Beckett Part 3

We ordered our birth kit (which has a lot of the disposable items in it that you will need for a birth), and set up our weekly appointments. At our first weekly appointment, my belly was measuring small. Our midwives ordered an ultrasound to check that everything was okay. As it tuns out Beckett was extremely low, but perfect so while we (I) was really stressed about my belly measuring small leading up to the ultrasound (hate google!), we were good to go. The ultrasound tech did say that his head was huge...but Owen had a huge head too, so that wasn't anything unexpected.

At 37 weeks we had our home visit. This is where the midwives make sure they can find your house, and get oriented with where things are in general so they don't come into it blind.  They also gave us a list of things they would need us to get together. We met their apprentice, Leslie, at this visit too. Everyone involved in our birth was really awesome and positive. We could not have had a better group of people at our birth. At this visit they also gave us another intimidating piece of paper. It was a yellow sheet of paper that we needed to put on the fridge and it listed emergency contacts and the hospital we would want to go to if anything went wrong. No matter how much you tell yourself nothing will go wrong, there's an evil little part of your brain that just keeps making you have this small piece of doubt. At this visit we opted to do the Group B Strep test as well. Then that evil little part of my brain got a win because at 37 weeks we tested positive for GBS. Just when we were getting really excited and feeling good about our Homebirth, we got knocked back some. Now if we did have to go to the hospital, I would definitely be given an IV and put on antibiotics that can really mess up your stomach and can effect the baby's stomach. GBS can cause serious complications in a newborn. Luke and I debated what to do. Should we transfer out? We needed to know what the odds were that this could effect Beckett. We also needed to know how effective a natural treatment could be. As it turns out there are some pretty effective natural ways to reduce the amount of GBS bacteria in your body, in fact some women have been able to eliminate the bacteria entirely via a change in diet. I started eating yogurt for breakfast every day, eating a lot of sauerkraut, and taking garlic supplements as well as eating a lot more fresh garlic (I'm sure my breathe was quite lovely...bleh). The odds that Beckett would actually have an issue from the GBS were less then 1%...but this is our little baby boy so even though those are pretty darn good odds, it was still nerve wracking. We had to trust our decisions and trust our midwives. Our midwives didn't seem concerned and didn't tell us to transfer out to a hospital. They were very reassuring. So we trusted each other and our midwives and kept each other positive towards our Homebirth.

Once we got through all the tests and big visits, it really became empowering to tell people we were planning a Homebirth. We were planning it and it would work. We could do this. Luke and I trust each other completely. No we didn't know exactly how or when it would happen, but we knew we could do it. We definitely had to reassure each other a lot, but we both really wanted a great birth experience. We got a lot of doubters giving us crazy looks, this was hard because some of those people are close to us. Other people were interested, but seemed intimidated by the idea and said so. That's okay, this was our birth experience. This was for me, for Luke, for Beckett and for Owen. This was a good idea for our family. As it turns out it was a great idea actually, but surrounded by doubters we couldn't have known how great an idea it actually was.

And then we were past due...again. People get really annoying when you are more than 40 weeks pregnant. They ask you stupid questions, like where's the baby?! Who says that to someone who is clearly epically pregnant?! Anyways. We waited. Beckett was born 13 days past due. In reality he was born right on time. But by the calendar he was 13 days "late." With Owen we were 11 days "late" and it was hard to wait. Our OB told us we had to induce at 41 weeks, he used the term still born. We were freaked out then too. We trusted ourselves then to make the right decision for my body and for the baby and again this time, we trusted ourselves. We were confident about our Homebirth and confident that my body could do this, that we could do this.