Early Christmas Present...

We are looking forward to our early Christmas present expected to arrive some time around December 1, 2008! It will definitely be an interesting experience having a baby in Holland, but we are excited for the new addition to our family. It is quite common to have a home birth, no medication, and of course the use of midwives in The Netherlands. We are using a midwife, but have been insistent about a hospital birth. As far as medication goes, it all depends on when the baby comes. The anetheseologist only works from 9-5, Monday-Friday. So, it will depend on when the baby decides to arrive. :) We have had two midwife appointments so far, one at 9 weeks and the other at 13 weeks. They did ultrasounds at both appointments, which I was impressed by! Below you can see some pictures of our 13 week visit. We could see the baby kicking away and waving to us on the computer screen. The appointments are a bit different than the U.S. They take my blood pressure each time, but I have yet to be weighed. I guess they don't worry about weight gain... We meet with the midwife and her assistant each time we go. So far all has gone well and they speak English very well. We head back for another appointment in 2 weeks and then a few weeks after that we'll head to a clinic to find out whether we're having a boy or girl. At the bottom of our blog we have a baby countdown, if anyone is interested. Thanks for all the congratulations and excitement!