Congratulations:
Today at church everyone was extremely excited about the growing baby! The most heartwarming excitement, however, came from the beautiful little girl who was the flower girl at our wedding less than two years ago. She gave us a card with this picture inside 🙂 Looks like she thinks it’s going to be a girl, lol! It was overwhelming but fun to receive all the congratulations. People can see my little bump now and say I have that “glow”. Awesome! I got a little faint-feeling from standing in my heels for so long and had to escape to get my snacks that i packed for post-church.
Condemnations:
For lunch we went to someone’s house, and it was there, from another church member, that we got the first really negative reaction to home birth that we’ve gotten yet. She basically said that no, we should not do a home birth and that, because of my age (excuse me, is thirty really that old, and is my age even your business??) we should go straight to a birthing center. Actually, the first thing that came out of her mouth when she asked what hospital we are giving birth at and we said we’re doing it at home was: “Are you kidding me??” And that was not an exclamation of pleasant surprise. So both my husband and I were pretty taken aback by her rudeness and weren’t quite sure how to respond. My husband did a great job of defending our plans without starting an argument, but after that I just wanted to go home. I know I can’t expect everyone to agree with our decision to birth at home, and I really am pleasantly surprised that we haven’t gotten any really negative feedback until now. However, I think that people would be kinder to ask questions and maybe learn a little about why we want to do this instead of immediately discounting our plans and telling us what we “should” do. Unfortunately this woman is good friends with my husband’s mother, who had been very supportive of home birth thus far. We’ll see what happens when people like this begin to talk to her about what a bad choice they think we’re making…..
Natural Birth and Parenting 