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2001-04-20

I have some pretty big news. It's not about the book (which my agent still has not read, though she promises I'm next up).

I'm expecting.

You know, a baby.

I'm happy and a little freaked out. I have very little experience with babies. The other day I was waiting to have my blood drawn at an OB/GYN clinic--not the one I will actually be working with, as it turns out--and a woman sat down next to me with an infant (nine weeks old, I soon learned). And it hit me: I'm going to have one those.

It's really too much to fathom.

I've been mildly stressed out about finding a health care provider--an obstetrician, family practicioner, or midwife--who'll be compatible with the approaches I have come, through reading, to believe I want. In general, I want as little medical intervention as necessary. Drugs, cutting, stuff like that. For the sake of the baby, a speedy recovery, and my own mildly macho streak, I'd like to try to tough it out as much as possible.

At the moment I'm happy because I think I've found the right place for me, a family practice with a very progressive orientation. A bonus is that they'll be able to provide pediatric care after the kid arrives.

The place I went the other day gave me a real assembly-line feeling. They also handed me a plastic bag that contained parenting magazines and advertisements and a box of powdered formula. I was taken aback when I saw it, and asked the nurse what the practice's attitude is toward breastfeeding. "We prefer it," she said. "Isn't it a bit of a mixed message to hand out formula then?" I asked. At this, she rolled her eyes--at me, not with me--and said the formula companies give it to them so they pass it along.

I wondered if perhaps I was overreacting but this morning I was on the phone with a nurse at the family practice I'm so excited about and I told her the other place gave me a box of forumla. When she gasped and said, "They didn't!" I knew I'd found my place.

Incidentally, I'm about seven weeks along. I gather that for many at this point, the nausea has already begun, but I haven't been queasy in the slightest.

I'm due in mid-December. This blows my mind.

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