Birth Plan

As an update, my mother-in-laws visa was not approved.  It is really like a visa lottery, no explanation was given, she had all of her paperwork in order.  She can try again in 30 days.  We are disappointed, but it is out of our control. 

My family has been here visiting--parents, brother, sister, brother-in-law and their 3 month old twins.  It's been fun and distracting but also exhausting and stressful sometimes.  I haven't had time to relax physically or worry about this baby or connect to my grief.  So that's what I'm doing now, at almost midnight.  My body is so tired, but my brain needs to process. Tomorrow we go to our hospital pre-registration appointment, where we tell them our birth preferences and fill out paperwork. 

I am stressed.  My joints ache and the weight of my uterus slows me down.  I am TIRED.  It is 105 degrees outside and our air conditioning isn't working right.  My dog is barking nonstop because my husband is (still!) outside with his friends watching the UFC fight (which I hate), after he rigged up the TV in the backyard.  The twins keep waking up because of the barking dog.  Etc, etc.  In writing out and thinking about all of these stresses, I'm reminded of my early days of grief, when I didn't take even a heartbeat or a breath for granted.  When I couldn't fathom being stressed about anything mundane because nothing was as stressful or as important as the fact that my daughter died.  So life does have a way a making us move on--now I find myself stressed over truly non-stressful things.  I am not sure if that is a good thing, or a bad thing, but it helped calm me down when I remembered how it felt in those first few months.  Even if I'm stressed, it feels better than it did then. 

I am so grateful to have made it this far into my pregnancy, and am trying to relish even the aches and pains because I love feeling baby moving and I know the aches and pains are because she is growing big and getting ready to be born.  I've been trying to think about how I will explain my birth plan.  I do have some preferences for an ideal, perfect birth.  But really, I don't care what happens or how she gets here, I just need to have a living baby.  "Just" a normal, healthy baby that gets to come home with us.  That's my birth plan.