I suppose it’s fitting that when you read this post, Sarah and I will be in the middle of Day 2 of our Birthing Class in Medford at the Rogue Valley Medical Center, the hospital where Caleb will be born.
And today is the day of another big milestone: we’ve hit the 9 month mark.
I must say that it feels pretty amazing to be at this stage, although I’m pretty sure that Sarah might describe the way it feels using some other choice language at this point. 36 weeks. And everything is going along just as it should for little Caleb Elijah.
Yesterday’s birthing class involved doing some practice breathing exercises, learning a lot about the stages of labor, pain management and watching multiple birth videos. I must say, it was the first time I’ve seen one of those birth videos, and I handled it okay. For some reason, watching the video about the epidural started to make me feel a little lightheaded. When Sarah delivered Micah and Judah last year, I had a real hard time watching them give her an epidural.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to either of us, but something about that procedure just messes with me. And then watching all of the videos about how intense labor is…let’s just say that I’m wondering a bit about how well I’ll do throughout the whole birth process. So when the instructor mentioned the option of having a doula, we both realized that might be a very wise thing for us. We don’t really know much about doulas, but will be checking with Sarah’s doctor when we see him on Monday.
At any rate – we’re still looking at a January 8th due date, but who knows…we’ll see what Caleb thinks about that.
Robert Mitchell says
We have had the same doula for all four of our birth’s. It was a compromise that I agreed to as Heather wanted to have home births. A doula is a great thing as the one that helped us had lots of experience in various positional techniques. She also would use pressure points at during labor to help focus Heather. With the last three pregnancy’s I wanted to pass on the doula to save the money but once we were in the labor and delivery room I was grateful to have the doula there to assist through each of the birth’s. I wish everyone could have that kind of assistance if a natural childbirth is preferred.
Lindsay Frank says
I’m so glad everything has gone well! I don’t know if you remember, but I wrote you a few months ago, I had a similar situation, water broke at 18 weeks with twins, they never found a reason, but one of the things they have thought it could be is incompetent cervix. I have been following your blog closely over these last few months and prayed everything goes well for you this time. It gives me hope and confidence that next time everything could be fine…sometimes random things happen, it doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong that will be a problem every time we get pregnant. Thank you again for writing this blog…it has helped me so much over these last 6 months. Good luck!