1babysmom - Yes, I have a relative who, despite having insurance, payed about half a grand out of pocket when she miscarried. :( Geesh. Like anyone should have to deal with that on top of grieving their loss.
First midwife appt is tomorrow. DD will be coming with me, so hopefully she'll get to hear the heartbeat. We just told her about the pregnancy just a few days ago.
Last night I let her sleep in my bed with me (we do "snuggle sleeps" as a special treat from time to time), and this morning she sleepily told me "Mama, I'm glad you're growing a new baby." 
I know her opinion is very likely to change when she sees how much work/attention the baby will need (though we are trying to prepare her for that). But it still made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. She's been the one and only for nearly 4 years (closer to 4.5 when Turducken actually arrives). So I know it's going to be a strange adjustment, especially since we may be moving shortly after that and she'll be starting kindergarten a few months after that. She's got a lot of big changes coming in 2013.
We're actually considering pulling her out of preschool though. We applied for a gov. subsidy to cover the costs (because we can't really afford it right now), and after spending the day in class yesterday as the parent helper I'm none too impressed. They spent 1 hour (out of 3.5 total) doing free indoor play time (and the teacher didn't encourage the few shy kids, like my DD, to interact with anyone else). Then they had a snack and a story and a really short circle time before spending the rest of the time free playing outside. And again, though there were quite a few shy kids not participating during circle time (just standing there staring), the teacher did nothing to encourage their participation. Now we just feel like, geeze...why are we paying for preschool AND doing a million different volunteer duties when all it really is is a glorified play date three times a week? We wanted DD to go to gain some social skills and learn to follow teacher instructions before kindergarten, but that's not happening because the teacher just lets them do whatever apparently. So we decided that if our subsidy application is rejected then we're pulling her out. She has a weekly playgroup through the community (that is free), plus we go to an atheist-friendly non-denominational church every week and she gets play time there as well. We read to her at least once a day so she gets plenty of story time (plus she loves, LOVES to just sit and look at books on her own). And I will gladly spend time each week teaching her things to help her be ready for school. She already knows almost all her letters, can count pretty high, read some sight words, etc. Plus the local libraries have all sorts of free programs for kids. And hopefully we can get her into a swim class or a similar physical class (there's a rock climbing class for her age group that looks fun) if we can get the low-income family discount for them. It's not like she's going to be lacking exposure to new people and ideas. And she's apparently not getting too much in the way of new experiences at this preschool. So what's the point? Am I crazy, or would you feel like this sort of preschool is a waste of time too?
Figures.
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