After a quick and easy delivery, William Laurence was born at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, December 29 at 8 pounds, 4.5 ounces and 21 inches long.
Having just come out of the water
Like his sister, his delivery was under two minutes with no pushing. (Yay for Mommy!) R babies know how to make an entrance. However, the active labor was much more normal than hers: four hours versus six minutes. We were a little surprised by all the vernix; that was a big difference between having a baby at 39 weeks, 5 days and one at 41 weeks, 3 days.
Less than an hour old
He looks just like Avonlea Jane.
He's just had his foot prints taken.
Daddy's turn for some skin-to-skin bonding
We just finished eating lunch, and at 3:30, we were ready to go pick up Avonlea Jane and introduce her to her new baby brother.
Five hours old and ready to go home
Getting the important introduction out of the way
Avonlea Jane first met Will at her friend Caedmon's house, where she spent the day, but she was glad to see him out of the carseat at home.
Everyone's ready for an early bedtime. Avonlea Jane woke up at 6:00 a.m. when we were leaving for the birth center. We told her she was going to go sleep at Cad's house, and she correctly interpreted that as "Baby brother coming!" She was then too excited to sleep much throughout the day.
Good night, Will.
Rise and shine: Will's first morning
Because we went home after only a few hours at the birth center, Will needed to have his first doctor's appointment within twenty-four hours of being born. Here, Avonlea Jane is entertaining him with a story in the waiting room.
In his bunting, he looks like one of Avonlea Jane's stuffed animals.
Sharing a pretzel with Daddy after Will's appointment
Resting as a family watching Avonlea Jane's new movie Free Willy
Just to let you all know, this morning the Northeast Hospital Board of Trustees met for the final vote about the North Shore Birth Center. The bad news is that in the future all mothers have to consent to fetal monitoring (which may unfortunately revoke the NSBC status in the American Ass. of Birth Centers and may lead to unnecessary medical interventions and raise the transfer rate), but the great news is that the NSBC will remain open.
Finally, here it is, Avonlea Jane's unexpected birth story:
My early labor started around 2:00 a.m. on Sunday with my contractions 10-12 minutes apart and lasting one minute. I was able to get a couple hours of sleep through the night but it wasn't easy, not because of discomfort, but because it was exciting to think that our baby would be born in the next day. I told David around 5:00 a.m. that I was pretty sure it was going to be Baby Day either Sunday or Monday, and he set an alarm for us to get up to go see the sunrise over the ocean. We had discussed for some time both of us wanting to watch the sunrise on the day of our baby's birth. However, once the alarm went off, I was much more partial to staying in bed longer to get whatever sleep and rest I could store up.
Labor progressed over the course of the day rather slowly (taking ~7 hours to move my contractions from 7 minutes apart to 6 minutes apart), allowing us to get things done around the house. In the late evening my contractions started to take more focus, but still weren't painful, just uncomfortable. I was certainly glad to have had a yoga/birth ball, which I spent much of my time on. Prior to laboring, I had prepared a wonderful labor and birth soundtrack that contained Enya and other New Age music, African drumming and chanting, and whale song--exactly what I thought I would want for a spiritual and earthy labor. It was not to be, all I wanted to listen to were Christmas carols. I spent many of my contractions bouncing on the birth ball while singing, "Thumpety-thump-thump, thumpety-thump-thump, look at Frosty go...."
I sent David to bed around ten o'clock so that he could rest up, and at around midnight, my contractions were five minutes apart. I couldn't remember whether I supposed to call the birth center when my contractions were five minutes apart on average or when all of them were under five minutes apart. I wound up waiting until the latter, which was at two o'clock when my contractions were two and half minutes apart. I also woke up David at this point who was upset that I had waited so long, though my contractions were still pretty mellow, barely distracting me from a Grey's Anatomy rerun.
We called the birth center and the midwife on call said that we needed to come in right away. When we got there, there was another woman in labor in the other bedroom who was getting down to her last few hours. The midwife on-call, Meredith, who had been busy with the other woman, checked me after we had been there an hour or so, and I was disappointingly only three centimeters dilated. This news was especially disheartening because I had agreed to be checked the Tuesday prior and on that date was two centimeters. Advancing one centimeter in twenty-four hours was not what I had hoped for. Meredith said that if I got some sleep I would probably progress better, so she gave me a sleeping pill and said she would check on me in two hours. The sleeping pill unfortunately didn't allow me sleep, but lying down did make my contractions more laborious. (These were definitely moving into the realm of uncomfortable, proving there's a reason it's called "labor" and not "picnic," but I'm still convinced they weren't much stronger than cramps.)
After an hour, I woke David up to ring the midwife because something didn't feel right. Meredith came in the room, and when I stood up my water broke. She did a quick check and said that I was now barely five centimeters, wasn't very effaced, and the baby was still pretty high up. She said that we could fill the tub and I could get in to labor for a while, but that the birth was still probably six hours away. David put on his swim trunks as the tub started to fill, and I told Meredith and the secondary midwife, Amanda, that I had to go to the bathroom. They said that I may have to go to the bathroom and that I may not, but that I would continue to feel that way as labor progressed. They helped me to the seat, and as soon as a sat down, I told them that my uterus was pushing. Meredith said that it just felt that way, but I told her that I had nothing to do with it, but I could feel the baby being moved. She told me to pant through my contractions because it was too early and pushing would really injure my body. (This was the only slightly painful part of the labor and birth process--trying to control my uterus from pushing.) The panting was not working and I wound up sounding more like a moose sending out a mating call, for which between contractions I profusely apologized, as I was sure I was scaring the woman next door. I told Meredith that I had no control over what was happening but that the baby was coming NOW. She assured me that I had hours more to go, but David suddenly said, "The baby's crowing. I can see its head."
Amanda told me to quickly get in a position to birth the baby, and I got on my hands and knees on the ground. At this point, I still had not actively "pushed" or done anything voluntarily to birth the baby. I asked Meredith to describe what was happening because I couldn't see, and she told me that the baby's head was completely out. I couldn't believe it, because I had felt no discomfort in the baby crowning or coming out. Amanda told me to give a push, and I asked if it would be better to wait until a contraction, but she told me the shoulders were already on their way out. My only effort in birthing Avonlea Jane was the tiniest of pushes, taking less effort than it would to shut a car door with your hip. She was born at 5:27 a.m. into David's hands, less than seven minutes after my water broke, just in time to shut the water off in the tub. From less than five centimeters to Daddy's arms in under seven minutes! They've never had such a quick birth. (Also as a note, the last song playing when she was born was Dean Martin's "It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas." Both midwives thought it was too funny that we put on Christmas carols when we arrived.)
Her cord was a little short for the position I was in, so it was immediately clamped and cut. She was breathing but she wasn't crying, so I didn't hold her right away. She was taken to the bed to be aspirated, and when she finally cried, she was put on David's chest and not mine. Because she was birthed so quickly and spent no time in the birth canal, she didn't have the fluid squeezed out of her lungs. She was also born pink because of the quick birth and had no head molding (which was only of a detriment to me). Also because of the precipitous delivery I didn't go through the hormonal changes brought on by labor and went into shock. I was helped to the bed but was pretty out of it. I recall seeing that she had hair and after a couple minutes was informed that she was a baby girl. I don't remember really seeing her face, but David assures me that he held her up to me. While Meredith tried to help me get my dizziness and shaking under control, I was grateful that David got to have fifteen minutes of skin-to-skin contact with her. Amanda made the call that Avonlea Jane should be checked out by a neo-natalogist for her breathing, and that she and David would take her to the hospital while Meredith attended to my stitches (of which there were many because of how quickly she was born, but I was certainly surprised as her delivery was painless, and even though I had hoped for a painless delivery, not even I thought it would really be possible).
When David took Avonlea Jane to the hospital, he was allowed to stay with her in the nursery for the first twenty minutes as the doctor was examining her. However, once she was declared healthy and fine to leave the nursery, David had to leave. She was allowed to leave the nursery at this point and wait for me with David in a maternity room, but David was unable to check her out, as he didn't have photo ID on him. During this time, I was receiving my stitches, but then both midwives needed to leave to attend the other woman who getting ready to birth. I was then unfortunately left alone lying the birth center bedroom, not knowing where my baby was or what was happening with her, until the shift change at seven. This was definitely not good for my mental health, and I was quite upset by the time someone finally came in. Both David and Avonlea Jane were also alone and separated from each other during this time at the hospital.
