Her room

This past weekend John's sister and her friend and John's cousin came over and helped put together the baby's room. The walls were painted, shelves were installed, and the furniture was assembled. I took some before and after pictures for you to see!


Before..





During..

And after!

Here is a picture of some of her clothes. Aren't they cute?!?

Now we have to put in all the toys she has received and put her books on the shelves. All we need now is the baby! Only about 5 weeks to go!

I am going to post a new belly picture here in the next couple of days. I am going to wear one of the outfits I wore in a previous picture for a nice comparison. I feel like I am so round now!

Here is something I am excited about, we now have the opportunity to have the baby at home instead of at the birth center! It's exactly the same process, except the midwife brings her equipment to us instead of us driving to her. Things will be much more comfortable for me that way. I can sit in my own tub instead of theirs, I can relax on my own bed instead of theirs, and I can make sandwiches from my own fridge instead of theirs.

I imagine a lot of you readers might have freaked out upon reading that, but please trust me. I have done sooooo much research on the subject of home birth. I would never do anything to compromise my health and safety or that of the precious baby inside of me. If you have any concerns please feel free to call me and I will tell you everything I know. For starters, natural or home birth is just as safe as having a baby in a hospital. The birth often goes much quicker. There is a significantly lower need for procedures like episiotomies and c-sections. These rates come from the fact that the mother is more relaxed and able to let her body do what it needs to do. The midwife has equipment to handle most complications that may arise. (She has resuscitation equipment, she can do stitches, etc.) For anything that she can't handle (such as the baby just not wanting to come out and requiring a c-section) she will transfer us to the hospital.

Here are just a couple of articles on the topic of home/natural childbirth:

http://www.birthingnaturally.net/

http://pregnancyandbaby.com/pregnancy/baby/Researchers-say-planned-home-births-are-safe-5530.htm

Here is a short paragraph from another article I found with some interesting statistics:

Among the mothers who had planned home births, 9.6% required induction of labor (vs. 21% of the hospital group); 3.7% needed a Cesarean section (versus 19%); 2.1% required episiotomy (vs. 33%), 1% needed forceps (vs. 2.2%), and 0.6% needed vacuum extraction (vs. 5.2%).

I've mentioned before how badly I was dreading having to go to a hospital to give birth.. nurses shouting "pushpushpushpushpush!" at me, doctors rushing the birth with drugs or cutting for their own personal schedule purposes rather than medical necessity, being tied down to monitors, having to give birth on my back with my legs in the air, and not being able to hydrate myself or eat anything during this exhausting process. These are NOT things I wanted to experience!

Alright, enough with me trying to justify my decision to ya'll! I know that some people object and are just biting their tongues, so that is why I invite you to call me, write to me, research natural birth yourself, etc. so that you may be able to support (or at least understand) my decision and see how wonderful it can be!

So anyway, the midwife agreed to let me have the baby at home on one condition.. they typically don't let first time moms have the baby at home based on the fact that first births tend to go a lot longer than subsequent births. So, if I go into labor on one of their clinic days, then I have to go to the birth center so I don't take up all of the poor midwife's time and cause them to cancel a hundred appointments. I agreed to be flexible with that, since their birth center really is a nice place to be anyway. Like I said before, it would just be that much nicer to be in my own bed and my own tub, but their center is very comfortable.

http://www.laborluv.com/

That is my birth center. My midwives are Bea and Robin out of the Tampa center. Turn the volume on your speakers up when you look at that last link.. it has very soothing music. :)