10 simple rules...

My dad called today..ugg. why i don't move and change my phone number i don't know. I'll admit I have no intention of calling my father when i go into labor and he told me today that i better call him because he'll have to come and put me in the car and James in the car...to which i responded by telling him that since i can literally spit on the hospital from my house that unless the baby was falling out of me, we'd be walking. He's like you can't walk to the hospital. To which i reminded him that by the time we got in the car and drove to the hospital and parked in the garage and walked into l and d i could have been there and back 6 times. Everyone always asks me what my "birthing plan" is...and other than saying to go with the flow and make it without an epidural as long as possible I have purposefully not developed a plan because I know it will not get stuck with. I can however respond with what i DO NOT want my birthing experience to be. My birthing experience will not be...

1) Scenes from 9 months. Unfortunately my dad lives in his own little world and slips between reality and movies quit a bit. Thus when I ask him about the night I was born he swears that my mom was standing in the car screaming the whole way to the hospital and that the dr on call was a Polish immigrant whose favorite ice cream was cherry garcia. just fyi- i'm from western kentucky...there's like 4 polish people in my home town...

2) A Kentucky version of the Clampetts go to the big city hospital... unlike what everyone in my family believes- having a waiting room full of people waiting on your to give birth does not 1) speed up the process or 2) provide any support. Actually our hospital purposefully has a very tiny waiting room designed to keep family members at home...they also do not put babies in the nursery for public viewing and they do not allow people back to see the mother or the baby for 2 hours following the birth of the child and even then visitors can only go back one at a time and people under 18 need not even try. Though this poses a few issues with my little sisters, what it also does is ensure 1) I never have to be with both of my parents at the same time at the hospital (score) and 2) visitors won't be able to stay as long because they'll be others waiting. I don't care if after we get home (especially after James goes back to work on the 3rd) if people want to stop by and visit. That being said James' biggest disappointment thus far was when they relaxed the visitation policy to allow for one additional visitor in the room with the mom and the dad...there for a couple of months it was mom and dad only and now he's mad because he has to share.

3) it is NOT going to be a remake of my wedding... my parents got into it and my father was walking me down the aisle on my wedding day complaining about how horrible my mother had treated him. btw- both of my parents have selective amnesia and don't remember how big of assholes they were that day. unlike then, nowadays I will send them home.

I'm sure there will be more rules but as for now these are the three that I plan to stick too. my goal in life is for amelia to come this tuesday because mom and the girls will have to go home for christmas so santa can come and my father will go to his mothers and it can be just me james and amelia which is all i really want familywise.