Baby updates: So I've sort of plugged myself into my prenatal care, though we've had some bumps along the way. I had a new OB appointment for myself with one of the NPs to transfer care last week, which proved invaluable when I needed someone to send me in a tamiflu prescription. Although I was given some bizarre medical advice (macrobid is not a pyelonephritis treatment, nor should you empirically treat someone who is pregnant for pyelo just in case! get them to a hospital if you think that's what it is. /rant) overall I got what I needed. Tyler and I did a tour of L&D, as I'm still feeling unsettled with delivering somewhere that I know nothing about. L&D was redone about 6 months ago and is incredibly swanky. The triage rooms almost put the delivery rooms at Swedish to shame. The tubs (in the tub rooms - there are only 4) have LED lighting so you can labor in a pool of rainbow water. However, the postpartum rooms are next on the renovation list and are terrible. They will be where I will be pining for Swedish! They're Spartan, county hospital like rooms. On the bright side, if I win the lotto and feel like I need more pampering, the hospital does have 5 hotel like suites that you can pay $420/night extra to stay in the ritziest hospital room imaginable, complete with private nurse and chef.
The main snafu that we've run into actually is when I went to my first Centering appointment yesterday (group prenatal care visit model - we were in a Centering group in Seattle), we found out that to deliver with the midwives I have to sign on to a nonmedicated birth plan, hook, line and sinker. They will not accept an open mind to my delivery experience, if I want to deliver with them I need to hire a doula, attending birthing classes, read their reading list, etc and have no intention of having anything other than a nonmedicated birth. They are very proud of their 15% epidural rate. So this is very different from the midwife group I was at in Seattle - where they would support whatever kind of birth you wanted (obviously unless you were going to try and talk someone into scheduling an elective c-section, which I don't think anyone will do these days). So, as I had fully intended on making use of advanced in medicine and getting an epidural at some point in my labor, apparently I am not hardcore enough for the midwives and will have to have a physician delivery. Which, you might ask, doesn't seem like a big deal, especially because I am a physician and have delivered many babies - and feel like I do a good job of it! The issue is that there are no family docs that deliver at VCU (which in all honesty would be my preference, but I was hoping a midwife delivery would be the closest I could get on the East coast), and it's a teaching hospital. So I'm going from the crunchy granola supported and attentive delivery that I had hoped for (yes, with an epidural included in that - I've seen plenty of epidural midwife deliveries that were lovely) to likely being managed and delivered by an OBGYN resident (thank goodness I'm not due in July at least!). Which may turn out to be lovely, and really in the end all I want is a healthy baby, but I keep having fears of the stereotypical East coast obstetrician delivery in which I will end up with an unnecessary section because they aren't patient enough to let my body do its thing. Not to mention instead of getting to know a small group of practitioners so I will have a somewhat familiar face delivery my baby, I will have a pool of residents on shifts that I have never met managing my care. But, delivering at VCU makes the most financial and convenience sense for us, so we'll stick with it. Their Centering program is a bit abbreviated so I can still stay in the class, and then fill in my individual appointments with one of the docs (the judgey midwife did at least give me a list of the crunchier OBGYNs). The Centering group also doesn't seem super social, although it isn't filled with teen moms like I had feared! I'm hoping it will improve. I'm starting to get a little stir crazy with my only non-spouse social outlet being dog owners at the dog park! Though to be fair, they are very chatty.
Okay so this ended up being a very long update that probably no one read through, so I will save the rest of my updates for later. In order to include some photos - we did get the crib assembled! Although I forgot to take a photo after we got the mattress in.
And we got a rug (not pictured) for the nursery. I have grand plans for the dresser/changing table and closet organization, but I need to wait until I'm getting paychecks again before we go on an IKEA spree. I've also been having, hopefully irrational, fears that we will not have enough clothes for our baby. I can't figure out how you're supposed to calculate how many onsies and outfits and socks you need for each size! And do babies really need pants? How can I shop the clearance racks and buy outfits in advance if I have no idea if I'll have a 95%ile or 5th%ile baby? And where do people buy cheap baby clothes? I've gone to several consignment stores and unless I was dead set on only Ralph Lauren dresses, Target still seems to be the better choice. Worst case scenario we'll have a wild jungle baby who will run around in a diaper only (although I guess I also need to start buying the cloth diapers we need! maybe she'll have no diapers and we can litter box train her?) and we'll just bundle her up in blankets when we go outside. And I have no idea how cold it gets here in the winter. Do 3 month old babies wear winter coats? I think I can see why I have stuck with furchildren so far, they come with built in clothing and I don't have to make sure we have enough pairs of socks for Rue or if the cats need to wear pants when they go out in public.
Anyhow, your reward for reading through all of this is a video of Rue trying to decide if she will be like a Virginia dog and lay down in the baby pools at the dog park to cool off.
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