pleased

I actually forgot that I blogged about our switch in maternity care. Sooo...I had my appointment in Fort Smith. Beautiful. Dr. Rainwater actually had 2 cesareans and 2 VBACs in that order. She was unsuccessfully induced for her first and ended up with a cesarean, then elected to have a cesarean with her second. Her third labor happened spontaneously (which in the natural birth world is what we hippies prefer ...since I am such a hippy, right?!), and she had no choice but to deliver vaginally. She loved that she was back at the gym in two weeks (instead of limping around the house for 6...which TOTALLY sucks, BTW). She elected to go into spontaneous labor for her fourth and was again successful with a vaginal delivery. Woot. So I get to find strength in her success, it's quite empowering, my friends, quite empowering.

I have an ultrasound scheduled for Tuesday, so I'll have to remember to update, lol.

In other Noticias de Baby Sandor Numero Dos, we have added someone FABULOUS to our birth team. Her name is Tonia, and she is an OB RN at Washington Regional. She is also working on becoming a doula. Obviously, she has all the credentials and class credit; her issue in becoming fully certified is that it's very difficult for her to attend births that she is not nurse for. ...not crossing legal lines has been tricky. Our birth will be one that she will be able to attend as a doula, since we are not planning on delivering at WRMC.

Our plan as of right now is to head down to Fort Smith as soon as I have signs of labor (these were kind of sketchy 5 hours before active labor started with Abe, so we'll count on the idea that things will roll like they did with him and head down as soon as I suspect contractions at all). We'll labor in a hotel until I am between a 7 and a 10, depending on how I progress. Great news: I was only in active labor for 6 hours before things got bad with Abe, so I could hypothetically have a VERY short labor. We shall see. If the birth happens to move so quickly and I have him in the hotel, I have Mariah (who is a doula of 5 years and an apprentice midwife) AND Tonia there to take care of us. Good stuff. I still have all the stuff we didn't need from my homebirth "delivery package," so we'll just beef it up a bit and be ready to deliver there if that's what happens to happen.

All I can say is that I am so empowered and so inspired. God is good and has given us so much to look forward to -- good prenatal care and the promise of a healthy labor and delivery environment.