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If you would have told me a little over a year ago that I would not only be married and become stepfather to a rad 4yr old little boy, but also that I’d be expecting a new baby in 5months I would have brushed you off as a crazy lunatic. And even if I could have imagined being in this 9 month holding pattern waiting for a baby to bounce into our lives, I never would have guessed that I would be willing to keep the gender a surprise, possible names for the baby a secret, and never ever in a million years would I have thought I’d be okay with my wife having a homebirth.

But here we are. Meeting with midwives and looking at above ground swimming pools. The swimming pool thing was a joke. But yeah. A mid-wife. It sounds so old timey and charming to me.

The circumstances involving this decision makes for a long dull belly aching post about sitting on hold for hours trying to get answers about insurance, and Doctors saying one thing and then finding out that in fact they aren’t being up front. The entire experience has been a brutal one to be honest. The more we try to have this baby the way my wife would like, the more of a problem it becomes for us. The short of it comes down to this, I am not willing to end up in a situation where some Doctor decides it’s more convenient to his/her schedule to just induce the labor or cut the baby out so he/she can be home in time for dinner. I won’t let that happen. I want my wife to have this baby the way she wants and so I took it upon myself to start the process of deprogramming my brain about how the entire birthing industry works. To unlearn everything that I have observed about babies being born.

The starting point is to remember that in America everything has been turned into a business so that somebody can make stacks of money from it. Having a baby is a billion dollar industry and as soon as you look at it from that viewpoint you begin to see it for what it is. I am not knocking hospital births; I’m not soapboxing about the evils of corporations. I am just saying the way I was able to be okay with this decision was to look at things in the rawest form. The physical act of having a child, and how nobody in the world delivers babies like they do here in America. So with that said this is the path we are walking. As things develop minds could change, there are factors that could lead us back to the hospital path but for now this is the first time that either one of us have been happy or excited about the way this baby is going to burst onto the scene. So there it is.

If my wife wants to try to have a VBAC and wants to do it at home then I am going to make sure that we have a solid back-up plan, monitor the growth and development closely and not be afraid to bail on the home birth if things look even a little dodgy or if she ends up with a 12lb baby in her 100lb body. She is tiny. I just really want her to feel calm and excited about all of this. If it sounds like I am having a hard time leaving this topic behind and working on a speech here it’s because we have some convincing to do on the parental front. My Mother surprised the shit out of me and has her hand in the huddle and has been emailing us link after link of sources of info and advice. It has been great. So yeah, we are pretty sure that Cole’s Mom and Dad, are not going to be high fiving anyone over this decision and instead feel like a fight is on the horizon.

Right now Cole is in the “office” turned nursery putting together a crib. She has wanted to do this for a month. This week has been extra intense and centered around the new kid. She is showing finally, and I stare at that little bump whenever she sits next to me on the couch and she gets embarrassed. I love it. It’s so freaking exciting I could explode. I took pictures of Cole this morning because now more then ever is the part of the pregnancy where I guess the lady starts to feel ugly and big or something. I read that now more then ever I am supposed to start walking around complimenting her, and getting intimate as often as I can, so that she feels pretty and secure. I hate reading stupid shit like that, it just suggests that guys are stupid fucks that lose attraction for their wives or something. I tell my wife she is beautiful everyday and I don’t do this so she feels pretty. I do it because I think she is freaking breath taking, and I love every extra inch of her gorgeous glowing pregnant person. So just to make sure she can see what I see, we took pictures this morning.

Now she is in the kitchen banging dishes around and venting frustrations about family and fears and my advice I am giving her is just making her more stressed. I should probably just shut my mouth and nod my head and let her get it all out. One of my faults is I am too quick to offer suggestions.

Our house is a shit-hole wreck right now. Dishes piled up, floors filthy, laundry scattered (clean and dirty) all throughout the house, mail and work mess is everywhere, it’s honestly out of control. How did it get this way? I stopped cleaning. Cole has been a happy bee buzzing from room to room dropping little messes all week and just really feels more comfortable in the filth ( she doesn't want me to say "filth" she is not comfortable with that term and is offering alternatives). This is bonkers to me, but something that I decided to not care about. Why in the world people ruin their relationships harping on each other about stupid crap that melts away in the face of anything real or tragic is beyond me. So yeah, just now in this sentence I decided to not care anymore. And upon announcing this Cole started cleaning the house like a wild woman. How did that happen?

So yeah… I am going to get off of this post and go tell my wife she is pretty and then do it with her while she vents about whatever is wrong with her.

All the Love in the Universe ~ me

An out take from today that I just loved, she's like: "what am I supposed to do?"

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