Friday, October 29, 2010

Signed, sealed, delivered

Guess what?! Today is the last day that I work outside the home for at least a year! I feel as giddy as the last day of school before summer. Except that this is going to be a very, very long summer. It really is time for me to be off work; I’m hardly sleeping which is severely affecting me ability to do my job these days. I feel fat and tired and grumpy and emotional at work. Just this morning an old lady told me that her dog died after sixteen years and instead of telling her how nice it is that he had a long life (my usual MO), I pretty much burst into tears. Clearly, I’m in no position to be here. I haven’t not had a job this long in my entire grown-up life, so this is an odd thing I’m going into. But the fact is: I feel happy and confident that my time and energy is being well spent on raising our baby girl. There’s nothing better that I could be doing with my time.

At work they’re having an ice cream sundae party for me – what a perfect sendoff for a pregnant person!

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Fat&Tired?

Well. My last midwife appointment as a working person was yesterday. The first thing she said when she saw me was, “So! You look ready to have this baby!” Why does every person I see say that? I don’t think I look particularly tired or haggard or large, but I get that comment about a billion times a day. I guess I’ll choose to take it as a compliment.

Anyway, baby was laying down and still in the right position. Her head is 2/5ths (that’s actually the fraction she gave me – weird, huh?) into my pubic bone, and I’m told this is a good sign that her head will fit with no problem. As if there was ever a doubt! We revisited the basics of my birth plan, just in case I don’t “make it” to discuss in extreme detail at my next visit, and I feel quite pretty confident that my wants/needs will be met. I also told her how, while I feel strongly about my specific labour requirements, I’m very open to the fact that whatever happens happens and the only true goal of this whole thing is a healthy crying baby. So, having said all that and going over it with her made me super happy and confident about how it’ll all go down.

Our next step is this so called “home visit.” What’s that all about? Toby thinks they want to make sure that we’re not weird hoarders with a dirty kitchen and a sword collection. But really? They don’t even do a home visit when you adopt a puppy. It seems really bizarre that they want to check us out. Luckily our house is immaculate and I hope that they don’t consider us unfit parents because of the excess of stairs we have.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Before and After

This is the view of my guts, before and after. No wonder I feel a little cramped...









Pictures from: http://www.childbirthconnection.org/

The great debate of the decade.

The biggest thing that my spouse and I disagree on in terms in child rearing (so far) is TV. While we’ve been raised in really different ways and in really different times and places, we do have common goals and values that we truly agree on. We knew this before the child thing even came into play. But TV? We just can’t seem to agree on that.

This morning we were sitting on the couch exhausted after having woken up an hour early to clean the house for yet another showing. We were both whining and complaining to each other about how tired we are and I said something to the effect of, “Well, in a month we’ll be more tired. Except there’ll also be a crying baby here and the TV won’t be on.”
Whaaaaaaaaat?!” said Toby incredulously, even though we’ve been discussing this very thing for months.

I don’t want the baby to look at the TV at all. I hate the way that babies are just drawn to TVs and when they’re in their vicinity can’t keep focus or their eyes averted. Well, it’s not just babies that can’t keep their eyes from the TV; it’s grown men also! I’ve really been pushing for cutting off our cable all together, but we obviously haven’t really gotten to that (or any) level of acceptance yet.

I know that practice is very different that theory and that I could easily get to the point where I need to plunk the child in front of a TV in order to pee by myself once a day. But now that we’re actually in the theory stage of things, I can certainly have ambitious goals! And really? By not watching TV, we’re not missing out on a thing.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Huh

I’ve been waiting for the baby to “drop,” but looking at pictures of week 35 and 36 together, I can really tell a difference of how low she’s sitting. I’m so glad I have all this visual proof of where I’ve been.

I’m working hard to decrease my fear/paranoia. I’m accepting that she may come early or she may come late, and no matter what I do or say, she’s going to be coming and it’ll all be just fine. It helps a lot that Toby doesn’t spiral into the craziness with me and that all inquiries of “Aren’t you scared?” are met with a very sure and secure, “No. There’s nothing to be scared of.” Bit by bit, everything’s getting done, and even if it doesn’t, our baby girl probably won’t even notice! I think a big factor of the outcome of my day also comes greatly in how I sleep. The night before last I was up throwing up and awake for a few hours, and yesterday was a crap day. Last night I had a great sleep, and my today I’m already feeling a billion times better. Important life lesson when the baby comes!

