Charles and Christy’s Weblog

So, Charles and I are expecting a baby in mid-March. When we found this out back in July, our goal was to be as relaxed and casual about this pregnancy thing as possible. My philosophy was that if I was relaxed (and I’m not always so relaxed) that we would be more likely to have a Zen-like child rather than a Tasmanian devil-like child. I think it also took us a long time to start accepting how much our life is going to change… not that we didn’t want this… but we have a pretty nice life as DINKs. We knew we needed to see a doctor, confirm the pregnancy, and do all the other tests that doctors do… so Charles asked one of his colleagues for a OB/GYN reference (I wasn’t quite ready to tell anyone at work yet). We didn’t even check around. We made an appointment with the suggested doctor at the suggested clinic who only delivers at one hospital without even considering the longer term implications of this. I just assumed I’d want a doctor (instead of a midwife) for a first baby… I’m not sure why. So, we started going to the doctor regularly… she was nice enough but a little cold. We toured the hospital… it was nice enough but a little cold (with a disproportionate number of birth interventions!). Even when I started to think that maybe the doctor and the hospital weren’t the best match for us, I still didn’t really consider switching because I knew it would be a pain and I HATE dealing with insurance issues.

Fast forward to me being 32 weeks along… and it did go fast… our doula (yes, we’re “granola-y” enough to have a doula yet didn’t consider a midwife, go figure) asked me why we were using a traditional doctor at a hospital where our chances for a natural birth experience were greatly compromised when it was clear we were hoping for a natural birth. She suggested I consider changing. So, this week I’ve been trying to convince a midwife clinic to take me on as a client even though I’m at nearly 33 weeks. Thankfully, I’ve had such an uneventful pregnancy that this is a possibility. I have to switch my insurance in order to do this… and today is the last day I can do this. Hopefully, it will all work out and we’ll end up with the birth experience we’re hoping for.

I wish that we’d had enough insight (and guts) to think about this last July. That’s really tough though because you don’t really know enough about what you want or what your options are until this huge event is quickly approaching. Also, if you’re in denial about the amount of work you need to do and the number of decisions you have to make (like we were), you can’t even identify your ideal situation and work towards it. I knew I had the potential to be that “over achiever” expectant mom who read everything and couldn’t think about anything else… and I didn’t want to do that too early because then I knew I’d just be sitting around waiting for the kid to arrive. I guess I should have found a gray area between the extremes. In the end, it might all work out just like we want it to… now we just have to start working on daycare, pediatrician, etc… and we’ve learned our lesson about making these decisions too lightly.