Monday, June 15, 2009

Lots Happening

This has been a week of milestones.

  • We decided where to deliver the baby. There are only two places that our midwife delivers. They are both about 10 to 15 minutes away, so distance wasn't a big factor. One of them is an older hospital, but is known for having a fantastic, level 4 NICU. Although the care is top-notch, since it's an older hospital, they don't have a lot of the amenities of newer hospitals. The biggest drawback for me was that they have you labor and deliver in one room, then switch to another for the remainder of your stay. Within two hours of delivering, you have to switch to a "mother and baby room." The other hospital only has a few beds in their NICU and is a level 3, but it's a much newer hospital. They have the space to allow you to labor, deliver, and recover in one room. In other words, once I get into the labor room, I'll be there for my entire stay. I also really like it that they have a "Baby First" program, which means that they immediately place the baby on mom's chest after it's born. Rather than keeping baby under a warmer for measurements, apgars, etc., all of that is done while baby rests on mom. The hospital's policy is to keep visitors and nonessential medical personnell out of the room for the first 90 minutes after birth. I really like the idea that Brett and I will be able to spend some special time with the baby before the flood of visitors starts trickling in. Ultimately, we decided to have the baby at the newer hospital. If anything's wrong with the baby, they can stabilize him/her and transfer to the level 4 NICU.
  • Friday was the first day I wore maternity clothes. It was probably a tad premature, especially since I'm back in regular clothes plus a Bella Band today. I was just so frustrated with my clothes by the end of last week. Case in point, I was planning to wear pants, a tank, and a cardigan one day last week. Unsurprisingly, the pants were too tight, so I added on the Bella Band. Then, my boobs were too big to continue squeezing into my tank top, so I added a camisole below my tank top. On my top half, I was wearing a bra, two tanks tops, and a cardigan. On my bottom half, pants and a Bella Band. This just seemed like too much clothing to keep straigthened up for the whole day. On Friday I gave in and spent a glorious day feeling comfortable. I'll probably make the switch for good in the next week or two.
  • We started on the nursery! Well, kind of. We cleared out the nursery, which used to be our guest room and turned our office into the new guest room. I am very wishy-washy about what I want the nursery to look like. Here's what I know -- it's got to be gender neutral for obvious reasons. The walls are currently a soft green and I'd like to keep them that way because it's not safe for me to paint and I'm our family's official painter, so Brett probably wouldn't be able to do it alone. We bought a dresser/changing table in a light wood tone, so it looks like we'll be sticking with that wood tone. We bought the dresser last weekend when a very posh part of town was having their neighborhood garage sale. It's a Ragazzi three drawer dresser with a side cabinet for diapers. It also came with a hutch to attach to the top. The woman who sold it said they spent over $1,000 for it, but we got it for $150. It really look gorgeous in the room -- I'll try to post pictures. Aside from these things, I don't know what to do for the nursery. I keep looking online for bedding or samples to inspire me, but nothing yet.

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