THE CAT IS OUT OF THE BAG BABY!
WE ARE HAVING A HOMEBIRTH!
YEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAA!

I am SO EXCITED about this....I mean WE BOTH ARE! We have been keeping this to ourselves pretty much until we told our folks, and today I called my mom and told her...she is super excited too! She had the opposite reaction than I thought she would, I was a little surprised.....happily of course! YEAH MOM BIRTH ACTIVIST! Matt is on the phone with his mama right now and he told her a little while ago....so now the folks know and we share it with the world! Since I first found out I was pregnant, I knew that I wanted to have a homebirth...but I have MassHealth and they don't pay for homebirths in the state of Mass! So, we called around anyways to see if we could afford it on our own....do my dissapointment no, even though homebirth is almost $3,000 less than a hospital birth! Anyways, after months and weeks...things have worked out in our favor and I want to cry I am so happy about it! I am so extatic to be bringing baby into the world in the most peaceful and gentle environment, our home.

Our midwives ROCK! Kirsten (also our Doula) and Tanya are the sweetest, warmest most gentle and loving people...we are so fortunate to have them as our midwives.

Here is a link to thier site (under construction): Sacred Birth Midwifery Here is a link to Kirsten's Doula Site: Graceful Birth

Really there are way too many awesome things to say about these women.....=) They are so incredibly confident in who they are as people/women, as well as being extremely competent in thier profession and true believers in the power of a womans body to labor a child naturally, that is what our bodies were made to do!

So our homebirth....is going to be peaceful and quiet (soft meditative music)....relaxed, candlelit and romantic. Matt and I are going to spend as much time alone during labor as we can, we are both looking forward to having this beautiful experience together and deepening our relationship. Ok, I need to go and eat some more food. I promise to write more about this later!

Luv, E

35 Weeks and 4 days......2 days to go to 36 weeks!

Holy Canoli! Hi there, here I am and there you are.....reading this blog. Things aren't much different than they were with my last post, but I have some new photos that I was to share and also an amazing momma blog that I have just been alreted to. It is the blog of an amazing woman who had an unnasisted birth at home, truely inspiring and BEAUTIFUL!

Here is the link to her Blog:

So, things are good. I still feel pretty great, though it's getting harder to motivate to go for walks.....but I was reading last night that I need to keep on with it (which I knew anyways). So, today I am going to bundle up and take Macy for a long slow walk, and then I will head to the Y to go swimming. I really do love to go swimming as a pregnant lady, it feels so nice to move through the water. Last weekend Matt and I went to the Bershires and we went swimming at the indoor pool that the resort has. While were swimming around so was the baby! It was so cool! When I swim at the Y the baby doesn't move too much....
It could have been that Matt was making whale like sounds underwater right to my belly!

Here are some photos from last weekend in the Berkshires....on the cusp of 35 weeks....





These are images from this past weekend....there are a lot of Macy & Matt......so cute!

35 Weeks and 1 day....

Sorry that I have not been posting too much.
I have been working still and trying to be sure that we have all we need for the birth next month and trying to keep this apartment clean. We continue to also have car issues, finally today we brought in my car to have it repaired and its going to cost $360 buckaroos! I wish that we could just have a newer car (I realize that doesn't mean there are not problems then), but I have had the car for a year and had to put $1,000 into it, not to mention money my parents kindly put into it before giving me the car (my moms old car). Its a cute car and drives great when its in full working order.

Anyways, I am still feeling great! Though there are days when I am deffinately exhausted in the afternoon, so Macy & I usually take a couple hour nap. I almost schedule my day around needing a nap, a good thing. I am still taking Macy for atleast 2 30min walks everyday, sometimes she gets and hour walk. It feels good to walk, and I wish that I got the Y more to go swimming.....
I want to go there right now but its getting dark, and much colder outside and I have not car to get me there and home.
Probably tomarrow I will get there in the am after Macy has her walk. I don't have to work tomarrow as I fufilled my weekly hours quota, Yeah! I also had hoped to get to Yoga tomarrow but, I don't know that I will have my car back in time. Arrrg! We need to get Matt's car fixed too......he had brought it to Jiffy Lube to have it re-inspected and they burnt out the clutch! DONT GO TO JIFFY LUBE! There was a big to do after this happened, and basically the company was awful towards Matt about it making it seem like it was his fault, when obviously the technician left his emergency brake on!

