Maternity Care and Delivery Decision

We have a secret in our culture, and it's not that birth is painful. It's that women are strong.
-Laura Stavoe Harm

If you've been following my blog for a while you know what a wretched experience I had at the hospital last time. You also know I have done some serious research on the benefits of natural birth and the problems associated with epidurals and c-sections.

I mentioned before that I was planning to give birth in a birthing center this time with a midwife. Some of you may have used a midwife before and many of you probably can't imagine birth without a hospital or an OB. Before you start trying to create an image in your head of what this might look like, I will just paint one for you.

I haven't yet decided which midwife I want but I will be using one of the ladies at Better Birth (click) They are trained and experienced in assisting in labor. They do all the same tests at each check up but meetings have a more personal touch. You don't have to sit and wait forever in a doctors office at every appointment because they actually meet with you at the time you decided on!

When I go into labor I will go to Bella Natal Birthing Suites (click). There will be a real queen size bed (no stirrups) and a large birthing tub to help ease the labor.

I will be aloud to eat the whole time from their stocked kitchen because labor will not be seen as an emergency waiting to happen.

Most importantly I will have the same person taking care of me the whole time who is not counting the minutes till her shift ends so she can abandon me! She will be supportive of my choice to birth naturally and will even encourage me in it. I will not have some dumb on call doctor show up 30 seconds before the baby comes out only to start stitching without anesthetics. In fact with any luck no stitching will be required because they work hard to prevent it!

My baby will be given to me to take care of! My baby and entire family will not be forced to leave me behind so that I can be dumped and abandoned (somewhat in shock from delivery I might add) in a foreign room alone for 45 minutes with no call button, no family, and NO BABY!

Most insurance companies will cover little to none of this but the price is somewhat comparable to just my co pays alone in a hospital. If I do the apprentice program I will pay close to the same amount of money as I did with Kaylee for everything from beginning to end. If I use a private midwife the price will be a little more but it's worth it to me.

I know this way isn't for everyone but I hope everyone now has a better understanding of where I'm coming from in this choice and can support me as I attempt to give birth without even using local anesthetics.

Family: A gift that lasts forever

I have a wall sticker from the dollar store that says that and it seemed an appropriate title....

Dear Blog Readers,

It appears the Hightower Family of 3 is going to be a family of 4. I'm only a whoppin 6.5 weeks along so I've decided to only share this with my blog reading friends and family.Our little fetus is starting to look something like this little worm creature.
This throws a wrench in a few of my plans but then I always have plans with wrenchs in them. The morning sickness while in school (especially a cooking class) is my least favorite thing. You should have seen the way I was sobbing at the idea of going to class last Thursday to make meatballs. Lets just say I ditched my first class of the semester. I've had a cold for a couple days recently and I can't take any drugs to help me feel better so that has just been insult to injury.

I've decided it makes the most sense for me to go ahead and finish in August and hope that Ryan can still pass his classes with us both in school. He's done pretty well this month even with me being sick and worthless. I'll have to miss some school in June to go with the Hightowers/Nortons to Mexico. I'm very excited to actually fly on a plane and leave the country (2 things I've never done) but I am worried about missing school since summer school moves twice as fast.

Insurance plans are still sorta iffy. The job thing is kind of up in the air depending on whether the company can seal the deal on these new projects they are trying to grab. If he gets the job before I finish school in August then all will be well. Assuming the job doesn't work out I may have to finish school but not apply for graduation and just keep pretending to be a student to get insurance. Regardless of the insurance situation though I still plan to give birth at Bella Natal birthing suites with a midwife. More on that later though.

My house is the biggest disaster you could possibly imagine. It was bad before now it's ridiculous. It's hard to find the motivation to get out of bed let alone pick something up that Kaylee has dragged out of the cupbords or her toy baskets. She's so dang cute though it's hard to blame her.

I am very excited to have another tiny child to hold in my arms! Fall will be exciting in our family. Ryan's birthday is September 27th and then baby's will be around October 14th. Mine and Kaylee's will be the 16th and 23rd. Family party? I think Kaylee will benefit from having a younger sibling and I think 2 years apart is a great age gap. Bring on the nursing bras and the infant seats! (in 8 months)

Stacey

Happy Birthday Trevor

Chris and Jessica's baby boy Trevor is already one. CRAZY. We threw a small party for him and I learned that buying clothes for little boys is kind of hard!...

Valentines Eve

Ryan and I went to a BYU activity on Saturday night that involved making and eating a delicious meal. My wonderful mother took care of Kaylee and we had a good time. Ryan got a small taste of what it is like to be an HFL major and cook/eat at school.