Also: four more days of work!

36 week tummy!


Sandwiches usually likes to be in the belly pictures, but this week he's just too tired.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Thirty Six!

Well, this is the last week of having a non full term baby! She’s coming!! At this point baby is probably about six pounds heavy and 45 centimeters tall. My tummy is measuring at 37 weeks, so we’re right on track with that! She should now be completing her absolute last stage of development: getting her lungs ready to breathe real air! I’ve been a bit on edge this weekend, as her movements have slowed significantly. While I was trying really hard to shrug off the lack of movement, the midwife asked that I go in for a non stress test this afternoon. Her movements and pulse are absolutely perfect, but for some reason I’m not feeling her at all from the outside. The nurse at the hospital, after scolding me for waiting so long to come in (I was trying hard not to be crazy and paranoid!) hooked me up to the machinery and on hearing her heartbeat my eyes just watered with absolute relief. There’s just no sound better than that. Anyway, our little baby is doing great. I’m heading into my last week of work outside the home and… we’re getting there!

Friday, October 22, 2010

Loved

Last night I started crying because I thought I was in labour and the car seat was not installed and we didn’t even own any baby laundry detergent. And maybe “crying” is an understatement – I was incredibly hysterical. Toby just called to say that the car seat is installed and that he located and purchased that special baby detergent. Sometimes I forget that I’m listened to and loved…

Bla

I haven’t been feeling well lately. I’ve been exhausted, nauseous, crampy, and overheated. I’ve been checking my blood pressure, and it’s slowly creeping up which is a bit worrisome. All of this is leaving me emotionally drained, since I’ve been stressing and worrying about having this baby early. I’ve always imagined that she’d come late; never ever early. So long as she makes it past next Friday (full term at 37 weeks) I’ll be feeling okay about it, but before then, I just can’t accept. I know I just need to calm down and let what happens happen and that stressing out is working in the opposite way. It’s awful, but I know that I’ll feel like I failed baby if she has to come out early.

So for now, I will have my hospital bag ready, and install the car seat, and sit and hope for more time to pass.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Taking a bit of a leap...

A few years ago I decided that it would be a good idea to jump out of a plane. Skydiving had never really been on my “bucket-list” or anything, but at the time it just seemed like a fun thing to do. In the days leading up to it I was just super excited. Driving there I was thrilled that we were finally doing it. Getting changed into the outfits and helmets and getting trained to properly jump out left me jubilant with anticipation. Climbing into the plane with all the other jumpers and sitting down with all our gear made me giddy. But when we hit the 5000 feet mark and suddenly it was time to jump, I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die. I was just so irritated with myself: “Why am I doing this?!” I thought. “I could die! Why am I taking my life into my hands like this?! This is absolutely ridiculous! I don’t want to do this anymore!” It’s a good thing that I was basically pushed out of the little plane, because otherwise I know that I would have ridden back to the sweet, sweet ground within the safety of the plane.

And just as quickly as that, I jumped and it was amazing and then it was over.

Lately, I’ve been in sort of the same place. I’ve been planning and preparing and getting excited about this thing for oh… my whole life? There’s never been a time in my conscious memory where I haven’t wanted to be a mom and have a big family, and do exactly what I’m doing. But recently, now that I’m one month away from my entire world changing, I’m getting flashes of anxiety in the way of, “OMG, this thing… it’s really happening. There’s no going back. Ever.” I’ll have about thirty more sleeps and then I’ll push out this little baby and I’ll never live a day again without being a mom. The utter finality of it is making me scared. I guess in the end it’s all part of the process, but the starkness and reality of the whole thing – it’s just really making my head spin…

Monday, October 18, 2010

35 Weeks



As I keep doing these updates, I continue being shocked with just how far along I really am. It’s just not sinking in lately – the fact that this baby is coming and she’s coming SOON! This week she weighs in at about 2.4 kilos and is 18 inches tall. She has fully developed fingernails (which must be so amazingly cute right now!) and also fully working kidneys. All she’s doing in this next month is gaining fat and increasing her weight by an ounce a day. She’s already entertaining herself with activities such as blinking, practicing breathing, and dancing little jigs inside my belly. I continue on with the extreme nausea and heartburn but in the end it’s a small price to pay for our amazing baby girl.

