Month: August 2007

Ramping Up


I had my eight month visit with my midwife Monday morning, and all is well. We had our final ultrasound on Friday, and so Petra, the midwife, was able to look over our results and confirm what the ultrasound midwife told us: “There are no contraindications for proceeding with a homebirth”. That’s medical person speak for “I think you’re crazy for wanting to do this without painkillers, but OK, go ahead.”Today I go to the hospital for my first (of three) ‘just in case’ visits, where I open a file, see the anesthesiologist and endure more medical person speak for ‘crazy American without painkillers’. I’m joking actually; having done this twice before the visit shouldn’t be that bad.

I’m now seeing a medical person weekly for the baby, what with prenatal visits, birth prep classes and hospital visits. Only 7.5 weeks left to go, and if you think I’m not counting the days, you’re crazy!

Jonah and Owen go to summer camp for the last time today- school starts next week!

Update: The visit went really well. The hospital midwife was quite nice, and there was also a student midwife there. The hospital midwife gave me the ‘I know you know this, but I have to warn you about the risks of homebirth’ shpeil for about two seconds, but in a very nonoffensive way.

August’s Honey Do List

It’s official: Eddy is now the ‘World’s Most Patient Husband’. He has painted the kids’ new room, and ours, moved furniture and boxes of heavy books back and forth countless times, installed lights and bookcases, and now is refinishing and resizing the new crib. What a good guy. He’s been working his way through his ‘honey do list’ with alarming speed, leaving me under much pressure to update it!

As we’re in France we’re subject to all kinds of strange laws: garage sales are illegal, you must eat at least one kind of cheese a day, and making loud noises is forbidden on Sunday except from 10 am -12 pm. So Eddy is now relaxing on the bed re-reading his childhood comics, and enjoying the afternoon off.

We managed to toss the children into bed at the same time, and amazingly they both seem to have fallen asleep. Actually, we always put them down for a nap at the same time, and I think this tradition is going to continue well into their teenage years. Owen falls asleep easily (now) and Jonah is very good about entertaining himself for two or three hours with a stack of books and his collection of stuffed animals.

It’s amazing the amount of stuff they both have in their beds, and how they actually manage to wedge themselves in, under and around their toy collections. Owen woke up in the middle of the night the other night because he’d lost some of his little plastic people. I clean their beds out every evening, but they always seem to be able to smuggle more stuff back in!