altarflame | Well well well.

We leave in the morning.

Yesterday I had a moment in the afternoon...I was sitting on the floor, talking to my very supportive sister on the phone about the amazing conversation I had with my amazing midwife. Wearing the string bracelet with beads from Kristin, Melanie and Annie, on my wrist. With all these things spread out around me on the floor...a talisman knit by a friend I wish could be there. A sitz bath made by someone from their own garden.

Everything just felt so incredibly right. The surety of faith I felt in this direction, and how weird and hopeless that seemed when I was 30 weeks and everyone was still telling me no, no, no. Now we have an apartment lined up, we have money practically falling out of the sky from various places, such that we might actually make budget (fingers crossed). We have an incredible and supportive midwife lined up and this whole adventure ahead of us. It was one of those days that I can just imagine a baby sliding from my body.

Then in the evening I had one of those terrifying times where it seems impossible that that could actually happen. The really bloody reality with tears, and water everywhere, and pulsing cord and in an apartment? Really? I read this very reassuring article on the infrequency of uterine rupture and, somehow, it made me feel terrified of rupturing, which is not something I've really experienced in the past. By the most absolutely horrifying single study ever done based on people with a whole mess of c-sections, the incidence is 8%. Generally it's more like 1.5 or 3 or something, but there is this one study. And I was trying to reassure myself, like, ok, even if it was 8 - that means there is a 92% chance that your uterus will be just damned fine. Those are certainly "betting odds", and definitely competetive with the risks associated with a 5th cesarean, for me. Not to mention that 8 includes use of pitocin induction and augmentation, which increase rates of rupture and I won't be having, and includes harmless, minor scar separation - not just catastrophic rupture, which is way rarer.

I guess the bottom line is I prayed like crazy, for months. I felt called in a certain direction, even when it wasn't what I wanted, or what seemed possible. I had faith and tried to trust. And a whole lot of stuff has been provided. Now it's time to leap from the cliff, trusting that I'll be caught by loving hands and not, you know, plummet to the rocks below.

I was trying to explain various things to my sister, on the phone. That people (my mother in law, people Grant works with) don't seem to understand that I DO understand there are risks involved with a natural homebirth. There are just also major risks involved with a 5th surgery. That's what THEY don't understand. That everything has risks here. Being pregnant at all for me is probably highly "inadvisable" at this point in time. But here I am. And so I have to make some choices, and they come down to how I want to live my life, if that makes any sense. What I think is best for me as a mortal human being, as a mother, what's best for this baby, what's best for us as a family, all of it. I want my daughter to see this as the norm, I want her to not go through the trauma of me dissapearing from the house for 3-4 days. I want to hold my baby as soon as she's born and not even have to bring her home with me, because we're already there (let alone leave her in an NICU somewhere for hospital related complications).

Anyway...I don't even know if I'm making sense. My brain is fried. I crammed several more chapters of one textbook into my head, so I could take a test, and another chapter of another book, so I could submit an assignment online, today. And I brainstormed and came up with slings and sewed them, before we leave, and got all our hygenic and homeschooling crap packed, and some of my stuff, and helped Grant a little with cleaning up and washed diapers and responded to PATH emails and the day has just been endless. Nobody is getting enough from me, me in particular. There are so many things other than this that I should be doing. It will be such a relief to just be on our way.

DAMA - If you could email me your phone number? And address, I suppose :p