a visit to the midwife
I had my 13 week appointment at my midwives' offices yesterday. It's a practice with four midwives, and I meet a different one each time (so that I'll know and be comfortable with them all, since I don't know who will be at the birth). Yesterday I met with Emily, and liked her a lot.
I got to weigh myself and test my own urine (not as exciting as I thought it would be), and then got to hear the grub's heartbeat (always fun) and had a fun chat with Emily about leaving the gender a surprise. I was so surprised to find out that I'm in such a small minority not finding out ahead of time when I was pregnant with Otto (something like 90-95% of expecting moms find out these days), and I thought maybe the "let's have a surprise!" percentage would be higher at a midwifery practice, but Emily says about 80-90% of their patients find out, too. She was so thrilled and excited when I told her we wouldn't be finding out, and told me she likes the surprise births better, too.
It's funny, it doesn't even seem like an option to me. In my mind, you get to find out if it's a boy or a girl right after they're born. I just don't see any reason to find out ahead of time. When I was pregnant with Otto, I got into lots of online discussions with other pregnant women, who would almost always use the line "I just had to know, because I'm such a planner." Which would make me laugh every time, because I am the biggest planner I know (I had the nickname Katie Calendar for a while, and am routinely asked to be involved in projects because I'm so organized). This was usually from women who claimed not to be into girl=pink and boy=blue. So what's to plan? You can still decorate and buy plenty of clothes and things. So weird. They should have just said "I just wanted to know."
Emily also agreed with my not naming babies before they're born policy. I think we agreed on that one because we were both almost named something else (she was almost Cindy, I was almost Melanie), but then we were born and our moms realized they had the name wrong and went with the correct name.
Anyhow, I guess I'm a weirdo on this one, but that shouldn't surprise anyone.
I got to weigh myself and test my own urine (not as exciting as I thought it would be), and then got to hear the grub's heartbeat (always fun) and had a fun chat with Emily about leaving the gender a surprise. I was so surprised to find out that I'm in such a small minority not finding out ahead of time when I was pregnant with Otto (something like 90-95% of expecting moms find out these days), and I thought maybe the "let's have a surprise!" percentage would be higher at a midwifery practice, but Emily says about 80-90% of their patients find out, too. She was so thrilled and excited when I told her we wouldn't be finding out, and told me she likes the surprise births better, too.
It's funny, it doesn't even seem like an option to me. In my mind, you get to find out if it's a boy or a girl right after they're born. I just don't see any reason to find out ahead of time. When I was pregnant with Otto, I got into lots of online discussions with other pregnant women, who would almost always use the line "I just had to know, because I'm such a planner." Which would make me laugh every time, because I am the biggest planner I know (I had the nickname Katie Calendar for a while, and am routinely asked to be involved in projects because I'm so organized). This was usually from women who claimed not to be into girl=pink and boy=blue. So what's to plan? You can still decorate and buy plenty of clothes and things. So weird. They should have just said "I just wanted to know."
Emily also agreed with my not naming babies before they're born policy. I think we agreed on that one because we were both almost named something else (she was almost Cindy, I was almost Melanie), but then we were born and our moms realized they had the name wrong and went with the correct name.
Anyhow, I guess I'm a weirdo on this one, but that shouldn't surprise anyone.