SNOW!!! And midwife meeting update

IT WAS SNOWING THIS MORNING! Ok, so to all of you used to cold weathers and real winters it was nothing, but to someone used to never seeing snow unless you specifically drove to it, this was pretty exciting. =) It was pretty, too, seeing the little snowflakes falling from the sky and beginning to accumulate on the rooftops. Within an hour of me getting up it had already stopped and the sky was blue and the little bit of snow that had accumulated was already melting, but STILL. =P Hey, that much snow woulda probably shut down all of Austin for the entire morning. ; ) Here's a pic of the Jura mountains with their fresh layer of snow on top:


Ok, onto bigger matters-- I met with the midwife from the birthing center today. I wasn't quite sure what to expect for the appointment, if she was going to do a regular prenatal check up or what, it turned out to basically be more of an interview as I felt her out and she gave me all the info on her practice and the birthing center. I really liked a lot of what I heard. Basically, if I were to choose to continue care with her, I'd see her for appointments and then when I hit 37 weeks she'd officially be "on call" for me for the next 5 weeks, since baby can come at any time after that. Whenever I'd go into labor I'd call her, she'd come to the house to check my progress and would stay with me here until I'd be 3 cm dilated or so. At that point, we'd go to the birthing center and take it from there. The center is basically a house with one birthing room, has a bed, swing, birthing chair, and a big tub where you can take a bath while laboring and even choose to do a water birth. The mid-wife would then stay with me the entire birth, calling on one of the other mid-wives from the center for assistance if needed but otherwise it'd be me, her, Zach and my mom for the entire labor/delivery.recovery process. She showed me some pictures of the space. It seems really nice, basically like giving birth at home, only you don't have to deal with the set-up or clean-up or anything. ; ) After birth, the mid-wife would do at-home check-ups for me and the baby every day for a week, and then every other day or every few days for up to 3 weeks after the birth.

Now, here are the downsides, or the things that make me a bit nervous: There's only one birthing room available, so if another woman happens to already be at the birthing center, I would have to then go with Plan B of going to the public hospital anyway. The mid-wife would take me there and drop me off, and then I'd be in the hospital's care. At first this really turned me off, but then again if my other option is going to that hospital anyway, then what's the difference other than the option to use this fabulous center?

Ok, the other factors that make me pause-- If any sort of complication happens (breech baby, need a c-section, or even if I decide I need an epidural) we'd need to transfer to a hospital. The closest hospital is in Nyon, and is about 5 minutes from the center she said. I'm not sure how to feel about this. The vast majority of births are complication-free, and I do feel fairly certain that I should be able to do this drug-free, especially with the help of a skilled mid-wife who can help me prepare for labor and help relieve the pain through natural methods. But there's still a part of me that wonders...

So right now I kinda feel like I'm 80-85% leaning towards committing to the birthing center, but I want to wait till I take a tour of the center itself. I also want Zach to come with me, so he can weigh in on the decision some-- I definitely feel like I need to talk this through with him before making a decision, since I need him to feel comfortable with it as well. The atmosphere and space seems so much nicer than at the hospital, and I love the idea of being able to have both Zach and Mom present (the public hospital would only allow 1 of them in the room at a time) and to have 1 person taking care of me the whole time (at the hospital the midwives would be rotating according to shift, and then whichever doctor is available would deliver the baby). I just would have to trust that nothing would go wrong, while also being ok with Plan B... which I think I could do.