Weekly Babble Blog: First, the baby stuff: 25 Weeks, the Nursery, the Stats

I have hit 25 weeks and all is well. Baby Girl is growing and very active (she kicked all through yoga this morning - very hard to keep a straight face when there is someone rolling around inside). According to Babycenter.com, she is roughly 13.5 inches long and weighs 1.5 lbs. Doctor says everything is looking good and I will begin seeing him every two weeks after my next appointment.

I have decided that I am going to attempt a non-medicated natural delivery at the hospital and have decided to hire a doula to help me meet that goal. We are meeting our first candidate on Tuesday. She is a yoga instructor and uses a lot of the yoga techniques to help her laboring clients. I will also be training myself on the hypno-birthing techniques that I hear so much about. My doctor is supportive of my decision, but I definately got the feeling that he does not understand why a woman would choose this path over the epidural. I believe that childbirth is a normal function of the female body and that hospital intervention (pitocin and epidurals) can change the dynamics of labor which raise the chance of a cesarean section. Should I run into problems or not progress, I'll be open to whatever the doctor thinks I need to do, I just want to give it a shot.

We wanted to get the baby's room done after our trip, so we've been working hard on that. Dave graciously tackled my ambitious closet project while I was out of town one weekend which got things started, then he tackled crown molding which we've been trying to get up in all of the rooms. As I have found pieces of furniture, my obliging wonderful mother in law has purchased them, so the room has really started to take shape. Yesterday I painted a forest on the wall where the crib will go (I am a landscape architect after all) and will be soliciting my friends and family to paint wooden forest creatures that I will be affixing to the wall. You'll be recieving your wooden critter with paint in the mail at some point over the next few months :-).

I recently acquired some of my old books and toys and dolls in the mail, enough to fill up some shelves with. This Christmas our generous family sent lots of baby clothes, so I was able to hang them in the closet that Dave built. I find myself going in there all the time to mess with them.

Here I am at 24 weeks: