Sophie was born on the 2nd day of the new moon, just like Christopher and Matthew were.

Since she’s been born, we have been calling her “Baby Gene” or joking that Gene Simmons is her real daddy because this little girl seriously has a giraffe tongue. This is a HUGE change from my other babies, who were tongue tied. Today they had a marathon of the reality show “Gene Simmons’ Family Jewels” so Bobby and I decided to watch it since nothing else was on. Bobby and I both really enjoyed it, but had to laugh when we learned that his own daughter’s name is also Sophie. I guess Sophia *IS* Gene Simmons’ daughter after all, just not *my* Sophie.

I was running a 102.5 temp last nigh, so I called my midwife for advice. She told me she does not mess around with things that could require antibiotics and advised I see my primary care doc.

Well, my primary care doc closes early on Fridays, and they told me I should see “my OB”, well since I did not have one, I called the practice I used for half my pregnancy, and they also would not see me since “I left them for a home birth“. So we decided to head to Urgent Care…. Well, they thought it could be something more serious than their scope of care, so they sent me to the ER. The ER took blood, urine, and did an ultrasound and could not tell me *why* I had a fever, but gave me antibiotics and told me the OB they consulted with wants to see me next week for my follow-up.

Who is the doctor who wanted to see me next week? The OB’s office who handled half my pregnancy and refused to see me in the first place! Go figure, huh?

Tomorrow I will be 38 weeks pregnant. Wow. I have 15 more days until my due date, which means I *should* have my baby in my arms within the next 29 days. Hopefully sooner than later, come on out little lady, mama wants to meet you! I am so crampy.

Sabin is still missing, we are now on day 5. I have filed a report with the humane society (and looked at all the kitties to see if he was there), contacted the company he is microchipped through. Talked to neighbors, call for him daily, Bobby walks the block with a flashlight each night after sunset. I set out some smelly food, but a neighbor kitty ate it all up. Now we just wait, and hope, that he finds his way home soon.

I had my home visit with my midwife on Tuesday, all is well and she seemed to get along well with Bobby. She told me that they way I was coughing, she could tell I did not read the manual that states I am not allowed to get sick at the end of pregnancy. LOL I am feeling a little better today, so hopefully I am not coughing when I am pushing.

The older boys only have a week left of school before summer vacation, I am really looking forward to having them home to help. Usually I dread it because they get *so bored*, but they are older and more mature and are SO helpful around the house.

My mom is coming to visit in 2 1/2 weeks, I am so excited to see her, it has been 3 years since her last visit at my house. Normally we all drive up to visit her since all my family is up north and I can visit everyone.

Bobby’s boss is coming next week to visit him from Texas. I told him I will try to wait until after his boss leaves and after the kids are out of school to have this little one, which is May 23rd, but realistically, this will probably be a June baby. I am just hoping she decides to come sooner than later so Grandma can meet her.

What an odd day.

Yesterday it was 80 degrees, freaking ROASTING hot and beautiful. I noticed our trees all had little blossoms on them and the kids were having a blast playing outside.

Today, DH brings Matthew to our bed at 6am, he is feverish and sick. On his way to work he tells me “make sure you bundle up Mr. Sick when you go outside, it is snowing” It is WHAT!?!?! It is May and it is snowing? WTH!

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Mr. Sick laid in bed with me cuddling until 2:30, poor little guy is leaking snot and has a low grade fever. Around 5 he comes running around the corner saying “I am a pirate!” And then runs screaming into the other room, and then comes running back again…. his fever has finally broke.

***

On the way home from getting Austin from school, I decided to drive to Starbucks and get a Mommy’s Little Helper AKA a Venti Chai Tea Latte and I get up to the window with my $4 and the girl hands me my tea. The second lady says “Oh crap” and the first girl says “Oh wait, I think we need to trade” and the second lady says “no, we made an extra” so the first girl goes “want a free tea? We will just dump it so you can have it!” Hell yeah! I empty out my change container from my van into the tip jar and drive off.

***

Bobby is getting ready to go to the premiere of Iron Man with a friend…. what a dork!

