Playing Catch Up... Again...

It has been exactly a year and a month since I last posted to my blog, and what a busy 13 months it has been!  December 2011 through February 2012 were pretty uneventful.  We had a wonderful Christmas and went way overboard with giving Addisyn gifts as it was the first year she would actually have a sense of what was going on with decorating, opening gifts, etc.

March 2012 was an exciting month.  Matt and I had been talking about having a second baby, and I wanted to wait until Addisyn had turned 2 to begin trying for another.  But then I was having some issues with the birth control pill I was taking, and together we decided that I would stop taking the pills, and we hoped/expected that it would take a couple of months to become pregnant anyway.  I had been training for a 5K run that would happen the following month and really wanted to continue toward that goal.  Less than 2 weeks before my 5k we got the positive pregnancy test - apparently I had gotten pregnant just a couple of days after going off my pills.  I had had a pretty strong suspicion that we had inadvertently timed everything just right, and apparently we had.  I had only been running 2.5 to 3 miles at a time and decided I didn't trust myself not to push too hard, so I decided to put off running until after the baby - I would walk my 5k.

This time around I knew I wanted an out-of-hospital birth.  I wanted a home birth.  After Addisyn was born I had read everything I could get my hands on about birth in a hospital versus outside of a hospital.  I had never considered anything but a hospital birth with Addisyn, but I knew that if we had another baby I wanted to be home, and after some discussion Matt agreed to it.  As soon as we found out I was pregnant we started looking for a midwife.  In April we had a consultation with a midwife not far from where we lived and we both felt good about her and set up our first appointment: an ultrasound at 10 weeks.  As an added bonus, the birth center had a team signed up to walk the same 5k that I had signed up to run, so I was able to join them in walking it!

We had an ultrasound at 10 weeks to confirm the gestational age of the baby as I didn't have a last missed period to go by thanks to the problems with the pill I was on.  I was 99% sure that we had conceived within days of stopping the pill, and the online due date calculator I had used set the due date as December 5 according to the conception date I gave.  Our ultrasound gave us a due date of December 4!

Matt and I celebrated 5 years of marriage on May 12th, and Addisyn turned 2 May 22.  My parents came in during that time to visit for 2 weeks.  Life continued as normal until June, when Matt got word from his company that they were having financial difficulties.  A week later he had lost his job.  Thankfully he had started looking for and applying for new jobs as soon as there was the slightest indication that he might lose his and he had already been through a few interviews.  Nine days after losing his job he accepted a new one.  Hours after accepting the new job we found out his grandmother had passed away and 2 days later we were on a flight to Virginia for the funeral.

June and July are a blur of packing and getting ready to move "back home" to Virginia.  We had wanted to go back some day but had no idea it would be so soon.  July 17th we had a 20 week ultrasound and discovered we were having another baby girl and she looked perfect.  My dad and Matt's dad also arrived that day to help us with packing the truck and driving.  July 18th I had a final prenatal checkup with my midwife and then we left for the 20 hour drive to Virginia.  We drove straight through and I did about 16 total hours of driving myself.

We spent a month with mom and dad at their house.  We had looked at many houses and found several we liked but all were taken by the time we actually got to Virginia.  After a lot of looking we finally found a house for rent in Culpeper.  Next step: find a midwife.

I spoke with 3 midwives on the phone, and set up interviews with 2 of them.  The first midwife we interviewed came to our house and we all sat around the dining room table and chatted for a while.  We both liked her, and Matt especially liked her price - about half of what all the other midwives were charging in the area.  But she didn't attend breech births as she didn't feel she had enough experience with them, and I was uncomfortable with that.  The second midwife we interviewed at her birth center. She was much more outgoing, seemed much more passionate about birth, and she attended breech births - I was sold and called her back the next day to set up our first appointment.

September through November were full of prenatal appointments and baby preparations, and everything was going well.  Addisyn dressed up as a dog for Halloween.  Matt's job was going well.  I was feeling good, getting bigger, and our second little girl was doing well.

Our December 4 due date came and went and the pressure was on.  Matt had taken vacation time for work with the assumption that I would have the baby pretty close to the due date as Addisyn was born on her due date.  Family was calling to check in daily, sometimes several times a day, and it was wearing on me.

December 7, 2012 - exactly a year since my last post - we welcomed Elizabeth Gray Viel into our family.  We had a beautiful, fast, peaceful home birth.  It was everything I had hoped it would be, and I will post the birth story next!