No baby yet...but SOON!

I’m nearly a week overdue now (Monday marks 41 weeks), and I know everyone is wondering when this kid is going to show up! :-) So I wanted to let you know what was going on. If Baby M doesn’t decide to come on his own before tomorrow night, we’ll be headed to the hospital on Sunday evening (right at the end of that Cardinals game!) to start getting ready to induce! We are so excited to meet our little guy!

And now I hope you’ll allow me to be a bit vulnerable. I have to admit I was a little afraid to put anything online at all. I’m afraid of well-intentioned “advice” or opinions about how we have decided to proceed. You see I’m a little emotionally worn out at the moment, and I really need cheerleaders, not debates.

However, I didn’t want to let this fear keep me from being excited about birthing this baby, or for updating the many many people out there who have been so excited and encouraging throughout the pregnancy. Not to mention, I would really appreciate your prayers and support for a safe labor and healthy baby! SO I decided to go ahead and put the update out there.

You might be wondering what went into our decision to schedule induction. But guess what?

It doesn’t matter.

If there’s anything I’ve learned while being pregnant it’s that every woman, every baby, every pregnancy is different. There’s no “right” way to get pregnant, be pregnant, go into labor, or birth. Really. I promise.

Meds. No meds. Pitocin. Natural attempts at induction. Epidural. No epidural. Caesarean. Vaginal. VBAC. Birthing center. Home birth. Hospital. Midwife. OBGYN. Family practitioner. Doula. RN. Birth plan. No birth plan. Birth plan gone awry. Breastfeeding. Formula. And on and on…

None of these choices make you more or less of a woman or a mom.

*Gasp.*

The thing is, birth decisions are just precursors for all the decisions we will make that will impact this child’s life. Bottom line, we love our child and want to do what is best for him. So we have (and will) gather information, analyze the data, and make the best decision we can. THAT is what matters. There will be times we realize in hindsight that we didn’t make the best decision. There will be times as a mom that I agonize over whether I made the right decision or not…and I may never know. There will be times when we are right on with our decisions. And I’m certain there will be times we struggle to make a seemingly difficult decision that ends up having no lasting impact whatsoever.

This is just parenthood. And we’re all just doing the best we can with the knowledge, resources, abilities, and information that we have. And even if there were a “perfect” method, I’m not even sure I’d want to know about it, because I feel like the world would be a little boring if everyone was the same.

This concludes both my update and my mini-rant. Unless this little dude decides to get rockin’ in the next 24 hours, look for an update sometime Monday morning!

Love you guys bunches!

Rebekah