After seven I was finally taken over the hospital nursery, where I wasn't allowed to take Avonlea Jane out either because of lack of photo ID. Meredith was allowed to check her out though as she could verify that I had indeed given birth to her. We were then all three taken to a maternity room to wait for the pediatrician on duty to release Avonlea Jane from the hospital. We had expected to leave in a few hours, but were told at one o'clock that we should wait until the evening, and we could probably leave around five. The pediatrician never came back, and we were told we could probably leave at seven a.m. Luckily, our friend Brittany brought us clothing to the hospital, as we certainly didn't expect to stay so long. Seven came and went, and we were told we could leave at noon, but we didn't wind up being checked out of the hospital until after two p.m. The hospital stay was certainly not expected and not wanted, and after being separated from my baby and my husband for two hours, all I wanted to do was go home and have the three of us get into our own bed. So, leaving on Tuesday and finally being home alone was wonderful. And, even though it wasn't the birth experience and recovery experience we had expected, we could not have asked for a more perfect little girl to come home with us.
Thank you all so much for your congratulations and well wishes. Something we've noticed in a big chunk of the e-mails we have received has been the comment: "What a beautiful name! ...how do you pronounce it?" We certainly appreciate that even not knowing how to perhaps say it, people still like her name. Avonlea Jane's name is pronounced: Aa-vohn-lee (aa as in apple, vohn as in Von Trapp, lee like the general).
We wanted her to have a name that to us said family, tradition, love, and literature. We promise we didn't make up the name Avonlea, it is the taken from the Anne of Green Gables / Anne of Avonlea series written by Lucy Maud Montgomery which have been my favorite books since childhood. Avonlea was the name of the close-knit community where the series was set, based on the real town of Cavendish, Prince Edward Island. Over the course of our relationship and through visiting PEI, David has also gained a love for all things Anne and Avonlea.
This year marks the centennial anniversary of the creation of Avonlea which we thought was a wonderful sign. We also wanted a name that honored our families in some way without directly naming her after someone. We did , of course, consider the name Anne, but with David's family having an Anne, Anna, and Annabella we thought that Avonlea was a nice connection without making family functions confusing. Another important contributing reason to the name choice was my grandmother, from whom I got my middle name. She and my grandfather were who introduced me to Anne of Green Gables and gave me my first copy of the book when I was nine. Some of my fondest childhood memories are watching the Anne movies or the Canadian television series Road to Avonlea with my grandparents.
As for the name Jane, we also wanted her to have a strong and traditional name that also belonged to a saint. We both think that Jane is a beautiful and elegant name (and of course hope you do too). In line with the first part of her name, Jane of Lantern Hill is another one of my favorite books (also by L.M. Montgomery), which was introduced to me by my grandfather.
As for an update, Avonlea Jane is doing very well. We're so glad to finally be home after our unexpected day at the hospital. She is eating almost constantly which has really hindered my ability to sleep, which is particularly unfortunate after being awake and in labor for so long. (I'm running on less than 15 hours since Saturday morning--yuck.) David is currently carrying her around the house in the pouch I made, and he finds her to be a much more willing participant than the cats. Mabel has been very curious about her and likes to sit on the couch by her or watch her in the bed. Maxwell doesn't quite know what to think of her and is keeping his distance, barely setting foot into the room where she is. We are getting ready to take her to her three-day doctor appointment and are anxious to see how her first public outing goes. We will post a birth story soon, but getting the computer hasn't been a top priority.
After more than twenty-seven hours of early labor followed by a very quick and painless birth (from less than 5 cm dilated to a babe in arms in under seven minutes!)--the fastest the birth center had ever seen--Avonlea Jane arrived at 5:57 a.m. on November 17. She weighed 8 pounds 3 ounces and measured 20.5 inches long. Because of the very rapid birth we needed to be transferred to the hospital to check her lungs for fluid. The whole family is now at home and Mom and baby are doing very well.
We'll try to post a complete birth story in the next few days. We will be open to out-of-town visitors starting this Saturday at the earliest. Anyone who needs to be in contact with us, please go through David and understand that response time will most likely be slow.
