Homebirth! Yay!

I met a midwife (K) today. I took a half day and my hubby and I (on his last day of unemployment!!) drove out there. We were over a half hour early and I did not realize until I shut the car off. So we decided to go grab lunch and come back so I started the car and backed out and I saw K come out of the building and motion to us. So I pulled back in and got out and she said, "Let me guess, you had no idea how long it was going to take so you left early and got here early." I said, "Yep!" and she told us to come on in because she was free.

The meeting went well and my hubby and I are going to go with her. She is fine with my being overweight as long as I don't have issues like high blood pressure or glucose issues. So far my blood pressure is fine. And if I do develop those problems there are herbal supplements I can try. I also read about certain diets that can help with the HBP.

So I'm very excited! We have to figure out where we are getting the money to pay for this and we have no idea if insurance will reimburse us. I feel this is the right decision for us though and I feel very happy and relieved!

Is baby depleting my brain cells? Plus...midwife update!

I'm starting to notice I'm doing some stupid things. I'm pretty sure my baby is sucking my brain cells out.

Here is an example. I put clothes in the dryer the other day but did not turn the dryer on. Instead I turned the washer on and went upstairs. I kept hearing water running and couldn't figure out why. Suddenly it dawned on me I turned the wrong knob. The washer was full of water and twisting and whirling away with no clothes in it. Meanwhile the dryer was full of wet clothes just sitting there.

The other night I was at my parents' and had my bag on the dining room table while we talked. Then we left to go get something to eat but took separate cars (hubby and me in one, Mom and my "baby" sister in the other) since my mom had to go food shopping after dinner right near where we were eating dinner. I did not notice this until we got in the car after dinner but there was a water bottle in my cupholder that was not mine. It was not my husband's either. I sent my sister a text asking her if she had a particular brand of water bottle and she said she did but she could not find it. I guess I just took her bottle with me and put it in my cupholder although I have NO RECOLLECTION of doing so!

In other news I had a weekend where I spent a lot of time in thought! On Friday I decided I was switching to the new midwife and I thought I was at peace with my decision but it nagged and nagged at me. I realized I still wanted a homebirth and did not try hard enough to find someone who would support me through this. I Googled a search term I guess I had not used before because I hit the jackpot this time! I found several midwifery practices in our area that do only homebirths/water births (no hospitals or birthing centers). I emailed two of them right away. One wrote back almost immediately to say she could not travel to my area and she is full for November anyway. Her partner would have traveled to my area but will still be out on maternity leave when it's time for me to give birth. She did give me two suggestions though, one of which I had already written to. I heard back from both of those women today. I have a consultation iwth the one on Firday! The other one also offered me a consultation but I have not written back to her yet simply because I'm not sure how I can take all this time off work. I'm wondering if I should meet with the one, see if it feels like a match, and only meet with the other one if I don't feel good with the first one. So many decisions! I feel like this is one of the most important decisions of my life though! And I guess that is why I just cannot "settle" for something I'm not keen on. Ever since finding these women I've been so excited. I feel like my heart is finally happy! I hope it can stay happy and that I have luck with one or more of these women. Both have told me that they do not base their decisions on weight alone but on the overall health of the mom. So let's hope one of these works out! It is what my heart desires!

Baby names

I've had my top girl name picked out since 1995 and my top boy name picked out since sometime in the last decade. My hubby likes them both and I always assumed that is what we'd use. However, I just found out that my top boy name is in the top 20 in our state! I've always been one to like "different" names. This other name I liked but always thought was too "unique" popped back into my head the other day and I can't shake it. I asked my husband and while he doesn't hate it, he thinks it sounds too upper class for us lowly middle class people. A player on our city's soccer team has this name and our city's baseball farm team has the same name. So I think hubby is starting to realize it's not that upper class.

I swear up and down the baby is a boy most days and I just said to my belly, "Are you a S______ or a N______?" S is the new name I cannot stop thinking about and N is my old standby that I'm now afraid is just too popular. Anyway, in response, my hubby totally just cracked me up and said, "Neither, I'm a girl!" in this fake baby voice. He, along with my parents and most of my siblings and my niece, thinks it's a girl. I don't know where I'm getting the boy vibe but it's really making me want a boy. I'm imagining camping trips and baseball games. This does not mean I do not want a girl. It's hard to explain. Up until about three years ago I always figured my first baby would be a girl and I only really wanted a girl and felt I'd be disappointed to have a boy. But I no longer feel that way. I truly feel I'd be happy with either and would actually want the opposite gender for Baby #2. That's how badly I want to experience both.

Update - attempt #3, second midwife, and some good news!

