Wordless Wednesday: I Can't Believe He's Here Already

"I can't believe he's here already." I've been told that I repeated this phrase over and over after Felix made his entrance!

I Am Woman - I Can Birth

My birth pool came was delivered yesterday. I haven't had a chance to take it out and set it up yet. We'll be doing our practice run this weekend hopefully. But I did look at the instructions and I got a bit, well, excited. Yes, excited to give birth! I feel as though I've gone through a slight transformation this pregnancy. I entered pregnancy knowing that I wanted to do things differently and knowing that I wanted a home birth. But I still had apprehension and nagging doubts about my abilities - my ability to handle this, my body's ability to work right, etc...I took a lovely birth class as a way of boosting my confidence and I have to say that I really think it helped. Also, I've been going through the Hypnobabies home study course thanks to a friend who lent it to me and I LOVE it. Part of the course is listening to a positive affirmations track every day. I've been able to keep up with this most days. I feel this has been very powerful for me - hearing over and over about how my birth is going to be wonderful, my baby is going to come easily, everything will go right, etc...It's gotten me into a good head space. Obviously, birth comes with no guarantees, but having a calm and peaceful frame of mind will only be of benefit should I need to be more flexible with my plans during the birthing day.

This birth is going to be different in other ways too. With my son it was only my husband and I around, well, along with the medical staff anyways. This time my oldest friend, who I just adore to pieces, will be photographing my birth for me. My mom will be on "Boo duty" so that he is able to stay and be a part of the experience as much or as little as he wants. I like that my hubby won't have to worry about snapping pictures this time around and he can just be. Be whatever I need him to be in each moment. There will of course be the midwife and her assistant. I'm kind of excited that I might know the assistant coming. Provided she's available when I go into labor, the assistant will actually be the woman who taught my birth class. I'm actually pretty excited about that. So I kind of feel like I should buy some party hats or something. It feels like a huge group to me, but in reality there's probably still fewer people overall than there were when I labored in the hospital. I think it feels bigger because it's more people that I know. But I'm really okay with it and of course I'm reserving the right to tell anyone extra "Nevermind. Go home," if that's what needs to happen. I don't think that will be the case - but hey, a laboring woman can do anything she wants when it comes to those sorts of things!

I'm excited because I realize that I've come from a state of mind where I apprehensively wanted this home birth, but still felt nervous to a point where I'm excited about it and ready to hop in the birthing pool now. I feel calm and powerful and well, like a woman!

Balance during Busyness

Well, I meant to get my blogger award posted this weekend, but hubby has hijacked my computer all weekend. He's running out for an errand, so I'm hoping I have time to complete an entire post while he's gone. In his defense, he's hijacked the computer for a very good reason. He's been working on a paper for school. Poor guy - he's so ready for a break. I am too. It's interesting that he's the one in school, but I'm feeling the stress also. It's one of those things that easily creeps into family life.

Many parenting books talk about balance. Balance is such a great concept, one that I wholeheartedly agree with. But it can be hard. Sometimes we have seasons of life where things are busy busy busy and there's just not much that's optional that can be cut out. I think this is where we find ourselves right now. We made the choice for hubby to go to school, so of course classes and time for schoolwork are not optional. My business is supporting the family and so my work is not optional. Our birthing class takes up time, but while this would be optional for some, when I look at my parenting and birthing priorities, there was no question of us needing to partake in this. This class has been everything I hoped it would. I feel much more confident approaching my home birth as a result of having this set time on a weekly basis to learn about and discuss birth. I also feel encouragement in learning more and more how my body was designed to give birth naturally! Since we have an hour ride to and from class, it's been a great time of togetherness for hubby and I to focus on our birth. With all of the other commitments in our life right now, I'm not sure that we would be intentionally discussing labor and birth if we did not have a set time carved out of our schedule for this. I think we've grown closer as a couple as a result. Church is another commitment we have and should not be optional, but I admit that with everything else going on we've definitely chosen to sleep in a few Sundays out of sheer exhaustion. I was happy that I was up for Mass today and took Boo, who's always so happy to go. Hubby stayed behind and worked on his paper. We do have Boo's parent/tot tumbling class on Saturday mornings and that is definitely not a necessity, but it's a really nice time of family togetherness and physical activity. Boo loves to go and the teacher is really wonderful and seems to have a great understanding of this age group. She's never pushy with doing activities the "right" way (unless it's a safety issue of course), she knows how to be respectful of children's space, and she's very encouraging of his accomplishments.

One of the key pieces of advice that I hear from books when it comes to balance is cutting out the things that are not necessary. Well, I've listed all of our commitments. I think the thing is that the few we've chosen, with the exception of the tumbling class, are very time-consuming and life changing. So while it may not sound like much, I assure you that it feels like very much. Also, being an introvert, I think that I can personally handle fewer commitments than an extrovert could, so I know that this plays into my perceived level of stress a bit. I do feel that until hubby is done with school, this level of busyness is what we're going to be dealing with. So, other than cutting things out, how does one find balance during a season of life that is just busy? Is it a matter of better managing stress? Perhaps I need to focus more on my relaxation exercises. Connecting with friends and family? Perhaps I'm on the right track in intentionally connecting with Boo more often. Taking care of myself? I admit the massage and hair color and cut yesterday felt great. So, as always I'm open to the wisdom of others!

Preparing Boo for the Home Birth of his Sibling

Our current plan is for Boo to be present at the birth of his sibling. I found some great information here and thought I would pass it along.

Preparing an Older Sibling for a New Birth

Boo has always been high needs in terms of attention and emotions. He's a very sensitive little soul. So it has been with much consideration that we've decided that the right choice for him is to be at the birth. While I do think he might struggle with seeing mom in pain, I also think that he may feel incredibly left out if he leaves the house and there's all of a sudden a baby when he comes back home. Given his personality, it seems that he might adjust better to being a big sibling if he's a part of his sibling's birth day. We will continue to prep him and discuss birth with him and are of course open to a plan B if he should indicate in one way or another that being at the birth is not best for him.

Sometimes I've wondered if/how he's processing all of this birthing education. Being 3 1/2 and an active little boy he's not exactly prone to long drawn out conversations about his feelings on the matter. The other day we ran into someone that I hadn't seen in a long time at Target and upon being questioned about the fact that he was in fact going to be a big brother, Boo began to tell this person how when baby's big enough, baby will come out of mommy's door. Well, I guess he HAS been listening and comprehending in his own way!

We've been working on creating a bedroom for Boo. I had a frank conversation with T the other night about transitioning Boo to his bedroom and was so relieved to find that we are on the same page. That is, that the bedroom is there and Boo can choose to sleep in it and he can choose to continue to cosleep. The only change is that Boo has his spot on the edge of the bed and he will likely have to give up his spot on the end move to the middle. Little one's cosleeper will be attached to the edge of the bed and I definitely feel that given how Boo rotates and moves in his sleep I'll need to be between him and his baby! Hopefully he will manage that small change okay. Right now he throws a righteous fit if we ask him to sleep in the middle. I'm hoping that he might understand more with a baby there. This could backfire, so I guess we'll just have to play it by ear! I guess maybe the key for us will be to be flexible and creative in the way that we help Boo adjust.

I'm open to any suggestions of those who've been through this process before!

An Interesting Post

I thought this post was interesting:

12 Years Ago Post

Doesn't it suck when we allow government to take away choices that should be ours? Ugh!