The reason

I am currently 24 weeks pregnant with my third and final child, a baby boy that we are naming Jude. I've yet to have a baby come easy. I'm not one of the lucky ones who sail through pregnancy with just a touch of morning sickness and maybe a little back pain but still look fabulous and glowy...I'm the kind of pregnant woman who gains 80lbs and looks frumpy and miserable, sweaty and smelly. I always get more than my fair share of "morning" sickness and turn into a raging, waddling bitch by about 5 months. I am fortunate to have had healthy full term pregnancies every single time and so I know enough to count my blessings, don't get me wrong. I've had two previous cesareans, my first (my now 9 year old son) was at 40weeks due to who knows what. According to the doctor at the time, I just wasn't going to have him vaginally due to his size so I was given the option of being induced and being in labor for days and then having the cesarean, or just going ahead with the surgery right then. I let myself just kind of get railroaded into it despite the fact that up to that point I had been seeing a practice of midwives at a freestanding birth center and the cesarean was kind of the opposite direction...oh well. That ended up with a really difficult cesarean birth that was hard for me to deal with for various reasons. Maybe I will write a whole post about it someday, but at any rate; I decided to have my next child (who came along about 7 years later) at home. My daughter was born Oct 2, 2010 after about 33 hours of labor at home. I saw an awesome midwife during my pregnancy and planned a homebirth. After the long labor, I chose to transport to the hospital and told myself I would be able to avoid a c-section and have an epidural, get some sleep and then have my VBAC. No such luck...a bunch of things happened at the hospital but in the end, suffice to say that I chose a repeat cesarean. Now I find myself pregnant with my third and final child. I'd like to avoid another cesarean. If I end up needing one, I am ok with it. It is what it is. But both of my children have had to go to the NICU for about a day for testing/oxygen because they both had "wet lungs" which is common with cesarean babies, but mimics the symptoms of pneumonia apparently and therefore has to be watched/tested/treated with antibiotics"just in case". I really really really want to hold my baby after it's born. I would love that. It seems so basic, something you just kind of assume will happen, but for me it hasn't. Not yet. I've always been resentful that after all that work of labor and/or surgery, and the whole 10 months of being pregnant and feeling like the only one who really "knew" my baby, they are always held and handled by a bunch of other people before I get to them. I'm always one of the last to hold them by the time the nurses do their thing and all the other family members get their chance first because I can't see them in the NICU until I can walk recently sliced self to a wheelchair to go there. So yeah, my ultimate goal is to be healthy, feel somewhat healthy despite being pregnant, and to have this baby via the ole baby spout aka vagina, at home.