What the....?????

So that fab doula who I was raving about in my last post just dumped us. She made up some bullshit excuse about being overbooked (which means she never should have taken a meeting with us to begin with), then alluded to "other reasons" she felt it would not be best to go forward with us, but saw no reason to "make things complicated" by explaining what those reasons are. She sucks. (I know. I am being very mature). And if anyone ever asks me if I know anything about her, I'll tell them all about this. I have half a mind to slam her all over the local pregnancy message boards, but I'm going to try to control myself.

I did some digging among my online network and it turns out a lot of people have had her do similar things to them. The prevailing theory is that she is in such high demand (which she is) that if you don't sign her when you meet her she loses interest in you and takes other clients without having the courtesy to check in with you first. Given the fact that we agreed that Henry and I would let her know our answer a week after our interview, she should have had more thoughtfulness than that. Instead she told us that she just hoped that we would have picked someone else, and then we wouldn't have to deal with this at all.

And of course now we are up a creek without a doula. We'll probably call the one we didn't hire and see if she would still be willing to work with us, but that will be an awkward conversation at best....

22 Weeks

So, at 22 weeks and 3 days pregnant, I finally felt ready for a so-called "belly shot". Things are really taking off in there, with lots of movement and "pops" around the clock, and the occasional Braxton Hicks contraction. I'm definitely in the second half of pregnancy, and trying to remind myself daily (sometimes hourly) that I am over halfway through this marathon.

The acupuncture I wrote about last week really did seem to help -- for about three days. I felt truly fantastic, and then things got really bad again. I didn't have another appointment until Thursday and in the meantime, I just had to get through my days. I got really upset -- it is horrible to feel horrible again after feeling so good. I had been warned that because acupuncture's effects are cumulative that I would probably have some bad days again, but I wasn't prepared for how awful it would be. I was so relieved to go to my appointment for another treatment come Thursday. I've felt pretty good again since then, with a few bad moments thrown in, but all in all I do think the acupuncture is still working. We've got a prenatal appointment this week, though, and I'll be glad to review all this with my doctor, as she's been out of the loop for the last few weeks. And its in the last few weeks that this has gotten really bad.

For fun, Henry let me take his belly shot too. He does this thing where he pooches his belly way out and manages to look more pregnant that I do!

The greatest part of feeling good has been noticing things that I had forgotten about when feeling sick -- things like the fact that it is summer and the farmers' markets are busting out with amazing fruit. We went down to the farmers' market at Jack London Square this morning and picked up a bag of gorgeous nectarines, a quart of blueberries and a few others yummy things that just screamed SUMMER. We took everything home and whipped the nectarines and blueberries up into a pie, that we then took to enjoy with our friends Marco and Christine and their twin girls. Yumm, yummm...

Another great benefit to feeling better is being able to realize that in 17 weeks (or so) I'll be giving birth and actually being able to start planning for that. We have wanted all along to hire a doula to assist during the birth. She'll provide labor support for me and for Henry, and help us both through the experience, and also act as out advocate with hospital staff. She'll help me avoid medication if I don't want it, and hopefully avoid an "emergency" cesarean. We interviewed two candidates this week and it was really hard to pick one, because we liked them both so much. They each had incredible experience and credentials. In the end we went with the one who exudes this incredible confidence, because I feel that if my own confidence starts to fail during labor, she'll be able to pump me right back up and help me finish the job.