20 Weeks: Thoughts and Concerns

Just about halfway! ...depending on how many weeks she decides she needs to be in there. :)

Chuck found out how scheduling days off works for his Radiology residency, which he began yesterday. He should hopefully be able to work it out to have a couple of days off for the birth of our daughter. I'm sure they run into that request all the time. This seems to be baby-making age for sure.
I'm looking forward to Radiology residency. Four years of weekends off (except when he's on call), vacation days pretty much whenever you like as long as you apply the month before, holidays off and "regular" length work days. *BIG sigh* We made it through his internship year with nary a scratch. It wasn't a piece of cake, but it wasn't a piece crud either. He got a certificate on his last day. Where's mine?

We have yet to figure out who our go-to person or family will be to keep Eden the day (or night) we have to go to the hospital. We opened the subject for brainstorming between the two of us, but didn't come up with much. My closest friends from the UMC Spousal Alliance will be about to pop themselves and already have a kid each. Ideally, I would love for someone to come camp out at our house so that, if the hospital trip does happen in the wee hours of the morning, we wouldn't have to get Eden up and drive her somewhere unfamiliar. She could just keep sleeping and our "sitter" could camp out in the guest room.

My mom has offered to come help with the aftermath of bringing the second one home and Chuck's mom has also offered her assistance. I should be getting some meals from the Alliance and possibly from MOPS and/or bible study ladies. I'm sure we'll be well taken care of in the weeks following the birth, which is a very comforting thought.

We also talked the other day about trying to hold off longer this time before we go to the hospital. My biggest fear last time was that scary thing called transition. I didn't want to be in transition in the car. Chuck asked me if I was as concerned about that this time. My answer was no, but, really, I don't feel like I can recognize the stages of labor that much better even after going through it. I felt pretty much the same intensity for hours on end. We arrived at the hospital about 12 hours in, around the time that I wasn't comfortable standing on my own through contractions. 12 hours later, my labor was petering out to one contraction every 15 minutes and we were considering Pitocin. I got Pitocin about 3-4 hours after that, causing my contractions to start up again with a vengeance and even double peak for a while. I remember saying "I sure hope this is transition, because if it's not, I'm in trouble!" My OB said in a very non-reassuring way "It might be." I still don't know if it was because, later on, my Mom told me that at one point, when I was really having a tough time getting through the contractions, she noticed they had upped the Pitocin to a pretty high level.
So, yes, I had a pain-medication free birth, but not really natural. Not enough for me to be able to recognize this time when I'm getting close to transition. Oh well. I'm still not that concerned. I think we would be just fine having the baby at home. :) by accident...