25 Weeks

25 weeks today! 15 weeks or 105 days to go.

On Sunday we had our first official meeting with our doula. Maybe it’s my past as a very dedicated student or maybe it’s just my personality, but I’m a planner and a studier. Eleanor’s birth might be 15 weeks away, but I’ve already begun serious preparation, including reading, practicing breathing methods, and doing exercises to strengthen the muscles I will use to deliver her. I finished reading Pregnancy, Childbirth & the Newborn (Penny Simkin) a few weeks ago (I would highly recommend this book, by the way, especially for someone who would plans on reading only one childbirth preparation book) and it has a very detailed birth plan worksheet that is a sort of checklist to help you make sure you’ve thought about everything and have some clear preferences lined up. I spent an afternoon typing up the entire list and providing my answers with some helpful input from Andrew. The entire worksheet ended up being six pages long! Don’t worry, the six page worksheet won’t be what we take with us to the hospital; we will refine it down to one clear page. Along with the worksheet, I made a short bullet list of the most important things that we would like to convey to the hospital staff.

So I had all of this stuff printed out and ready to hand over to the doula. I figured I would either come off as really committed and prepared, or totally anal, opinionated, and maybe a tiny bit crazy. She went over everything, all seven pages, very carefully and provided a lot of useful feedback about the hospital’s policies and her experiences attending other births there. Luckily she didn’t think I’m anal or crazy and she praised us for seeming so calm and well studied. We won’t meet with her again until after our childbirth classes in late April, then we will practice some labor positions and coping strategies together. Until then I’m going to keep up my reading and mental preparations. I'm currently working on Birthing From Within (Pam England) and will move on to The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth (Henci Goer). Trust me, you don't want to see how long my Amazon Wish List is right now.

On Monday Andrew turned 29. We celebrated over the weekend with a little dinner and some frostingless cake (he just doesn't like it that sweet). He always told me that he wanted to have children before the age of 30, so I'm happy to report that the goal has been met.

Aside from Andrew's birthday and the leftover cake, the highlight of my week so far has been the purchase of this little dress:

I found out about this brand, Right Bank Babies, a few days ago. I gushed to my friend Morgan about how cute these clothes are (we share an affinity for children's clothes with an Anthropologie aesthetic) and fell absolutely in love with this reversible dress, but it was pretty expensive. This morning the brand was featured on one of the sale sites that I subscribe to, The Mini Social, and there was the dress at half price. I snagged it in a 12m. It will be perfect for next summer. Isn't it lovely when things work out like that?