Cabbage Patch Kids? No…Eggplant Babies

          First off let me just start off by saying I love each and every one of my children and being pregnant with them was a true blessing. I have done doula work for women for many years and every time I witness a birth it is a true miracle. With that being said, I must admit that my body isn’t like it used to be.

          When I was 16 I got pregnant with my first daughter. With the pregnancy I had morning sickness but nothing newsworthy. Hardheadedness and determination lead me to a 20 hour long natural birth. When labor started I couldn’t even believe it was real.

          With my second daughter I was the same way, morning sickness: nothing major. I carried over by ten days and had to be induced. Two and a half hours later, she made her appearance into the world naturally and I walked from recovery to my room.

          With number three, I didn’t contract. I just couldn’t sleep. I went to the hospital at 38 weeks wanting them to give me something to knock me cold. When I got there the nurse said it was policy to be checked. So, I let her exam me and to my surprise found I was dilated 5. So they put me on Pitocin once again around two a.m. and at 4:23 a.m. she was born naturally.

          Baby number four was a little difficult at first. I developed hyperemesis gravidarum, a rare form of extreme morning sickness which Princess Kate has just been recently diagnosed with in her pregnancy. My heart goes out to her. It’s pure misery. I was hospitalized twice during that time for severe dehydration and I was almost five months before I could keep down solid foods. After the sickness let up, I had a healthy pregnancy, other than occasional vomiting throughout. At 38 weeks I woke up thinking my bladder was leaking and went to the bathroom. After helping my SIL clean out her garage that day, at two p.m. a bigger gush occurred and I realized my water was leaking. So I went to the hospital and they confirmed it had indeed “sprung a leak.”  Contractions never came and I once again was put on Pit. Three hours later she was born naturally with no complications.

Number five….God bless her. Since birth she has been a handful, but pregnancy with her was easy. Regular amount of morning sickness and no false labor.  However, at four p.m. on a Friday during week 38, I found myself stuck on the toilet and had to call my aunt for help. When she engaged in my pelvis it made it to where I couldn’t stand. They got me to the hospital and confirmed I was having contractions even though I didn’t feel any. My now ex-husband and I were having some problems at the time and I found my natural labor stressful. By nine p.m. I was hurting bad. By ten I had cussed every nurse, my husband, and my mama. She was born at eleven ten p.m. on March 31^st. Fifty more minutes and it would have been April Fool’s Day. I had never acted that way in labor before, and afterwards realized how embarrassed I was by it. I apologized to the nurse a million times. That baby girl is now seven and a half years old.

          That brings us to now. I have recently re-married. My new husband has four kids of his own and I have five. I am in my 38^th week with our first child together. I am 33 now and boy is it different. Not only did I have morning sickness, I have ached and hurt physically this entire pregnancy.  I stay hot all of the time which I never remember complaining about with any of my other children and some of them were summer babies. This one is a December baby and also my first boy. I have had pubic symphasis dysfunction for over two months now and every time I sit and stand it’s like knives shooting into my hips. The round ligament pain has been unbearable at times and I have to move really slowly when I get up or my knees will buckle from the pain. It has been horrible. So bad in fact that I would tell any woman who is waiting to start a family in her thirties that she is crazy. Do it in your twenties.( Even if that means a career hold.)  It’s also made me consider my doula work. Normally I work with teen mothers and young single mothers because they have no birth support. It’s made me realize us thirty year olds may need that support worse that the younger women. PersonalIy,I am so ready for this baby to be born. At night it’s hard for me to breathe because it feels like he’s up in my lungs. If he hasn’t made his entrance by Friday, I am going to attempt to make Scalini’s Eggplant Parmigana.

           Scalinis is a restaurant in Smyrna, GA that is famous for making women go in labor with their eggplant dish. So far there have been over 900 babies that are considered Scalini Eggplant Babies because their mothers had them within 48 hours of eating it.  I am so ready to try anything at this point. Since we are attempting a home water birth this time around, I am hoping to avoid the Pit drip. Hopefully the eggplant will get things started. I will post an update. A.S.A.P. on if it worked or not. At my last checkup I still hadn’t dilated any and my last four pregnancies I was dilated three for the last three weeks. Hopefully this labor will be smoother than the actual pregnancy.

A Midwifery Nights Dream

For those of you who don’t know, I have a passion. I have a disturbing need to be around pregnant women and help them through their labors. I know it’s crazy. Most of you probably think, “Why on earth would a woman who has had five kids want to do that?” That is probably the reason I do. All of my births were natural and when I had my first baby the only person I knew who had done that was my great grandmother. I had no kind of support and everyone tried to talk me out of it. Needless to say my stubbornness on the situation prevailed and I would not have had it any other way.

Over the years I realized I wanted to birth at home but in Mississippi midwives are a dying breed and Medicaid does not reimburse them here. That was the only thing keeping me from it. Now that I am done having children, I have come to realize becoming a midwife is what I want to do in life. Getting the training here seems to be almost as hard as finding a midwife to deliver.

Other states like Florida not only have midwives that work in hospitals, they also offer Medicaid reimbursement. One would think that the poorest state in the nation would want to save the state money since a midwife cost only about a third of what an OB does. Mississippi has the second highest infant mortality rate having 10.74 deaths for every thousand births in the US. The District of Columbia was number one with an average of 14.1.

What most people don’t realize is the maternal death rate. The World Health Organization released in March the statistics for maternal death rate. What it found was shocking. More women die in the U.S. after giving birth than die in Poland, Croatia, Italy and Canada. In California alone the maternal death rate has tripled in the past ten years. One of the main causes is pulmonary embolism after a C-section. Since thirty percent of US births end in C-sections, that would be the reason for the higher rate. Most of which were unnecessary.

One may think if you have a midwife that means no drugs and a home birth. That is not true as well. There are lots of midwives who work with hospitals and anesthesiologists. Midwives are just more personal with their patients. Their job is to focus on the needs of the mother and help her bring her baby into the world in the way her body sees fit. Doctors try to push things along to fit their own schedules. This is not really good for mom or baby.

The last birth I attended the doctor showed up just in time to catch after the mother had been forced to stay on her back for hours. That disturbed me. She did all the work and he got all the glory. One of my own births was somewhat painful in the end because the doctor had been woken up AFTER he put me on a Pitocin drip. He literally jerked her out because he wanted to get more sleep. It was completely unnecessary.

I am taking FREE doula clients on now to help me get my certification as a doula which is a birth support specialist. It is just the beginning of my training to become a midwife. I have attended countless births already but none of them are on record. My dream is to one day own my own birth center so that women everywhere can have their babies the way they want to. Not how they are forced to. Below are some great links if you are pregnant or know someone who is.

Mississippi Friends of Midwives


DONA International


Midwives Alliance of North America



Below are some links to some videos. If you have had birth before you might realize the difference in the labors of these women in the videos.

Orgasmic Birth

A Water Birth

Water Birth Info