Statistics and weekend updates

The kid has gotten to the constantly active stage. No, that's inaccurate. The kid sleeps when I walk (or I can't tell if it is moving when I walk) but if I'm sitting for any period of time (drive in the car, eating breakfast, resting for a moment on the docent tour of the art museum) the kid bounces around. It actually got a little tiring Saturday morning when we were catching up on our TiVo from being constantly poked and jabbed.

It's gotten a little easier for Mistah Hoovah to feel the baby, but he still has to put his hands so low on me to feel it that I'm not comfortable inviting others to feel it yet. Once the kid's kicking somewhere higher than a bikini line, it'll be fine.

Other news: There's an article in the NY Times I read this morning about the prosecution of midwives in Indiana for attending home births, which had this interesting factoid: 99 percent of all births in this country are in hospitals. That's 99 freaking percent. Of those who deliver in hospitals, 8% are attended by midwives. What about the other 1%? Quoting the Times now: "Two-thirds of the remaining births are in homes, and the last third in freestanding birthing centers."

I feel as stunned as I felt when I heard that only 7% of people in this country with TV have TiVo or DVRs or the like. [This also came from the Times, and I don't know if it includes non-commercial solutions like D&L have or just subscribers to DVR/TiVo services.] It seems like most of the people I know have some form of DVR/TiVo, and it just boggles my mind that more people don't have a DVR. But then maybe we're moving in privileged circles.

3 of 4 couples in our birth class are giving birth at our freestanding birth center, and those are all the pregnant people we know right now. I know that from my research when we were still in Colorado, the nearest freestanding birth center was in Boulder, which was a good 45-minute drive from our house (and caused some minor speculative discussions about what driving to Boulder in labor would be like and what delivering in Hygiene, CO would be like since that is where our damn cars always broke down on the Boulder-Loveland drive). So maybe it's a question of access/availability of birth centers.

But maybe it's just the fear - all the 'what ifs' that Silverstein sung the praises of. Someone in a white coat says, "But you wouldn't want anything to happen to The Baby, would you?" and off you go. I'm not discounting hospitals for people who really need them - if you are high-risk and you need a neo-natal unit there ready to go, then get yourself to the hospital. But until someone tells me I'm high-risk, I'll be in the birth center with the people who just birth babies and will let me stay in one room from the time I check in until the time I go home, aren't interested quite so much in throughput/yield/scheduling, and don't have an OR in the next room.

One of my midwives told me at the last visit to enjoy pregnancy, and I've been thinking on that a lot. Early on, I thought there was something wrong because there was nothing wrong: a little nausea, but no puking; the work-then-nap-then-dinner-then-nap pattern of late November-December; no cravings; no gargantuan belly at this point. There's something messed up when I'm thinking there's something wrong because there's nothing wrong. It's been fun recently to have a little jostling presence to remind me, I'm here and boy, I am a mover and a shaker. Hopefully it'll continue to be fun.