So, things are good. I am almost washing all of the lovely new organic clothes we got for baby....yesterday we went to IKEA and got a lovely new dresser for baby, we got it for only $96 bucks! The full price was around $140 I think......we found the exact dresser we wanted in the up to 50% section...there are the tiniest of scrathes on it, other than that its fine and it was already assembled! I will have photos soon.

I WANT MY SLEEP!

I just cannot sleep through the night anymore. Its now almost 6:30 in the morning and I am awake! I have been since about 5am. Its hard to adjust to being so incredibly uncomfortable sleeping...but it's supposidly a preview of what is to come after baby is here right? So here I am typing away playing opera music for baby...headphones on the belly. Not sleeping is becoming a pretty intense issue for me, I am usually a very heavy sleeper and I can sleep like a champ through the night. However the combination of being uncomfortable now and baby moving in the night have made my sleeping nights a thing of the past. Its all worth it....I just need to be more active closer to bedtime, a brisk walk before bed would be great (per suggestion of our midwives). The only thing about that is that its SO COLD at that time of the night, at least the last few nights have been totally frigid! Also I have some new photos...they are self portraits from week 33. For those of you who might feel uncomfortable at the sight of a nipple I have blocked mine out of the images....though I feel that its kind of silly to do so, I AM SO TIRED OF BEING MODEST ABOUT MY BODY! I mean I am will most likely be completely naked in the birth tub during labor, it seems that that would be the most comfortable way to be....pregnancy, labor and birth are so beautiful! Anyways, here are a few of the self portraits from week 33.

Christmas is over, the New Year is here...the year that we will meet our little nugget. Ahhhhhhh.....It's very exciting to think that next month our baby will come into the world....oh my gosh, and I am also very exited that we will meet our little one very close to our home (I will write about what I mean by this soon). I am just so excited and so happy! We had another midwife visit last week and my weight seems to have really stablized, I am not ganing like I had been. I have put on about 45 pounds, which is a lot for me but being a small person it totally normal its just what my body had to do. I also had a blood test to check and see if I am anemic, well I found out yesterday that I am slightly anemic. My score went from 37 to 29, so it's not really that bad. Last night we went to Whole Foods and I am taking a liquid iron supplement called Floridix, as well as adding walnuts to almost every meal, drinking tea with nettles in it and cereal with extra Iron. I also spoke with our Doula (midwife) who said that she has seen really good results with Floridix with her clients. So thats that, I am doing ok and I still feel GREAT! The baby is getting so strong, pushing on my belly right around my belly button...one of these days the baby will push my belly button all the way out! We have also been making some progress on names! I am pretty sure we have found our Naturopathic doctor/pediatrician, and we are meeting with an Alopathic pediatrician that was reccomended to us on friday. We have been readin a lot about vaccinations, I cannot believe all the info that is out there about these things! Its really very scary what vaccinations actually do to a persons body, especially the body of a small little baby! I highly reccomend to everyone to read this book: There is so much info in this book, things that your pediatrician might not be willing to share with you unless you know to ask about them!

Here are some images from last week (WEEK 32)...I think that these images are my favorite thus far.
Notice how sweet Macy is...

Christmas trees with adorable doggies....and pregnant ladies and thier ginormous bellies! Happy Holidays all of ya'll! Yes there is a photo of my belly here, and yes we have been slacking on the photos...we missed last week..well I have some but I didnt get them onto my computer yet! So this weeks is from 31 weeks.....I am 31 weeks and 3 days! I cannot believe how big my belly has grown, I mean it really blows my mind! I think that I kind of always knew that as a pregnant woman I would gain weight because I am normally really small (petite 5'2, 110 lbs)...but the belly, holy cow it is just HUGE! I/we are starting to get really excited thinking about labor and birth, I am so looking forward to the love and hard work I will have to do! It is going to be SO worth it....I am staying positive and still taking things day by day until "the time" comes. =) Maybe I sound a little naive saying this but I think that even as hard as it will be it is still going to be fun and amazing and transforming!


