You guess

Today's picture is a replacement for the usual update photo because Cati keeps sneaking out of the house without letting me take her picture. I took this during our homebirth prep class with a woman whose name is actually Jane Austin. Your job is to guess which is the giant gym ball, and which is Cati's belly. She was leaning on the ball in between leaning back on her toes to simulate some of the physical "challenge" of childbirth while I tried to do things to help. First, I was to just use touch with no talking, trying to massage, lightly touching, etc...then, I was to try to get her to say yes. Finally, she told me stuff she liked and then I did them. I was doing pretty well until midway through the "Yes" part when I asked her if she loved her mommy and daddy and her brother and she definitely said yes to all but then she started almost crying so I had to go back to things like ice cream and puppies. I shoulda known better, she does miss them an awful lot.

Meanwhile, Ms Austin is a fine teacher, with a nice mixture of fairly genuine new ageness and crass body fluid talk. Each leavens the other in a way that makes all of us fairly comfortable. While she lacks the original Jane Austen's economy of language, she's a bit more helpful on the topic of birth than our literary hero. One of the best parts of class is meeting all these other couples homebirthing, from all different walks of life and ages and backgrounds. Very helpful to feel part of a community. The other day, the craziest thing happened...Cati was telling someone she was from Marietta, and this guy pops up from across the room..."You're from Marietta? Me too!" Turns out, though they went to different high schools, they graduated the same year. AND, they have the same midwife. AND, they are due the day after us. Weird, eh? I guess them Georgians love their summertime...

Otherwise, all is going fairly well. Cati has been struggling with acute acid reflux (heartburn), but that seems to have eased somewhat. All our tests and checkups and whatnot continue to come out all grand, and our baby continues to dance the amniotic fluid dance. I alternate between panic and ecstasy, which seems to ratchet up even as Cati descends into a preternatural calm about child birth. I think Cati would laugh to hear this, but I've started just gazing at her to calm myself. She's the center of my storm, and a lovely place she is to spin around...