Birthing center, milestones, and bizzare dreams.

An important milestone: Seven weeks and two days pregnant.
This is days longer than my three previous pregnancies have lasted.
I feel relived and more confident, like I am almost out of the woods.



Last night we took a tour of the birthing center in Chapel Hill. Mike was not excited about it, but I was very interested. It is the only freestanding birth center in North Carolina. It's only a mile from UNC Hospital (where Hannah was born). I'm not the environmentalist, organic, granola-loving type, but I do love the idea of a midwife-attended, naturally progressing labor and birth.
The first-floor birth center is set-up very similarly to a labor & delivery ward, with bigger, more comfortable beds, priavte bathrooms, huge bathtubs, and basic, but less invasive, medical equipment. It's perfectly safe and much more comfortable and homey.

The other alternative is to go to a midwife practice for my prenatal care, but have the delivery at the hospital, assisted by a midwife - which doesn't sound much different, but could be more complicated, or lead to unwanted medical intervention, just because that's how hospitals operate.

The only other determining factor is cost. I know exactly what the birth center costs, but I am unclear how much Blue Cross is wiling to pay on my behalf.
I am also having a hard time estimating how expensive a hospital birth would be. (We had a low-income state-sponsored insurance plan with Hannah, so virtually everything was paid for by the government when she was born. That was nice, but it dosn't help me plan for now!) My OB practice says they "have no idea, we just bill what they tell us to." Yes, of course you do.



Pregnancy always produces bizzare dreams for me.
This week I have been dreaming that we are going to adopt a little boy from Guatemala. It's odd though - in my dream, it's as if this tiny male baby is inseminated into me, and I actually, physically, give birth to him when the pre-ordained time comes for Mike and I to take over as his parents. But when he is born, there is not one baby. but two! Fraternal male twins. They look completely different (the original baby looks obviously Guatemalian, the other boy looks like me), but their personalities are remarkably similar. They never cry; they are so quiet that somtimes I forget to feed or change them.

Obviously, this dream would not happen in real life.
Where does my mind come up with these things?!