Welcoming bath with Gideon-June 2004

I will be 30 weeks tomorrow and time is getting closer, so I decided I'd write out a birth "plan" and things that I really wanted to do

pre and postpartum.

It will be just my husband and I welcoming baby to this world and perhaps a child or two if they are awake and stroll in while I'm in labor. My four prior births have been in the weee hours of the morning, so I am anticipating them sleeping through the birth like they have before. I would like to go on a stroll with DH while in labor around the block. We'll probably go down to the local grocery store to buy flowers for baby's

welcoming bath and pics. We did this with our prior two homebirths. Walking seems to sooth me and help bring baby down quickly with a strong ending bodily desire to push. When the time comes and I feel an overwhelming urge to push, I'd like to be in our jacuzzi bath tub (hopefully in our new house). Birthing in the tub should make clean up easy for DH and encourage my body to relax through contractions. I've always had land births, but for some reason I feel drawn to a water birth this time. I will let my body decide when the time comes. I plan to have towels in the dryer for me (and baby) because I tend to get cold after the delivery is over. I'll have some wash clothes warming in the crock-pot to place on my perineum just incase I decide to have a land birth again. The warm wetness feels so good when baby is crowning. It has always helped me alleviate the pain with the "ring of fire." My intuition foresees a simple and quick birth and I believe this. After baby arrives, I plan to bring him to my breast, skin to skin, to welcome him to this world. We will wait for the placenta to deliver and place it in a strainer sitting over a bowel and perhaps float it in the water while baby and I have our first moments together. If I feel lead to slice off a piece to swallow to help with pp bleeding, I will. After waiting until his life cord has stopped pulsating and it is white, cold and limp, we will braid the four colors of embroidery thread that my four older children have chosen to represent them and tie off the cord and cut. If the time feels right, we will have our welcoming bath together, float the flowers in the water and take pics to send out on the baby announcement. Here's a pic of my dd's welcoming bath. The placenta will go into the fridge to continue draining so I can make some beautiful placenta prints in the days after my birth.

Perhaps we will measure and weigh baby soon after he's born or perhaps we will go to bed and all of that can wait until the next morning. I am usually starving after birthing, so hubby has been in charge of making sure there is leftovers or homemade veggie soup to warm up for me to devour. In the days preceding birth, we will go and choose a tree, or perhaps a blackberry bush, to plant on top of his placenta. DH has put together a birth CD for me of songs that I choose (and a few special surprise songs that he chooses) with every birth. It's amazing to listen to the CD years later and how specific songs will bring back laboring and birthing memories that are so vivid of each of my children's births. I also have been memorizing specific scriptures to help me through my birth. They are listed below. I plan to take a long babymoon and enjoy our new son, nursing, and becoming the mama to five!

Scriptures:
Isaiah 66:9 "Do I bring ye to the moment of birth and not deliver? Says the Lord"

Hebrews 12:1-2 "Let us throw off everything that hinders and let us run with endurance the race that lies before us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus. "

and one more new vs. that I added is
"Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing." James 1:2-4.