Is it okay to say that I'm nervous?

Time is ticking and Oscarina is almost done cooking, and we'll be in the "full term" window pretty soon. We're more prepared than I let on, but the unknowns are knocking on the back door of my mind. Knock-knock, tick-tock.

Compounding those little fears -- we watched The Business of Being Born yesterday as part of our birthing classes. Its kind of terrifying when you see what machines the hospitals are and how quick they are to start "interventions" into the birth process to speed you up.

Apparently epidurals slow down labor which results in pitosin being prescribed to increase speed and intensity of contractions. The cycle continues to the point that the baby gets distressed by cataclysmic contractions and the doc puts you in surgery for a c-section for the 'health of the baby' -- when the start of the cycle is what threatened the baby in the first place.

Most major hospitals in Atlanta have c-section rates ABOVE 30%, and as high as 37. No wonder women are terrified. Apparently, according to the movie, the US has the second WORST newborn and mother death rate of industrialized nations.

We're going to Northside, the "baby factory" and I'm preparing to fight off the docs the whole way. The movie advocates home birth, which we're not doing -- I'd rather have them there than not -- but this will be interesting.