One more week

I have one more week of summer before classes start next Tuesday. As I think back on it, it's been a really good summer. I took two classes (4 more credits behindme--yay!), relaxed a lot, got to take two vacations to see family, and watched Abbie grow up sooo much. It's been so much fun watching her learn to stand on her own, stand up on her own (with toys in each hand for balance, of course!), and even start to walk! She's not a baby anymore--it's a little hard to accept. On the other hand, I am looking forward to having a new little baby in just a few months :-)

As much as I've loved this summer, I am really looking forward to starting classes next week. I'm taking Basic Christian Doctrines (Tuesday nights), which I'm expecting will give me a solid foundation in Wesleyan theology (a nice balance to my Calvinist college doctrines classes); Assessment Inventories in Counseling (Thursdays and Saturdays), and Crisis Counseling (Wednesday afternoons). I'm not that excited about Crisis, but Assessment sounds cool (in a nerdy way!). What I'm most looking forward to is the challenge of all this work during my last trimester of pregnancy. I think I can do it. I just hope Karis decides to wait until AFTER finals to be born!

Free stuff rocks!

I've gotten some pretty awesome free stuff lately, and it totally rocks! First of all, a friend from church dog- and house-sat for us for the entire week Matt and I were in Jersey. For free! Horray for awesome friends!

Second, at Mother Nurture's 2nd anniversary celebration a few weekends ago, I won a super awesome door prize: 12 one-size Bum Genius cloth diapers! Considering that the best price I could find for this quantity of diapers was over $200.00, this is a HUGE blessing! Also, these diapers keep Abbie dry, which is great because she's had mild diaper rash for a few days due to her orange juice consumption.

Third, on my way home from WalMart today, I decided to stop by Fazoli's for a few breadsticks. The drive-thru guy said it would be a few minutes because they had just put some fresh bread in to bake (no prob!!!! Even better!). When they were finally ready, the guy said "They put some extras in there for ya." I checked and saw... two extra free breadsticks! Score!

sweet kisses

Finally!

I felt the baby move for the first time last night! Wahoo!

The way it should be

Have you ever seen one of these before?

Neither had I until last night during our first prenatal appointment when Candace pulled this fetoscope out of her bag of tricks! Doesn't it look like a torture device?! When the baby gets bigger she'll use this to listen to his/her movements. We listened to the baby's heartbeat with a Doppler again and not only did we hear the heartbeat--we heard the placenta and the blood rushing through the umbilical cord! Candace explained everything we were hearing, which I really appreciated. The cord blood and the heartbeat sound very different. The cord blood is a whoosh whoosh sound, but the heartbeat actually sounds like a beat. We even heard the baby kick a few times (although I couldn't feel anything yet)--this one is feisty! When the baby finally held still, the beat was about 168--higher than last time, but that may have been because s/he was getting a workout trying to dodge the Doppler for five minutes. Candace also measured my fundal height and I was right on for 17 weeks.

We sat and talked for about and hour and a half and the best part was that this was all in our living room! I was laying on our couch listening to our baby's heartbeat--it was so relaxed and awesome! I feel so pampered having such personalized and gentle care. No rude nurses, no hospital gown, no cold plastic exam table with crinkly liners with Ortho Evra ads printed all over--just our comfy living room. We both love Candace and are even more excited for this birth after such a great visit!

Goodnight, angel

Good news on the midwife front!

We've found our midwife! It was love at first meeting :-) Her name is Candace and she's a CPM who's been practicing in central KY for nine years. She came to our house for an interview yesterday morning and we talking for over an hour! Her major emphasis is on prenatal care and building a relationship with the family that will allow her to do a "hand-off" birth--we do what we need to do; she acts as our guide. She's experienced with waterbirth, which is definitely a possibily for me; every woman I've talked to who was able to labor/birth in water says it was a great experience and really helped them relax. So besides for liking everything she had to say, it felt right. She had a very calm, strong presence and both Matt and I felt really comfortable with her.

I am getting more and more excited about this birth! A couple from church just had their baby this past weekend and Matt and I got to visit them in the hospital on Monday night. Just being in the hospital (not to mention hearing about the pitocin, the epidural, etc. etc.) made me not want to have any babies in a hospital ever again! Being there, I remembered a very strange feeling I had during our postpartum hospital stay that Abbie didn't quite belong to us. All the rules about when we could have her in our room, not being able to walk with her through the halls...I seemed like she was only half ours until we were on our way home--and then the feeling was scary and overwhelming! I can only imagine how awesome it's going to be to be at home through the whole labor and birth, and to be able to really bond with this new baby right from the very beginning. I imagine the whole experience being calm and quiet and happy. I'm so excited to feel the feeling of labor again--the rush of breaking waters, the powerful force of the contractions, the relief of finally needing to push, the baby's head crowning and finally being born! And I can't wait to ACTUALLY feel all of that this time, un-numbed! I really wonder if normal contractions are anything like pitocin contractions (which is all I experienced last time)--my guess is that they will be completely different, probably a lot more pleasant.

By the way, I'm currently reading Ina May's Guide to Childbirth, which is really inspiring! Ina May Gaskin is a big name in the midwifery world (she was in The Business of Being Born, which I highly recommend!) and I really like most of what she has to say. She is so respectful of women's bodies and our ability to birth our babies, which of course, I can't get enough of!