Pregnancy Update

Tomorrow marks my 35th week of being pregnant. It's been fun, exhausting, painful, awkward, and emotional but most of all,  such a gift. 

Life is accelerating toward Ava's coming at a speed that's causing me to clutch the proverbial door handle. We've had three sweet baby showers where our friends and family generously helped us prepare for Ava's arrival. 

Then we had our first birth class. Our Doula/birth coach is awesome. Brian and I are incredibly thankful to have found her and feel so much more at peace about this whole process with her help. She is a believer who does birth coaching as a ministry for no charge. She's worked with our doctor many times before and they both have a great amount of respect for one another. Last week she gave me the homework of walking 30 minutes a day. That sounds easy enough, but it's proved to be a challenge when I have to head back to the house every 6 minutes to pee.

Today we made our pre-admission arrangements with the hospital (billing, birth plan, legal stuff). Everyone was competent and professional, but I did pick up a lot "drug pusher" vibes. 

I'm not trying to be a martyr and if I have to have some pain intervention it won't be the end of the world, but I'd really like to avoid that. I'd also like to avoid the nursing staff asking me what my pain level is on a scale of 1-10 throughout labor. If I need something for the pain, I'll ask. And even though I wrote that very plainly in my birth plan the nurse explained to me how the scale works (1= uncomfortable - 10=feel like you're having surgery without anesthesia) and told me they would be checking in with me about my pain levels from time to time and needed to know at what number from 1-10 I would like meds. I told her that I could be at a 10 and still not want meds. I don't think she liked my answer. Then she went through the list of the possible drugs I could be given and some of the ones she went through weren't presented as optional. 

One thing I've learned during this pregnancy is that it doesn't do a lot of good to let your alternative medicine flag fly in these situations. It can come across as disrespectful to their profession or just make you seem hard to get along with and both are counter-productive. So I'll wait and talk to my doctor next week about drug concerns. He tells me that if he were giving birth, he'd want the epidural but as long as I'm healthy I can give birth however I want. He's not a control-freak and he's not out to make it easier on himself- such a blessing!

I guess that's all there is to update on for now.