Zatera Ul

I don’t put much stock in the baby’s actual due date. OLC came at 42 weeks and 3 days, and wasn’t postmature at all. (On some of the hospital paperwork, they even put her down as “39 weeks”–I have no idea why.) For home birth purposes here, my midwife can attend births from 37 weeks through 42 weeks–the difference between the two is more than a month. So I think more in terms of a due month, where the baby could come at any time. In OLC’s case. the extra weeks of waiting were difficult, but all the extra prelabor paid off in a very easy labor. (I wish that labor went that smoothly for everyone.) An induction would have been a lot more pain for really no gain.

We have most of our home birth preparations in place now. Our midwife has a preselected birth supply kit at Cascade. Then we ordered a tub liner in case I end up using her birth tub. The rest we ran around for last weekend and bought locally–things like extra trash bags, an RV water hose for filling the birth tub, a plastic dropcloth* to protect the bed (with a thrift store sheet over it), hydrogen peroxide, etc. This all fits in a medium-size box. Then, of course, lots of snack foods and electrolyte drinks for labor and postpartum. Also, all the ingredients to make two double batches of boeuf bourguignon for the freezer–we have no intention of starving like we did last time for the first few days.

It looks like we will have a doula come to help take care of OLC during the birth, or trade off with MFH for labor support. I really don’t want to send OLC away for the labor, and would like her to be present at the birth if possible. We’ve been reading Welcome with Love from the library, a children’s book about a home birth. Though it bugs me a little that the mom in the story is a LOT more vocal in labor than I was last time.

I am hoping that the baby waits at least two more weeks to be born–partly to be more definitely “fully cooked”, but also so that my broken finger (whacked by a plank in a toddler-precipitated mishap; I am stubbornly self-treating it) has more time to heal before the birth.

*There are various options for home birth bed protection: mattress protector, shower curtain liner, plastic tablecloth, plastic dropcloth. But the dropcloth price is pretty hard to beat: $1.19 for a 9 foot by 12 foot dropcloth.