January Midwife Visit & A Call for Your Used Baby Stuff! February 1, 2009

We had our 4th month visit, this time with a midwife.  We are now unsure if we are going to stick with the midwives or not.  Our practice has about 7 doctors and 6 midwives attached to it.  So far we have seen two docs and decided to switch to the midwives as it is our hope to have a less medicalized birth, if possible.  We found out during our visit that the midwives only work M-F, ten hours a day.  I recently read that most women seem to go into labor over the evening. The author hypothesized that this nocturnal labor was an evolutionary measure to protect the mother and baby. But depending on the length of the labor, we could be with the midwives anyway.  It’s a tough call.

At this visit aside from asking questions such as “Is it okay that I’m in the beginning of my fifth month and haven’t gained any weight?” “Why can’t I sleep at night?” and “When can’t I lay on my back anymore?”  The midwife didn’t care about weight gain, she focused on what I was eating and making sure I wasn’t dieting (nope!). I probably can’t sleep because the hormones can do that to you or because some part of my brain is preparing to become a mom (huh?). And soon I’ll need to stay off my back (not as big a deal as I’m a side sleeper)./

We’ve already had two ultrasounds (and seen the tiny heart beating) but this time she pulled out the Fetal Doppler Heart Monitor.  We could hear the heart beating and hear when s/he moved! At this time I told her how on the way to prenatal yoga, I felt a tiny fluttering.  It was raining really hard and I was leaving work. I was driving past the hospital when I felt the fluttering (it was like if you take two fingers and drum it on your arm). It was funny because I had to turn down NPR so I could “hear” it better.  I told her I had felt something and she did the same exact thing  to me that I had done to Jim to explain it (the two drumming fingers). Exciting!

One thing that disappointed us was that she blurted out that we were having a girl.  Now I’ve read that some people try to guess the sex based on the # of heartbeats/minute. I’ve also read how inaccurate that is. We have decided we don’t want to know the sex until his/her birthday. So Jim informs her that her way is wildly inaccurate. She said it was also based on how I was carrying and my food cravings (which we didn’t discuss since I haven’t had any).  Bah! Hullabaloo!

We have an ultrasound tomorrow.  This is the 18 week anatomy scan where they will look at the organs, heart chambers, etc to look for any abnormalities.  If the baby complies this is a chance to find out the sex too.  We’ll have to make sure we tell the technician to keep silent on the sex.  I’ll post the pictures next week!

On other fronts, as you can probably guess, we are going used/cheap for everything.  We just snagged a crib for $30!  The first thing Jim bought was a Kolcraft Universal Infant Car Seat Carrier for $30. So now we have two things! We had only planned to get two new things: a crib mattress as we wanted an organic one and a car seat.  We’ve talked ourselves out of both. We really want to avoid anything treated with flame retardants, which means all new clothes/mattresses/etc. But used things also have time to off-gas/rub off/etc.  So we’ve decided this is the best course of action.  So this is our call for any used baby gear you are willing to give or lend to us. We don’t care what gender it is “supposed” to be for.  Earn good karma points!