It wasn’t long before Maggie got me “comfortable” with the idea of a home birth. After all, she was a registered nurse. And after meeting with Dr. Henderson and getting his reassurance that Maggie and the baby were in great shape and that regular prenatal checkups were scheduled and that if there were complications we would be well prepared for them, I finally relented my concerns. I even agreed to do Lamaze classes which I was sure I would find extremely entertaining. Maggie and I were also in agreement that if anything unusual came up or if there were any red flags around the home birth then we would deliver the baby in the hospital with Dr. Henderson.

We settled into a nice routine. Days flew by, then weeks and months. I kept myself busy at work but couldn’t wait to get home and be with Maggie and Layla. We had started a new ritual which was to talk to Layla and use her name in our conversations when we were around the apartment. Maggie had continued seeing Mama but it was more a casual thing now, with Mama offering support and friendly advice. I sensed that internally Maggie had really calmed down and, now that we were 10 weeks out from the due date, I gathered that at some point we would be meeting with Mama and the other midwives. So it was no surprise to me when Maggie came home from work and announced, “Hey, Jim, are you ready to meet with Mama about the home birth?”