hello there

Blogging has been on pause for over a week. No blogging was done about The Bachelor Final Rose ceremony OR After the Final Rose. ppppppffffffffttttttttt. Sorry, if any of you out there care. Neil, I know you are especially upset about the lack of Bachelor posting :).  I have no excuses expect I've been tired and moody. Doesn't being pregnant sound FUN? ha. I've also been cleaning and organizing my boss's desk, he has documents from 2009 on it, so that's been super fun too andddd I've been writing lots of thank you notes for baby showers. So, I guess I do have some excuses. Not very good ones mind you, but there they are.

Hopefully, I can get back into the swing of blogging a bit before I have a baby. #duedateApril29. ahhhh. Mostly I hope to blog for therapeutic reasons. Hop on board and read along if you dare or if you are extremely bored.

I hope everyone had a good St. Paddy's. Roberto and I spent St. Paddy's at Baylor Medical Center attending a "Prepared Child Birth" Class. I was apprehensive about going, but my doctor kept strongly suggesting it and I want her to like me, so I signed us up. I'm really glad we did it. I've read and I am reading books about pregnancy/birth/babies, but something about actually being in a class setting and hearing confirmation from someone with years and years of experience in this stuff about what REALLY happens, helped to give Robert and I a little peace of mind.

Our instructor was great. She is a doula. You can click the link to see what that is. (I didn't know until I saw a Rachel Zoe Project episode and they go to a doula. See- you can learn things from Bravo.) Anyway, she is a doula and has been a nurse at Baylor since '97. Also, she has FIVE kids. Meaning she's done this whole childbirth thing 5 times. Wow. She said there is always a curve ball concerning someone's birth story, just something you completely do not expect- it could be a big or small thing. She thought for her 5th birth, she had it down, but there was a curve ball. Omg. Curve ball with Baby #5?? Good grief. Give me morphine.

Speaking of, she did give me a little perspective on the whole "drugs during labor" bit. I have always been very PRO drugs. I know myself and have assumed that I will need them to cope, but, she gave the analogy that "you wouldn't take an advil BEFORE you had a headache" Meaning you don't need to walk into the hospital and hook up to the epidural before you really know you're going to need it. You could be through the worst part and it's possible you won't even want the drugs??  So, I guess I'm just going to be open to seeing what my body does and how I feel. I don't think I'm going to have a natural birth by any means, but I'm a little less scared of experiencing pain. Plus, one of my besties had a baby boy 2 weeks ago and almost went all the way with out drugs. She didn't mean to at all, but it just happened. She's amazing :). So that and this class has reminded me that our bodies where made to do this. Saying that, I have fainted when I have had to give blood and I shake and my teeth chatter when I have to have a dental procedure. (yes, it's weird. they bring in blankets and crank up the laughing gas to calm me down.) So, no matter how much I psych myself up, I know when it comes down to it,  my track record has shown that I tend to physically shut down in some way, so I will be happy to take these drugs to get through this in a healthy manner. The drugs exist for a reason. Plus, I might as well continue to support the pharmaceutical companies that have gotten me through the last years, right? ;)

I also liked that our "prepared child birth" instructor mentioned she had an English bulldog AND a chihuahua. Yay dogs.

We took a tour of the labor and delivery unit, the labor room and the post partum room (where we will be right after).We found out we will have an iPod dock in our labor room. After class, Robert  made me a chill/low tempo playlist and a pumping-up/high tempo playlist. I might have to share these - they are great mixes. The high tempo play list is 3 hours long. Let's hope I don't need "pumping up" for that long.

At the end of the class, the birth videos were played. I swore that I would never watch these videos. I had been instructed by several who have seen them to NOT to watch them. But, by the end of the class Robert and I oddly found that we wanted to watch the birth videos? When in Rome? They were short and probably filmed in the late 80's or early 90's, so definitely dated and cheesy. There was a c-section one and a normal birth one. The c-section one was...hmmm..maybe graphic is the right word? I don't know, it was not pretty. I think I imagined c-sections to be like "oh there's a little incision and here's the baby!" It was a little more "discovery channel health show" than that. But, obviously, I'm not someone that deals with medical things well, so any surgery is not going to be fun for me to watch. And in the end, the baby and mama were fine and that is really all that matters.

The normal/vaginal birth video came next. I had a couple ups and downs with watching this one. The poor girl in the video was a teen mom. It made me so sad that she was this young and going through this. But, you know sometimes when something makes you sad, it makes you want to laugh?? Well, I was that person LAUGHING during this poor teenager's labor. (Lauren, just go back to middle school youth group and us laughing during the prayer circle and not being able to stop. It was like that:.) I'm sure the other couple's were thinking...who is that immature girl LAUGHING? I don't know what was funny. She had this odd entourage of people with her, Robert leaned over and whispered, "the neighborhood gang?"  The neighborhood gang was with her at the hospital when she was walking through the halls trying to get her labor progressing. I couldn't look at the video and I couldn't look at Robert.....I could not. stop. laughing. It was painful. I somehow pulled it together enough to watch the rest of the video like an adult. The teen girl's mom gets to the hospital to help her and be her coach. That was good, but, uggg, it was harder and harder to watch as it went on. She was just in such pain! I definitely was not laughing anymore at this point. Then, right before she has the baby, the dad (obviously a teen too) comes and holds her hand and that was kind of funny because it was like "well, oh there's the dad?" but I didn't laugh. Thank you God. The baby comes and everyone is so happy and I found myself crying. I was so relieved for this teenager that is was over and of course, it was just so neat to see this little baby...you could feel the joy. Several other girls were crying too, so that made me feel better/less dumb. Anyway, that video was a real emotional roller coaster for me. Whew. I blame hormones for everything lately...so I'll just blame them for that  too.

Okay, afternoon tiredness is setting in......I better go and work on holding my eyes open....