As you know, we are having our baby at the North Shore Birth Center in Beverly. We were greatly saddened by the news that the board of trustees for the Northeast Health Corp., which owns the birth center and Beverly Hospital, will be voting on November 18 for a measure that would require all patients of the NSBC to deliver at Beverly Hospital due to financial concerns. Not only is this a concern for women in general and for our future births, but should this measure pass and be effective immediately, I will be at 41 weeks, 3 days on November 18. We don't know when the baby will be born, but this is certainly cutting it a little close.
The birth center has been open for twenty-eight years, has seen the births of over 6,000 babies, and was the first birth center in New England. It is one of only two birth centers currently open in Massachusetts and many families travel an hour or more to be seen at the birth center. The women who go to the birth center account for over a third of all births through the Northeast Health Corp., and it is rated among one of the top 100 places to birth in the country. Should the North Shore Birth Center close, its loss will not only affect those who are direct consumers, as it stands as model of care for birthing around the country.
Our hope is that even though this was brought to the board for financial reasons that financial reasoning will be what saves the birth center. The thought may be that whatever women originally chose the birth center will just continue their care with Beverly Hospital. Being the only birth center in the area, families at a considerable distance choose it for their place to labor and deliver. Should they want a hospital birth, there are certainly closer ones. Even though we just live over the bridge from Beverly, should we have wanted a hospital birth, we would have gone to Salem Hospital. Birthing aside, many families living closer to other hospitals choose Beverly Hospital for their non-emergency medical care because the fact that they have a birth center sends the message that they support low-intervention and more holistic health care as well as a patient's right to make decisions about their medical care. What would happen should the birth center close is that many families will choose to stay home or to travel to New Hampshire for a birth center (which would be our two options in the future). Even though we wanted this baby to be born at home (which was not achieved because of financial and transportation issues) and we hope for the ability to have homebirths in the future, we don't want to lose the option of the North Shore Birth Center.
Since finding out that this decision was going to a vote, there has been a large grassroots movement to save the birth center that has attracted the attention of local media and national birthing and women's rights groups. We attended a strategy meeting this weekend with a wonderful turnout of parents, parents-to-be, midwives, doulas, and doctors who support natural birth. We are in the process of doing what we can to help save the birth center. Whether you are a resident of the North Shore who has either used the birth center or would like to have the option in the future, you are someone who cares about a family's right to choose how and where their child is born, or you are a friend or family member of Baby Radue who is grateful that this baby has a chance to be born in a safe and comfortable environment (all studies show that for healthy low-risk women, a no-intervention birth with a trained midwife is safer than one in a traditional hospital setting), we would love to have your help in saving the birth center.
The best way of helping is to express your feelings to the board of trustees (no matter how short or long of a letter). The purpose of the board of trustees is to act in the best interest of the community, and we need to let them know this isn't what we want. The proper address is:
Northeast Health Corporation’s Board of Trustees c/o Mary Ellen Lear, Secretary Beverly Hospital 85 Herrick Street Beverly, MA 01915
We will also be sending our letter to the individual board members who are listed below:
NANCY PALMER (Chairman of the Board) 9 Buttonwood Lane Danvers, MA 01923
GEORGE BURKE 7 Ray Street Beverly, MA 01915
CHARLES FAVAZZO Miller & Favazzo 27 Congress Street Salem, MA 01970
JOSEPH HALEY 75 Paine AvenueP rides Crossing, MA 01965
ROBERT RIVES, Esquire Burns & Levinson LLP 125 Summer Street Boston, MA 02110
DAVID ST. LAURENT 1 Virginia Place Wenham, MA 01984
MICHAEL C. SHEA, Esquire Pino & Shea 46 Middle Street Gloucester, MA 01930
This weekend I hit 9.5 months. As enjoyable as the end of my pregnancy has been, I am glad this is the end. I am definitely ready to have a baby on the outside. Our most recent midwife appointment was Wednesday when there was some excitement because a baby was born just as we came in the door. We've been at the birth center when a mom was coming in to deliver, but this was the first time we were there when the baby was born. While our midwife was busy cleaning up, we went over to the hospital to have some lab work done. I just needed a complete blood count, but I had been putting it off for two weeks. While we were in the lab waiting room, David actually got a phone call from Sister Mary Hemophilia reminding him of his Catholic duty to donate blood every six weeks. Thank goodness there are people like David who are willing to have blood drawn for the sake of strangers, while I have to be coerced into doing it for my own health and family. I was not as big of a baby as the first time, but I'm happy all the blood work is over, and I'm even happier that I was able to arrange having my blood drawn only twice during pregnancy.
