a little more about me

 

I'm Stacey, a cloth-diapering, breastfeeding, sometime babywearing, sometime co-sleeping, stay-at-home mama of an intact baby boy.

Our Story

Dan and I met through my father. He worked for my dad through high school, and eventually we became friends. We stayed in touch, and started dating a few years later. We got married on August 17, 2007, and have lived in a few places around Connecticut and Massachusetts before settling down and buying a house this year!

Our Baby Story

In February 2009 we decided that we were ready to start our family, and I stopped taking birth control. We got pregnant in April, but miscarried in June. We got pregnant again quickly, and miscarried again. Being a scientist, I did my own research and found some curious information. I grew up with dysmennorhea, a condition that causes severe cramping. Through my research, I found that dysmennorhea can be caused by high levels of prostaglandins, which can induce childbirth, or can cause spontaneous miscarriage. I also found that in some cases of recurrent miscarriages, women were able to carry a pregnancy to term while taking small amounts of aspirin (aka baby aspirin or St. John's aspirin), and aspirin is a prostaglandin inhibitor, meaning it blocks prostaglandins. After talking all of this through with my doctor, we decided to try taking baby aspirin every day. He said that it couldn't hurt a fetus, and that it was possibly going to help, so it was worth a shot before having to resort to fertility specialists. And on July 20th, Cole was born!

Cole's Story

I was determined to have a natural birth. I took an amazing natural birth class, "Alternatives in Childbirth". I was ready for this. On Monday, July 19th, at my 38 week appointment, my midwife had trouble finding his head. This had happened at each appointment for a few weeks, but they had all said that his head was just really low. This time she decided to do an ultrasound to check position, and found that they'd all been wrong, and his head was actually up, under my ribs. My baby was breech. They scheduled an external cephalic version to turn the baby on Thursday. If it was successful, they would induce, and if it wasn't, they'd do a c-section. By this point I was panicking, this was NOT what I wanted.. I called my husband, who called the chiropractor that our birth class doulas recommended. We scheduled an appointment for the next day to try the Webster Technique, which basically relaxes the pelvis and uterus to help the baby turn himself. At this point, I would try anything. But Cole had other plans, and my waters broke the same night, at about 8 pm. We took our time getting ready, but around 10 we were in the car, on our way to St. Mary's to have our baby. They can't risk trying to turn him once the amniotic sac is broken, but they checked when I got there to see if he had somehow turned, which he hadn't. They checked again at about 1:30 am, just to be sure, but there was really no way he was going to turn. So Cole was delivered, by c-section, at 2:16 in the morning of July 20th. 9 and 9 on his Apgars, a perfect, healthy little boy.