Plan B

I just learned today of all days, that April is C-Section awareness month. Ironically, we scheduled ours for Baby G yesterday. We had originally planned a natural birth purposefully at a place where we felt a C-Section would be a very rare possibility. The Birth Center run entirely by nurses and midwives had a 30% transfer rate and a C-Section rate of somewhere around 10%...much lower than any nearby hospital. But most importantly they supported women in their desires to have a natural and medication free labor and birth and we were looking forward to that experience. Of all the fears and worries I had over the course of this pregnancy (and poor Brian can attest to almost all of them)...the one thing that never crossed my mind was the possibility that our baby wouldn't turn to be head down- as 97% of babies usually do by this time. 

We've done all we could to try to get Baby G to turn but our baby seems to have other plans! Some have said that this is our first lesson in parenthood...where the only thing you can plan for for everything to be totally unpredictable. So here we are in the last few weeks of pregnancy having to change everything all around and find a new caregiver at such a late stage in the game. It wasn't what we wanted but we had to make a Plan B: transfer out of the birth center and find a doctor to deliver our baby. It was important to me that I could still have a natural hospital delivery in the off chance that Baby G does decide to make the rotation to head down before the big day so I took a recommendation from a friend at work. We met this new doctor yesterday and loved her. She works at a hospital where babies aren't routinely separated from their mothers -even after a C-Section- which was really important to us. She was also very sensitive to the fact that we had to transfer our care at such the last minute. She seems willing to do whatever she can to make our birth as close to what we had envisioned as possible- even though it will be in an OR instead of the comfy home like setting of the birth center. So we're starting to feel a little better about the situation now and I'm grateful to have had some time in advance to let it all sink in.

So unless Baby G has other plans (which at this point I certainly wouldn't be surprised about!) he or she is scheduled to make a grand entrance on April 28, 2014! As much as I hate to admit it, the planner in me finds it oddly soothing to have a date on the calendar. 

It all brings me back to the common cliche: Everything happens for a reason. Maybe this really is just a first glimpse of parenthood for a ---let's be honest- pretty Type A couple? Maybe it's the universe's way of gently guiding us to deliver in a hospital instead of the birth center...? Maybe we'll never know. But one thing I do know is that Brian and I make a great team :)  We'll make the best out of whatever situation is handed to us, and there is something overwhelmingly comforting in having each other to lean on...