I was very concerned that all of my panicking about the blood work would raise my blood pressure for my appointment. I had been a little concerned about it because I have gotten really puffy in the last two weeks (if you look at the maternity photos, my poor hands look like catchers' mitts, and I can no longer wear any rings), but my blood pressure was just where it has been, 90/50.
As we're heading into the home stretch, I have been busy trying to turn the baby who has been posterior (with its back in line with mine). I had acupressure last weekend which really helped to alleviate some of the lower back pain caused by a posterior baby, and it was able to move the baby slightly. Since then I have been doing positioning exercises every day which hopefully will help. (15% of babies enter labor in the posterior position and most will rotate at some point. It is not dangerous in itself to have a posterior baby, but the labors are generally considerably longer and more painful than anterior labors.) The baby has also dropped which is good news because it means that we're getting closer, and it makes it easier to breathe, but I have a more pronounced pregnant gait, and I go to the bathroom a lot more frequently.
The waiting game has begun though, and as much as I like games, I don't care for this one. When it comes to surprises like "boy or girl?" at least then we know it is either one or the other. That is not much of a surprise. When I think about the fact that I could pregnant for another 29 days before I become dangerously post-dates, it seems like way too many options for the baby's birthday. Perhaps there is a reason that patience is a virtue.
I am now officially 8.5 months. The average baby at this point is 4.75 pounds. I hit term in THREE weeks (full term in six)!
The upcoming arrival of our little bundle of joy is most definitely going to be accompanied by the arrival of lots of visiting friends and family. Not only are we excited about meeting the baby, but we're excited about you meeting the baby as well. Clearly, we don't know when exactly the baby will born, so for those who want to come to Salem shortly after the birth, you will most likely be making very quick arrangements. If you have an interest in coming from out of town and need to make arrangements in advance, we would suggest waiting until the baby's baptism, which will most likely be Sunday, December 21. We will know for sure if we have this date reserved by mid-October. We will post on the blog as soon as we know for sure, and formal invitations will be sent after the baby is born. So, be thinking about it, but don't book anything yet.
[Should we definitely reserve that weekend with the church, we will be hosting a holiday dinner on Saturday, December 20 for those who are in town, and when those who are driving will receive their Christmas presents--everyone else will get theirs shipped to them. The baptism will most likely be following the 10:30 mass, concluding at ~12:30. Afterward, we will be hosting a welcoming brunch for the wee one. As a note, because of the time it takes to get from Salem to the airport and the holiday travel rush, making a flight before 5:00 p.m. on Sunday would be very difficult.]
Announcing the birth and coming to visit:
As for letting people know about the birth of the baby, unless from the baby's perspective you have the title of "grandparent" or "aunt/uncle," we can't promise you will get a personal phone call from one of us. We will of course post an announcement on the blog, but we will also be sending out an e-mail announcement. Should you be interested in being on our e-mail list, please either post a blog comment with your e-mail address or send an e-mail to olivia.radue@gmail.com to let us know. When we let everyone know the baby has arrived, we will also let you know when we will be accepting visitors (if everything goes smoothly, most likely ~five days after the birth).
The reason for the gap between the birth and wanting visitors is for some recovery time. Most women birth their babies in a hospital where they stay for a few days, only being allowed visitors during restricted hours, and for a good reason. While we may be feeling up to 20-minute visits from those who live locally and come bearing vegetarian casseroles or baked goods ; ) we will certainly want to be able to devote hours and days to family members who have traveled a good distance to see us. Of course, we don't expect anyone to spend all of their waking hours in our living room, so we do have plenty of information about local attractions and things to do.
How to get here:
From Central Indiana to Salem, it is a 16 hour drive without stops. We have done it twice in one day (yuck), and we do not recommend it. Even with two days, it can be a hard drive. If there is snow, we do not recommend driving the Southern Pennsylvania (I-70/76/78 through Harrisburg) route. Instead, we would recommend either taking I-80 across Pennsylvania or I-90 through Buffalo (which is a nice half-way point).