35 weeks with some shiny new bling...

Friday, October 15, 2010

Head Down!

There’s a girl about my age whose pregnancy I’ve been following since I started working at the credit union. I saw her when she started showing, and almost weekly up until the week she delivered her baby girl Gemma a few months back. Watching the real-life progression she’s made has been awesome and it’s neat to see someone who’s in a very similar situation to mine. It’s been really helpful tracking her progress and the realities of this whole ball of wax viewed against our (sometimes unrealistic) expectations. Today she came in looking beautiful and skinny, and she had two helpful hints:

-“I would have done more to prepare.” I have a huge list for my 2-3 weeks off work pre-baby. There are so many projects to finish, meals to make, books to read. Sometimes it feels like the day before school starts: everything has to be in perfect order to get a nice start on this whole endeavor. Sometimes I feel like I’m being a bit anal, but even coming from new mommies, it’s good to know that doing as much as I can when I can is imperative.

-“I thought I’d be able to get things done when she sleeps.” I’m in the same school, but deep down I know she’s right. Everyone has the hope of being the perfect housewife – not only raising a happy and healthy baby but also of keeping an impeccable home. It all seems fine and well to want to do things while the baby naps, but in reality, they often don’t nap for long enough to even start to embark on a small project. She advised to not get frustrated, but rather to love and enjoy the time that you do get with baby.

Helpful advice from another first-time mom!

Also quite exciting today: we saw the baby! My mum-in-law and I got a 35 week ultrasound to confirm the position of the baby. As I thought, she’s head down and quite beautiful in my opinion. While we didn’t get measurements, she looked normal, healthy, and is swimming in an appropriate amount of fluids. Basically she’s the one who’s ready to go and I’m the one who’s not overly ready yet. But it was fantastic to see her and made me feel so proud and ecstatic that we’ve made such a lovely thing and are getting to close to finally meeting her!

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

So tired...

All of a sudden I’m very, very tired. From the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed, I’m in a sleepy daze. The first words out of my mouth when I wake up are “I’m sooo tiiiiiired…” I don’t know why this has happened all of a sudden. I didn’t get any of the usual fatigue of the first trimester, nor the burst of energy of the second. I’ve been normal and balanced throughout this whole process, and suddenly I’m slouching around dying to crawl into bed each evening. Maybe the baby is sucking up all my extra energy, or maybe the weight of her is tiring me out? Anyway, I’m still not at the point that so many get to where they just want to be done and over with the whole thing. I wonder if I’ll ever get to that point. For now, however, I’d be happy with a nap and maybe a sleep-in once in a while…

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

34 weeks

Baby and I are 34 weeks along, putting us at three weeks away from “full term” and a mere six weeks from the due date. My tummy feels full all the time and baby girl is kicking constantly, except for when other people want to feel her kicking. Like my dog, she doesn’t really seem to do things on command. She’s weighing in at close to five pounds this week (!!!) and should be around 45 centimeters tall. Her hearing is fully developed (Toby insists on playing Metalica for her these days, because he doesn’t want her to have too much exposure to my “crappy girl music”) and I kind of feel like she hears us when we talk to her. 34 weeks marks the beginning of the ninth month of pregnancy, and I still can’t believe we’re already here.

34 week belly!


After thanksgiving dinner, but the turkey didn't change things much. Things like putting on socks and tying shoelaces (anything involving my own feet, really) is becoming increasingly difficult.

Friday, October 8, 2010

One Hundred!

