Sadly, I've heard of too many families with tragic outcomes in hospitals too. Birth is not going to be risk-free at a hospital either. Statistics clearly show that there is the same risk, if not less, at a birthing center that you have at a hospital (of course many factors come into play). Did the families you know with the tragic outcomes use birthing centers? And were the tragic outcomes directly related to the fact that they used a birthing center? Also, how far away was the birthing center from the hospital? I'm just trying to gather all the facts and been-there-done-that stories before I make a decision. Thanks!

:iagree: Yes, from the website of the birthing center I'm considering: Q: What equipment do the midwives have at the birth center or bring to my home for the birth? A: The equipment and supplies at every birth, whether at birth center or home, is listed below: sterile instruments for the birth and cutting the umbilical cord an oxygen tank and resuscitation bag/ masks for mother and newborn a suction device for removing mucus and other material from the baby's nose and mouth a Doppler for listening to the baby's heart rate during labor and pushing equipment to monitor mother’s vital signs during labor drugs for preventing or stopping the mother from bleeding too much after the birth IV equipment and fluids for rehydration of the mother, and if necessary, to administer antibiotics Vitamin K and eye ointment for the newborn

The birthing center I'm considering is 1.5 miles away from the hospital. Actually Mapquest says its only 5 min away (10 min with traffic...but an ambulance wouldn't have that issue as much?). Its run by Cert. Prof. Midwives.

Thanks for the advice. :) Yes I usually try to schedule appt's for the afternoon. This Friday was a goof on my part. It used to be that mornings were easiest for appt's, and its been hard to get out of that mindset. I dont' answer the phone during school time, and I tell anyone if they want to come over, it has to be in the afternoon. House cleaning I usually ignore during school time, totally. However we haven't got a good schedule working yet, so it seems by the end of the week everything is just trashed and all I want to do is spend the day cleaning. lol I like the idea of using Saturday as a cleaning day instead though...as long as we don't get any visitors over. ;) Evenings I cant really use for cleaning because I have my own homework to do. uggh :( Thanks again!

I have seen the Business of Being Born. THat's kind of what helped me make my decision to use a birthing center. I did Bradley for my 1st and 2nd children, unmedicated. :) The key was that I labored 90% or more at home, and basically just got to the hospital to push. But I couldn't time my other deliveries to go as easy as that. :( We only have one hospital here, and it doesn't have nice birthing rooms. The birthing rooms are just very medical...hospital bed, with a couple chairs for visitors to sit in and machines right next to the bed. I don't think the birthing rooms even have showers...just a tiolet. Because they transfer you to a normal hospital room after you have the baby to recover and stay the night in-that one does have a shower. :) THey recently updated the hospital to have all private patient rooms, but they still look the same. lol At least now I wouldn't have to share a room with someone else after I had the baby though. That sucks. lol

Thanks all! :) I feel bad about dropping the co-op because the boys were all in public school prior to this. Especially my 12 yr old who really did not want to homeschool-I've been trying to get him involved in this co-op to make new friends. And he has. :) The boys realllly enjoy the co-op. The co-op is actually through the PS...its an ALE. So we can't really drop it mid-year. Well we could of course, but the boys would be devastated. I want to try to avoid making so many changes and pulling them away from friends too much. :( I was moved around A LOT as a child and it got to the point where I just stopped making friends. Even now as an adult I have social issues with making/keeping friends...like I never developed those skills to keep long-lasting friendships. :( So that's why I think I'm going to keep the co-op in the fall, but only afternoons. They have a variety of classes all day Tues-Thurs (but you can only take up to 8 classes, or as few as 1). So I think a good plan would be to plan a half-day in the afternoon (like from 1pm to 3pm) on Wedesday or Thursday. We would have to be disciplined to get our work done before lunch then...which we can if we start at 8am like I had planned. I'm just not a morning person. lol I know that can be changed though! Thanks again for the advice and comments!! :)

I keep going back and forth on this. On one hand, I have SOOO many pros to use the birthing center for my whole pregnancy and delivery. I feel good about it, excited. :) I want to try a water birth. The med-free thing doesn't scare me-I've done it twice on purpose. lol My biggest reasons for wanting to go the birth center route is: 1) using a midwife. I heard that care is so much more personal and involved...my OB is great, but she's pretty impersonal. 2) Doing a water birth. I've lots of great things about them. :) 3) Being in a comfy setting and getting to go home a few hours later. I've started to have very negative feelings towards hospitals after my five hospital births. I seem to relate pain and being uncomfortable to hospitals now so that I get knots in my stomach just stepping into a hospital. lol I hate being stuck in bed, or even if I can walk around I hate the IV pole that has to come with me, and the constant monitoring belts that make contractions hurt worse because of the constriction. :( Not to mention that I just can't really relax in that kind of setting, which is the ENTIRE concept of my birthing method (Bradley)...relaxation. So basically if I'm in a hospital, I'm getting an epidural. Because I can't cope otherwise. lol My Dh says its up to me, but he is really worried about complications...of course the one big CON to a birthing center. THey can deal with some complications, but if a hospital is required - they have to call an ambulance first, and then the hospital is about 10 min away. If its a real emergency...every second counts. I have no history of any complications whatsoever...but things happen. Would I be taking too big of a risk? What if I made a compromise and used a CNM and delivered at the hospital, but laboring primarily at home like I've done in the past. In that case I'd ask to be released early, and not stay the night. THere is nothing worse then trying to get used to a new baby and also get some rest, in a loud, busy hospital with uncomfortable beds and nurses coming in and out waking the baby up all day. lol! So BTDT advice?

