For those of you following along at home

Tomorrow marks the beginning of my 13th week and most of the pregnancy books I have been reading highlight this as one of the "significant" weeks as you start it in your first trimester and end it in your second. For most women this marks the end of morning sickness and all the fun that comes with that. I am looking forward to the promised energy book to finally make some headway on the baby room.

For all those following along, a quick update on the actual progress of the baby:

• This week MBB is the size of a peach! Growing steadily to 3 inches and weighing in at .75 oz.
• Vocal cords are forming - MBB better get ready to stretch those in this family!
• The nervous system and muscles are practicing the coordination of certain movements, such as bending the wrist, grabbing, and making a fist. - I can't feel that punching yet (soon to come in week 20 or so).
• Lots of bone is growing - woo hoo maybe MBB will be taller than both Jason and myself (we can only wish!)

Our next big milestone is our heartbeat appointment on April 5 and then early May we have another heartbeat and our final sonogram. Ideally by that point we will have lots more information on WHO will actually being doing that heartbeat test...but that is for another blog.

The Post covers midwives

Read more about what is going on with MD midwives at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032601618.html.

Where have all the midwives gone?

Even before I started thinking about getting pregnant, I knew that I wanted to have a midwife (instead of an OBGYN) see me through my pregnancy and (as they put it) "catch" the baby at birth. So a year before we started trying I switched over to seeing the midwives at the Takoma Women's Health Center and could not be any happier with them. I am always able to get an appointment quickly, they also call within two days of blood tests with results even if they are good, and I always get a call back within four hours for routine questions and one hour with emergency. Early on in the pregnancy I was having some pain that turned out to be that pesky fibroid but the Center was able to (within two hours of my call) call back, set me up a sonogram appointment and get me in the door for testing.

However, I also knew going into the pregnancy that I may want to deliver at a birthing center instead of a hospital and that my midwives only delivered at Sibley, a local area hospital. So this Thursday off Jason and I went to The Maternity Center in Bethesda. As I was leaving work early to get home, let Hunter out, and get back my supervisor mentioned that he heard that the Maternity Center was closing - news to me as I had just talked to them last week to set up our tour. But he was right, the first thing we learned upon getting there was that the Center was closing in May with some midwives going to another practice, some providing home births and one leaving for Doctors Without Borders. Although a bummer we decided to stay for an hour and hear the midwife talk about options for us as well as midwifery in general - it was VERY worth the trip.

A quick primer for anyone not familiar with midwife care. You can skip this section to get back to the life experience stuff if you are not interested.
What is a midwife: Certified Nurse-Midwives are experienced Registered Nurses who have completed a postgraduate obstetrical program. They have prescription-writing privileges so you can go to them for birth control, etc. They refer out for sonograms, amniocentesis, mammograms testing procedures to a local location where they have a partnership.
Why would Jenna (or anyone else for that matter) want a midwife instead of an OBYGN: Midwife's are not just for us "crunchy"type folks. Many women are opting for midwife care for many reasons, including lower medical intervention. Midwives (as an average) have only a 6% rate of Cesarean birth v/s U.S. average of 30% with the same type of statistics for epesiotomies and other medical interventions. Midwives also (again as an average - I don't want to speak for all midwives and OBGYNs here as yours may be different) allow you to eat, drink and and basically give birth any way that is comfortable for you. They also will not push epidurals if you do not want them but will not object to them if you do. The last main reason at least of for me, is they stay with you the entire labor process - helping to not only manage pain and labor but also fears and expectation during the process. As a midwife told me this week "We are not in a hurry during a birth. We look at it as a natural part of life." I could go on forever on this point, but if you are interested in learning more let Jason or I (yes Jason he is as knowledgeable as me on this now) know and we can send you all type of information.
What if you have complication or are at a high-risk?: All the midwives I have met have an backup M.D. both for consolation and help during birth.
End of midwife explanation section.

Also my current midwife at Takoma had just mentioned that her Center would be closing they thought in September or October which left me the option to follow her where she went next (if there was a place to go) or find another option (which was suppose to be The Maternity Center). Unfortunately, we have also learned since then that the Takoma Center will be closing April 13 (I got in under the gun with my next April 5 heartbeat appointment). So hence the title of this blog - Where have all the midwives gone - or in truth - Why are they all leaving!. This leaves a HUGE shortage of easy to find midwives in the DC metro area with the next nearest birthcenter in Alexandria, VA.

Turns out none of them are leaving because they want to leave. They are all leaving because the Center's that provide them employment can no longer financially sustain the practices as they do not get reimbursed by insurance the same way that an OBGYN's office does. At least this is what they told us at The Maternity Center. It is an overhead problem. I could rant on and on about the ridiculousness of this, but I am realizing just how long this post is.

This situation not only leaves us but hundreds of women (there were at least 20 couples at The Maternity Center session we were at) at a disadvantage for the way they choose to give birth. It is a pretty sad state of affairs if you ask me.

So where does this leave us and MBB. We can go with some of the midwifes from The Maternity Center to their new practice where they will only do hospital births. We can check out the maternity center in Alexandria (and a very small one in Arnold Maryland). We could check out home births. No matter what we end up doing, we have a lot of women to talk to and questions to ask.

Will post updates as we go along! Have a great Spring Saturday.

More pictures of me!

Here are three new pictures of me. I look more like a real person now.

I am the one waving to you in picture #2.

Into the Jungle

Jason and I went on our first "baby stuff" shopping trip yesterday to Great Beginnings a local baby superwarehouse in Gaithersburg. I had heard nightmares of complete overwhelm from couples who started with other superstores like Baby's R' Us so I was a bit nervous as a busy day at the mall tends to send me wanting to run back to the car.

