Surprised at Myself

I did a post a about a month and a half ago asking "How do you know when you're done having kids?" Well...(no, I'm not pregnant)....I just had the privilege of being present at the birth of my sister's very first child. My sister is 8 years younger than me and my one and only full blooded sibling.

First of all, I have to say, she did great! She delivered her son after about 9 hours of labor and with no drugs. She did have to work quite a bit to get the little guy out, he made her push for over an hour. There were a couple of worrisome moments when it looked like baby's heart-rate was dropping and my sisters was as fast as a fetus' should be. The tried having her change positions a bunch of times, they tried monitoring baby's heart with that thing they stick on baby's head (sorry, can't remember what it's called right now), and at one point they even brought in an ultrasound machine because they couldn't pick up baby's heart-rate as well as they wanted to with those other monitors. I was really worried about the baby at that point, but kept telling my sister that she was doing really great and in the end, they both were just fine.

But why am I surprised at myself? Because I was thinking that being part of the miracle of my nephews birth would cause me to want to have another baby. Contrary to what I expected, it did NOT have that effect at all. It did have the effect on another person in the delivery room that way, but it just didn't bring up those "Oh, I want another one" feeling for me. That surprises me.

I don't know that this shuts the door completely because I'm still not quite ready to just close that chapter of my life, but I just found it interesting that being there with my sister didn't give me "baby fever" again. Hmmm...

Doula To a Queen

It looks like I may end up an "animal person" after all. LOL! We have a cat who has taken up with us in the last several weeks.

At first she was extremely skittish and when we would open a door to go outside, she would run away. But she got progressively more comfortable with her and now she is letting us feed her and pet her.

This morning she stood at the back door and meowed. She's getting progressively fatter, we've noticed. And so we let her in and made a little bed for her. We think she's preparing a birthing spot.

How can I not help a mother in labor?

Right now she's hiding out in a warm spot under my son's dresser. My 2 year old is camped out in front of the dresser holding vigil. She loves this cat! And the cat is incredibly calm with her. Does this mean she had an owner at one time? I don't know anything about cats!

I've been using my Googling skills to try to learn something about birthing cat behavior. Did you know that when a cat gives birth it's called Queening? Isn't that awesome?

Queening. Looks like I might be doula to a Queen soon. :)