We had a busy "baby" week this week. Monday I took a half day from work and my husband and I went to visit a second midwife for a consultation. I haven't made the switch yet but I think I will. First of all she was overweight like I am so when I told her how I'd been treated by my previous midwife she was pretty horrified. She also has PCOS and used the same fertility doctor I used to get pregnant (many years ago)! My hubby and I liked her much better. The only issue is she is farther away (like double the distance) and her C-section rate is about 20-22%. That is still much better than the national average but it does worry me.

Yesterday we went back to the Fetal Diagnostic Center for one more attempt at a nuchal translucency (NT) ultrasound. This time the baby was too big! Our tech last week said the baby was 70 mm and needed to be 84 mm or less to do the test. Yesterday the baby was 87 mm! He/she grew 17 mm in 5 days which seems like a lot to me. I think I might just drop all the screenings now. There is one more I can do which is just a blood test called a quad screen but I think I'm going to drop it. It was nice to get to "see" the baby a few extra times and see that heartbeat going, which was 147 bpm yesterday.

My husband and I have been married for two and a half years. He spent the first year of our marriage unemployed, then had a temporary job for 10-11 months. He's been out of work now since August. He had an interview on Friday and got a call on Monday that he's been hired! We are so relieved and so excited and I almost fainted when I heard how much money he'll be making. Now I'll be able to buy the baby things I want and get us new bedroom furniture which we have not gotten. We're also going to be taking a "babymoon" in July up to Niagara Falls and Toronto. I'm so excited!

Quick update on attempt #2!

I'm very tired and not feeling so well right now (so much for second trimester greatness...ha ha!) but I wanted to take a moment to post about today's ultrasound. The pictures were even blurrier than the other day (sob!) and the baby was not in the right position. So we get to try one more time on Tuesday and then after that we give up on sequential screening. Part of me feels like giving up now, that maybe it's not meant to be that we do it. But we'll give it one more try and see how it goes. I'm getting weary of having to ask to leave work early or come in late or take an early or late lunch for appointments. My boss is very understanding but I don't want to take advantage. That's all for now!

Baby is fine - such a wiggle worm!

I finally got to see our baby again on the ultrasound screen. He/she was moving all over. As soon as the tech put the wand on me DH saw the baby's arms going all over. It was such a relief. And she was able to record the heartbeat at about 167 beats per minute. It was such a relief.

She was not able to get the measurements she needed though. She even had me roll on to my left side and was doing all sorts of stuff to get the baby to move. I will be going back on Thursday. I'm excited for another look at my bean! I'm so relieved everything is fine!

I wound up telling LOTS of people today - all my coworkers that were in and over a dozen friends. A few friends and our families already knew. So now almost everyone on my "list" of people not to forget have been told.

I'm now starting to rethink the whole midwife thing. I'm just so impressionable. My husband's friend's wife was telling me about how I should use this hospital near us and she's heard such great things and a coworker was recommending an OB/GYN there. I wish I could just hear things and know they were signs and not wonder, or know it's just that person's opinion and means nothing.. It's just their opinion but I do feel that sometimes God talks to us through other people. I'm going to go to this appointment on Monday with the other midwife and just see how things go. I heard one time that when faced with a decision we should pray our desire for the one will be increased and the other decreased. So I need to do that. Midwife #1, midwife #2, doctor, someone else? I wish these things were easy.

Well, it's late and this mama is headed to bed!

First midwife appointment

I have not written for awhile. I meant to write last week. So much has been going on. In my last post I was writing about how I thought I was starting to get nausea. Well, there is no longer any question about that! It hit at 10w2d and it has been hanging around. The last day I felt really terrible is Friday when I was 12w2d and then I had a really good weekend with NO nausea. I was starting to think today that maybe I don't have it anymore but I felt sick after dinner tonight. Almost every day I've been sick it's been in the afternoon and evening. One morning last week or the week before I did throw up once. Sometimes brushing my teeth and tongue can really set off my gag reflex and that's what happened. Last night I couldn't even finish flossing. I was just gagging so bad.

We bought a baby shower gift for our friends whose shower was yesterday and while I was at Babies R Us I picked up some Preggie Pop drops for myself. They help, at least while they're in my mouth.

Tomorrow is our sequential screening test at 1:30 in the afternoon. I'm very anxious. It will be our first ultrasound in almost three weeks. I know for many women that is very frequent but starting out with an RE meant I got lots of ultrasounds and got very spoiled by it. The ultrasounds were all vaginal and I got to hear the heartbeat at the last of them.