And of course I was super prepared. I have a list compiled from many many recent mothers of everything and anything one could ever need for a newborn or toddler and I have been researching brands, reviews, etc. for the last few weeks. So before we went in the store, Jason and I decided to start with the cribs and bed sets and then move on to all the many baby accessory buying options (assuming we had any energy left).

Lucky for me (and for Jason as well since he had to walk around with me!) the store was incredibly well laid out and organized. The center was all"rooms" made up with different theme ideas and a huge variety of cribs and bedding sets. A walkway circled the store reminding me of a track around a football field. Then the accessories were all set up on the outside of this track so that you could peruse one section or the other - letting your brain rest in between buying option.

We had a really good time. We found two bedsets and two cribs we really liked. We learned all about baby nail clippers, baby table bumper and baby bathtubs - it was actually quite fun. However, I think the funniest part was when we made it into the stroller section. This is the one part of the store that was not systematically organized, but really just a bunch of strollers lined up next to each other. We had already been around the inside and most of the outside of the store and when we walked into that part we both looked at each other and said "Not today :)." Probably the best decision we made all day!

In the next few weeks we plan to check out Buy Buy Baby, Pottery Barn Kids and a great place we found up in Fredrick. After that we plan to call our research done and actually start picking out things. All of which, of course, you will get to share right along with us in this blog!

On a different and final note for today. I have read a lot about morning sickness, nausea, and more. Although I have been very lucky, I do occasionally get rather nauseous and for me the cure seems to be nothing I have read anywhere else. Popsicle brand ice pops! I have no idea why but one or two of those 40 calorie pops seems to settle my stomach with 15 minutes. Ah..the mysteries of pregnancy!

What fruit are we today?

A quick morning note. Each Wednesday we get the "What size is your baby this week email" which as I have mentioned in some previous blogs is always a fruit - amusing me to no end. Well this morning the photo to the left came up as I opened my email and I immediately thought - "A grapefruit! How did we get from a strawberry to a grapefruit in one week and I am not even showing.". The email itself didn't mention the name of the fruit at all. Luckily, someone created HTML , metatags and as I hovered over the grapefruit looking photo up popped the words "Your baby is the size of an apricot." Ahhh much better! Glad to know that MBB is not growing at the rate of a strawberry to a grapefruit each week. I guess that is what I get for checking my email before 7am. :P

Pvew at least THAT is over

This weekend we had the rare opportunity to tell almost all of our friends about the impending Baby Boig at once. It was Jason's bday party and virtually everyone was able to come. The combination of extreme excitement and nervousness was quite intense, but it was wonderful to finally be able to share the good news.

After that I went on an email spree to let people know about MBB (Mighty Baby Boig) and I have gotten an amazing response of enthusiasm and joy. And the much needed advice has started rolling in! (Keep it coming :) )

We still have a few friends we need to get a hold of, but the secret is finally out of the bag. It is, however, a bit odd to share the news because there is no outward obvious way to tell that I am pregnant and I have been feeling so good.

A few other misc things...last week the MBB was the size of a strawberry (have to keep up with those fruits) and who knows wat we will be this week - the week change is each Wednesday. Also, you may see that we have started our registry on the left side of the blog. We set it up this way so that we can link to many different types of places so we will see how that works!

Lastly, we have already started hearing many ways to tell if it is a boy or a girl (how bad morning sickness is, date we conceived etc.) We would love to hear any interesting or even humorous ways you may have heard. Although we do not plan to find out - it is always fun to guess!

Expectations

It is amazing how nervous one can be about telling friends and co-workers about having a baby. I have ben hesitant to mention it to people since many of my co-workers do not have kids or have grown up kids by now. Since hearing the heartbeat on Wednesday, I started to tell a few people and was very happy to get positive reactions from them. It is nice to have the feedback that one hopes for when sharing such important news.

The Heartbeat :)

Boom-boom-boom-boom. What a very sweet sound. Jason and I went to hear the baby's heartbeat for the first time today. After a few quiet minutes (well not exactly quiet because it sounded like water rushing) we were able to hear it loud and clear.

My midwife said the heartbeat was "very strong" and everything seems to be going very well. She confirmed the Oct 3rd due date based on what she can tell so far. We go back in a month!

Baby Room Transformation

We thought it would be fun to share the transformation of our "Storage Bedroom" into the Boig Babyroom over the next many months. Above and below are some photo of how the room stands today - clearly we have a lot of work to do!

My uncle has offered to paint us a mural on the wall, so we are planning to walk around some baby stores later this month to get inspiration. Between that, cleaning out the room and taking down the border we should have lots of changes to post.

What's that smell?!!?

One of the surefire symptoms that gave away my pregnancy, was that I started having a superhero like sense of smell. I could walk down the hall and pick out the scent of not only what someone was having for lunch, but every ingredient that was in their dish. I could smell the herbs growing in my kitchen before they even became big enough to see.

At first I thought this was great! What a fun trick to have for the next nine months. However, I soon realized this new superpower had the ability to backfire. Public bathrooms for example...a whole new experience with my also new found need to use one pretty often (I had no idea the baby presses on your bladder when its less than one inch long!).

Also garlic, ginger, and any strong herb that I usually cook with on a regular basis. A bit overwhelming, to the point where my stomach stopped agreeing I should eat those things. Even chocolate became a less than enjoyable experience - who knew! And well let's just say that we are washing our dog more often than usual. :)

Luckily, I have learned to use this power for more good than evil. It has helped me realize that I can smell chemicals from miles aways and may be part of a protection from breathing in unsafe substances for the baby. I can also enjoy flowers and lightly scented purfume where others can't even tell the smells are there. And I have learned how to hold my breath really well in public bathroom type of instances.

Jason and I are in Boulder, Colorado today - so new experiences smelly and otherwise will abound. Off to smell some fresh mountain air!