Getting Ready for Baby Bean

Hello friends and family!  It’s been a while since the Wandering Rascals have blogged, but with the upcoming addition to our family, we figure now is as good a time as any.  As our due date nears, we are finding that a lot of people have questions for us – general ones about how we’re doing preparing for a new baby, and specific ones about our decision to have a home birth.  So, we decided that we would use this blog as a way to keep everyone informed in this last week (or weeks, as the case may be) on how things are going.  If we are able to update the blog with some information during labor, we’ll do that too.  At the very least, we’ll post on here once little Bean Wheeler arrives.

Some general information:

• Our baby’s estimated due date is August 14^th (next Wednesday!).  

• We don’t know if we’re having a boy or a girl.  General consensus from most of our friends (and some random people on the street) is that we’re growing a mini-Chris in there.  But we’ll find out soon enough.  Here’s a recent picture of Kimmy.  Feel free to make your own guess!

• We are planning for an un-medicated home birth with a midwife.  Our Midwife’s name is Karen Baker, and from what we can tell, she’s the best-of-the-best in our area.  There are many reasons we decided to have a home birth, but we might need a whole blog post for that, so tune in next time.

• To prepare for labor and delivery, we took a 12-week birthing class called the Bradley Method.  It’s geared towards un-medicated births, both at home and in the hospital, and stresses the importance of the coach’s role in the childbirth process.  We really liked the class for the most part (it got a little redundant towards the end), and have been practicing the techniques we’re supposed to use during labor.  Who knows if they will work, but it’s worth a try, right? 

We’re getting pretty excited to meet this little rugrat who’s been squirming around for the last 39 weeks.  It’s hard to imagine how much our lives will change with a baby, but we’re looking forward to finding out!