This week has been … challenging.
After several weeks of feeling relatively okay (compared to the first 6 months of my pregnancy), I was suddenly stricken with nausea the likes I haven’t experienced since early in my first trimester. My midwife says it’s perfectly normal for some women to experience a resurgence of “morning” sickness in the final stages of pregnancy. And of course after my 6 months of nausea in the beginning, I’m one of the lucky women who gets more nausea at the end. Yay me!
All I wanted was to lie around listening to sad music and feeling sorry for myself. But unfortunately, I was up against a deadline for a huge freelance project. So this week has been full of stress and sickness and working anyway. Boo.
This week also marked the beginning of our hospital childbirth class. Since I’m planning an unmedicated birth, I was really nervous about the hospital class. Several natural birth resources advised me to skip it, saying it would only pump my head full of fear with talk of pain and pain medication and C-sections. We decided to take the class anyway, because I wanted to know what I’m up against. If my hospital wasn’t going to be natural birth friendly, I wanted to prepare myself.
I was so relieved to discover that everything I heard about hospital birth classes couldn’t be further from the reality of this class. The hospital I’ve chosen is incredibly natural-birth friendly. One of the few in my state certified baby-friendly based on guidelines set forth by UNICEF and the World Health Organization, the hospital I chose has an astonishingly low epidural rate (under 40%!). So far the class has focused on natural pain management techniques. I’m sure we’ll discuss medicinal approaches at some point, but they don’t seem to assume that every woman will show up looking for the drugs.
Because they’re baby friendly, most of the hospital’s standard policies are also very natural-birth friendly. Their policies combined with my midwife’s low-intervention approach makes me very optimistic about my birth.
My friend Kacie, who’s due with her second baby in December, posted her to-do-before-baby list on her blog today, and it reminded me just how little time I have left. My due date is in roughly two months. I still have diapers to buy, freezer cooking to do (thanks for your suggestions, by the way! I’ll be writing more on that later), deep cleaning in my apartment to tackle, and a baby quilt to finish.
Oh! And then there’s the tiny little task of setting up the nursery, which we haven’t even begun. It’s going to be a busy couple of months, for sure. Once I finish a major writing project that I’m working on, I’m thinking I’ll take some time off from freelancing to prepare for baby and rest up. I just hope my body cooperates, and I don’t lose too many days to nausea.
Despite the long, grueling week that’s almost behind me, there’s a light at the end of it. This weekend we’re headed to my parents’ house to celebrate my baby shower and my birthday on Sunday. I’ll be 26 years old. Eep. The second half of my 20s! Where has the time gone?
Safe travels and Happy Birthday. Don’t worry, you will get things done. It will all fall into place. :)