snow piled up in a silver bowl

This birth went very differently than Chester’s, in almost all positive ways. For those that don’t know, I switched doctors at 22 weeks to a practice that, in addition to many OBs had two midwives on staff. If you were determined to be low risk, you had the option of delivering at the Alternative Birth Center at the local hospital. The ABC does not use IVs during labor, they allow you to eat and drink at will, and they do not practice external fetal monitoring (they user periodic Doppler readings to check fetal heart rate). They also have birth tubs available in each room (although you’re not allowed to give birth or push in them) and queen-sized beds. The ABC does also have the benefit of being in the hospital, so if anything were to go wrong, they had access to all of the necessary equipment and personnel just down the hall.

This was my goal – a natural birth in a setting that would provide for it with staff that was used to dealing with natural births – and after many months of obstacles (gestational diabetes, baby being a bit larger for her gestational age (likely due to the discrepancy between doctor and mom’s due dates), and my alleged clotting disorders), I was able to have the birth I wanted at the ABC.

( Further Details... )

We’ve been home for nearly a week now, and Chester is adjusting (I think anyway) to having a little sister. We’ve been lucky thus far though, there has always been at least one adult around to pay attention to him while the other pays attention to Shelby. I will be very sad when Anthogna returns to work next week. I also miss sleeping, but that’s part of having a newborn – at least now we know there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

All in all, I absolutely loved delivering at the ABC. It was exactly the kind of birth experience I wanted and I am very grateful that I was able to deliver there.

So we are now about 80% moved into the new house and are slowly unpacking and making our updates to the place. We have paint up on one wall in the living room (we're doing a wall a night while Chester sleeps) and it's already starting to feel like home.

But now that we're finally *in* the house, we are finally starting to discuss and plan for Shelby's imminent arrival. I actually had a mini-freak out this past weekend since I realize she's due in 6-8 weeks and we had NOTHING prepped for her. I had gone through all of Chester's old clothes and picked out what we would keep for her, but it turns out we only ended up keeping 2 0-3 month sleepers, which was not going to work. I did pick up a box of baby girl clothes off of craigslist for $40 and co-worker has offered me some more clothes, so that's useful. We also ordered the crib and changing tower which should arrive in the next week or so. Things are moving along, now we just need to get her bedding, a mobile, some sheets for the crib and a diaper pail. At least we have toys covered. :o)

So that's what we've been up to lately. I'll have to post pictures once we're all in and unpacked.