Musings of a 32+ Weeks Pregnant Woman

This may just be the increase in hormones racing through my body and playing their little game of change and preparation on all the important innards and outtards of my body (read: brain, heart, lungs, uterus, skin, hair, nails and so on) but I feel ridiculously out of my normal alignment today.

Yesterday, I heard the fantastic, amazing news that a friend, someone whom I respect and has been an enormously supportive and wonderful person during my pregnancy, gave birth to her first child (http://glossolaliac.typepad.com/). Maybe the hormones can also be blamed for feeling so close to this person, or maybe I actually CAN be friends with girls (there's a thought), but I was so overwhelmed with the news and so damn happy for them that the only place my happiness could go was out my eyes.

How weird is it to cry for someone else's joy when yours is just around the corner?

Today I read her birth story, which set off a whole new wave of weepiness. My husband and I had been planning on birthing at a birth center, not at home, but over the last week we've discussed with each other and our midwives the idea that maybe we do want to have a home birth. After reading the aforementioned birth story, and reading the stories of others who have recently given birth, I'm having a very difficult time imagining this birth taking place anywhere BUT our house.

Yeah, so we do have a lot of work to do at the ol' homestead before it would be ready (mainly making the backyard look pretty so I don't see turned up soil while breathing through my eighth hour of labor), but a home birth is feeling more and more like the only way that this was ever going to happen anyway so why fight fate?

At the same time, I wonder, "can I actually do this?" Birthing at home seems so much more personal and...close than birthing anywhere else and I don't know if my shyness, my concern of making others feel uncomfortable to be around me, my worry about looking unprepared or like I didn't do the right thing, makes me a good candidate for home birth. I like my midwives a lot and I love their attitude toward birth, but they haven't seen me naked or sitting on the toilet.

And then there are the silly thoughts that my house won't be ready for people to be in it - there will be dog hair on the carpet and under the fridge, the cat box will smell, our fridge will need to be cleaned, our pictures are dusty, we haven't even been able to get the living room how we want it yet (decorating, furniture, etc.).

So that's where I am right now. I'm so freaking excited I can't stand it, but there are lot of other things that are pulling my focus between now and then. I wish I had all this time to focus on and prepare myself for the birth.