ste_noni

 After my post of frustration yesterday, I googled "albuquerque birth center" (since that's where my parents live) and the first link was to an awesome looking/sounding birth center where the midwives will either come to you, or you can use their birth center.  And they take insurance.  I just wanted to cry because it sounds exactly like what I want.

But if I go that route, it almost guarantees Joe won't be there.  I suspect that would be fine with him (he's not home and we haven't talked much since he's pretty busy on his trip), but I know what an amazing experience it was and I think he would want to be there if he knew.  But he's wanted our baby born outside Puerto Rico from the beginning.

The whole thing just makes me mad.  I have two health insurance plans, both of which are pretty good.  I should be able to find a situation in which I can be comfortable and have my baby and yet have a safe back-up option if necessary.  Territory or not, I'm still in the US.  When I'm the most frustrated, I just imagine bending over, having them do the epidural, and just have the baby their way.  And I could accept that, but then I have to put up with 2-3 days in a substandard hospital with limited visiting hours and limited access to my baby and no 3rd party (husband or someone else) who can stick around and be my advocate.  Three days away from Ellie when she could be bonding with the baby seems so wrong.

I need to talk to Joe, I guess.  I suspect he will be all for me going to stay with my parents for a few weeks and will do his best to fly out as soon as I'm in labor.  As for him missing the birth, I guess we will just have to have a 3rd baby so he can hopefully be there for that one.

[x-post with Ellie's blog]

So, despite a rough beginning, the week ended really well. On Thursday afternoon, Ellie and I made brownies for her daycare teachers as part of a Teacher Appreciation lunch they were having. Ellie and I had lots of fun making the brownies and licking the bowl afterwards. Friday, after work, we made brownies again since the entire first batch had gone to the teachers.

Saturday, Joe and I decided that we were tired of spending our weekends working around the house, so we got up early and decided to head to the southwest corner of the island. On our way, we stopped at a car wash fundraiser Joe’s cadets were having and then we headed to camp Santiago to get gas, drinks, and let Ellie play on the military planes and Jeeps they have there. After that, we headed back in the car, drove for a while, and then got lost. The southwest corner of Puerto Rico is almost like a savannah – hot and dry. Good ranch lands, I guess, but pretty empty. Since we had the dogs with us, we couldn’t enjoy the beautiful state park beach we saw, but we headed off on a pretty rough dirt road that led us right next to this beautiful beach. The only bad part was that there were weeds in the water. We found a clear spot and spent some time just enjoying the water. I found all sorts of huge shells and large pieces of coral. I found an entire conch shell about five inches long. The dogs had a great time swimming in the water. Unfortunately, Ellie had not slept much in the car so she was pretty tired. And it was incredibly hot. We all piled back into the car and once we had cooled off some, changed into dry clothes. We then drove down to another cool looking town with a beach and then headed to the very tip of Puerto Rico. It was sort of disappointing – mostly salt marsh. So, we headed back north and up and around the island towards home. In the end, it was a nice day away from the house.

On Sunday morning, Joe went downstairs to make breakfast, I lay in bed next Ellie, who was still sleeping, and read for about an hour. While I was there, I couldn’t help but think that this was the perfect Mother’s Day – reading in bed next to my sleeping baby. We eventually got up, had a great breakfast (pancakes with fresh blueberries), and went to church. We then came home, did a little bit of housework, and then went for a swim in the pool. After that, we all went out front to wash the cars. Ellie had a good time with the hose. She was in charge of rinsing the wheels, although she needed a fair amount of assistance and supervision. It was a good day and a fun weekend.


In Ellie news, her new favorite activity is to walk the dogs. Or dog really. She does not like to ride in her stroller for walks anymore and instead likes to walk Sebastian. If I try to help her, she is very insistent in her “no, no, Mommy”. I insist on holding her and the leash when cars go by or if we see other dogs/cats, but mostly, Ellie does a good job of walking behind Sebastian holding on to the leash. She probably trips about once per walk but she gets up right away, determined to keep going.