Asheville... the Center of Homebirths

If you live in the Asheville area you may have seen this article in our local newspaper or on the local news. This lady was practicing as a "lay midwife", which the Midwives Alliance of North America defines as "an uncertified or unlicensed midwife who was educated through informal routes such as self-study or apprenticeship rather than through a formal program." The baby passed away from meconium aspiration which is where the baby has it's first bowel movement in utero and if the proper precautions aren't taken then the baby can die.

I know I sound like I know what I'm talking about, and although I'm not a medical professional in any way, shape or form, I've researched child birth so much in the last few months I at least know that it's not good if you see meconium and you need to get help ASAP. This woman was not a "certified" midwife, but there are people making comments on these articles that this fact shouldn't hold her accountable for the death. People saying that they would use their final breath to stand up for this woman and that they, in fact, chose to use a lay midwife instead of going to a certified midwives office, which trust me, there are plenty of certified midwives in these here western North Carolina mountains.

I think maybe what bothers me most about these mamas is the fact that they find their homebirthing experience to be so much better than us "regular" women who choose to have our babies at the hospital and God forbid with an epidural or medication (or the worst of the worst, who have to have a c-section).  I think if you decide to have your baby at home, more power to you. These women obviously trust themselves more than I trust my body. Personally, I actually feel more comfortable in the hospital setting in situations like this. If something goes downhill fast, I want to be surrounded by doctors and nurses and equipment that can save my life or the baby's life.

 I'm at the age where lots and lots of my friends are having babies. Or if they've already had babies, everyone has the stories of labor and delivery to share. Even the woman who doesn't know me from the next person likes to share stories of the births of her children. I have friends who have chosen to birth their babies in all different ways, homebirths, all natural births, epidurals, c-sections, you name it. And luckily, for all them, the end result is the same: happy, healthy babies and moms. It irritates me a little bit when the women who have home births or even all natural births scoff at the fact that I would even consider having an epidural. Ummm, ok, don't see how that's any of your business, but alright.

My goal, and any other mother's goal, should be to just make sure that they and their little one make it through safe and sound. I feel that choosing to have the person responsible for bringing your baby into the world who is not certified to do so is completely unwise. I wouldn't even take my dogs to a vet who hasn't been to veterinary school, so why would I choose to have someone who doesn't have the proper certification deliver my baby?

Sorry for the long, long rant. I woke up thinking about this just fuming. If you've ever seen the movie "Away We Go", the part where they go to visit Bert's cousin who is an "artistic" professor reminds me of women's reaction here in the area.

 

 

So anyways, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go contemplate my hospital birth where I may or may not have an epidural (it really does depend on how I handle the pain, which if my reaction to a  small cut on my hand is any indication, the epidural will be happening.) Just as long as in a month I'm sitting here with a happy little boy, it doesn't matter to me.

Tired & Uncomfortable

I know. I've been seriously lacking in baby updates. It's not really that we haven't been doing anything to prepare, we've actually been doing lots, but I'm just tired and cranky and getting myself to sit down and write about things has been on my list right after sitting on the couch and taking a two hour nap. Plus, work has kept me really busy, which I like. It's a nice distraction from thinking about the fact that the baby could come in a week and be full term. It could literally happen at ANY TIME now. Yikes!

I don't really remember where I left off, but I do know that we have finally put the car seat in the back of my car, which is a big relief seeing as how they won't let us leave the hospital until it's installed. We think that it's installed correctly, although we may run down to our local fire department just to double check. We joked that we would put Lola in the car seat just to test it out.

Dillon has been working crazy over time so when he has a day off I try to grab him to do baby stuff. Last week was car seat time and this week was cleaning. My stomach has grown so much that I'm really unable to get around really well to clean (especially the bathrooms... or that's what I'll tell him!) He's a good man though, and doesn't seem to mind helping me out.

