u/Adventurous_Push_975

Has anyone had a positive home birth experience an didn’t really prep for it? I’m 34 week and between a hectic toddler and being sick AGAIN, and organising a big across the country move for late August, I just cannot find the time or energy to practice my breath work (I literally can’t right now because I can barely breath as I’ve got like the flu or something) and I’m a bit on edge I could technically give birth in a few weeks and not feel on top of this. I honestly just don’t feel like I have the time or mental capacity right now to take time for this, which I know sounds so stupid but I get literally no time to myself and when I finally do by like 8/9pm I’m too exhausted to bother. Am I being absolutely stupid? But honestly I try, even a 15 min breath work practice and I can’t even focus on it because I am just not in the zone for it at all.

A bit of word vomit and previous live traumatic birth/mention of previous pregnancy loss TW

I didn’t handle labor very well in my last birth which was a hospital birth, after a certain point. I was having no break in between my contractions and got really freaked out when meconium started appearing. I think I was about 7/8 cm when I got an epidural and had been blacking out from pain for a bit by then. Before that I was managing with some hypnobirthing tracks on Spotify and tens machine. I’m hoping being at home will help me stay calmer this time but I’m so scared I will lose control again, although I have more confidence that I can do it this time as I had a lot of severe anxiety from a 13 week miscarriage and infertility so I was at a point I just wasn’t convinced I would have a live baby. I don’t feel like that this time.

I have a private midwife (L&D nurse I think if you are in the US? It’s ran differently here in Aus) and I do not have a doula - I personally can’t think of anything worse than even more people in my space during labor

I am wondering if anybody has had similar feelings/worries about school and what route you chose/if you ended up being right or wrong about these initial feelings? My child is 2years 9 months so I still have a while to figure this out. I don’t know if pregnancy hormones are making me feel much worse.

I recently (in the past 6 months maybe) ended up getting flooded with home schooling Instagram videos and on Facebook too, which have pretty much convinced my mind that school is just going to be awful for my children for various reasons and I can’t get myself out of this mindset. I have thought about this long and hard and I really don’t think homeschooling will work for us for multiple reasons, especially long term.

I currently attend a playgroup at a Steiner school that I adore and would love to send my child to. He is really high energy and I just do not think that mainstream school will be a good fit for him because of this and just his personality, but I don’t know if some of this is the constant videos I have seen getting in my head. Another thing I hate is iPad and tech usage so young, I think it’s unnecessary. My grandma learnt to use an iPad in her 80s, I didn’t touch a computer until I was about 10 and have done very high tech jobs and obtained 2 degrees just fine. We are moving states so I won’t be able to send him to that school, and the Steiner schools that are where I’m moving to are 90 minutes away (without traffic) so I will have to move again to be close to one of them. Which comes with its own issues, buying houses can be hard for other various reasons.

Another issue this raises, is if I was to send my children to a Steiner or alternative (for example I would consider Montessori if I was to have a tour and saw it suitable) we would continue living on the breadline financially basically forever. We go without a lot now so I can be at home with my current child and until the unborn baby goes to school, but this was only ever going to be temporary for the early years. I grew up in poverty and have always wanted my children to grow up having holidays and nice things. I know these things don’t matter to some people and that’s fine, the world would be very boring if we were all the same and I also don’t need to be rich. But we would have to continue to go without new clothes, anything for ourselves and any luxuries/things that we always thought we would have back so we could pay the school fees and have the house in a more expensive area to be able to do so.

Has anybody had similar anxieties, sent their child to a good public school and everything has been fine, they’ve flourished and the worry was for nothing? Or not felt these worries but seen their child (especially high energy boys) settle in and love it? I feel like although school is a lot of a child’s life, it’s not the ONLY thing I remember from my child hood. If we were to use public school we can keep our mortgage lower, allow the kids to have hobbies and support these, go on family holidays, and have nicer things. I have truly had the fear of god put in me about how school is going to completely ruin my child’s life. I am also heavily pregnant so like I said I don’t know if a lot of this is pregnancy hormones and it will settle down.