Blessed, and labour thoughts

I feel a little bad completely password-protecting this post, as there are parts of it that are fine for the general public to see, but oh well.

I've been pondering lately how very blessed I am. I have Matthew, who I love with every part of me. Even better, he loves me too and is so good and supportive of me. We have experienced some miraculous things in our lives, and somehow were blessed with Elijah. He is such a joy every day, and I just know our love for him is growing on an hourly basis. I'm approaching the 2-year mark since I found out I was pregnant with him (May 7th) and I can't help but remember how different life was back then. It felt so confusing and unsure, and then, to find out I was pregnant was so life-changing, so emotional and spiritual. It gave me so much clarity and hope that it's indescribable.

And now, I'm amazingly pregnant again. I feel equal parts completely normal and totally different. I don't want to ever forget what we experienced, I don't want to take a single thing for granted, and yet I'm so happy to be experiencing something so completely normal and exciting. The peace I feel in the blessings we received and the confidence that all is well with us, and that we can actually plan for the family we want to have is amazing.

My mind always harks back, though, to those who are still struggling. I read blogs (despite numerous resolves to quit) and I particularly love the blogs where they've just found out they're pregnant, or are going through a cycle and about to test. It bring me so much joy to hear of others' joy, but at the same time, I'm faced with reading about people whose IVF cycles failed, or who experience chemical pregnancies. I'm as impatient to get to their happy ending as they are, and hate that they have to wait however many months until their next chance to try again. And sometimes, they have to call it quits, and not do any more treatments, which also makes me sad. I was at that point once upon a time, and it's something I never really let go of. I knew we'd adopt first, but in the back of my mind I imagined turning back to treatments once we had the money to. I never let go of wanting to get pregnant.

So I read these blogs and I'm reminded of the confusion and loss I felt before. It makes me wonder even more why I'm the one who has been blessed with, not only one pregnancy, but two, with the hope and faith of more. I feel so abundantly blessed, especially each time I feel this baby move. My heart hurts for those, especially Heidi, who may never experience that feeling.

Our life feels so good. Not perfect, but so good. Even living in this teeny apartment doesn't feel like a very big deal in comparison to the blessings we've been given.

So there, that's my "blessed" portion of this post.

The other thing I wanted to mention was my ideas for labour and delivery with this baby. With Elijah I felt very unsupported and realized that I wouldn't actually mind people being there (apart from Matthew and my midwife.) Then at Time Out for Women, one of the speakers (a singer from Mercy River) mentioned that she's realized how much she loves childbirth, and surrounding herself with women she loves. I've stored that in the back of my mind, and now that I'm pregnant again, I'm thinking about it more seriously.

So here's what I'm picturing in my mind. Matthew will be here. Beyond that, I'm thinking mom (Glanfield) Rachelle, Farrah, Elizabeth and maybe Lindsay. I don't just want to surround myself with those I love, I want to be surrounded by those who would be supportive of me and try to encourage me so that I don't need pain meds. I think it's possible, I just need the right support group. I feel really good about this plan, but I know that, at least for Rachelle (with Terrah) and Farrah (with Morgan) it will depend on their nursing situation when I'm about to have the baby. Also, Rachelle lives in Kitchener, so it's a question of whether she'd be able to get here. I'm not mentioning anything to anyone yet, as I'm still pondering it, but I hope it works out.

Another thing I'm thinking about is how long I will stay at home. Typically you start out at home, and go to the hospital when you are further along. What I want (or am imagining) is starting out at home with my support group around me, and playing it by ear, with when I should go to the hospital. If I never feel the need or urge to go to the hospital, I want to be able to stay at home and possibly deliver the baby here. I know that it'd be more difficult to have so many people at the hospital, and more uncomfortable for them, and if I go then they probably wouldn't all come with me, maybe just mom and Rachelle (and Matt, of course! He's a given.)

But here is the difficulty with all of this. I do not want my mom to be there, and if she knows that I'm having other people than Matt there, she will expect to be there too. I understand why she would, and I feel bad excluding her, but the simple fact remains that I am not comfortable around her. I'm not going to make any judgments on our relationship or complain about the lack and awkwardness of familial affection, I'm just going to say that she is not intimate with my feelings, with me at all, and labour progresses very slowly, if at all, when there are people present at the birth who the mother is not comfortable with. I could cite everything I've read about it, but I don't feel I need to. It's a fact, that's all there is to it.

But I wouldn't explain this to my mom, because to do so is to tell her that I don't want her around, and she wouldn't get the whole labour-not-progressing thing.

So what am I to do about it? I'm faced with:

a) telling my mom how I feel, hurting her feelings, dealing with family drama, etc,

b) not telling my mom at all, even if it means outright lying about it, or

c) not having anyone else there other than Matthew. Because in the beautiful, puppies and rainbows version of the world, moms of the birthing mothers have first priority on being there.

I tried c) last time. I didn't even consider anyone else being there for this very reason, and I've realized that I need more than what I had. Arg, it's so frustrating. So much of me wants to have a daughter just to do things differently than my mom did, to have a better relationship with one another.

So there, that is my schpeel about labour at this point.

And to wrap this all up, let me just say how sick we are right now in the Glanfield household. Matt's fine, I'm unwell (sore throat and headache) and Elijah is just awful. His underarm temperature is at 39.1, and he is just so quiet, sluggish, and sad. He napped on me for 30 minutes this morning, and I napped a bit too. Matt is staying home from work today to help take care of him, and I am so so so grateful. Hopefully this little boy is feeling better soon.