My midwife has a line she likes to share with second-time moms. “When you’re pregnant with your first, all you think about is your first. When you’re pregnant with your second… all you think about is your first.” I’m finding this very, very true. And it’s sad, but it’s like this second kid is already getting the shaft.

My husband and I are working on improving in this area, although often still failing miserably.

This past Thursday marked a bittersweet milestone for me in this pregnancy – it was my last day on-call with my midwives.

No longer will I be woken in the middle of the night to the news that a mama is in labor. No longer will I dash out, hop in a cab, and zoom off through the abandoned NYC streets to help a family welcome their newest member. And, aside from my own birth in February, it will be quite a while before I hear the first cries of a brand new human being while mom looks on, in awe of what she just accomplished.

I am going to miss this work so badly.

I just wrote the other day about how I’m not feeling much of a need to prep for this baby. We have the basics from our daughter, so what more could we possibly need to do or get before Boo arrives? Then my midwife handed me a supply list at my last prenatal appointment and I remembered… “Oh yeah, all the birth stuff. Whoops.”

While most families stock some freezer-ready meals and pack a hospital bag as their primary preparations pre-baby, planning a homebirth requires an extra level of preparation. Not only do you need to make sure you have your home in order for your triumphant return, but you have to have your home in order to handle the actual birth as well.

Fortunately, this isn’t as complicated as most people think.

You know you’re in the third trimester when…

• you leave work, pick up your toddler from daycare, and by the time you get home are so exhausted from all that effort that you are too tired to make dinner… or even dig out the take-out menus. No, really.
• you get into an argument with your husband about how to temporarily rearrange the furniture to accommodate the Christmas tree and it ends with you in tears. Apparently it’s that important to you. Or, more likely, it’s the hormones.
• you bend over to tie your shoes and realize you can’t. If you spread your legs really far apart, you can sort of bed over and let your belly hang between them, but it’s not pretty.