Home Visit and Homebirth

Today, my midwife and her midwifery student visited our house in preparation of Henry's birth. After having them here, I feel like I'm totally prepared to have Henry. I thought I'd have more to say about the visit but, other than the tour of my house and the location, it was like every other midwife visit I've been too. The first half of the visit consisted of chatting and question answering and during the second half, the midwife felt and measured Henry, listened to his heartbeat and took my blood pressure. Henry is in the perfect position (head down, facing left), the right size, with a strong heartbeat and his mommy has a nice, low blood pressure.

Surprisingly, I rarely have to explain my reasons behind my choice to have Henry at home. Of course I had to explain things to Lawrence and my younger sister needed convincing (she's still confident I'm crazy) but most people seem to take the news of my choice pretty well. Maybe they're just being polite, not wanting to say how crazy they think I am. For the longest time, I've thought a home birth would be nice. No idea why I've wanted a home birth; I don't know anyone who've had a home birth, my mom had all of us in the hospital. I had said, though, that I'd have the first one in the hospital, just to make everybody feel better. As I got closer to childbearing age though, I started doing some research into the birthing process. The more I learned about the modern medicalized birth, the more it freaked me out. The more I learned about midwifery and home birth, the more I felt it was just right. 

At the start of the pregnancy, I started seeing the nurse midwives at Group Health with a plan to deliver at St. Joe's, mostly because I thought it was the only option. I kept doing more research and during an appointment at Group Health, I started asking questions that then lead the nurse midwife to suggest I look into home birth. So I did. Having Henry at home just feels like the right decision. Women have been having their babies at home for thousands of years and I won't be any different. I get to stay in my own home, eat when I want, watch my movies and TV shows, listen to my music and be in control of the environment. I believe that by having my baby at home, my labor will be much easier.

Oh So Close

I know it's been over a month since I've posted and that's because life kinda got crazy.

In the last week of September, I started back at school. I'm taking anatomy and physiology, chemistry and beginning piano (have to get to full time status some how). It has taken me a month and two tests in each class to really get in the swing of things and feel successful but I think I'm there.

To add to my return to school, we decided the best time to look for a new place to live was the end of September as well. For quite some time, we have been planning on moving to a house with Lawrence's mom, Maria. It just so happened that the lease on Maria's apartment was up at the end of September and since ours had been month to month for quite some time, we just let them know that we were leaving at the end of September. Lawrence, Maria and I spent a long time looking for the perfect house in our price range. We even thought we had found the perfect place, put in applications, just to have the rug pulled out from under us (too many adult occupants). As the end of the month loomed, our search got a little frantic. Maria took a significant amount of time off work to join in the search. Through Maria's hard work, we found the perfect house in the west end of town (at least, that's what Google calls it) near Point Defiance. So my first week back at school was filled not only with school but packing and during the last weekend of September, we moved. It took us a week or two to get completely unpacked and even longer to get everything in it's proper place.

Henry is nearly 37 weeks along and growing by the day. Every time I visit the midwife, she tells me that he's just the right size. He's also still amazingly active. They say the kicks slow down in the last month because baby runs out of room but Henry still loves to squirm around in there.

Last weekend, Lawrence and I attended a birth class. We were the only couple there who was having a home birth but all the couples were being attended by midwives instead of OBs which was nice (and probably because the class was held at the area's only birth center). I learned a lot about labor and what to expect as well as ways to handle the pain. I also learned about the specifics of the interventions that Lawrence and I may have to face. We were given a lot of information about what goes on at the hospital we'd be transferred to in an "emergency" (and by emergency I mean anything that is out of my midwife's scope of practice which isn't a lot). The class was totally worth it just for that information.

Oh hey, pictures!
I had Lawrence take these about a week ago so I'm about 35 1/2 weeks along (and huge!).

Tomorrow, a look at our family's bedroom and a summary of the midwife home visit that'll happen tomorrow.