Baby is 18 weeks!

The baby is finally the size of one of my favorite things to eat. :)

I am getting bigger and bigger. So big, I don't see how I can be due around the same time as 2 friends who do not look anywhere near as big as I am. Hmmm, I am not gaining that much and yet, I feel that my belly is getting enormous. I think this may be what happens when one is on one's 8th pregnancy. At least, this is what is happening to me. I saw a picture of a woman who was pregnant with her 10th baby and at 30 weeks, she looks like what I look like now. I guess I am just getting dumpy in my old age. 39 is definitely not young anymore, yet I don't really feel quite old yet. I have to smile when I remember that I once thought that I'd be old when I turned 30. I was 30 when I had my first homebirth and my first daughter. It was a good year. Now I am almost 40 and I still don't feel too old to be having a child. I think as long as I can bear children, I will not feel too old to have them. It's true that age does affect a pregnancy, but I think being active and healthy goes a long way. Feeling old is really a relative thing. For me, I will know I am old when I no longer want to go outside with my children. I will be old when I want to be alone, a lot. I will be old when I have great grandchildren and I will love it!

We were at a friend's house last night for prayer meeting. After the prayer time, the ladies and I talked about childbirth. It's good for men and women to talk separately sometimes. :) We talked about giving birth at home and about our different pregnancies. Our hostess is a young mother very near her delivery time. She seems so comfortable with the impending birth of her first child. I am very glad to be part of the older women group that can give some experiential advice to a younger woman. I don't remember talking to many women about childbirth before I gave birth for the first time. I don't know why I didn't ask a lot of questions and no one seemed eager to share their childbirth stories with me. I read some books and wasn't too fearful, but I wasn't very confidant either. I know my mother gave birth naturally without drugs but I didn't know how she coped with her labors. I knew my father couldn't be with my mother while she birthed but then she said she didn't want him to be there. It's interesting how fathers were kept away from their wives so that the professionals could handle everything. How can a husband be an advocate for his wife when he's not even part of the process? It's good that hospitals have changed their policies on where a father should be allowed to be when his wife is giving birth to their child. But still in a hospital, there's only so much a father is allowed to do. He is really helpless to do anything for his wife and can only be a bystander. When a woman births at home, her husband is still the head of his domain. He has the capacity to give as much support to his wife as she desires and the authority to do so. He doesn't have to be given permission to cut his baby's umbilical cord. He can be the first to touch the baby if that is the couple's desire. He can be actively involved and not passively wait to be told where he should stand and watch. Some men may not feel comfortable in this environment, but what a man he who can be just as intimately involved with the birth of their baby as with the conception. Husband and wife are one flesh in marriage. We experience that so beautifully in our homebirths. I lean on my husband for emotional support and he trusts my body to do what God designed it to do. I am so grateful that he desires to be with me when I birth and does not neglect me. And I am thankful that he is not a fearful man. He understands childbirth to be a natural process that can be accomplished without medicalization. And very importantly, he trusts me. He trusts that I wouldn't attempt something I am not qualified to do. :) We're a good team. I'm looking forward to another birth with my husband. Wow...we're on a good roll here. This will be the 5th birth that he will have attended. 4 of them at home. So, he's only missed 3 births, that's not too bad.