Emtala Mackey?

It's been a bit since I posted anything more personal than vacation photos on this blog. As the Internet has unlimited potential for both good and creepy people to use it, I usually error on the side of paranoia when it comes to how much personal information to post on it. But now that I'm officially past the "magic" twelve week mark, I feel free to announce my good news with the Blog-o-Sphere (all six people who care enough to read my blog as (ir)regularly as I post on it).

I'm pregnant! The new fiber enthusiast is expected to arrive in early March. (Because I miscarried early with the last pregnancy, I wanted to wait until the first trimester and the greatest danger of miscarriage was over before I posted about it. Neurotic, but true.)

We received very good news from the New Start church in San Francisco over the weekend. Their church board voted unanimously (How amazing is that? I mean, how often can you get twelve people to agree on pizza toppings, let alone pastoral candidates?) to present Brian's name to the congregation for a "would you like us to ask this person to be our next pastor?" vote. So that's an important hurdle overcome in the church-finding/pastor-finding process. We really loved the people and the church, would be delighted to come there if they called Brian. So now we wait...

However, this does mean that if they vote yes (and he says yes) we will be moving with me five or six months pregnant. Our health insurance right now is through my work, and it's really hard to find a job in any field when you're heavily pregnant, but especially in nursing. With the national nursing shortage, I do have the added advantage of the fact that hospitals and clinics are incredibly desperate for qualified nurses, but mid-to-late pregnancy generally precludes the level of heavy lifting that nursing requires.

As I lay awake worrying in my insomniac moments, I am repeatedly reminded that God has been with us this far and He will not abandon us now.

I have also been encouraged by (cynical) advice from the other nurses at work. "Well, if you can't get health insurance by the time you're in labor, you can always name the baby 'Emtala.' "
(EMTALA is the Federal statute which stipulates that if you show up at an emergency room in active labor (or having other medical emergencies occur) you must be diagnosed by a physician and treated regardless of your ability to pay. Sadly, it's the closest thing the US has to "right to health care" concept.)

Even if I do have to invoke EMTALA to deliver the kid, I don't think we're going to commemorate the experience in quite that way.