The Birthing Experience Part 2

Barbie Asks: if you have a second child...and if you have a similar labor experience (induced and/or a few hours of painfree labor, thanks for the epi) do you think you will allow more people in the delivery room. be it during your pain free contractions and/or during the delivery. or will you keep it to just you and ryan again?

This is a really tough question. I had a few reasons why I didn't want an entourage in the delivery room with me. Most of which I wont really get into. But here are a few:

1. Ryan is easily over shadowed. I could imagine him not being as involved because he wants to give everyone a chance to be part of the experience - when all I wanted was for Ryan to be super involved so that he can make the experience what he/I want!!

2. Letting one person (or two people, or three people... etc) in opens the door to so many other people asking "well what about me???". There are some times I don't mind being the center of attention, but when I was unsure about what was going to happen/what to really expect, I wanted to be able to focus on me without people in my face telling me what I should/shouldn't do and asking me "how are you" or "what can I do for you", etc.

I could go on and on, but I won't.

Now that I know what to expect, I still think I would keep things the way they were the first time around. Ryan and I have both said that it was amazing how calm and mellow it was during Jude's delivery. We both had that special moment immediately after his delivery to bond with him and just take everything in, I would want our second child to have that moment too - even if he doesn't remember it, we will.

Barbie's Question, Part 2: Would you ever consider giving birth at the Birth Center?

To answer this question I had to do a little research. I've heard of the Birth Center and knew they were more focused on natural births, but wasn't exactly sure I knew what it was all about. For anyone who doesn't know from my quick research I've gathered that that's all they have: natural births. Basically only low-risk pregnancies allowed. In the event of an emergency, you can go to St Francis which is a hop skip and a jump away.

When I was pregnant with Jude I without a doubt knew that I would be getting an epidural. The closer I got to the end, I was so confident in how well I was doing with the whole pregnancy experience that I thought when it came time to deliver, I would go as long as I could without pain management. I won't say I got far, but I did wait it out for awhile just to get an idea of what it was all about, I was slightly impressed with myself - but when I was ready, I was READY. That being said, I could never imagine going through the entire experience without an epidural (no matter how "natural" I try to get in the rest of my life).

In addition to the epidural there's the consideration of my doctors and my experience at Christiana. I loved Dr Larkin and pretty much the entire "All About Women" staff. They were super friendly, calm and just all together pretty awesome (side note 1: at some appointments they would be pretty behind on their appointments leading to long wait times, but I'd go through it again. Side note 2: There was one doctor I thought I hated the first time I met her, but I actually grew to like her just as much as my own over time - she just came off pretty odd in the beginning) . Christiana Hospital was great with a pretty awesome staff.

So in conclusion. There is not a thing I would change about my birth experience next time around. From where it was all the way to who it was with. I would be the luckiest lady in the world to be able to duplicate my experience the second time around.

shoooowoooo - that was a long blurb.