Appointment #3

Currently Craving: A Long Hot Bath (sore yoga bones)

it's been a week and i'm finally getting around to updating about our visit with Nancy last week.

Our appointment was in the middle of the day and as soon as we got there we were ushered into the back room and she stepped out to check on a mother who'd given birth a day or so ago. (she was checking in by phone). so we visited together in her back room for a while and max said he was already doing better with all the pictures on the walls.

this appointment was pretty routine and not terribly exciting. she started with going over our informed consent which i am happy to say we remembered to bring back. (she did actually look a little impressed that we remembered) mainly that form spelled out all the possibilities of things that can go wrong or right with home birth and the possibilities for transport to the hospital if needed. we didn't have any questions about that part so it didn't take too long. one part of the form says the baby has to be checked out by a pediatrician within a 'reasonable amount of time' so we asked her what she meant by that. in her opinion she said about 3 days. that she sees the baby when it is born and comes back the next day and then on day 3 we go to the pediatrician. but..... pediatricians have different opinions depending on who it is.

then she asked who our pediatrician is, and of course we don't have one yet. then we learned that none of the pediatricians in town are particularly supportive of the home birth idea and we might get some slack for it. as she put it 'home birth is highly unusual' she did give a recommendation of one practice that other patients of hers seemed to like. and we heard two nice birth stories while we were there too. i kind of got the feeling she was trying to pump us up about having a baby. like we needed to get more excited about it. we must still look pretty shell shocked.

she measured me and said i was 17inches at 17 weeks which is right on. and we listened again to the heartbeat both of Babe and of the placenta and she said we sounded good. i asked her if there were two in there and she said the ultrasound would tell us but i didn't seem like i was carrying more than one. she said i looked good and energetic, so that's nice.

i've actually been getting that comment a lot. that i look 'better' i guess people can tell that i'm feeling better than before. did i really look that bad in trimester 1 though???

then at the end of the appointment she gave us some resources. first a book called "birthing from within" which is also a childbirth method. as she explained it this method is pretty touchy-feely with lots of role play and getting into the feelings of the entire experience, a more right brained method. she said the women tend to like this one while the men tend to like the Bradley method better because it is a bit more left-brained (and sounds like it doesn't involve role-play). as soon as we left i told max ' i think we're Bradley people' i knew he was, but i definitely am too. give me the science and let me know what's going on in there.

and she also gave us pregnancy tea. she walked into the back and came back with this brown paper bag of what looked like the leftovers from the lawnmower. but she explained it is full of great herbs and should be brewed into tea that i can drink throughout the pregnancy. she also said it is like eating a full serving of green veggies, so that's nice. but the nicest part was she looked directly at Max and told him ' you will make this for her.' she went on to explain that during pregnancy sometimes things just seem too hard to do and so he could help out by doing that for me. she also told me that there are good pregnancy days and bad pregnancy days. and that on the bad pregnancy days i should just rest and let it go, then i'll get twice as much done on the good days and it will all even out.

we set our next appointment and that was about it. so nothing insane and i felt very comfortable with her again. we'll see her next at the beginning of june and we'll be 22 weeks by then. keep marching on.