I don't know what's "normal" for the first year of homeschooling. Am I pretty typical for a new homeschooler, or are we totally failing? My Dh keeps saying that "things aren't working" and that he feels our kids are failing. I keep telling him that its not going to be easy and especially the first year we are learning a lot. But basically, we have a co-op program one full day and one half day a week. So I do homeschooling Monday, Thursday and Friday. It just doesn't seem like enough time to get caught up - to be able to finish our books before summer. So I've decided to take the leisurely route and take our time....which means we'll be doing school in the summer too. My goal is to finish ,or nearly finish, the grade level worth they're doing before they start their new programs in the fall. However, its hard for me to keep to a schedule and homeschool every Monday, Thurs. and Fri. You think it wouldn't be...just three days a week! But it is. Especially if something comes up, like we had a Dr. appt. for one of the boys in the morning on Friday. It kind of ruins the whole day so I don't even bother. Or if we are really behind on housework and the house is just driving me crazy, we take a housecleaning day. I know that can be considered schooling in a way too...home ec right? Lol But to my DH, and to me, it feels like I'm taking too much time off. Then there are the days where I had to stay up late working on my homework (I'm taking online classes through my local college) and so I sleep in which just ruins our day too. If we don't get started until 10 with school work, then we take a lunch break of a couple hours, we don't finish school until around 3pm or later. Days where we do school all day exhaust me. I have so many other things to do and two toddlers to take care of...being stuck to the table helping kids is hard. My 9 yr old cant seem to do any independent work...well I take that back. It sure feels like that, but really he does pretty much all his work independently with a little instruction from me except math. He can't seem to do any math on his own. :( He's having ADHD issues, so we are trying him with some medication now to see if that helps... Anyway, sorry for the big unloading of random venting. ;) I just feel like I'm failing my kids right now. We can't seem to have a good week where we do school all three days. We seem to always take a day off, sometimes even two days. This week we took Monday off because the boys had a stomach flu. uggh Then we did school on Thursday, but yesterday (Friday) we spent the day doing household chores to get caught up. I have a much different schedule in mind next year, including new curriculum (primarily CLE). I'm hoping that will help. Also I think we're doing CC one day, but then the other co-op program we do...I think we'll just take the afternoon portion classes so that we can still do school in the morning at home? That will bring us to four days a week at home. So, please help reassure me or give me some ideas on how to do better. :(

Thanks everyone! I was surprised to see so many responses. I don't feel quite so invisible now. lol Congrats also to all those PG as well! And good luck to those TTC or thinking about TTC ! :)

I didn't know about levels, so I just started him with book 1 at the start of first grade. He's now about half-way through book 2. I would like to finish book 3 by the end of the year. I think I figured that it takes us about 5-6 weeks to finish a book...however we haven't been very diligent staying on task. lol Oh and he breezes through them, but book 2 has been getting a tad harder. Often I have to just tell him what the picture is. I.e. he's never heard the word "trot" before, so he sees a horse and thinks they want him to write horse. I'll give him the word as long as he's able to figure out the correct sound/spelling himself.

Well I'll send you my fresh BFP vibes! lol Good luck!

My son struggles with math facts too. I've found that with subtraction, it was more of a matter of relating it visually as well as getting him to think in terms of backwards addition. If he knows that 5+5 =10 then when he sees 10-5=... He can think "what plus 5 equals 10?" and figure it out. OR I've given him blocks, or even the abacus, and showed him with story problems how to figure out subtraction. Sometimes when we're just going about our day normally, I'll bring it into our conversation...ie. So if I have five dollars but I want to buy a pop for two dollars, how many dollars will I have left?

I can't share with anyone "in real life" for a couple months incase of miscarriage :( I've had two before, and we've always told people right away. It made it much worse to have to go tell everyone that I had lost the baby. SO I'll share here... Three pregnancy tests later and I think it's true, I'm PG! We were trying for number six, so this isn't a big shock or anything. ;) Now I just have to pray for a healthy baby and 9 more months of this! :) I'll be due mid November. Kind of a bad time for schooling, but maybe we can just take all December off. I know the CC co-op takes that whole month off.

