we went to a seminar at the local Babies R Us where a Hypnobirthing (Mongan Method) instructor was recruiting for her class. She explained some of the theories about how fear of pain increases (or even causes) pain in labor, etc, and I came to the conclusion that I could do natural childbirth. Around then, I came to this board and started reading stuff on the recommendations of the wonderful ladies here, and I became very committed to trying for a NCB (Henci Goer will do that to you).

My preparation for my NCB, in addition to a lot of reading and the hospital’s 2 hour Breathing and Relaxation course, is sort of a home-study modge-podge. I’m reading Janet Balaska’s Active Birth and I have started the Pregnancy Yoga routine she outlines (leaving out any position involving lying on the back because I’m past 34 weeks). I’m also reading the Mongan Method book and trying to listen to the CD that came with it or do some other kind of relaxation rehearsal every day.

Most of you probably followed the saga of me changing from my OB to a MW group. Upon interviewing my OB, I found his attitude less than ideal, to say the least, so I switched to a group of CNMs who are very NCB friendly and attend births and a hospital that is a better environment for un-medicated birth. It’s farther away, both their office and the hospital, but I feel it will be worth it to have someone supportive.

Oh, and our baby is a girl. The OB was reluctant to tell us for sure at my 2nd tri u/s, so we were naughty and went to one of those commercial places. They told us girl and my OB confirmed it at my 3rd tri u/s, which was also the last time I saw him. We are naming her Tehani Lindsey Belle. DH’s mom is from Tahiti, and Tehani is a Tahitain name which means something like “the beautiful fragrance of flowers” (way nicer meaning than “Land of the Britons”) Lindsey is my mother’s maiden name, which is a nice girl’s name, and Belle, besides being beautiful, is a great grandmother’s middle name (she actually went by it, because her first name was Lula, and she didn’t like that) and it’s a tradition on my mom’s side of the family to have girl’s middle names end in –elle.

Edited to add my Belly Pics:

I did follow your story how you looked for a different care taker. I have been impressed with how you do not allow this being your first birth to stop you from educating yourself and finding a better environment for both you and baby. I think you will be a fabulous mom and look forward to reading more on your log.

Are you planning on having anyone other than your MW and DH with you when birthing?