I made my dad’s famous red beans and rice recipe tonight and it could not have tasted better, it was so yummy and SO filling. I doubled the recipe because I figured my little boys would not be full on just the normal serving amount, so I doubled the recipe… wow, talk about a cheap way to have TWO meals! They ate exactly one of the two casserole dishes and were full, so the second one went right into the freezer for an easy way to come up with a hearty, healthy meal for after I have the baby.

I also doubled the corn bread recipe so we can have it tomorrow with our chili, which I am hoping yields the same overabundance to make enough for a second meal. Each meal I am able to freeze will just be one less meal I need to burden Bobby with, or one less meal we might get from the drive through. I have to tell you, making 2 cups of rice instead of 1 was not any extra work, but it will save me the time it took tonight to make two meals later down the road.

My beans for chili are already soaking tonight and I am hoping I can get it into the slow cooker before my prenatal appointment tomorrow with my midwife so I have the crock pot doing the work while I am away.

…but in one fell swoop today, I lost some major stressors and gained some minor ones.

No more concerns about what I feel is a faulty diagnosis of Gestational diabetes (Why I feel that way, summed up here by Henci Goer)

No more worry about who will watch my kids while I am in the hospital

No more stress of disagreeing with how over-managed my care has been (I have had TEN ultrasounds already, YIKES!!!)

No more stress about declining hospital policies I do not agree with (IV, continuous fetal monitoring, being pushed into an epidural)

No more stress about creeping suspicion that my hospital midwife was planning on finding an excuse to induce me at 38 weeks (weekly appointments scheduled once a week, months in advance that suddenly ceased at 38 weeks)

No more stress that cesarean sections kept being brought up in my appointments

No more hour long appointments EVERY SINGLE WEEK with me either under an ultrasound wand, or strapped to a monitor

No more stress from being told I could decline certain tests because they were unnecessary to being told suddenly it was no longer OK

No more being ignored when the NST monitor does not pick up the heartbeat because a wiggly baby and the alarm sounds for 5 minutes freaking out my 3 yr old, and then being ignored for 5-10 minutes after my timer goes off

No more freaking out about not liking the idea of driving 30 minutes to the hospital (I have two within minutes of my house, but not where my hospital midwife delivers)

And no more stressing about NOT wanting an OB again for as long as I shall live, and suddenly being forced to accept one

So after the last disastrous week being told that the last hospital midwife in town will not deliver me, I had a good cry, a ton of meditation, a lot of talking, a ton of additional research, and more prayer than I think I have ever done in my life, I decided I was going to seek out a home birth midwife. During this pregnancy, I have spoken with several midwives in town, all were in agreement that nothing in my past or present pregnancies makes me fall outside of the limits of the 95-98% of pregnant women who are good candidates for home birth. Not that, but the #1 most important job of a HB MW is not to catch the baby, but to know if a woman needs to be transfered to the hospital. From what I have read, 10-12% of women who start at home, will end up transfering. However less than 4% of those women who plan a homebirth will end up with a cesarean… compare that to a US average of over 30%. Is it a wonder why the US has some of the highest mortality rates in the WORLD?? This pamphlet, while hard to read because of the format, makes some wonderful points and quotes some wonderful studies.

So some minor stressors include:

Not everyone in my support circle are supportive

I now have another bill I will have to pay, although I have to say the HB MW is being VERY cool about it

Bobby and I are not in agreement about wanting the kids at the birth, although he has agreed to allow them, IF they want to be there

There is always the slight chance of being transfered, and in quite a few cases I have heard of medical staff not being very nice to women or their babies in cases where a homebirth attempt was made

I am worried about silly things, like homebirth etiquette and making sure everyone here has food to eat

I am worried about disappointing the staff at my old office, even though nothing they do or say will make me stay

So really, the “pros vs cons” list, no match-up whatsoever, especially so many of my worries of a hospital birth lead the things like a cesarean, which I just DO NOT have time to recover from with 3 active boys and a new baby girl.

