Q and A on Midwives

So, anwers: A midwife is a certified nurse who has as much school as an a medical doctor, but with an emphasis on women's healthcare and delivering children. From what I understand, one of the major differences between a hospital delivery with a doctor and a home birth with a midwife is that doctors view childbirth as a disaster waiting to happen and midwives view childbirth as something that women have been doing for centuries and a very natural process that typically goes off without a hitch. With a midwife, home delivery, it is your birth, you can have the baby in bed, squatting on all fours, in the shower, standing up, dancing, or whatever feels right/good to you. I don't know if she does the ultrasound or if she sends me to an ultrasound tech - it seems like everyone specializes now (which typically I think is good for the best medical care). From what I understand, I will have the option of having something for pain or not. I want to have a natural birth, unless there are complications. I am only going to do this once in my lifetime, so I want to feel it no matter how much it hurts. I can't imagine having an epidural and not feeling it or feeling like I am in control of the process. I will know more at this time next week.

The genetic counselling will look at both Joe and my family's health histories and see if there is anything that we should pursue with testing that might be an inherited abnormality, but I don't think we have anything. It has nothing to do with the baby's sex. I would rather be surprised about the sex and have no preference, just a healthy baby. We're not the kind of people to do some 'theme' room or baby decor or anything like that (we don't even know where we are going to PUT the baby!) and I loathe the color pink, so unless we see something danglingg on an ultrasound or I change my mind, I'd rather be surprised! I'll tell people as soon as we have an ultrasound to confirm everything is okay. I think Joe is telling his boss today (because they will need to plan ahead as the baby is supposed to come between green beans and blueberries), but asking him to keep it a secret until we are in the clear. The naturopath says 12 weeks is the magical miscarriage marker. Everything I've read states that, aside from jumping off a building or scuba diving into the depths of the ocean, there is nothing you can DO to cause a miscarriage. I tend to think more about the 70% chance of everything being A-OK and going with that instead of being fatalistic. 

One ultra cool thing is that General Mills has paternity leave, so Joe can take weeks off, work from home and check crops in Skagit and California as needed, but mostly he'll get to be here full time while we are fumbling around and figuring out what in the heck we're doing. 

I think I'll at least be missing my waistline by Christmas because my belly is already fuller - I'm not sucking it in anymore - ha ha!

And the Nausea commences

Well, I am feeling very slight nausea and understand the key is to eat 6 or 8 very small meals a day instead of the usual big 3. Apparantly, the medical community is too busy trying to make millions treating erectile dysfunction to waste much time studying trivial little things like morning sickness, but I have a whole list of remedies and so far...so good. I also understand that it only affects half of the women and ranges from very mild to quite severe (as in hospitalization with intravenous fluids to make up for everything that ISN'T staying down). I do get up to pee a million times in the night as my growing uterus containing the growing Hale Hale bean is sitting on my bladder for awhile here (and tell me if I am giving you more info than you want :). We get to go meet the midwife the Monday of Thanksgiving week and hopefully get to do the first ultrasound then. I talked to her on Friday and she estimated my due date to be around the 5th of July. I hope we like her. I read a book called The Babycatcher a friend loaned me about a year and a half ago. It's about a nurse midwife. When I started reading the book, I couldn't imagine having a child at home and by the time I finished the book, I couldn't imagine having a child in a hospital. I'm crossing fingers, toes, everything but my eyes that we like her, she likes us, the pregnancy is uncomplicated, etc. and we can have this baby in the living room. We go to Seattle (relief) for genetic testing.

I went to Hawaii and I all I got was knocked up!

I don't feel that different, which is why I was convinced that TWO pregnancy tests had to be defective. Some areas seemed fuller (but you know how you gain and lose weight there so easily anyhow). I don't have any nausea at all (yet) but I am so tired. I could just sleep, sleep, sleep. It's a little frustrating - am so used to being Action Jackson and Charles in Charge. This morning we went for a run (which is okay, even encouraged - everything is okay except scuba and high impact aerobics - even boxing is okay if you can believe that, just no high kicks), had breakfast, and then I felt like I had been awake for 3 days. I am going to give you my fertility book when you are here. I learned so much about my body from that book. One day, you'll be ready to pull it out and figure things out too. I go to the doctor tomorrow.

It was wierd, though. We were in Portland last week eating at this

restaurant we love and Joe told me that he didn't think I should have a

glass of wine with dinner, that he just had a feeling and he told me

that my smell (like my skin and hair) was different. Jess, he knew...

BIG NEWS!

BIG NEWS!

While Jess went off to teach all of the little Big Islanders to play their violins and pianos and Alex went off to inspect the peaks and bowels of the island abodes, Joe and Terry made a little Hale Hale on the 10th of October - I told Joe that would be the best 40th birthday present he could give me. Jessica, you were right! So there's magic in that little room of yours looking up at that big green hill and watching the clouds fly across the big blue sky.

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

We found out last Thursday and I was in a state of complete and utter disbelief (semi disfunctional) the entire day. I was glad I had purchased the 2-pak of p-tests, because I thought the first one must have been defective when it came out positive. It was quite comical had you been a fly on the wall. I went straight to the library Thursday night and picked up books for the pregnant and clueless and have had my nose buried since. Don't wig out about the wine consumption while we were there - for a week(ish) after conception implantation doesn't occur, so the grain of sand we are calling Hale Hale wasn't getting anything from me yet.