Last night, David and I had our first date night since our anniversary. With our awesome neighbors coming over to watch Olivia, we headed up to French Hospital for a Prepared Childbirth Refresher course. Do we know romance or what? One thing we do know...procrastination. Nothing like scheduling a refresher course 12 days before my due date.
It was nice to have the reminders on some of the breathing/calming techniques and how to time the contractions. We were there with two other couples and all shared our birth stories and it was nice to hear about how we could do things differently this time. We wrapped up the evening watching a childbirth video and that was when it really hit me that I was going to have to go through this whole labor thing again. Watching the women's facial expressions on the video was like a hot slap-in-the-face reminder of just how unpleasant it is until the moment your baby is placed on your chest. There was not one smile in the whole video and I could distinctly remember each of their expressions being on my own face less than 28 months ago.
I know it is all worth it in the end - I have a daily reminder of that with Olivia - and it is nice to think that labor doesn't last forever. But, truly, all those philosophical mantras sort of go out the window when you are hours into labor pains. I am all the more motivated to try the relaxation techniques from the HypnoBirthing book in the hopes that some of the pain can be relieved.
We have a family date planned for Saturday with a Sibling Class at the hospital. We are super excited about this and think it will be a great preparation for Olivia. Earlier this week, we packaged up Olivia's special gift for her baby sister - a pink zebra lovey and rattle - and it is sitting on my desk. When we talked about going to this class at the hospital, Olivia immediately said, "And I get to take Baby Sister's present to her!" Not quite yet...although I am starting to worry that all these hospital visits and newborn babies being born (our friend Sarah went into labor early and had Kendall's sister, Katelyn Elise, less than 10 hours after our playdate with her on Monday afternoon and I was lucky enough to be able to visit her in the hospital yesterday) may send my uterus into overdrive. I'm just wanting her to hang on until at least next Wednesday when my mom flies in, otherwise I'll be leaving David in charge of Olivia and giving birth to our second daughter by myself.*
Happy Thursday from the Central Coast!
*Bill and Leslie, our neighbors, are on call for Olivia in case I go into labor early...which is SO NOT HAPPENING. And, they are wonderful with Olivia. She has so much fun with them last night - they had an entire set up of play-doh people, had played with Kinleigh, read several stories, played with stickers and did magnetic doll dress-ups. She gets 100% of their attention, 100% of the time. What kid wouldn't love that?!?!
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