Of dads

I just read this powerful birth story in CNN. It's an amazing one, specially considering that my husband doesn't even want to cut the cord, let alone catch the baby, which is what I would love him (or myself, for that matter) to do. It would be perfect if the first hands that touch him are ours, if our voices are the first sound he hears after coming out. But in these times of medical births, specially considering that I will give birth in the hospital, the most likely scenario is that my OB will catch him, and it will be her voice giving directions to the nurses the first one he hears. The focus won't be about him. It will be on getting a job done. I bothers me, but homebirth is not an option in our case. Unless baby has other plans, as the one in the story did.

Otherwise, the pregnancy is still as uneventful as it could be. Let's hope it stays that way, because I still have eight weeks to go, no crib or anything else prepared, and a ton of work to do.

And of course, at 30 weeks...

... we had our first trip to the ER. It was like deja vu. I've been here, I've done this. Four years ago, to be more exact. I thought i was out of the woods when four weeks ago they told me that I didn't have gestational diabetes. But for the last few days I had been having a pretty bad headache and today I decided to go to CVS to check my blood pressure. Sadly, IPhone doesn't have an app for that yet. Of course my BP was 145/105, which is pretty high. I called my doctor's emergency number, and they told me to go to the ER, which in UIC's case is labor and delivery. That's a very good thing, because you deal with people who know what they are doing, not with regular ER doctors with no expertise in OB/Gyn, which was my experience at Prentice. Everyone was extremely nice, they checked my BP and heart rate (which as is common in me was on the high side) for a couple of hours, and when they started believing that I'm really fine at 120 bpm they allowed me to go home, and take the 24 hour urine sample here. I had preeclampsia with my first pregnancy, and such samples were taken during a 24 hour hospital stay that made us crazy. We never understood why I needed to be admitted to pee on a jar. What I loved about UIC is that we didn't even have to ask for it. They thought about it on their own. Seeing first hand how low intervention they are is reassuring for me. It may not be the fanciest hospital in town, but I'm more certain every week that it is the best place to try for a VBAC.

The only down side about today is that they gave me a bag and a half of IV fluids, and now my legs could go straight to the elephant section in the zoo. IVs and me is not a good mix.

If I could just hope this is the last visit...