Yea!

I had my in-home visit with my midwife this morning and all is well. The baby is head down, although his back is parallel with the right side of my body, which can lead to back labor... so I'm supposed to be spending time on my hands and knees and making sure I sleep on my left side as much as possible. Both should be far easier to do and be much more enjoyable than the breech tilt! She thinks the baby is a little under 6 lbs at this point, and will probably be in the mid to high 7's when the baby is born. I think I can handle that! I must say that things are definitely starting to feel pretty real around here. I do rather wish I had a dresser to put baby stuff in, but perhaps I can do something about that this weekend.

I've been reflecting on how nice it is to be working with the midwife and planning a homebirth. Everything just seems so much more relaxed. When I was feeling a lot of contractions on Wednesday, I really liked knowing that if things seemed like they were picking up and getting more intense, I could call my midwife, she could check me, and then either go back home or stay awhile, depending on how things went. No going to the hospital, waiting around in uncomfortable and unfamiliar surroundings and dealing with perhaps condesending nurses and doctors if it turns out that nothing is really happening. Just knowing that I don't need to go anywhere is very comforting to me and it makes me feel so much more relaxed about the whole process.

I suppose it also helps that I've been through one childbirth before, although I feel like the experience I had wasn't particularly relevant. With Emma, I didn't have any early labor signs and virtually no braxton-hicks contractions. When I was induced at 38 weeks, I don't think my body was anywhere near being ready to go into labor. I think that if I hadn't developed hypertension, I wouldn't have had Emma until at least 41 weeks or perhaps later (if they would have let me go that "late"!). Also, since I was induced I didn't experience any sort of gradual going into labor - it was immediate and very hard labor once they started the pitocin, with contractions coming quite close together and lasting a long time. The nearest I think I came to any sort of early labor was on my second dose of cervidil the day before I was induced with pitocin. That ended up giving me some very mild contractions for about 45 min or so, but nothing more developed after that.

So anyways, I'm really looking forward to going into labor myself and seeing what that's like.

Hmm... trying to decide. Should I take a nap right now, or should I start making some cookies for my brother's birthday tomorrow? Speaking of which, I can't believe my baby brother is turning 21 tomorrow!!!