Ahhh, the catch phrase. This is the single most annoying thing you child says over and over and over and over and over. It’s the phrase you repeat years after they have grown past it; Christopher’s was “I can stand on one foot”. He said that when he was 4, any time he felt it was too quiet, you know because silence to kids is an opportunity to annoy. Even though he is now 6, Bobby and I will sometimes lovingly look at each other and utter the annoying “I can stand on one foot” just to make the other one giggle.

Well, thanks to a segment on Noggin, a pre-school children’s channel, Matthew has picked up the very pleasant question, “what is your name?” and will ask us at least 1,390,874 times a day. “Hey Mommy, what is your name?” “My name is Ima Going Crazy Matthew, what is yours?”

So this morning, in true Matthew fashion, within I would say 5 minutes of waking, this little conversation takes place:

Matthew: “Mommy, what is your name?”
Me: “Mommy”
Matthew: “No, your name BOOBS!”
Me: “What??”
Matthew: “Booooooobs”
Me: giggling now “did you say boots?”
Matthew: “Yes! Boots! And my name Dora” He then runs off to go play.

I have to say, normally he annunciates ‘Boots’ just fine, apparently his tongue had not woken up yet.

So, what’s your name??

A comedian once taught me that you can get away with saying anything about anyone, as long as you follow it with “bless their heart” and it is no longer insulting.

So, my husband is a big old dork bless his heart…

I have three cats, these cats are not very patient with our dirty clothes if they have dirty litter boxes. If you leave a dirty shirt on the laundry room floor (this ONLY happens in the basement) they have been known to use the said article of clothing as their own litter box. This is why I have covered hampers.

Well the other day, DH is laying on the bed complaining that one of the cats has peed in our room. Knowing this would be a HUGE issue if they did, I set my already sensitive nose to high and start sniffing around the room. I cannot smell said offensive smell anywhere so I go smell DH’s blanket, which is clean, and on a whim decide to smell DH’s shirt, which did smell like cat urine. Between fits of laughter DH figured out I was telling him it was his shirt and removed it at lightening speed. He then replies, I kid you not, “no wonder I have been smelling it all day!” I took all my couth to keep from dropping to the floor and rolling around in a fit of hysteria. I can’t explain HOW my darling husband was exposed to a toxic shirt, but I theorize it probably was in a basket of folded or to-be folded laundry assigned to my two oldest children and rather than taking care of it promptly they left it in the laundry room and my kitties though “hey, a new litter box! This one smells better than my own” and then the offending article was folded and placed in his drawer to later be worn and offend the wearer’s senses.

So my husband is a dork, bless his heart and I am sure you will all agree.

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Now playing: Grateful Dead - Truckin’
via FoxyTunes

…and my husband really is not helping!

He called this morning to say “what if you can’t see the gender, $100 is a lot to spend on a ‘what if’ and chances are the baby won’t cooperate”. Thanks dear, this is the first time I have thought that. I keep telling myself that the receptionist said that 90% of the time the tech can see the goodies and tell you what you are having at 20 weeks and reports say that 16 week (I will be 17 on Friday) gender ultrasounds are usually just as good as 20 weeks for telling gender. Medical professionals chose to wait to 20 because the parts they care about, like the heart, stomach, kidneys, etc are easier to see at 20 weeks.

I am trying very hard to stay calm in all this while trying to pass time until 11am when I can go get Austin from school. I am thinking about heading to the library to return books and look for new ones, but it is so cold out there, I hate dragging Matthew out into it before it has a chance to warm up. I also need to go get fish food and clean up around the house, but I just can’t get myself going this morning.

I had so many strange dreams last night that it seemed to me I was up half the night, most of the dreams seemed to point out that this baby is a boy, where others were of a girl, so geez I have NO CLUE what this kid could be. When I woke up this morning I was so wide awake I just got up and showered knowing I would not be able to go back to sleep. I wish I could have because now I am feeling sleepy and my moms words keep coming back to me if you go to sleep, the time will pass faster, however I have a two year old who I know will NOT enjoy me taking a nap.

What I would not give right now to have someone come over right now and keep my company while I clean my kitchen, that is what I want most of all, someone to help me pass the time.

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Now playing: Leonard Cohen - Woke Up This Morning
via FoxyTunes

My check engine light just came on… again. It keeps getting better and better!