First Home Midwife appointment

I had my first homebirth midwife appointment yesterday! Man, was it nice to be home and have someone arrive on time and talk to me for an hour, as compared to going to the birth center on time, waiting a half hour to be seen and then getting about 20 minutes.

We went over all my paperwork and she asked a lot of questions about my medical history, and we talked about things like family support, nutrition, and exercise. This was the 24 week appointment and next month I'll do the Gestational Diabetes test, but she does it differently than the birth center. Instead of the horribly supersweet sugar drink and one hour wait, she'll give me a glucometer like the ones diabetics use. I will test my blood sugar in the morning before eating and then have a sugary breakfast (she says Cocoa Krispies count!) and then test my blood sugar again at one, two and three hours after eating.

(She said the sugar drink is more palatable to teen and early 20s moms who down several soft drinks a day already, but for people who eat "real food" the sugar shock to the system isn't very nice to go through.)

We went over the prenatals I've been taking and she made some recommendations for better ones. Apparently the ones I was taking may contribute to constipation - the iron in them was a particular sort that can cause that. She recommended a handful of specific brands and gave me the names of two health food stores in town that carry them. One of those stores offers a 10% discount to pregnant women for prenatals! Martin and I went there later on in the day and decided to get the ones that she described as "the best, but the most expensive" as the difference in cost between those and the second tier ones is only $20 for the rest of my pregnancy. I am also now taking cod liver oil capsules! (Martin used to have to eat spoonfuls of the stuff as a kid in England!)

What else...we talked about sneaky ways to get more exercise, like parking on the farther end of the parking lot and taking at least one flight of stairs on the way into work. (I work on the seventh floor...she agreed I don't need THAT many stairs.) And I'm to keep a diet diary for three days, though I'm going to extend it to seven to catch the weekend.

Then she took my blood pressure (slightly lower than my normal, which she said is common in home testing!), my pulse (good) and checked out the baby. She said he or she was head down at the time and "would probably stay that way" which I was surprised by as I thought they can still move around for a couple more months yet. She used her Doppler and found the heartbeat quickly but was trying to get the "galloping" one where she's right on the heart, but Fish was moving so much that she couldn't get it. I felt a few of the movements that we heard, but most of them I couldn't feel.

And then it was done, and I was already home, which was fantastic, lol.