A home birth

I have always wanted to have my children at home. In my heart, I have always felt there was a more peaceful and less invasive way to have a baby. Unfortunately, a home birth with a mid-wife is not covered by our insurance and it is hard to justify a home birth when I could do it at the hospital for free. Well, with all my new found free time I started to spend more time day dreaming of my perfect birth experience. There just had to be a way. With the encouragement of an amazing women, who also happens to be my prenatal yoga teacher and hypno birthing teacher (more about hypno birthing later) she referred me to a naturopathic doctor who does home births. Since she is a doctor and not a midwife, our insurance will actually cover the home birth!! Mr. B has never been excited about the idea, but after meeting her and discussing all of his concerns, he FINALLY gave me his support. So 30 weeks into my 4th and final pregnancy I dropped my OB/GYN and changed doctors. I am so excited to be able to be home and not have to fuss with the hospital. My girls are excited too.

I am being evaluated

So now I am home and have catching up on deep cleaning, paper work that needs to be dealt with, service calls that are long over due for our alarm system, reading more to the girls and holding my little Ms. O while she naps instead of putting her down. Am I really going to have another baby, when Ms. O is still so little. Really! Anyways, Mr. B started a very interesting conversation the other day that he started like this....." Depending on how well you do at being at home will determine how long before you have to go back to work." I was caught a little off guard at his statement and wanted him to clarify what the hell he was talking about and asked him to explain further. In his police officer/military tone he went on to say "Well, I am evaluating how you are doing around the home and the better you do, the longer you can stay home." OMG, is he serious??? Since he wasn't laughing I thought I would let him continue to dig his grave and went on to ask him exactly what I was being evaluated on. "Well, cleanliness of the house, frequency of cooked meals, variation of cooked meals, frequency of love making......." And on he went, digging, digging, digging. When he was all finished, I paused, letting him think that I was really considering his evaluation plan. I smiled very sweetly at him like it was the greatest thing I have ever heard and then I spoke. First, I had some very choice words about this evaluation process, told him to kiss my...... and said some more colorful words and told him to kiss my....again and left the room. So much for passing my evaluation. Bummer.

Bed Rest

Towards the end of every pregnancy my body starts doing all kinds of weird things. Most of them I will just keep to myself, but mainly I start pre-term labor way too early. A couple of weeks ago I was feeling soooo much tightening in my stomach and loads of pressure in that whole area. I remember showing a house and having a feeling that if I sneezed the baby was going to fall out. I went to the doc only for her to tell me what I already knew....time to stop working and get my feet up. It probably didn't help that during that week I was working real hard at getting my garden going which involved digging, shoveling and on my hands and knees trying to make those neat little hills that you see on farms. With out wasting any time after leaving to doc's office, I called my real estate friend and handed over all my files to her and put my feet up. Now my bed rest is the kind where I just have to take it easy and not spend so much time on my feet. I have absolutely enjoyed every second of it and it has been so nice to be home with the girls. I guess it is one of those things that when you are home all the time, you sometimes day dream about working and when you are working all the time, you wish you could be home. The never ending battle of being a mommy.