The Plan, Stan

As I grow ever larger, our extended family members have started to ask about our birth plan. (As if this is something we might want to think about.)

I've heard a variety of different opinions. My dad has taken the hardest line, which I find very sweet. (I like that he cares.) He says he thinks I should get an epidural no matter what. He made the point that people get pain relief for surgeries and so forth, so why not childbirth? It's a good point, but I think there is a difference between surgery and normal childbirth. Like most people, I have an ideal scenario for how this all might happen.

Now to state the obvious. Under regular circumstances childbirth is a natural process that a vast number of women have gone though since the beginning of time. Many births need no medical intervention and go just fine with the help of a midwife. I've even heard of something called free-birthing, where a woman gives birth by herself or only with her husband. I love that term. I've heard of free-balling, free-falling and free-boobing, but free-birthing was new to me. It sounds so reckless, like giving birth on horseback. Extremes aside, a natural birth without complications is an amazing thing in my mind, and that's what I want. Whether I'll get it is yet to be seen.

Ideally I will be able to deliver vaginally (sorry boys) without any strong pain medication. I want access to all of those birthing accessories that they say make the pain manageable. I want to try it, kind of like I tried skydiving, but with the anticipation that this will require a lot more personal sacrifice and something way cooler at the end.

I know my naivete must be hilarious to those of you who have gone through childbirth before, but I have this romantic notion of how thousands of women before me have done it this way, so I can too. Practically speaking, I want to feel like I'm in control of what's going on and to feel my contractions enough to be able to know when to push. I don't want someone else to tell me what is happening because I'm numb from the waist down and can't feel what's going on. And as ridiculous as this sounds coming from the mouth of a woman who has never done it before, I'm viewing this experience as I would a marathon (ironically I would never run one of those), where I presume the relief and sense of accomplishment is that much sweeter after all the pain.

Okay, so they don't give out medals for childbirth -- this birth plan would be for me, not so that everyone can say, "Oh, way to go there Em - having a baby just like everybody else." As far as others are concerned, no one other than you and your family members care how you give birth, as long as you get the baby out.

I'm trying to be mentally ready for anything. I've heard many stories of women who went into it with the same intentions I have, and ended up getting an epidural for various reasons: back labor and a lack of progression over a period of many, many hours being the most common.

So let me say that if I do end up having this sort of labor, I'm not going to martyr myself like Joan of Arc and leave my son motherless and my husband without a wife. An epidural can relax your muscles so that you can make progress. If the choice becomes that or a C-section, I'll gladly choose the former. A vaginal birth is my ultimate goal, with or without the big needle. I've heard many women breathe "God bless the epidural" after going through an experience like the ones above.

We will be having him in a hospital for a few reasons: the first being that this is where my doctor delivers. I checked into local midwives, but our insurance doesn't cover them. (The lady I talked to at Blue Care Network said, "Midwife?!" to me like I wanted to invite some character from Little House on the Prairie into the birthing room.) Secondly I want to be close to whatever we'll need in case something goes wrong. And lastly, who needs to deal with that mess at home? Not me. I respect and admire anyone who chooses a home birth (a close friend of mine did it - way to go Mal!), but as far as I'm concerned the nurses can take care of that and I'll love them for it.

So, that is our birth plan, but as they say, "We make plans. God laughs." I know two people who have had toxemia and HELLP syndrome. When this happens a C-section is usually the best option because the baby needs to get out of there quickly. In this case you need to scrap your birth plan completely.

No matter how he gets here, he's coming. I'll be his mom, and Jono will be his dad, and that's that.

Moving to Hope Street

This past weekend Jono, me and Mona moved to Hope Street to live with Joel, Jessie and Louie (their dog).

The move was surprisingly un-stressful. Three weeks ago Jono's dad and step-mom came to help us pack. Two weeks ago my parents came to help us fill the U-Haul and unload everything into a storage unit. This left us with a (mostly) empty house, but it still took us most of Saturday and Sunday to get every last little thing out of it. Towards the end we weren't even packing things into boxes any more -- we just tossed them into grocery sacks and laundry baskets, or threw things like brooms, driftwood and my rock collection into the back seat.

Now we're settled, and have arranged our little upstairs apartment. I made the nook up there into a pantry for our canned goods. My shoes are lined up along the wall in two sections: dress shoes and regular shoes (read: OCD). Our clothes are hung on a portable thingy next to the stairs. We're using those terracotta plant saucers as coasters so we don't put rings on Joel and Jessie's little table.

We've been watching the Olympics downstairs with Jessie every night. Jessie is knitting these fantastic booties for our little man, and I'm knitting a scarf because it's the only thing I know how to knit. It's all very cozy.

I feel like I'm on vacation somewhere. Mona does too. She was mopey on Sunday as we were getting the last of our things out of the house, but when she realized she was going with us she got over it. Now she gets to play with Louie every day and her morning walks are in a different neighborhood with new smells, so she's generally happy with the situation.

