On Monday we went on a maternity tour of the hospital I'll be delivering at. It really gave me a good idea of how the process would work. We didn't get to tour triage or the labor and delivery rooms, because they were all full. When they say that more babies are born in September than any other month, they weren't kidding!
As expected, the rate of women getting epidurals vs. going all natural was high: 80-90%. The cesarean rate is 40%. This is not a hospital that's natural-birth friendly. There are no bathtubs in the delivery rooms, and only some of them have showers. Once you're checked into the hospital, you are hooked up to IV lines and a monitor, although you can have your MD request that you be periodically taken off so that you can walk around. There are no battery powered monitors.
All of this is going to make it that much more difficult to birth naturally, and I shudder to think that I'll be spending the most intense part of labor on the hospital bed. But, I still fully believe that I can do this naturally, without drugs or an epidural. S and I have been preparing, getting all the essentials ready to go, both for me and for baby Z.
We also bought a car! We had been looking intensely for the last 2 weeks, and finally found the perfect little car for us. S doesn't have his driver's license yet, (not uncommon for someone who's lived in Brooklyn his whole life) but his road test is scheduled for the end of October.
We're seeing the doctor later this afternoon. I'm two weeks away from my due date, and I feel fine. I've been looking out for the signs that labor is impending, but so far I've just been feeling like myself, only rounder. My tummy is stretched to its limits, as I'm still carrying high, and all in front. So far, that's my only complaint, which isn't too bad. Easy breezy!
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