It's official!

Well, I made the call yesterday to hire the midwife--we are officially doing a homebirth! I am so excited. The midwife is tremendous--a sweet disposition, obviously extremely knowledgeable and experienced (she's caught six HUNDRED babies!), and a strong Christian to boot. And I started thinking last night about how different it will be do do this at home as opposed to the hospital: how I'll be free to do pretty much whatever I want and not treated like I'm sick, how I won't have to deal with people who don't get the hypnobirthing thing (like the second nurse we had who barged in, turned on the lights, and started rearranging the room while talking a mile a minute and completely ignoring Dan as he tried to clue her in to the kind of environment I wanted to stay focused), and how I won't have to worry about the staff automatically thinking, "Well, she's *trying* for a vbac" as though my chances are slim and they're just humoring me. Michelle (midwife) is confident I can. (In fact, her transfer rate for vbacs is 2 people over the course of the 15 years she's been doing this!) And *I* of course am confident that I can, or else I wouldn't be doing it!

So I chatted with the baby a bit last night and told him/her about our plan and how cool it would be to do this here, and how I really needed him to cooperate. I think s/he was understanding. :)

So now I have the unpleasant task of announcing to my OB that I'm leaving her practice. To say I'm dreading that conversation would be a VAST understatement. Michelle does well woman care as well, so I won't have to go back to Dr. Robinson, like, ever. Which is sad in a lot of ways because, truly, she's a lovely and wonderful woman, and an excellent doctor. But I need to be cool when we talk because I want her to be my backup in the extremely unlikely event that I get transferred. So yeah, that'll be fun: "I don't want you to deliver this baby, really, but I do want to keep you in my back pocket just in case. You're my second choice, really." everyone just loves knowing they're your second choice.