The baby seems to be really heavy right now. Before I got pregnant, I never realized that this kid would get heavy, like a bowling ball. It makes sleeping difficult and getting out of chairs, cars, etc... really hard to do. I feel like a turtle most days. The grumpy side comes out when I'm unable to get comfortable to sleep. Did you know that a side effect of being pregnant is having a stuffy nose? Neither did I, until it happened. And of course, you can't take decongestants or cold medicines to get rid of it. It makes the task of sleeping that much more difficult. Hips ache and you can't breath and then you sleep for 2 hours. Nature's way of preparing you for having a baby at the house!

I have decided on the day care we will use, finally. I've toured about 6 in the area and never really felt comfortable with any of them, until I found this one on Friday morning. The ladies seem super nice, small class sizes and it's in a church not far from our house. They also have a garden that the parents and staff put together and feed the children from the garden. Not to get TOO Asheville about it, but they also let you use cloth diapers and feed the kids no processed foods. It's all fresh/frozen with no additives. That's a big relief for me, to know that he'll be safe once I return to work.

Many thanks to Josh & Lauren (and Dara!) for bringing us baby things we were lacking in this afternoon. We now have a diaper warmer, swing, bouncy seat and pillows for Luke. All things that are helpful that first time mom's need!

This blog is sort of a ramble of what we've been up to. I feel a little spacey with lack of sleep and the surreal fact that we will have a baby within a month. I'm so ready for him to be here and can't wait to be uploading pictures of him! For  now though, I will grace you with pictures of Dillon putting our car seat in last weekend...

Extreme Nesting

It's kind of like "extreme couponing" except you're carrying around 30 extra pounds waddling around your kitchen.  These past few weeks, I've been extremely into cleaning my house and preparing for all things that are baby.

I've got his bag ready for the hospital and hopefully before the end of today, I'll have mine ready too (it doesn't matter that I still have some 45 + days, I've got to be READY!) I've done laundry all week, and when I say laundry I mean I've actually washed, dried, folded and put it away. A rare occurrence in our household.

 I got to thinking about what we would be eating AFTER the baby is here. I've been a pretty bad cook these past few months and I wanted to try and save money and not be eating McDonald's every night for the 3 months after the big day. I also don't want to have a baby on my hip trying to fix some dinner that could or could not be awful. A few months ago I found on Pinterest where these women go to the store, stock up on all of these groceries and spend their Sunday afternoon making freezer meals. I thought that could be really useful for me once the baby came. I didn't really know when I'd do it, just some out there time. 

I woke up this morning and decide today's the day.

Dillon and I head out to WalMart with a huge list. I discovered I didn't really like  a lot of the recipes on the sites I'd pinned and some of them were just for meat to cook in the crock pot and then you cook your side dishes. Seriously? I could just throw some frozen meat in the crock pot with mixed up sauce on the day of, I don't need to spend my whole Sunday preparing that. Instead, we had some go to casseroles and soups that I figured would be ok in the freezer. 

And this is what we came up with...

Hey there groceries... took us 30 minutes to check out.

Figuring out where to start

Now we're cookin...

Dillon making some ground turkey

The onions burrrrnnn!

All stocked up with a clean freezer to boot!

5 Casseroles, 15 breakfast burritos and at some point this week I'll be making some vegetable soup. I may end up making the soup tonight, but I'm just so tired. I didn't realize how hard it would be to stand up for 2 1/2 hours on my feet. I'm obviously the biggest whiner of a pregnant lady, but now I'm completely exhausted.

Dillon's also nesting, while in his own manly way. He's changing out curtains for me and getting ready to fix up the yard. He's got mulch and mowing on the brain and the random house fixer uppers. 

I'm 33 weeks pregnant which means I could have as many as 7 more weeks to go (possibly longer, but we don't think that way). My sleep is evading me and the ever present stuffy nose is completely annoying. The baby's kicks are more like punches now, but I still love feeling him move around. Spring is pretty much here as all the windows in my house are open which means baby Luke's arrival is just around the corner! 

