Reality checks

I asked my mom via email recently if she'd had all natural births or drugs. My mom had four pregnancies and four healthy babies (a source of some jealousy and bitterness for me when I lost my first) but I didn't know much beyond that. She said that with me (the first), she had a 14 hour labor and no drugs, with the exception of pitocin to speed things up. She had a midwife and had taken a childbirth class, which in 1978 was totally counterculture and had to be done on the down low. With the next baby, she decided if she needed an epi she'd get it, so she did, and had an easy labor. With the third, she asked for an epi but labor went so quickly that there was no time before my brother arrived. And with the last, mom was in labor for 36 hours (!!!) and definitely got the epi.

I do want to try to have a natural birth. I haven't even researched my options that much yet - just read the birth sections of the Mayo Clinic and What to Expect books - but my initial instinct is that I'm much more afraid of being numbed and losing control of my body than I am of pain. When I miscarried at home, I experienced the worst physical pain in my life, but I was also losing a baby - the mental anguish made the pain so much worse. I feel that as long as I had people there encouraging me and telling me that things were going fine, I could bear the pain of childbirth. If it came down to it, I'd rather take an analgesic than have an epidural during labor. But I will say that the figure we were given about the number of women who get the epi - 92% at our hospital - is rather daunting.

Sometimes now when I look at my body in the mirror, I experience a brief shock of realization that I'm actually really going to grow a full term baby inside my body. And after that: we're going to have a real, live baby. It sends me reeling to think about it. Sometimes I suddenly feel afraid about the whole venture - am I going to handle pregnancy well, am I going to stay healthy, and (perhaps most frighteningly) am I going to be able to keep working or am I living in a dreamland about what I'm capable of doing while pregnant? Quitting work is NOT an option for me. Every dime of what we can save between now and January will be going toward my "maternity leave." It's a little scary.

When I really feel overwhelmed about the whole situation, I play "worst case scenario." Worst case scenario: we run up a bunch of debt, we lose our house, we move in with my in-laws. Obviously that would be a big deal and would suck, but I would still have my husband and my oh-so-wanted child. Things are just things, ultimately. Money is just money.

Anyway. I have a regular OB appointment this afternoon. I'm going to work half a day first. It'll probably just be blood pressure, pee in a cup, height of fundus (measuring the ute), and listen to the heartbeat. Mr. Ibis is going to skip it, since he has missed a lot of work lately between my doctor's appointments and his for his head injury. Even now, though I am in second tri and everything has gone great so far, I still feel nervous that we will look for the heartbeat and not find it - that fear will probably never go away. But I just tuck it back in a corner of my mind and go on about my day until I get to the appointment.