Harvest Season
London must be further north than I had realized; sunset makes dinnertime darker, day by day. We’re in the steep part of the bell curve: clearly not summer anymore.
Just as my recovery from first trimester coincided suspiciously with cherry blossoms and sunshine, my third trimester energy drop doesn’t feel coincidental. But it’s here: I’m sleepier, less focused. Energy and inspiration come in bouts.
I would mind the productivity drop more, but I can’t hold onto the frustration; little matters much, just now. Instead, I have books and yarn, tea, chicken soup.
When I do go out, cool air and a body in motion feel good. On Hampstead Heath, leaves swirl and fireweed seeds blow.
I volunteer at the garden of a climbing center, and after turning the compost, it’s apple pressing day. The apples are small and tart, but the milled apple pulp flows freely from the burlap pressing cloths even before the crank is turned.
With other volunteers and community gardeners, I chop two wheelbarrows of fruit. The bottles and demijohns are filled too fast, dark sweet cider spilling to the ground, bouncing spaniel sneaking scraps below the table and zipping back and forth between our legs.
When you are close to the land, the season of coming darkness is transformed to harvest, a season of bounty. At the lunchtime table, someone shares homemade walnut nocino. There is an eggplant shakshuka and a salad of fresh-picked cucumber and tomato.
Pairing sweet with sweet, we gorge on gulab jamun and drink as much fresh apple juice as we can. The fetus flips as the sugar hits, animating my belly: this active one almost never holds still.
In the last few days, I think the baby has turned head-down. I’m surprised that I can tell, but it must be close quarters in there by now. When I get kicks, they tend to be up at the top of my distended belly. Usually, I can press with my palm along the lower sides of the curve and feel a hardness that might be a spine.
I’m not the only one getting kicked at the antenatal class. In the upstairs room of the People’s Park Tavern, the teaching midwife has laid out stations: aromatherapy oils and techniques for hand massage, labor positions your partner can help with, breathing techniques to practice, TENS machines and gas and air mouthpieces to handle.
Couples giggle through the labor position station: hands against the table, you’re meant to sway your pelvis against the pressure of your partner’s hands. Their palms can help to open pelvic joints at that critical juncture when baby’s head needs to drop through. But it looks and feels like the kind of club dancing I never had much inclination to do. I meet the laughing eyes of another mother, while Robert steadfastly avoids all eye contact with anyone. He’ll do it, though.
Some of the laughter has a nervous undertone. The due dates in the room range from late November to two weeks from now. The lecture part of the evening drags with worry-tinged questions that have already been answered — reassurance, more than information, the goal.
“I might be naive,” another first-time mom confides to me, “but I’m kind of excited for the labor part.” I am too, actually. Maybe it will be scarier closer to time, but I’m interested in the athletic feat.
“Yeah,” I agree. “Long-term injury is scary. But thirty hours or so?” I jinx myself, “that should be fine.”
“Plus,” she adds, “you get something at the end of it. There’s lots of stuff that hurts and then you get nothing. This one is like a Kinder Surprise.”
Our class includes hypnobirthing lessons — less woo-woo than it sounds, mostly ways to breathe and think positively about your birth experience, however it unfolds.
Your mental state in labor matters a lot, we’ve been told again and again. In particular, oxytocin aids labor, while adrenaline can halt it. So when you hear about people bringing twinkly lights, good smells, and playlists to a birthing room, it’s not frippery. Because these comforts can make you feel safe and relaxed, they’re instrumentally useful.
Not just that, but the hypnobirthing classes have meditation scripts to help you feel proud of your birth, however it happens.
There’s a lot about birth you can’t control, but if you do work beforehand to feel okay about a C-section in case you need one, or practice associating certain sounds and smells with relaxation, you can use these to aid the process when the time comes.
This morning, we looked together at the Allen Downey blog post on the stats for predictability of first time birth dates. It’s a rough 30% minority of babies that arrive on their due dates; it’s just the peak of a skewed normal distribution curve — a shallower peak than in subsequent births, and skewed later as well.
According to the midwives, a baby is considered “fully cooked” at 37 weeks, which means the lungs are formed. For me, that’s about four weeks away. But I expect, based on the stats, that the fetus will bide its time.
In the meanwhile, I can soak in the last warm days of the pre-baby season: picnics, reading outside, windy walks. I have lots of relaxation practice to do; we’re not in a rush.
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