We ♥ Baby!

Babycenter.com is a website I check every so often for updates on our little Bean’s development. Today, I came across this article about controversy over Ricky Lake’s movie about home birthing. Dan and I watched her documentary several weeks ago and thought it was great. Check out the trailer here:

If it weren’t for the medical industry being controlled by insurance companies, I would opt for a home birth. Alas, in order save money we’re going to be having the baby at the hospital. Luckily, the practice we chose has several midwives on staff. We’ve elected to get care from the midwives, which means that one of them will attend the birth, not an OB. At least we had that choice, as many do not.

But I digress! Not surprisingly, the AMA has come out and released an official statement about how the safest place for a woman to give birth is in the hospital and how when a woman chooses home birth, it increases her risk of hemorrhage, etc. I say HOGWASH! Of all developed countries, the US has the highest infant and maternal mortality rates, and as Ms. Lake so clearly points out, this is precisely because of hospital intervention. The countries with the lowest rates are the countries in which home births are standard. What’s more dangerous to women are unnecessary C-sections, episiotomies, etc. I was so pleased to see that the majority of the comments under the article on Babycenter.com supported this viewpoint! Score one for the little folk!

Dan and I both felt strongly that we wanted to find out the sex of our baby-to-be. And the ultrasound tech said she was about 90% sure that it was a girl. We could make out pretty clear labia at several points during the ultrasound (not pictured below). And although they can’t make any guarantees about the sex, Dan and I feel like this is probably right on. The first pronoun Dan spontaneously used (rather than saying ‘it’) was ’she.’ And although I wavered back and forth, I really trust his intuition. Turns out he was right!

The pictures so do not do this experience justice. It was so incredible to see our baby (an actual human!) squirm around throughout the course of the ultrasound. She moved her hands up by her head, flexed her legs and curled into a ball. It even looked like she put her thumb in her mouth and swallowed at one point. It was quite the surreal experience. The ultrasound tech took a bunch of measurements and then the OB looked the results over. Our sweet baby is growing right on schedule.

Now we’re charged with the task of choosing a name for our sweet little girl. Does she look like an Emily? An Emma? No? Good, we don’t think so either. We won’t be choosing a name from the top 10 of 2007 list. We do have a top-runner at this point, but Dan wants each of us to make a list of our favorite first and middle names, with any preferred combinations. Then, I’m told we’re going to cross reference the lists and we each have veto power over anything on each other’s lists. (That’s my methodical Dan for you.) We’ll see what we can do with the rest! Oh how exciting this is!

Dan and I both felt strongly that we wanted to find out the sex of our baby-to-be. And the ultrasound tech said she was about 90% sure that it was a girl. We could make out pretty clear labia at several points during the ultrasound (not pictured below). And although they can’t make any guarantees about the sex, Dan and I feel like this is probably right on. The first pronoun Dan spontaneously used (rather than saying ‘it’) was ’she.’ And although I wavered back and forth, I really trust his intuition. Turns out he was right!

The pictures so do not do this experience justice. It was so incredible to see our baby (an actual human!) squirm around throughout the course of the ultrasound. She moved her hands up by her head, flexed her legs and curled into a ball. It even looked like she put her thumb in her mouth and swallowed at one point. It was quite the surreal experience. The ultrasound tech took a bunch of measurements and then the OB looked the results over. Our sweet baby is growing right on schedule.

Now we’re charged with the task of choosing a name for our sweet little girl. Does she look like an Emily? An Emma? No? Good, we don’t think so either. We won’t be choosing a name from the top 10 of 2007 list. We do have a top-runner at this point, but Dan wants each of us to make a list of our favorite first and middle names, with any preferred combinations. Then, I’m told we’re going to cross reference the lists and we each have veto power over anything on each other’s lists. (That’s my methodical Dan for you.) We’ll see what we can do with the rest! Oh how exciting this is!

So, I work with kids between the ages of 0 and 12. I spend some time with them as I drive them to visits they have with their parents. (The kids I work with are living in some form of out-of-home placement.) The other day at work I was driving a six-year-old girl to the office to see her mom. I had just reminded her that I had to eat all the time because there’s a baby growing in my tummy. This six-year-old girl, who I’ll call Emily (not her real name), proceeded to tell me that my baby’s having a lot of fun in my tummy. This made me smile, which was great, because I’m not super fond of this girl. Don’t get me wrong, I adore a lot of the kids I work with, but some just get on your nerves more than others. She is one of those kids. Anyway, she continued:

Read the rest of this entry »