Wondering if anyone has any experience of this and if so how did it go? I am due with #2 in a few weeks and our closest family is a 4 hour plane ride away and tbh, they are older and not that flexible so we can't count on them to fly in to help look after LO1 while I am giving birth.
In preparing for this I have lined up a few friends that LO1 can stay with while I give birth. But of course there have been a few snags - a dear friend who offered to help has had to leave town to look after a sick parent and I kinda felt bad depending on her anyway as she has little kids too. I also have our babysitter lined up and one other friend. But I am worried that if they both fall through, DH will have to stay with LO while I give birth. To complicate matters, I will be having a CS so we have scheduled it for when LO is in school - but I am afraid of going into labor before that date and DH not being able to be there. I have mentally prepared myself to get through it alone - it's only an hour or so and I can do this etc. - but the thought makes me (and him) sad that DH could miss out on the birth of his child and this probably sounds dumb, but I worry about it from a bonding perspective - not so much between us and the baby but between us as a couple that I would go through something that is so big for us as a couple alone - if that makes sense. If anyone has any experience or advice I would appreciate it!
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I think it would really suck for both of you if you had to do it by yourself but in terms of bonding as a couple, think of it this way - your husband is such a good dad that he's willing to miss something very important to him that he really wants to do because it's better for your child. In the grand scheme of things it's only a few hours, you'll have an entire lifetime to be together with this baby.
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Our family lived very far away with birth of #2 and I lined up several people to watch our daughter. Of course I went into labor before family arrived and when most of them were unavailable (right away anyway). Well my last back up was actually still available, but it would have been more stressful for my daughter (they have multiple dogs, and she's just not comfortable with them). Anyway, I had my husband stay with my daughter until one of our sitters was available. I think the nurses/DR thought I was a little nutty they kept being like "WHERE IS HE?". It was fine for me, and I felt better knowing our daughter was comfortable. I didn't want to stress her out before this big thing happened. I'm not sure this really applies to your question, since he did make it for the birth (just missed all the lead up) but I would have been fine (not ideal of course) if he had had to wait a bit longer and meet me in the recovery room an hour later (since our daughter was allowed there).
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@ksnow: My husband also missed the lead up. My water broke in the middle of the night and I drove myself to the hospital and had my husband stay with our daughter. I was concerned that 1. I peed myself and didn't actually have my water break and they would send me home and 2. That my daughter would freak out if she woke up and we were both gone and someone else was in the house. He dropped her at school as soon as they opened at 6:30 and came the hospital. The nurses definitely thought it was strange when they brought up Pitocin because my water was broken but I wasn't contracting very hard and I said "sure, but can we wait until my husband gets here"
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All of your concerns are ones that I share as well. All of our family is a flight away and while I do have a few friends/ babysitters in mind for "just in case" our family can't be here or isn't here already. I'm constantly worried about it. In my mind, I am happy to be there alone until I know for sure that DS is in good hands. Also complicating things is that my first DS came at 34 weeks so its really a massive unknown when this one will arrive! So no advice really, but I get where you are coming from! I figure I will just roll with it and take it as it comes. Not much I can do to control when this LO wants to arrive!
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We don't have any family nearby and we had only been in the city a year when our DD was born (so no super close friends). But I managed to cobble together a list of 4-5 people to call to watch our older LO. Luckily, the timing worked out well and my DH didn't miss anything. Could you ask one of your child's teachers if she could be on the "call list" in case you have to go in at night/on the weekend?
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Especially if you go into labor over night, I had a friend that the nurse was more than happy to sit in with her and keep her company while her husband was home.
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