Home Birth

As my due date approaches, we're getting prepared for our first home birth experience. We had to purchase a birth kit with all sorts of goodies in it (pictured below), and several other supplies. It's definitely a different experience preparing for a home birth rather than a hospital birth.

When I tell people I'm having a home birth, 90% of the time their response is "you're so brave!" Now, I've come to realize they generally mean one or both of 2 things-- #1: "I can't believe you're not going to take the drugs!", and #2: "I can't believe you're going to risk your life and the life of your baby like that!"

Of course I have my reasons for choosing a home birth--I'd love to share them with anybody who's interested. However, for those of you questioning my sanity and/or concerned about our safety (which I do appreciate), please rest assured that we did plenty of research into the safety of home birth, as well as plenty of praying, before making our decision. Study after study has shown that home births are just as safe as (and in some cases, even safer than) hospital births for low-risk pregnancies.

My mom had all 6 of her children at home, so a home birth wasn't ever a strange concept for me, but it was a pretty foreign idea to Jarett at first. Once I told him I wanted to think about having our baby at home, he spent the next few days researching all he could about safety concerns. He also met with the midwife I was planning on using and drilled her on all of the "what if's" he could think of, and how she would handle them. I won't go into detail about what he learned, but in the end I guess you could call him converted. :)

Statistically speaking, there is still a 5% chance I'll end up having to go to the hospital for one reason or another, so I'm not ruling out the possibility. But I'm very much looking forward to (hopefully) welcoming our new little one into the world in the comfort of our own home.

Happy Halloween!

Here's our little monkey on Halloween. It was Bryce's first experience with trick-or-treating, and he did pretty well for the most part. We just took him to a few houses up and down our street. On the way to each house we'd practice saying "trick or treat!" and he'd say it great for us. But each time we got to a door for some reason all he'd say was "please." Oh well, at least he was polite.

After we went trick-or-treating we went down to my mom's house and Bryce saw his little cousins, Myah and Hailey for a while. Aren't they adorable?

I worked at WIC Halloween day, and when I got there everyone was dressed up in costumes. My fellow employees had forgotten to tell me that I was supposed to come dressed up (I often miss news like that since I work so few hours), but luckily someone had brought some extra costumes. Of course most wouldn't fit over my enormous belly, but I found a cape and one of the ladies made me a "Super Mom" badge for my belly.