Someone’s got to colour outside the lines … or there wouldn’t be any colour outside the lines.

But why pick which side of the line to colour? It doesn’t have to be a choice. I colour in and out and on the lines.

Till now, the baby has been breech, facing my backbone, dancing on my bladder, intestines, and poking at other unmentionable parts, but since waking up from a nap yesterday, there’s been no more bladder dancing and my stomach is poking out in the front all over the place, top, bottom and sides. I can’t tell where the head is but with no more tapping on the bladder I’m guessing she’s head down now.

We’ll see how long this lasts.

For my friends who ask about breech, it means the baby is upside down, or actually, right side up with feet on the bladder, which is not the way it’s supposed to be. The head is supposed to be sitting on the bladder … ewww … yukk yukk.

190 days down … 76 more days to go.

Last Wednesday evening, we visited another midwife. After spending almost 6 hours on the phone on Monday, looking for a hospital or a doctor or midwife or doula, and not finding a single one, I was wallowing in the depths of despair and didn’t dare hope she would be any good. As we walked up to her clinic, which was an older house that had been remodeled, my heart sank even deeper as I saw some plants dying in her front yard.

We walked in and she had a very loud voice. You think I am loud … well, I’m inaudible comparatively. She was extremely friendly and cheerful, very outgoing but pleasantly non-aggressive. The inside of the clinic was bright and clean and nicely decorated without being cluttered. It was a warm and comfortable place. With her somewhat brash manner, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but she skillfully put both of us at ease, giving Ben statistics about homebirth vs. hospital birth and also telling us comparative safety issues and risks. Then she started talking about herself, her practice, and answering pretty nearly all the questions Ben and I had before we ever asked anything.

Even better, after talking for over an hour, we found out the midwife is a Bible-believing Christian (… charismatic, arminian, premil, pretrib …) which was a great comfort after whacko new-age midwives and doulas (orgasmic birth, female empowerment, etc.) and abortion-pushing doctors and nurses who believe you must have STDs because you must have been promiscuous before marriage.

Anyway … this midwife doesn’t do breech births. She does vaccinations (’cause she’s a doctor), but doesn’t force parents to do any of the STD vaccinations and other shots and ointments and tests at any time and certainly doesn’t recommend doing them to the baby immediately after birth. She doesn’t do aromatherapy, but apparently she uses various herbs for treatment before and after. She also has a birthing pool we can set up so I can have a waterbirth at home … which is what I’ve wanted for a long, long, long time.

So, we’ll be having this baby in a tub at home in the family room. It’s been almost a week and I can’t believe it yet. Thank you, God!!

She has capable hands.

Leithart, quoting Lewis, about D.H. Lawrence’s idealistic and linguistic aims in attempting to “make dirty words clean.”

CS Lewis in a short essay on “Prudery and Philology” … words do carry a freight of historical meaning that cannot simply be shed by repeating vulgarities in polite company or in artsy novels. As soon as you seek to describe the human body or sexuality in words, as opposed to rendering it in a painting or drawing, Lewis says “you will fin that you have only four alternatives: a nursery word, an archaism, a word from the gutter, or a scientific word.” In short, “willy-nilly you must produce baby-talk, or Wardour Street, or coarseness, or technical jargon. . . . The words will force you to write as if you thought it either childish, or quaint, or contemptible, or of purely scientific interest. In fact, mere description is impossible. Language forces you to an implicit comment.”

Read the rest of the post, “Sexual Salvation in Lawrence” …

Nobody can be neutral no matter what. Hah.