Thanks to my Health Care Team - Happy Little Homemaker

No, you won’t find an OB/GYN or a delivery nurse on my list. Instead, I want to thank my HEALTH care team — those individuals who helped me to be as healthy as I could throughout my pregnancy.

First, though, I need to thank my family doctor. He took my claims of being weird, depressed and generally nutty and decided to put me on thyroid meds even though I wasn’t technically out of “normal” range. If not for him, who knows how many more angels God would have in heaven. As soon as I got on them, I was able to sustain a pregnancy and he even bumped them up a little after a few mid-pregnancy blood tests. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Did I mention he’s also a Deacon in the most awesome parish ever? He gave the baptism prep class at my church :). Love that!

MIDWIFE

Next, of course, was my midwife. Thank you, Kathy, for your lovely nurturing care that allowed me to know that things were progressing normally during my pregnancy without being invasive. At all. I was able to get prenatal care that did not involve ultrasounds. We only used Doppler to hear the heart the first time we were able because after two miscarriages, I wanted to be sure everything was okay before we told people. After that, we only used the feta-scope.

I think you did a fabulous job making sure that everyone was super healthy and would heal well. I feel fantastic!

CHIROPRACTOR

Second, was my chiropractor, Lea. Lea, you made the last 3 months of my pregnancy fantastic. My tailbone was in so much pain that I could not drive two blocks down the road without it being excruciating. I felt so much better in a matter of weeks that I spent two months kicking myself for not going when I was pregnant with Lil’ Bit. I had constant lower back pain.

I just read an article that said that regular chiropractic adjustments can reduce the length of labor by 24-39% (depending on whether it’s your first baby or not)! It can also help prevent back labor and can sometimes help turn the baby if it is showing signs of being breech. In addition, Lea had mentioned that having pressure on your nerves, equivalent to the weight of a DIME, can reduce the function of the body parts using those nerves by 60%! Yikes! Your body really needs to be closer to 100% than 40% when you’re building and birthing a baby!

PERSONAL TRAINER

Last, and probably most important, was my personal trainer, Judy. She was fabulous! Most of you probably don’t know, but at one point I actually held two personal training certifications – NASM & ACE. She had the right motivation, picked out many exercises that automatically activated my kegels and had the side benefits of being extraordinarily useful for labor.

After 1 week of doing what she said, I had no more “leakage.” TMI? Not sorry. That alone made it worth it. Never mind the fact that I felt better at 8 & 9 months pregnant than I had felt since BEFORE the birth of my first. I would recommend getting a personal trainer to everyone, even if you are already pregnant. I was 5 months in before I started seeing her. Many times, you don’t need to see your trainer each time you work out, but they will give you a work out to do for the rest of the month on your own, until they see you again. That’s how I did it. SOOOOOO worth it.

Do you have special health care providers (besides your OB or midwife) during your pregnancies? Is there someone else, I should include next time around? Let me know in the comments!