The Home Visit

My midwife and her assistant came over today for the 36-week home visit. I don't know if you can call it the nesting urge, but I did a fair amount of cleaning and rearranging yesterday in preparation. Heck, I even had Darwin hang some pictures that have been sitting around for months! But my bathroom counter is clean, and the floor is swept, and I hope I won't have to do that again before the baby is born.

The midwife checked out the layout of the house and made sure we'd laid in our supplies. For them as is interested, here's a partial list of stuff you need to have handy for a home birth:

• A bag for baby containing some cloth diapers, an undershirt, some socks, a first outfit, and several receiving blankets.
• A bag with eight towels and twelve washcloths
  
• A sterilized pan for the placenta (bake in a paper bag at 250 degrees for an hour, place the paper bag in a plastic bag, store in a safe dry place)
• A postpartum bag containing the antibiotic eye ointment, rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, cotton balls, Q-tips, small unopened bottle of olive oil
  
• two fitted bed sheets, a plastic sheet, and two sets of pillow cases. (In early labor you make the bed with one sheet, put the plastic sheet over it, and put the other bed sheet over that. Then after the baby is born you pull off the soiled top sheet and plastic sheet, and voila! The bed's already made.)

Baby's heartbeat is strong, she's wiggly and of a good size (but not too big!) and I'm as healthy as a horse. And I'm about 70% effaced and almost 2 cm dilated, and baby's head is low. This could all go down quickly once it starts -- heh, heh, heh...

But in the meantime, I feel just fine. My mom is scheduled to come out in three weeks to help with the girls and the baby stuff, and as long as my ankles don't swell up, I ought to be able to hold down the fort until then. And I haven't developed any new stretch marks (yet)! And a friend took the girls to dance lessons, so I'm carefree all afternoon! You think I'm going to write a long and witty post for your edification, but what I'm really going to do is make some cocoa and lay down with a book and relax.

TTFN!