Journey to a Home Birth: Week 25

I have decided to chronicle my journey to a home birth here on AC through a pregnancy journal. I hope to include information on my prenatal appointments, my preparations for a home birth and information on my pregnancy in general. Hopefully this will be helpful to women who are expecting as well as to those who are interested in or even considering giving birth at home. I have a previously published article, "Why I am Choosing Home Birth," which discusses what led up to my decision to have a baby at home.

Week 25
I am already looking forward to my next prenatal appointment, which is 3 weeks away. For my type of home birth there are absolutely no clinic visits. My midwife comes to my home at the same frequency that I would have gone into my Doctor if I I was doing a hospital birth. The only difference has been that prenatal appointments started later with this baby than with my other hospital-born children. In fact, my midwife didn't start home visits until I was 16 weeks along. Another adjustment I had to make was not hearing the baby's heartbeat as early as I would have otherwise. With my other pregnancies I got to hear the baby's heartbeat at around 12 weeks. With this baby, I didn't hear it until 20 weeks. The reason for this is that my midwife uses an instrument called a fetoscope to listen to the baby's heartbeat rather than a doppler. A fetoscope is more like a stethoscope and does not use ultrasound technology. For this reason it cannot pick up the heartbeat as early as a doppler can.

I have been struck lately by what it is like to "look" pregnant. If you have ever been pregnant before, you understand this feeling: You walk past a mirror and give yourself a sideways glance, not really intending to stop and look at yourself. However, when you look into the mirror your eyes are instantly drawn to your belly. "Is that really my profile?" you ask yourself. You stop and look at yourself from the side, then lift up your shirt to examine your belly from different angles. The feelings within you are mixed, on one hand are excited to see that your baby is growing and it is fun to think you will soon be able to hold and treasure him, but on the other hand you are also wondering, "Just how big am I going to get?" I guess that's the phase I'm going through right now. I have gained 20 pounds already, which I know is on the high end, but I really feel like my diet and lifestyle is healthy and no changes need to be made. At this point I think I just need to relax and let my body do what it needs to do in the area of gaining weight.