There are direct flights from Indianapolis to Boston. Should you be interested in looking at other airports to fly into, you can look at flights to Manchester-Boston Regional Airport in Manchester, New Hampshire. Depending upon when people will be coming in and with how many others, we cannot promise that we will be available to pick you up from the airport. If you fly into the Boston Logan Airport, cab fares to Salem range from $50-80. You can also very easily take public transportation (the subway + commuter rail) to Salem for less than $8 a person. Should you fly into Manchester, there is a shuttle option (for $19) from the airport to Boston, where you can then take either a cab or public transportation to Salem. There is also of course the option of getting a rental car, which depending on where you plan to stay in the area and how much walking you are accustomed to doing, may be your best option. (Salem is very walkable--clearly, as we only own one car.)
On our last visit, we traveled via Amtrak (taking a Megabus from Indianapolis to Chicago), which saved us from needing to be awake to drive or reserving a hotel room. The travel costs were very low, but we did spend many, many hours sitting in what was the equivalent of an airplane seat.
Where to stay:
We're fortunate to live in a highly "touristy" location, so there are plenty of options for accommodations. In Salem, there are no chain hotels. If that is the type of accommodation you will want, search for hotels in Danvers or Peabody where there are plenty of chains. Be aware that even if Google or Mapquest tells you your hotel in Danvers/Peabody is only 15 minutes away, it is actually with traffic generally 30+ minutes.
For those looking to stay in downtown Salem, there are several options within very easy walking distance (less than half a mile). We would recommend looking at:
The Northey House (northeystreethouse.com), which we could hit with a rock from our back porch
The Hawthorne Hotel (www.hawthornehotel.com), which is 0.5 miles away and an inn, not a B&B
For other Salem accommodation information, check out reviews and recommendations at http://www.tripadvisor.com/.
We have posted this information for those who have started to ask for it in thinking about their November/December plans. We will also re-post this information closer to the birth and when we announce the baby's arrival.
We've finally hit eight months, and the baby is very close to four pounds. I would suspect that by now things must be getting cramped in there, but judging by the octopus limbs that are constantly bumping the inside of my belly, there appears to be plenty of space.
We've been keeping ourselves busy with administrative tasks such as finishing our Hypnobirthing classes, writing out our birth plan, deciding what we want to take to the birth center, whittling down our to-do lists, and switching over my insurance. My insurance transfer has not gone as smoothly as we would have hoped, unfortunately leaving me uninsured (and breaking Massachusetts laws) for the last 15 days. Hopefully I will be re-insured by Tuesday at the latest. Being uninsured and pregnant is a very bad idea. On a more positive (and slightly obsessive) note, all of our family Christmas presents are purchased, boxed, wrapped, tagged, and bowed--taking one huge task off the pre-baby to-do list.
Now that Christmas is taken care of, we can focus on a closer holiday: Halloween. For those of you who don't live in Salem, it is CRAZY during October. Salem is the Halloween capitol of the world. Why? We don't really get it; they weren't real witches. It doesn't help that the police cars feature a witch, as does the Salem News masthead, and a witch is the high school mascot. TV Land even erected a statue to Elizabeth Montgomery in Salem to commemorate an episode of Bewitched that was filmed here. While Salem does have fabulous maritime, literary, and architectural history, it can unfortunately get overshadowed by the towns plethora of witch museums and tourist traps. These attractions bring in over half a million visitors in October (to a town of 40,000 people) who spend $30 million. Halloween is craziness. We don't drive around Salem on the weekends; David doesn't go to work on Halloween because his commute would be close to 3 hours on the way home. As nifty as it might be to have a baby in October in Salem, we're glad that most first babies go 41 weeks, because the ultrasound estimation of Nov. 1 (based on the baby's height), is a little close for comfort. An October baby in Salem would be awful for visitors; there's no legal parking and no open hotel rooms and lots of crazy people.
