Welcome to the world, Baby Boy, Part 2

By 9:00 or so, I was still feeling kind of "off," so I just stayed in bed where I'd done our reading and stretched out.  Shifting positions and moving around didn't seem to help much, but I still wasn't sure anything was going to happen.

This is probably a good place to explain why we were planning to have you at home.  Your sister was born, start to finish, in just about four hours and I had absolutely no indication that I was going into labor until my water broke, which is what started everything.  Your dad works about 30 minutes away, and the hospital, depending on traffic, is about 25-40 minutes away.  From the first few weeks I knew I was pregnant, I was just anxious about what we were going to do when it was time for you to arrive.  I was worried that your dad would be at work, and wasn't sure that he'd have time to rush home, gather us up, and get us to the hospital.  I kept thinking about being here with a toddler and being in active labor or about getting a third of the way to the hospital and then having you arrive.

And, of course, we don't have any family nearby and while we have some friends who would have taken your sister on a Saturday afternoon for a few hours, I didn't feel like I knew anyone that I could call in the middle of the night.  Or who I'd want to ask to come to the hospital and pick up Nora and mess with swapping car seats out while I was in labor and then they'd maybe have to call off from work and take care of her for who knew how long, not to mention how she'd likely feel about having to be hauled out of bed in the middle of the night, left at a nurses' station with strangers, taken to a strange place, and kept away from the two people she really knows for hours and hours.  That all just sounded awful - for her and for me, and I wanted to be able to think about you and focus on you and not be worrying about all this other stuff.

So, I started researching my options and found the CHOICE office in Worthington.  They offered home births in Franklin and surrounding counties, had been in practice for 35 years, and just seemed to be very organized, reputable and highly recommended, so we set up an appointment.  I also wanted to make sure that my blood pressure wasn't likely to be a problem again, and after talking to my doctor, the midwife who delivered Nora, the midwives in practice and just about every other medical professional in my life, I was reassured over and over that it was likely a fluke and there was no reason to believe it would happen a second time.  So we set up an initial consultation, talked about it quite a bit, and decided that just staying here at home, while knowing the hospital was close by and we'd be advised if that became necessary, would be the best fit for all of us.

I wasn't really sure what to think at first, to be honest.  Everyone seemed very competent, but I just wasn't sure I could do it, and of course, as a parent, my mind immediately went to the worst case scenarios that left me wondering how I'd live with myself for the rest of my life if anything went wrong.  But your dad was confident.  (I think I've said this before - he's very confident in me, more than I am, so often, and his confidence allows me to jump off cliffs.  Or at least be dragged to the edge of the cliff and pushed....)  After talking with Amy, Jill (who is an herbalist and had a Grateful Dead tattoo, both of which your dad just loved), and Allison, we came home, mulled it over, and decided that we'd do it! Aside from some mild anemia, which they caught, and a little bit of creeping on the part of my blood pressure in the final two weeks, I had another textbook pregnancy, although I'd be lying if I said that the blood pressure blips in the last couple of weeks didn't freak me out just a bit....