Home Visit & Pregnancy Update

The home visit went very well! Here's a brief (or maybe not-so-brief) re-cap for those of you who couldn't make it (we missed you!)

Midwife: Lynda Barton-Kirch, CNM (Certified Nurse Midwife) Lynda was a L&D nurse at Community North and Wishard for years before earning her Master's in midwifery. She's been involved in home births for over 13 years, including having one of her own babies at home.

Birth Assistant: Terry Blankenship Terry is a massage therapist, birth doula, hypnodoula, and she taught the Hypnobabies classes we took. Her main role will be to assist Lynda with whatever she needs, however she can also help Zach and I with our Hypnobabies stuff as a bonus!

Doula: Charity Reine Charity is a birth doula and her 3rd baby was born at home using Hypnobabies and having Terry as her Hypnodoula and Lynda as her midwife. She's also assisting Lynda in her office part-time this summer in order to eventually become a Birth Assistant and hopes to someday become a midwife herself!

That's our superstar birth team :)

The first part of the home visit was spent on introductions and a Q&A type of atmosphere with Lynda about home birth and with Terry about Hypnobabies. Then we went upstairs to the "birth suite" and Lynda took my blood pressure (98/64) and everyone got to listen to the heartbeat through the Doppler (high 120's to mid 130's, baby was calm). She didn't even bother measuring my fundus since at this point it has so much to do with baby's position that it can very by as much as 8cm just depending on how baby lays from 1 minute to the next! She's able to tell through palpation that fluid levels are fine, which we like to hear!

Then we went through the list of home birth supplies we've collected (towels, receiving blankets, peroxide, fish net, witch hazel, heating pad... lots of fun stuff) and showed Lynda where everything is being stored so she won't have to ask during the birthing time. She gave us a few supplies (sealed in sterile packaging of course) like the cord clamp (sooooo cute), bulb syringe, gloves and whatnot. Then we showed her around the rest of the house and made sure to point out the washer and dryer (they'll start a load before they leave, woohoo!).

After we all came downstairs Lynda gave me the Group Beta Strep kit and I swabbed myself (which was definitely nice than having to undress to let someone else do it when I'm totally capable!). We'll get those results sometime this week. If it's positive, I can opt to have an IV or injection of antibiotics once the birthing time is coming, or I can do a cleanse to get rid of the bacteria and test again. And we turned in our consent forms for baby care in the first 48 hours (in case anyone is curious, we're consenting to the vitamin k injection but refusing the antibiotics in baby's eyes, as those are to prevent infections in case mom has an STD, but I am STD-free, woohoo! We'll also be doing the standard metabolic screen at 48 hours).

That's really all there was to it! I'll be 37 weeks tomorrow (Wednesday), so we've got the green light to go ahead and get to birthing whenever baby is ready. Lynda attends home birth up to 43 weeks gestation, although I *doubt* I'll go that long. Lolli was born at 40 weeks, 4 days, not that that really means anything at all! Zach and I have a concert to go to in Cincinnati on June 29th, and I don't wanna miss it, so I don't plan to give birth before I hit 39 weeks :) Ha ha, we'll see what baby says about that. Our birth tub should come sometime in the next 2 weeks!

So anyway, everything is going really well and is as normal as can be. We got our house all in order and all of our big projects out of the way and we feel so prepared for the birth and having a newborn (well, as prepared as anyone can be!). I'm getting very sappy at the thought of having a tiny baby again; just the thought of holding her little baby booty makes me melt :)