October in Salem does bring one awesome thing with it, the Official Cat of Salem Contest. We didn't get costumes done in time to enter last year, but this year I'm more on the ball. We never thought that we would be pageant parents, but we're very excited. Maxwell is most likely going as a penguin. He was going to be Roger Conant (founder of Salem, pictured at top), but his hat would be difficult to make, and we don't think he would be recognizable--unless we painted him green. Mabel is going as Hester Prynne from The Scarlet Letter, which we think makes her a shoo-in. However, in Miss America style, we have to be able to verbalize why one of our cats deserves to be the Official Cat of Salem 2008. Any help on this would be appreciated. (As a note to our Salem readers, our kitties will open a giant can of whoop-ass if you steal their costume ideas.)
Today we went and toured the North Shore Birth Center, which a home-like setting for natural childbirth that is overseen by Certified Nurse Midwifes. (http://www.nhshealth.org/index.cfm?Action=Information.NorthShoreBirthCenter) Originally, we were only considering homebirth with a CPM, but we have decided to explore the next step up as well because of the costs associated with paying out of pocket. After doing some research and talking to other North Shore moms, we're meeting with our favored homebirth midwife next week, and then we'll decide where to go from there. (For more information about homebirth, check out the documentary The Business of Being Born or any books by Ina May Gaskin.)
As far as the birth center is concerned, it was really nice. It is a very comfortable environment with living areas and a kitchen open for your use, as well as a full-service lending library of natural birth resources. The birthing rooms are just like bedrooms in a house, but are equipped with birthing tubs built for two. They also have regular exam rooms where you would have all of your pre-natal visits. The midwifes there, as they are nurse-midwifes, aren't as crunchy as we might like, but they are very relaxed on having all procedures and tests be optional. The most important thing for us was that they don't view birth as something that needs to medicalized but a natural part of your sexual cycle, and they are there to observe, not to dictate.
Our first official appointment with be at the birth center the day after Easter, when I will be few days away from two months along. So, we're excited about that. I have been really fortunate working where I do, because I am exposed to so much about natural pregnancy and so has David, that we feel really ahead of the game, and we don't need very much at all explained to us.
Whether I wind up birthing at home or at the birth center, we feel really great about our options. The only downside is the issue of insurance no matter where I deliver. Our concerns about insurance go both ways though; neither will cover home birth up front. Mine only covers the majority of a hospital birth if you have a wicked-entended stay, leaving us ~$3,000-5,000 in costs; in the case of an emergency c-section we would be left with approximately $10,000-17,000 of the cost; and with the birth center, they consider it an out-patient procedure and would have us responsible for ~$4,000, the approximate cost of a homebirth. Ugh. David's isn't much better, as he has a restrictive PPO. They only truly cover at Mt. Auburn Hosptial, which for an appointment would take me two hours each way to reach, and driving in the evening would take an hour with absolutely no traffic. Going to the birth center with his insurace would run us at ~$2,000 and a hosptial birth would be $3,500-10,000, depending on the care. We're certainly glad we called both companies in the beginning though to find out as opposed to after. This issue might need some more venting in the future, and we may need to become squeeky wheels in demanding more coverage. Regardless, we're still excited and looking forward to choosing our provider.
Less than an hour old
Getting the important introduction out of the way
Avonlea Jane first met Will at her friend Caedmon's house, where she spent the day, but she was glad to see him out of the carseat at home.
Everyone's ready for an early bedtime. Avonlea Jane woke up at 6:00 a.m. when we were leaving for the birth center. We told her she was going to go sleep at Cad's house, and she correctly interpreted that as "Baby brother coming!" She was then too excited to sleep much throughout the day.
It doesn't help that the police cars feature a witch, as does the Salem News masthead, and a witch is the high school mascot. TV Land even erected a statue to Elizabeth Montgomery in Salem to commemorate an episode of Bewitched that was filmed here. 
While Salem does have fabulous maritime, literary, and architectural history, it can unfortunately get overshadowed by the towns plethora of witch museums and tourist traps. These attractions bring in over half a million visitors in October (to a town of 40,000 people) who spend $30 million. 
Halloween is craziness. We don't drive around Salem on the weekends; David doesn't go to work on Halloween because his commute would be close to 3 hours on the way home. As nifty as it might be to have a baby in October in Salem, we're glad that most first babies go 41 weeks, because the ultrasound estimation of Nov. 1 (based on the baby's height), is a little close for comfort. An October baby in Salem would be awful for visitors; there's no legal parking and no open hotel rooms and lots of crazy people.