My first appointment with my new Midwife was great. We met on Wednesday June 30. She checked to see if I was progressing at all but I was still a long way off. Apparently the last time she had a women transfer over to her this late in pregnancy the woman had her baby that week. I also had a routine test done for bacteria. She was a little concerned that our baby was small for date so I was set up with an appointment the next day to get another ultrasound. I got a call from Lindsey, the midwife, on our drive up to Idaho Falls on Friday, letting us know the results. The ultrasound checked out just great.

I was surprised when my water broke the next morning at 3:45 am, the day of Chad’s big Puzzle Hunt and all the 4th of July festivities.

I was able to get a great OB doctor in Murray when I suspected I was pregnant. Right off they explained that although the doctor was fully covered by our insurance the hospital he delivers at and where they are located were not. They did however, assure me that we would be adopted in and all of my costs would be covered. They gave us a contact person to work with after we received a bill from the hospital.

Besides a few longer than my patience allowed waits and their no children in the office policy I was really very pleased with the doctor and his nurse. But when we began getting bills in the mail from the lab, the ultrasound, and the fetal specialist they sent us to in house, we began to get pretty frustrated. I left messages with the contact person they had given us and Chad spoke with her a few times and tried to work with her and contact her week after week. It was ridiculous. Finally, less than 6 weeks before my due date she got back to Chad and basically told him that we would just have to wait until we received bills to discover what we were and were not covered for. What!? We have good, expensive insurance, we shouldn’t be paying a bunch out of pocket on top of that.

So within a week we found a midwife that works out of a hospital we are fully covered for. Chad had to battle with the other office staff to get my records and help me switch. The nurse of my original doctor was really helpful but the other staff were defensive and pretty rude. It was so stressful. I got an appointment with the midwife almost right away and she was fantastic! I couldn’t wait to have her help during delivery.

We have a lot of blogs to write. I’ll start with last weekend’s puzzle hunt.

We invited the family to do a puzzle hunt after the traditional Fourth of July BBQ. Elisa and I weren’t able to be there, unfortunately. (More on that later). Chad had a series of five puzzles that could be jumbled up so six teams could participate. He’s brilliant. I think about 30 people joined in. They had to solve clues that took them around Idaho Falls. The clues and solutions are posted here.

The first puzzle was to fish an envelope out from under a sunken trampoline, using a magnet and twine. Another puzzle was to find a DVD created by one of my cousins as a school project, and figure out where a certain scene was filmed. Another one was to drive around town using Presidential trivia and Presidential street names to decide the correct route. Another was to locate certain words containing X’s in a copy of the Declaration of Independence, and then find the location on an Idaho Falls map corresponding to one of them. The last puzzle was to find a message hidden in some patriotic lyrics. Then everyone had to go by my grandparents’ house and say why they are grateful for America. Finally they drove to my parents’ house where they found the prize. The prize was that my parents invited the family over for root beer floats and fireworks on Sunday evening.

Some of the teams got really competitive! I wish I could have seen them. The puzzles all got solved way faster than I expected. I had vetted them with coworkers, but my family solved everything faster and easier than anyone else I tested the clues on. It just reinforced for us how smart my family members are!

If you were on one of the teams, then please let us know what you wish had been different–longer or shorter, harder or easier, more kid-friendly, etc. There is a sequel in the works.