Banana Fanana Fo Fanana

A baby's name is probably one of the biggest decisions you make before they arrive. It's probably also one of the first things you start thinking about even before you make that first doctor's appointment. You think about how it'll sound when you're singing lullabies to him or when you're yelling at him to stop getting into things. 

I think Dillon and I had probably talked about names that we liked for our children before we  even thought about having children. When we found out we were pregnant though, it became pretty serious. The going back and forth to determine the name was a constant discussion, and we each came up with names that made the other person go "Really? You want to name them THAT?!" 

In November, I felt that we needed to decide on a name. That was the time when we found out if the baby was a boy or girl and I was getting tired of referring to him as "It" or as Dillon had lovingly started calling it "Cleatus" - a story in and of itself. (Dillon came home one day when I was first pregnant, proudly exclaiming he'd decided what we should call the baby. "Cleatus - you know, like Cleatus the Fetus." And somehow, that little nickname has stuck... anyways, we can move on now.) 

Of course, I had a girl's name picked out. There wasn't much discussion on that one, I had always liked the name Cecilia - yes, like Simon & Garfunkel's song - and since we wanted a Biblical type name to be included, we chose Grace as the middle name. The boy's name on the other hand was a little difficult. We went back and forth many times on what it should be. We finally landed on two names, Miles Avery or Lucas Grant. I really liked the name "Avery" but it seemed like every time we went out I heard little girls being called to their mamas with the name Avery. So it was back to the drawing board. We tried Miles Lucas but it just didn't seem to work so finally we decided, OK, Lucas Grant it is. 

Dillon always reminded me that we still had months to decide and until his name was on the birth record it could always be changed. 

After last week, I started to think about the life my grandpa had lived. He was a hard-worker, took care of his family always, provided for them and for people in the community. He had many of the traits that I find to be a good man. And I thought about his name, James (a name he also shares with my dad, who has many of the same traits of my grandfather). It is a strong name, a manly name, a Godly name. I brought it up to Dillon that I may want to change the baby's middle name. We discussed it a few times and have decided that, yes, it would be a very special thing to name our baby Lucas James. He'll still be called Luke, but he'll carry on the memory of my grandpa and share the name with my dad. 

So in April, we'll be pleased to welcome Lucas James to our little family. A very exciting and special time indeed.

My Grandma Helen and Grandpa James with me on my 1st Birthday.

Quiet Week

Things are slowly reverting back to normal, minus a slight "emergency" with our dog on Tuesday. But even now she seems to be back to normal too. I don't even have any pictures for this post, that's how boring this week has been.

I'm getting into the full swing with my new job, only to have to leave for 12 weeks in April. I'm furiously trying to get everything done before the big arrival date comes!

 It's also started to become very real that in 4 weeks the baby could be here. I would be 36 weeks pregnant by that point, but his little lungs would be fully developed. Of course, it could also be 8 more weeks before he arrives too so there's a little bit of an unnerving surprise mixed in. I've got plenty of things to keep me busy. I haven't packed a hospital bag, my house is mildly cluttered with baby things and not baby things, and I have the energy of a sloth, but I'm progressing! I will say though, that after we returned home last week, I went into full "nesting" mode and washed all of his clothes and organized the nursery. It's the best looking room in the house by far. The rest looks a little, well, um, unkempt I guess.

If you look on thebump.com, it says that at 32 weeks your baby is the size of a squash (which looks more like a pumpkin...) . And all it says about the baby's progress is that he's probably running out of room in there. Ya think?

I will include one picture on this post... We received an awesome gift in the mail from Dillon's cousin Cory and his wife Lindsey. I received a text from her one day asking which animal I preferred: bear, frog, or sock monkey. I chose the frog, and this is what we received!

We can't wait to dress him up in this and take pictures. He'll be the talk of the town, I'm sure! Thank you guys so much!

I've got errands to run today, so I guess I should be off. Until later...