Happy Valentines Day

Two of the blogs I follow posted their dating story and those are the things I LOVE to read. I am hoping others enjoy them as well since I plan to be a copy cat:)

Ryan was in my Singles Ward when I came to BYU as a Freshman. My cousin/ room mate was an FHE mom so FHE was always at our place. College was a huge shock to me because I went being completely un noticed by boys in high school and yet we had FHE brothers coming by just to flirt all the time. I had set my sights on a guy who was musical and cute and NOT Ryan.
Winter Semester rolled around and our FHE group changed a bit to include a great group of guys from Rain Tree. Ryan was among our new FHE brothers but probably the one I was least interested in because he had a girlfriend already. Why waste my time right? None the less we really liked all the boys from his apartment and started to become good friends with them.
We had a whole ward FHE one night and Ryan came and sat right in front of me and talked to me the whole night. That was the first time I really thought about liking him. I invited him to come watch 24 with me and a group that always watched 24 after FHE. The funny thing is I could care less about 24, I went because the musical boy was always there. I think I was hoping it would either help me decide if I liked Ryan or at least make the other boy jealous. Ryan agreed to come but first he had to take his girl friend home (I was so confused)... what I didn't know at the time was that she was now his ex-girlfriend.
I noticed on Sunday that he wasn't sitting with his girlfriend anymore and that night we all went to break the fast at a park. His ex and her room mates all gave me the evil eye when they saw him sitting with me again. I didn't care. My FHE brothers, me, and my cousins went and did cheer stunts on the grass and I taught them all so well:)
My cousin Ally and I started finding reasons to go over to their apartment and Ryan started staying after FHE. We were hiking the Y one night because a friend was in town and she told us to invite boys. We called up and invited Ryan's apartment but only Ryan showed up. He and I walked up and down the entire way together with no one else close behind or in front... not sure if the roomies were doing this on purpose or not. We went to the creamery for ice cream and he offered to buy mine. Very unofficial first date.
I was still a bit conflicted about the other boy so I wrote one of his female friends to find out how available he even was and she basically told me to never get tangled in his relationship web because it was way too complicated and that was the end of Musical boy.
Ryan and I started talking on the phone and texting for no real reason and then one night he said his room mates were going to the hot tub and that I should come. I wasn't thrilled about the bathing suit thing so I offered we go grab ice cream instead. He much preferred this option and was glad I made it easy for him to ask me out. We went to the Malt Shoppe and talked for hours.
That was it... a month later we kissed (apparently I kissed him... I thought it was a mutual thing) a few months after that he told me he loved me. He proposed 8 months after we started dating and we were married 1 day before our 1 year anniversary.

Please pray for the job!

Ryan is possibly going to get a job working for Riser Media. He knows the president from young men's of all things! He went in to talk business with him the other day and he pretty much offered him a job. He has to meet with a few people in the company next week but I'm feeling hopeful. I really want this to work out...

For reasons I will never understand, Ryan spends his entire life in pursuit of that next great thing that will make him a million dollar company owner. There is ache inside him at all time that prevents him from working for others. he spent his entire life watching is dad pursue different business ventures and swore he would never be like him. "Money's coming soon I promise... this will be big, really!" And yet somehow the entrepreneurial spirit is apparently genetically inescapable. He currently does run his own freelance media business and it goes something like this...

Ryan finds people who need work done that he can provide and they chat about what the person wants and how much they want to pay. Generally he way underestimates the time it will take him and therefore way under estimates the price he quotes them. He spends a million and 14 hours on a project that was only going to bring in a small amount of money. He bends over backwards to get people exactly what they want when they want it and then they take their sweet time when it comes to paying him the tiny sum of money agreed to when he started working. He hasn't really slept in 2 days and all for a project that is probably gonna work out to be like $0.50/hr by my calculations. Not to mention he also works on a project all the time that isn't going to pay him any money until it makes money...IF it makes money. He doesn't even have it in writing that they will ever pay him even if it makes a ton of money.

Basically I don't care if he hates the man, I say bring on the 9-5 with a dependable salary. Why should he be the salesman, laborer, collections, quality control, etc all on his own? Not to mention a full time student.

I must end with the disclaimer that I do appreciate his willingness to work so hard to keep our bills paid and food on our table. Also I should clarify that while Ryan does share that entrepreneurial spirit with his father he is by no means the same as his father. If it came down to it I think Ryan would put his dreams aside and bag groceries if that's what it took.

The only true constant...

... is change

Go ahead and scratch everything I said a few blogs back...

I love bargains

I grew up in a family where good deals is a bragging right... Here is my bragging

Your eyes do not deceive you, these jeans were actually 49 cents! YEAH!

Picture Sharing

Just in case you read this blog but do not have facebook I am including a link to my mobile uploads on facebook. These are pictures of mostly Kaylee taken with a phone. She's so silly!

CLICK HERE

It is working!