Throughout all of this, God's timing has been amazing. A couple of weeks ago we found a house we like on Orville Street near Boston Square in Grand Rapids. It's a short-sale, meaning it's in pre-foreclosure. Mainly we were impressed with the fact that it isn't trashed like all of the others we've been looking at in our price range. We made an offer with help from Jono's mom and her husband Jeff, who has a realtor's license. On Friday, the day before we moved out, we heard that our offer had been accepted. No counter-offer; just YES, IT'S YOURS.

Rundown of what could've been a bad situation, but then it turned good...

• We find out I'm pregnant and decide one of us needs to quit our job or work part-time. We realize quickly that our current mortgage payment is more than we are comfortable with under the new circumstances. We put our house up for sale in the worst housing market ever.
  
  
• We know it's likely we won't make very much on our house in this market, so after we sell we'll need to live very cheaply for a few months until we have the a down payment for our next place. Joel and Jessie live three blocks away and agree to let us live with them for awhile once we sell.
  
  
• We sell our house in a month and a half for a good price, when many homes in our city don't sell for nine months to one year (or more).
  
  
• Meanwhile we're looking at foreclosed homes in the city, but most of them are in terrible shape. We are anxious about having to completely re-do a house while I'm trying to get the baby to sleep, etc. Two weeks before we move out, we finally find a good house we can afford in a different area of the city. It needs very little work. We're shocked. We make an offer. We are told it could take three weeks for the bank to respond.
  
  
• One week before we expected a reply and one day before we move out of 135 Lowell, we hear they have verbally accepted our offer. We'll be able to move in 30 days after closing, which will be in two to three weeks. So we'll settle in on Hope Street for a month or two -- just enough time to save for a down payment.
  

There's more too, but I'll stop there. The point is, we are really thankful.

On the pregnancy front, I've had the song Another One Bites the Dust (QUEEN) in my head lately as each day I must put away another article of my clothing into a box destined for the basement. I am realizing I'm low on sweatpants and various items made of long, stretchy material. I am starting to feel the extra weight I'm carrying. One area where I thought I was safe was footwear, but even my shoes don't fit right any more. I tried to put on my favorite pair of sandals yesterday -- the kind with a toe loop -- and was confused when my toe was constricted by the loop. I innocently thought, "Now how were these packed? There must've been something heavy on top of them and it warped them." In the next moment I realized there was nothing wrong with the sandals. My feet are swelling. Yay.

Another new adventure I've been having lately are Braxton-Hicks contractions. What happens with these is the walls of the uterus contract for 10 to 20 seconds and you feel like you're walking around with a boulder in your stomach. They are not labor-inducing and are very normal -- I guess it's the uterus getting ready for the real thing.

Also, I've been packing for a camping trip and I'm realizing I'll need to wear my one pair of sweatpants or walk around in a sarong to stay comfortable. One thing I thought I'd never say: "Must have more sweatpants."

Chi-town!

Grant and I went to Chicago to surprise Tyler while he was on tour with Ten out of Tenn. When we got there Tyler was *surprised*, and he gave us a tour of his home: Willie Nelson's old tour bus (it has a little neon sign in the "living room" that says PARTY - ha.) We had some trouble getting Grant into the venue -- turned out it wasn't an all-ages show -- but in the end we got to see them play. We stayed overnight at my friend Sarah's apartment (thanks Werf!), met her cat Jordy, ate her cookies, had breakfast with friend Becky the next morning, and drove home.

With the move and everything this month I knew I wouldn't see much of Grant before he goes back to Seattle in September. So it was our chance to hang out for awhile.

24 weeks / 6 months

Oh Mona, if you only knew what was coming...

We've hit the six month mark, and our boy is getting nice and plump. He should have some hair on his head by now, and all of his major organs are mostly developed. He is about a foot long and weighs about as much as a mango (the fruit references continue to be helpful). The most surprising thing I read about this time is: "If the baby were born in this month and given the proper care, he would survive". Of course, for multiple reasons we're glad he's staying in there for awhile (God willing).

He is rolling and kicking regularly, and the other morning while lying in bed I could feel his whole body move across my hand. Not just a foot or elbow, but a body. Sometimes I feel a little "off-kilter" and I look down at my tummy and realize that he is obviously hanging out on my right side with his bum pressed against the uterine wall. It sticks right out and makes my stomach look lopsided, which is pretty funny.

I can usually see his movements on the outside now. The other day Jono was listening for him and got kicked in the ear three times :)

This six-month mark is also turning out to be the time when I'm having to leave behind my "prego-on-a-budget" wardrobe. By this I mean the little pink rubberband I was using to keep my regular pants on with. On the way to Chicago with Grant on Thursday I looked down and saw my rubberband, which had come to seem like an old friend, snapped and lying in my lap. I spent the rest of the evening with my pants wide open and a tank top pulled most of the way down over it. I guess it's a sign that I'll need to wear prego pants exclusively now, or just make sure I'm wearing clothing with a quality piece of elastic. I'm really learning to appreciate the merits of elastic. Someone needs to give the guy who invented it a big shiny medal.