My belly at 31 weeks and 3 days......look at that its just GINORMOUS!

FINALLY, some baby shower photos!
There are whole lot HERE that Meg took!




Matt's Gram with her Blessingway Candle









My Nana being ever so cute in mid-sentence









This is Merlin one of our cats, he looks like he is sword fighting.....nothing to do with the baby shower at all









Matty with one of the baby carries we got that will fit us both, The Moby Wrap....Rad!









Baby Cake











Stevie has tied himselg up in the red yarn and he had a blast!











I cried so much when I first started to go through this gift, a large assortment of my fathers baby clothes that my grandmother had saved and my parents then kept.....so beautiful!

Here are some images from 28 weeks (taken on Saturday Dec 2nd)

28 Weeks and 1 day...

Today we had a midwife appointment, I now weigh a whopping 159.9 lbs! I have gained nearly 40 lbs, and I still have 83 days to go! We had a long discussion with our midwife, asking if I am gaining too much to quick, and I measuring larger than most women at 28 weeks. She said that I am gaining a little too much.....and my belly today measured at 30cm, but I am still within the 2cm ok range so I am ok. I exlained that I am getting a lot of excercise, walking the dog 3 times a day for 30 minutes and I go to the Y to swim. I am wating healthy, not pigging out on junk food and other empty calories. Of course any pregnant woman craves some sweets at some points, as do I but I don't endulge every day by any means. We talked about how I have introduced some organic dairy like organic cottage cheese, and organic block cheeses....though I am not over doing it because my stomach cannot handle too much of it. Today I was supposed to have had my glucose tested, but I just could not decide if it's a test that is absolutely neccesary. So, today I declined the test...even after having a long talk about it with our midwife. The test is more for women who run a high risk for having GD. I don't fall into this category, however the concern lies in my being adopted and not knowing my biological health history. For all I know, my biological parents could now have diabetes. Nonetheless, even if I am tested there is not any real evidence that shows treating GD can improve the outcome for mom & baby. So, I am going to think about it over the weeknd....and make a decision early next week. Of course the risk of not having the test is growing a larger baby, and in the end not being able to have a vaginal delivery....that is not an option for me. I am so focused on having a vaginal all natural "bring the pain" childbirth. I am excited to experience all the feelings that are a part of my body laboring and delivering a child. We will have new photos very soon, hopefully we take some tonight.

Here is a photo from last week:

All is well here with us....
Erin

Our baby Registries

Assuming that everyone has gotten thier invitations to our baby shower, here is a little insight into our registries:

ALL ITEMS ON OUR REGISTRIES ARE HIGH ON OUR LIST (we are not asking for anything that we really won't need or use):

(some things we are asking for.....see registries for complete lists)
Cloth Diapers
Cotton Wipes
Diaper Pail & Liners (wet bags for travel)
Organic Clothing (shirts, pants, baby bunting, baby sleep bags, socks, caps)
Organic Bedding (blankets, sheets etc.)
Organic Baby Bath Products
Organic/Natural Toys
Organic Nursing Accessories (pillow, nursing pads, scarf etc.)
Some furniture Items (see babies r us registry #64779253:
Music Cd's
Books

ABOUT CLOTH DIAPERS
We are not using any "plastic disposable diapers", they are highly toxic for babies and the environmental impact of them is incredibly higher that that of washing cloth diapers. Not only this but a friend of mine who has had 4 babies has used cloth diapers with all her babies, she told me that in total she has spent around $500 on cloth diapers and they lasted through 4 babies! Thats awesome! Oh she also told me that even though she was washing them often that she did not see much of a change in her utility bills. =)

We are asking for cloth diapers from: Wild Flower Diapers

More info about cloth diapering: Cloth Diapering

OK FOLKS HERE IS A PLETHORA OF WEEK 26....and today Nov 15th I AM 26 WEEKS PREGO!


The lone prego belly...











Attack of the bellies!







Holy doorknobs, look at my belly! Its the same size as a woman in our natural childbirth class, she is due in Jan and I in Feb!