Our midwife Karin Kearns came this past Saturday. We got to fill out mundane paperwork, then she drew my blood, did a urine test checking for protein or some other such nonsense, and most importantly we got to listen to the baby's heartbeat!!! Both David and I were amazed that a small handheld device can pick up a tiny little heartbeat that belongs to a tiny little child whom is only a couple of inches long! I am still amazed when I think about it. It was exhilerating to hear the little beano's frenzied heartbeat as it was the first official confirmation of my pregnancy and because it is a sign of life, a sign of something that is much more grand than I!

On another note, I woke up this morning at 7 o'clock and went out onto our back sunroom to do my devotions when I was greeted with the smell of a fire. The smell wasn't very strong, so I just figured it was someone down the street burning something. At 8:30 I left the house to run some errands and noticed that the air was still tinged with smoke; it looked like a light fog but smelled like smoke. As the morning went on the smoke got worse to the point that at midmorning it seemed like we had a really persistant thick fog. I thought for sure something local had happened, but heard on the radio that the smoke was actually coming from wildfires in Georgia and the panhandle of Florida. Later on there were also reports that the smoke didn't come from those wildfires at all, but from something that had happened in Orlando. Either way, I was blown away by how something that had happened at least 100 miles away could so heavily affect us. I have been sick all day with sinus problems as a result of the smoke. Can you imagine that? Something that was sparked that far from where I live made me sick... It just goes to show that one person can do one thing, and that one thing and one person can affect hundreds, thousands of people! Now, if it just were a positive thing...

Today was supposed to have been my first visit with the midwife I had selected. I am somewhere around twelve weeks pregnant, and still haven't even had a confirmation of my pregnancy (other than the home-pregnancy test I took). I am pretty sure I am pregnant and would be pretty darn depressed to find out that I am not, as my waistline is growing beyond control and my chest has miraculously grown a cup size or two! I had been looking forward to hearing the baby's heartbeat and doing all the stuff that pregnant women do when being visited by or visiting their doctor. However, today I was really disappointed when my midwife never showed for our appointment.

My experience so far during this pregnancy with any medical practitioner has not been a good one. I left three or four messages at the office of an OB/GYN that I had seen before and really liked; never heard back. Then my sister Erin who is also pregnant suggested I look into midwives, which was a wonderful suggestion; the type of care midwives have to offer seems to fit pretty well with my no fuss, au naturale attitude. Plus I was really interested in a more homey atmosphere with the options of a home birth or water birth. So I set about looking for midwives in my area. There were four in the phone book. Can you believe that?!!! Four!!! In all of Tampa there are only four midwives!! I thought for sure there would be more. One of the midwives turned out to be a nurse midwife, which means she won't deliver anywhere else but in a hospital. One turned out not to be a midwife at all but a douhla. One number was no longer in service and the other was a birthing center about 45 minutes from me. It seemed my options were pretty limited.

In talking to the douhla, though, she knew of two other midwives that were not listed at all. I contacted one and set an appointment based on the fact that the midwife offered a birthing center. I thought at the time that I would rather go there than have the baby at home. After going to my fiasco of an appointment, which lasted three hours and all they did was take an hour to fill out paperwork for me when I could have done it in fifteen minutes, take two hours to take my blood pressure, make sure my reflexes were ok, and then they basically sent me on my merry little way, I decided I would go to option B. Option B was today's appointment.

Now I am on Options B and C. I called the birthing center in Dunedin (the one that is 45 minutes away) to see when I could schedule an appointment. The next available day for an orientation, which they require you to go through before you can see a midwife, was May the 24th. Then, if I qualified for their services, I would have to set another appointment to see the midwife. The girl I spoke with made it sound like that would be even later than the beginning of June. After that phone call the midwife I was supposed to see today called back and apologized profusely for her absent-mindedness. Thankfully I had had time to cool off from my irritation and disappointment, plus I was really ready to just get this stuff started, so I rescheduled for tomorrow.

Let's cross our fingers and hope everything goes well!