Pregnant and STRESSING OUT (PIOG)

[krazykass]

I'm wondering if anyone out there has been in my situation and what they did about it.  Right now it feels to DH and I like we're the only ones who have ever been through this and we're figuring it out from scratch, but that CAN'T be true!  We're expecting baby #2 in late March.  Our DS is just over two years old and he's really never had a babysitter.  It's not that we're against them or anything, it's just that we don't have family members or close friends who live near us.  When DS was born, we lived in Florida and we had great friends there.  DS was really slow in starting solids, though, and it took until he was about a year old before he would go long enough between nursings for us to feel like maybe we could leave him with one of them for a few hours and go somewhere.  But it never happened because shortly after that we left Florida and moved here.  For whatever reason, we just haven't found a good group of friends here that we really click with and right now we don't know anyone we'd be comfortable leaving him with for any length of time. 

So the problem is...what to do with big brother while I'm in labor.  We're using The Birth Center in Bryn Mawr, so in theory he could be in the living room area while we're in the birthing room, but someone would have to be there with him and I want DH with me.  We might be able to get my mom or my husband's parents to come stay with us for a while, but who knows whether the baby will be born while they're here!  The doula that we're probably going to hire suggested that we hire a professional baby-sitter for him, but I'm wondering if it's really possible to find a baby-sitter who would be willing and able to drop everything at a moment's notice and come take care of DS for however long my labor lasts.  Or if we could find such a person, it would probably be very expensive!  Plus, if it's the middle of the night, that means the baby-sitter would be the only one who was here in the morning when DS woke up and I think that would really freak him out.  And even if he was ok with waking up with just the baby-sitter there, we really want him to be near us during labor so that DH can check on him periodically (because not being near mom and dad is such a foreign thing for him) and so that he can meet his baby brother or sister soon after he or she is born.  We've been told by various people that it's really not a good idea to have him near by while I'm in labor because I'll be focusing on him and not be able to relax and let things happen, but I really think that the opposite would be true for me.  I think if he was off with some baby-sitter he doesn't know, that I would constantly want to call and check on him and that would keep me from relaxing, but if he was just out in the living room of The Birth Center and he could see his daddy from time to time, he would be happier and we'd know that he was fine and I'd be better able to relax.  Anyway, I realize this post has gotten quite long, but I'm just hoping that someone else has been in this situation and will have some ideas we can use because I'm really stressing out!

[JoJoBean8]

Maybe hire a babysitter and have the babysitter start watching him once a week or so now so that when you go into labor the babysitter won't be a stranger.