We decided to work with a doula!

Well, this was actually a very serendipitous happening.  One of our good friend's, who also happens to be pregnant and about a week further along, has a sister who is working to become a certified doula.  In order to earn her certification she has to attend a certain number of births first, so we invited her to join us as a support.  I'm really glad that we will have her there.  It makes me feel much more comfortable to know that Loren and I will have someone in the room who is very knowledgeable about different birthing positions, techniques and the process.  She will be able to guide Loren in supporting me and help me to remember to try different coping techniques.  I've read about a million books, web articles, blogs, etc, but I am most confident that I will forget everything as soon as we arrive at the hospital.  Hospitals make me uncomfortable and nervous to begin with, and I think that being in so much pain will cause everything I've learned to go right out the window.  Since she is not a close friend or family member, the labor will still be all about Loren and I working through it together, but she will be there to offer reminders and help support.

Here Dad: Info on what a doula is

Natural vs. Medicated:

While I've obviously navigated away from having a home birth, I still want to try to do things as naturally as possible for as long as possible. I'm not shut down to the idea of an epidural, but want to try to manage the pain on my own for as long as possible before it just turns into a traumatic experience.  My mom had both my brother and I without an epidural.  I was a tiny baby (5.9 lbs and 3 weeks early).  Michael was a 9+lb baby and broke her tail bone on the way out.  No epidural.  Apparently she went into labor 5 weeks early with him.  The doctors made the labor stop and he got over baked.  I'm hoping that her ability to go into early labor will be something that passed along to me.  I just want to make it to 37 weeks, which will be next week, and then we are good to go! ...Unoptimistically, Loren was 3 weeks late and had the biggest head the doctor had ever seen.  SCARY!

Home vs. Hospital:

We will be giving birth at Swedish on 1st Hill.  I was impressed after we took a tour.  It has been interesting to start to pull together all the things I've been reading with what we are starting to experience.  As I suspected, the hospitals in this area are totally up on best practices and a lot of the fears that are evoked by the Ina May and home birth books I have been reading are a bit out dated.  Everything we heard from the woman who ran the tour of Swedish was right on with what I/we want, so I feel much more comfortable with the whole hospital thing.

**Why we chose not to do a home birth:

1) Way too scary and unpredictable for me for the first time around
2) We are in a rental house and even though I really like it here, it's not a super special place
3) The bathtub in this house is absolutely disgusting, despite scrubbing and scrubbing, I wouldn't feel like it was clean enough
4) I don't want to ruin either of our mattresses
5) I would like to know that I have access to pain medication if I decide I want to use it