Thanks for all the replies! I'm leaning towards the night terrors. Although he does seem to be on the later age for them (12) since they are most common in younger kids, of course it sounds like (from your posts!) that they happen later too. I do find it weird that he never had issues like these as a younger child, they just started a couple years ago. Also, while he didn't really remember the first episode, he does seem to remember the other episodes and this morning's most recent one. After he snaps out of it, he'll explain what he was thinking about or try to explain it. It upsets him though to talk about it much so we try not to make a big deal about it. Oh also, I read that night terrors most frequently happen in the first couple hours after falling asleep? But his happens usually in the wee hours of the morning, the final hours of sleep. ? He does have numerous allergies, so that's an idea too. hmmm He's not on any medication. Thanks again for the replies!

Your story sounds similar to ours for our 9 yr old. I'll write more later. But we just got RX'ed Adderol (Sp?) and are starting it tomorrow. :)

I'm asking here because I have never heard anything like this before and was hoping someone could chime in and say that they've heard of this/had it happen before. I don't know if it warrants a Dr. visit because its so sporadic. Anyway, my oldest son has these weird episodes when he's sick. Before you suggest they are fever related, I can assure you they are not. They happen when he's sick, but not at the time he has a fever. It started about two years ago with the worst episode of all. He had a fever earlier that day but was cooling down. I fell asleep on the couch, and about 2-3am I woke up with him in my face shouting something at me. I was half-asleep and no clue what was going on. I panicked at first because he seemed so scared that I thought something really bad had happened. As I woke up I realized why I couldn't understand him...he was talking in complete nonsense, not even words, just weird jumbled up sounds. He proceeded to run through the house, from one end to the other. I followed him to be sure he wouldn't hurt himself. He'd stop every so often and look at me and just open his mouth and scream. His eyes were huge and he was in a state of sheer terror. Finally he ran downstairs and jumped into my bed. As he lay there he started to wake up and come back to reality. He thought he had a bad dream, he didn't remember doing what he did or why. Fast forward a few months, he got sick again - no fever - and it happened again. This time I could understand what he was saying, but it made no sense at all. The same sheer terror until finally he snapped out of it. It happened a couple more times, and now its to the point where he becomes afraid when he's getting sick because he always has these episodes. This morning it happened again. No fever, but we have a stomach flu going around and he threw up once last night. This morning we woke up at about 7am to him shouting at us about something he did very very bad. He kept counting too. He was terrified. I was terrified. He wanted us to follow him upstairs. When we got up there he had snapped out of it. He started crying because he says he doesn't know why he does this. He was very upset. So...any ideas? :confused:

I dont think anyone knows me well enough to notice if I'd be missing. ;) LOL But I do think its a good idea! On a smaller, private board, we did this and when I had one of my son's my "buddy" called to check on me and asked if she could update the board. It was very sweet of her. :)

What is LTR? Is this the CLE Reading? I was planning on doing ETC with my 2nd grader next year in addition to CLE. However, he needs a bit of help with his reading still and I'm wondering if just CLE reading would be better? (I wasn't sure I was even going to do CLE reading, I was thinking of just doing ETC and CLE Language Arts).

I am just an oily person I guess. lol I shower every day if I am planning on going out that day, otherwise I shower every other day...any longer then that and my hair is so flat and oily. Yuck.

He's really struggling with remembering multiplication facts and skip counting. We use Math in Focus and I've been surprised how fast it just skips through multiplication. It introduces multiplication concepts and then literally jumps into big multiplication problems, and now we're on division when he doesn't even know his times tables yet! He's taking a Number Sense class and they are working a lot with skip counting. I'm not familiar with the method they are using, so I have a hard time teaching it to him. Are there some fun ideas, games, tools, etc that I can use to help with his multiplication? Thanks!

Love this thread! After hearing so much about it, I checked out the CLE website and really liked what I saw. SO we're using CLE math and language arts in the fall for my 2nd and 4th grader. I will use the placement tests to see which grade level to start them in though. I wasn't sure about CLE reading, but it sounds like it feels in the holes - like vocab. So I may consider that too. I like that I won't need all these huge books to lug around. It also sounds nice and "streamlined" for new homeschoolers like myself who get really confused and stressed when piecing together curriculum. lol

That's what I figured...but what do the letters TeA stand for relating to that topic? lol Thanks! :)

Okay can someone tell me what the "other" meaning of TeA is? I even searched for it in these forums because I've heard it mentioned before. What in the world does it stand for? lol I have an idea, but I can't figure out the acronym.

Also wanted to post this video: The hospital constantly says the baby is in a vegetative state and has no reflexes whatsoever. According to the parents, the hospital won't let them take video of the baby (?) so someone snuck this video on their phone to show how he DOES have reflexes and some movement. In case link doesn't work: here's the website, second video http://www.savebabyjoseph.com/

Mine are my sig line too :)