20 Months and start of the Third Trimester

Dear Nathan,
My my, how quickly these past few weeks have gone by. This week you are starting to talk a lot more. You have started to use the phrases "Oh no," and "No, no."  It seemed like before, you just nodded when you agreed, but now, you are telling me "no." I bet that feels pretty empowering huh? I also forgot to mention in the past few posts how well you are producing sound effects. Sometimes we don't know if you are screaming or if you are mimicking a machine of some sort. Most of the time, you are mimicking, but this past week, you have become pretty sensitive and will whine or scream if things don't go your way. For example, you threw a huge fit when we were finished playing bubbles and you weren't ready to put them away. Eventually you will learn that things will not always go your way.

We've gotten lots of heavy rain recently. One morning we went to the grocery store to pick up some crawfish for a boil. As we were unloading the car, you started to wander out into the driveway. My first instinct was to pull you back in to keep you dry, but since it was a warm day and there wasn't any lightning, we decided to let you run around in the rain for awhile. I'm glad we did because you had so much fun splashing around in the rain.

Afterwards, nice and dry you decided to push Daddy around the house.

 Today, we met up with your BFF at a park nearby that I never knew existed. It is pretty much in the middle of a neighborhood. It's basically a large pond with lots of ducks and turtles swimming around. You guys had fun feeding the animals. I was surprised at how well you could throw bread. (Must be all the practice that you've gotten with throwing other things around the house lately).

On Saturday, Daddy wasn't feeling to great. So we hung out for a bit and you helped cook. You have gotten quite good with the knife. I had asked you to cube the tofu, but you gave me small chunks instead...which by the way, still tasted awesome.

Then, that afternoon you had a pretty bad accident. You had fallen on top of the dishwasher drawer and one of the pegs punctured your cheek. The bleeding was pretty bad at first, but then it got better. When I took a picture of the wound, you even smiled for me. We weren't sure if we should have taken you in to see a doctor, but since you were in good spirits and I read online that puncture wounds heal pretty well, we used some butterfly bandages and liquid bandage to close up the wound. I am just thankful that you didn't puncture your eyes.

This week you have also experimented with biting. At first, you would be hugging my leg, and then I would feel your mouth brush against my leg and then a light bite. I flinch away and tell you that it hurts and I don't like "ouches." Sometimes you continue to try to bite, sometimes you find something else to bite. Not sure what's going on, but let's stop this soon.

So at 20 months, you are still not eating vegetables. I've decided that this is no longer a phase and that I need to do something about it. I don't know what yet, but I will figure it out somehow.

As far as the pregnancy goes, I'm thinking about making a huge change: transferring to a hospital to give birth instead of the birthing center. Here are the main 2 reasons: 1) Cost. A hospital birth with our insurance has us paying $280 out of pocket. The birthing center is not covered under our insurance (but the midwives are) so we are paying a little bit over 10 times the cost of a hospital birth. 2) Jaundice worries. I found out that our second baby will have a higher chance of developing jaundice. After the experience with Nathan, I don't want to repeat that again.

But, having a natural, unmedicated birth is important to me. If it was necessary to receive drugs or to get a c-section, I would accept it. But a part of me (based on statistics) distrusts labor and delivery doctors. C-section rates have increased so much since the beginning of time and I don't want to have one if I can avoid it. With Nathan, the midwives used various massage techniques and birthing positions (as well as psychological threats) to help me push the baby who had a fist stuck under his chin. I think if I were to have birthed in a hospital, I would have been induced with pitocin (since my water broke with no contractions) and then ended up having a C-section because the baby's heart rate was dropping when I was pushing in a certain position.

Ideally I find a doctor who is knowledgeable and supportive of natural births, or I deliver at a hospital that allows midwives to deliver. I will be praying for God's blessing.

On another note, Steve and I will be going on our first official date night, babysitter and everything this Friday. I'm a bit nervous about how Nathan will fall asleep, but we'll see how it goes. Perhaps it will go smoothly, perhaps it won't.

Nursery update: I think we have everything we need for the nursery now. The room is painted with a customized gray (I mixed a bunch of old paint that we had around the house already), We have the furniture that will be needed and I've ordered a recliner for the room. I'm have a bunch of tissue paper pom poms to make. I'm trying to decide whether or not to hang them from the ceiling, or to stick them on a wall to create a 3-D wall art. The theme is going to be chrysanthemum and dahlia flowers with sheep. Colors: Gray, purple, light bluish green accented with pale green. I'll be sure to post pictures when I have more things put up.

Wow, what a long post. Until next week.

Love,
Mommy