I am very anxious about tomorrow because last Wednesday (4/27) I had my first midwife appointment. Earlier in the month (4/5) I had a consultation and I decided to book the midwife even though I wasn't 100% sold. I felt like she had an issue with my weight and kept making comments that were annoying me. Well, after this week I'm really considering switching. We had a good appointment up til the point when she said she'd try to hear the heartbeat. I laid back and she used the fetal doppler over my belly/pelvis region. It was definitely a different tool than the RE had used and being used differently. She said at 12 weeks she might not be able to hear anything. I was fine with that. I knew it probably wasn't as sensitive as the one my RE had used and not as close to the "source." She kept trying and was only picking up my heartbeat. My husband mentioned how we had heard it before at the RE's office and I don't know if that made her worried but then she started asking me if I was bleeding (no) or if I was nauseous (not at that moment). While she continued searching for the heartbeat somehow the subject of my progesterone came up. I mentioned how I always thought it was low but the RE always said it was fine. She asked what it was and I told her always between 12 and 16 until my last appointment at 10 weeks and it was 17 then. She said that was low in her opinion, she likes it to be about 20. I told her it was that low even with supplementation in the form of Endometrin suppositories. She asked if I was still on them and I told her they said to take it to 11 weeks but I had about 10 left and they were so expensive I didn't want to just toss them. I continued to take them twice per day til that Saturday (11w3d) I think and then for the next four days I just took one per day with my last one being at 12 weeks. She said that was very good that I continued to take them and I told her I might have continued but I was out of them and had no refills. At that point she had stopped trying to hear the heartbeat and started working on drawing blood. She said she was going to test my progesterone as well and I asked her if it was low if she'd want to supplement still. And her response was, "Well, we have to make sure your baby is OK first." So she went from telling us it was perfectly normal if we couldn't hear the heartbeat and once she couldn't find it and we had the progesterone conversation she is acting like there is a potential problem.

She gave us a prescription for sequential screening and some genetic counseling and then told me I could come back in a week if I wanted to try to hear the heartbeat again, or I could get an ultrasound. Teary-eyed I said I'd like an ultrasound and she told me that I would be getting one with the sequential screening. At that point I had been waiting 48 hours already for the hospital to call me back (I already knew I was going to be getting the prescription so was trying to be proactive about getting an appointment since I was already nearing 12 weeks). So I was very anxious about how long it was going to take them. They wound up calling me that afternoon and saying the earliest they had was May 3rd which sounded so far away. I was so in la-la land I didn't realize that was less than a week away and we were at the end of April! So I'm going tomorrow.

Needless to say when we left the midwife, my husband and I were very upset. We went outside when we were done and he said, "You are not miscarrying. You are not!" The good news is I have symptoms still and I have absolutely no spotting. I'm doing everything I can possibly do at this point and there is no reason to worry (except she put it in my head that something could be wrong). So it's been a long six day countdown from last Wednesday until tomorrow but here I am in the last 24 hours now.

I wrote on a couple message boards about what happened and I was flooded with suggestions to find a new midwife. In addition to the scare she has made so many comments about my weight. Before even hearing my medical history she deemed me unfit to give birth in her birthing center and immediately told me I had to give birth in a hospital due to my weight. If I got in the whirlpool I could get stuck and no one would be able to lift me out. Or she wouldn't be able to see or feel (I forget) the placenta due to my "subcutaneous fat tissue." Those were from our consultation. Then during the first appointment she was going to take my blood pressure and said she had to go get the "bigger cuff." I don't see why she had to announce that. Then she came back with it and told me it was going to be tight because my upper arm was so "wide" and then when it came back at 118/84 she said, "Is it always like that?" as if surprised my blood pressure could be good when I must be the size of a whale! Also when she asked me my pre-pregnancy weight and then my weight that day at 12 weeks she was so surprised they were exactly the same and told me I could actually lose weight. (Well, thanks, but that's not my goal now. I've spent the last 7 years trying to keep the weight off after a great weight loss but it has all crept back on and then some! My goal right now is to have a healthy baby at a healthy weight!)

All these women and their support gave me the courage I needed to start looking for a new one (not to mention the fact that I think my husband hates the woman!). I'm still not 100% sure I'll switch, not because I feel she deserves another shot or because I don't feel I deserve her attitude/treatment, but for the simple fact that there are few midwives around here. One I called has the same rule she does (BMI over 30 = hospital birth only, no exceptions) so that was out. I was going to call another one (practice of 3) but read terrible reviews online as well as heard a bad (secondhand) account of how they are, so figured that could be a last resort. I even called my OB/GYN's office even though that is not what I want but figured maybe with a doula a hospital/OB birth could be OK. However, they are already triple and quadruple booked for all their appointments and they are quite far from my work (30 minutes) so I can see my having to miss tons of work with all the prenatal appointments. I then checked my insurance carrier's provide list and found one midwife I never heard of. She is not that close either but I read some great reviews of her online (although my current midwife has rave reviews online as well so I'll take that with a grain of salt) and I called and have a consultation with her next Monday. If it feels like a better fit, I'll switch.

I'll update tomorrow, I'm hoping with good news from our ultrasound! Good night.