When I first made the decision to have a homebirth, when I became pregnant with J, my second child, I thought choosing a midwife would be easy. I had this idea that homebirth midwives would all be amazing and wonderful, and that it would be like night and day compared to the OB/GYN experiences that I’ve had before. I’ve come to realize that my assumptions were partially right, and partially wrong. Yes, most of the homebirth midwives that I know do practice in a way that is …

Both of my children have so far been born with nuchal hands, a type of compound presentation (head + other part, such as arm, hand, or elbow). When it occurred the first time, at the birth of my son, I really didn’t think much about it. I luckily avoided tearing, which seems to be more common during a compound presentation.
When I was pregnant with my daughter, we ended up having several ultrasounds after the screening scan due to a possible heart problem. During several of the scans, …

If anyone’s noticed, I haven’t been writing much lately.  Ever since this pregnancy began, way back in the summer, I’ve found it very hard to sit down and write very much.  First it was the morning sickness and utter fatigue of the first trimester that stopped me.  Now, in my second trimester, new issues have cropped up. 

That’s how I’ve been spending the last two weeks. I know, it sounds terrible. It is terrible to experience. But thankfully, it’s for a good cause. We are expecting our third baby – Yay!
When I had J, for some reason I expected her to be pretty much the same as M was. When she turned out to have a completely different personality than M has, I was shocked. That was a learning experience. Along the same vein, I keep finding myself feeling very …

 
Last night was the first night that the ducks spent outside in their duck house. For the last week we have been carrying them outside first thing in the morning and putting them in a wire pen in the yard. The duck house hadn’t been finished yet, so we had to keep bringing them inside at night to their baby-pool brooder. Even though they were only spending nights in their brooder for the last week, it was stinking up the house to high heaven. Even with …