May showers bring... June babies?

I actually have multiple FOs to show off, but it has been so overcast and rainy lately that I haven't had the opportunity to take pictures of anything. It's kind of frustrating, really, because all of this weather feels a month late and is coming at precisely the wrong time for my mood. I have been so down in the dumps lately, and although I know that it is definitely pregnancy-related, there still is no getting around the crying jags, the listlessness, and the multiple naps a day (not because I'm tired, but because I don't want to be awake. sheesh). We have been making appointments with all the other midwives at our office, and one of them suggested therapy. It was a well-intentioned suggestion, but obviously this woman just met me and doesn't know anything about me. It reinforced for me that I definitely picked the right midwife of the group- Trish is clinical, straightforward, pleasant, and happy to explain (in technical detail, if necessary) what she wants to do for me and why. She shares information and helps me decide for myself what I want, without making me feel like she's trying to sell me on one course of action. She didn't get a look of pity on her face (like some) when I said that I wasn't interested in hypnobirthing (seriously, it's a real thing. amazing) or similar techniques because I know in my heart I wouldn't believe what I would learn, and I don't want to invest in something that will probably fail me in the moment I actually need it to work.

If only the people at the front desk could get their collective act together and stop billing me for a co-payment I don't have. That's enough to get my blood pressure up- we've been jerked around enough this year with a forced transition to another insurance provider, which was done in stages for maximum confusion.

We had our first childbirth class on Monday. I really, really wanted it to be something useful (I am, after all, paying money to be there, and I can't give birth where I want to without the class), but, alas, it is geared toward the lowest common denominator* and has a seriously cheesy slant. The instructor kept asking what felt like questions for self-reflection (What do you do to relax? Why do you want a natural childbirth?) and then CALLING on someone to respond. I refused to answer at one point (the instructor wanted me to share what I've read about childbirth), and I'm sure I looked like a total crankypants, but I came to class for information, not to hear a bunch of strangers talk about themselves. I don't care about them, and they don't care about me, and that's how I want it. It sounds selfish, but I am the kind of person to get really wrapped up in what other people think, and I can't spend my energy on that when none of those people are actually going to help me birth my baby. It's in the interest of self-preservation that I have become a bitch, I guess. From what other people's responses were, I had nothing in common with them anyway.

If that weren't enough to make my head explode, we learned a relaxation technique that involved visualizing breathing in the colors of the rainbow. Yes, you read that right. A young couple across the room burst into a fit of laughter and had to leave the room. I was red in the face from trying to suppress my own urge to laugh or to break something, and I spent the entire exercise thinking of the group therapy visualization scene in Fight Club.

I am Jack's contracting uterus.

I feel like there isn't a place for me. I don't want a traditional hospital birth because I don't want the kinds of interventions that come routine, and I want a shot at getting through without a C-section (although the baby doesn't want to turn over yet, and I'm trying to get used to the possibility now rather than later). I don't, however, think that hypnobirthing or rainbow visualization is what is going to get me through childbirth, and more and more I am getting the impression that it's one way or another. Is there a middle ground between epidurals & episiotomies and doulas & self-hypnosis? I don't have an appointment with my (real) midwife for a few weeks because I'm rotating through all the other ones, but I'm starting to lose heart about this whole natural childbirth thing.

*The instructor seriously said that putting together a carseat is "a dad's job." Um, sexist much? And this is the ALTERNATIVE birthing center. I love the Midwest!