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!