Throughout this entire pregnancy I have been doing a fair share of reading and research about what's to come in the very near future for me, Mike and Quinn. I remember the day I found out we were pregnant....the first thing I did was drive down to Border's and purchase "What to Expect When You're Expecting" and plopped my butt down into our bed for the next few hours reading away. I remember reading the typical ways to birth a baby and watching documentaries at night with Mike, always thinking that something just didn't feel natural to my own body when thinking about the intensely medical labor and delivery process of a baby in a hospital setting. I was also so inspired by my friend Katie who had birthed her first baby in a hospital and second in a birthing center (and soon to be third and fourth twin boys at home) that I decided to look into my options a little more.
After deciding to go to the birthing center to have Quinn and getting to meet all of the sweet midwives who would be helping me, I felt this intense calm and relaxation about the whole process sweep over me. Almost TOO relaxed! We started our birthing classes which I was incredibly excited about, only to feel disappointment a few weeks afterward when the type of motivating encouragement that I personally needed and craved was on the backburner. The classes focused more on all of the things that could go wrong, as well as contradictory and unnecessary information that made me feel anxious and uneasy. So Mike and I decided to quit them and I kept reading and doing my own research online.
I remember thinking a few weeks ago that something might be wrong with me because I wasn't concerned about the labor process what so ever. I had barely even thought about it because I had this overwhelming sense of calmness and faith in my body that I could do it successfully by relying on my own confidence within myself. I was so sure of everything until our third continuous visit to the birthing center last week where they discovered that Quinn had still not flipped.
With four and a half weeks to go, she does still have time to flip head-down and I have been trying to imagine her doing so in my mind...trying to send telepathic messages to her little brain to turrrrrrrrrrrn around. All I keep thinking about now is how, if she doesn't flip and I am not able to birth a breech baby at the birthing center, what my options are and what I feel comfortable with. I know that I am definitely lacking the confidence to have her be born breech naturally with a midwife. Compared to the faith I had before about having her at the birthing center... that same confidence just isn't there. My body has never had to birth a baby before and I feel incredibly anxious when I think about having her feet first for some reason. I've read so much about first time mothers having their babies breech but for some reason something inside of me is telling me not to try it. I've listened to my body thus far and I just have this overwhelming sense that I need to listen to it this time too. That puts my other option at having surgery in order to get her out. Yes, having a cesarean section bothers me because I don't want to have surgery....but I am more concerned with how it will effect Quinn. I wanted her to have a very peaceful birth and be able to be in my arms the second she was brought into the world. I always imagine having her in a warm tub or in a big bed where Mike can be an active partner helping me through everything. In a hospital, that is definitely not going to happen. I just know that I'm not going to feel comfortable having my baby swept away from me the second she comes out and not having her parents right there for her makes me uneasy. I know c-sections happen millions of times a day and babies grow up completely normal, but I guess it's the fact that that option is completely different from what I have been planning and I feel really disappointed. I remember reading in a book that you shouldn't feel disappointed about any crazy twists in your grand scheme of birth and thinking to myself, "why would anyone be THAT disappointed?" All of these months of daydreaming about bringing this baby into the world in the way I imagined though and then having them kinda flipped on their butt (haha...there you go, Quinn!) gives that disappointment a reality for me now. I have begun to really identify with those mothers who take it a bit personally.
I'm trying not to think about it too much since the possibility of her flipping is still there. I want to stay positive and continue sending her messages and talking to her to try to convince her to flip around.
Just four and a half weeks left and I want to meet her so badly. After waiting nine months already, four weeks feels like it's going to breeze by.