This is my hundredth post since I started this blog here! I can’t believe what a long weird journey it has been. I’ve gone from freaking out at every minute detail to… still freaking out about every minute detail. I guess that’s just me, and baby or no baby; it’s not going to change. But I’ve certainly gotten bigger in these hundred posts. The baby has gone from being the size of a plum to now the size of a honeydew. I’ve gone from ravenously eating everything in the world made of cream cheese to just not being hungry anymore. Our zygote has turned into an embryo, a fetus, and now in our minds she’s a real baby with a name, shoes, and a bank account. We made this amazing thing out of love and we’re both thrilled and dying to meet her. We’ve learned so much in the past eight months and have gotten stronger as people and as a team. A hundred posts ago I had no idea how all of this would feel and look and now I’m absolutely loving every second of it. And… it just gets better from here!

Thursday, October 7, 2010

To clear up

I didn’t make this clear: I’m totally convinced that baby is head down. I feel her strong kicks only along the top bit of my belly and from all my reading I know that you generally just feel movement from legs and not from arms. Also, when I feel around very hard, I can make out the shape of her bum and her head around my pelvis. I’m not worried at all about having to go to a special “baby turner,” but rather am super excited for yet another chance to see baby before she makes her real-life debut.

Also, since I have bounds of internet time now that I’m pretty much checked out from work I’ve been looking at a lot of used baby stuff on craigslist and kijiji. My daughter is really fortunate to have a dad that bought her the fanciest car seat and stroller and also tons of friends and family that have showered her with amazing new gifts. We haven’t purchased anything used yet, but I’ve noticed lately that on those websites people are selling recalled cribs. What’s with that? They’re only being sold for about $50, but really? Can you justify putting your child in a bed that might kill her to save some cash? There’s even NON-recalled cribs being given away for free/very cheap, so why go the dangerous route?

Anyway, I’m just incredibly bored at work and counting down the days (Fifteen days of work!).

Another day at the midwife

The appointment with the unlikable midwife last night actually went really well! Toby came along, since I was really keen on showing him what a crazy hippy-dippy person she was and so he could be prepared to be my ally in the delivery room. Upon sitting down, she immediately asked me what my latest questions and concerns were. She attentively listened while I expressed my thoughts and inner turmoil about the whole Strep B issue that I’ve been thinking a lot lately and she made sure to tell me what is “recommended” by doctors and midwives. She validated my morning sickness, and didn’t give me too much grief about my weight like last time, since I’ve only been gaining one to two pounds per month. Halfway through the appointment, she leaned back and said, “Well… you sure have mellowed out.” I asked her what she meant, and she said that my attitude has improved and that I’m being more accepting of the process and the fact that what happens will indeed happen. I think, on the other hand, that I’m much less scared than when I last saw her (at 16 weeks only!) and feel confident and powerful in all of the knowledge that I’ve gained. I have nothing to fear because I’ve prepared myself for this as much as is humanly possible, so perhaps I’m not coming off as so insecure and flaily. Whatever it is, I’m happy that we were seeing more eye-to-eye. I still don’t buy any of her meditative “having a baby is like having an orgasm” crap, but I’m more confident that we can meet somewhere halfway.

When we left Toby said, “She seemed really nice and she didn’t even smell!” implying that I was perhaps exaggerating a bit last time I left her office in tears. But he also acknowledged that I was very firm and clear and concise in my questions and that she responded well to that. Anyway, I’m happy he got to meet her on the chance that she does actually deliver our child. As for baby: she’s “probably” head down, but it’s not absolutely certain. There’s a hard bit up by my ribs which is also “probably” her bum but I’m going for another ultrasound to be one hundred percent certain. We don’t want any surprises during delivery and I’m more than happy to get another opportunity to see my beautiful baby girl. Also, baby is measuring in the seventieth percentile and the midwife is pretty sure that she’ll be born weighing around the same as when I was born: a healthy eight pounds! I was imagining an average of mine and Toby’s birth weight (5.8lbs!) but am perfectly happy pushing out an eight pounder!

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Gross

I was feeling pretty good this morning as I walked to my car. I’d had a good breakfast of milk, a banana, and my three vitamins, the sun was shining, and Sandwiches was excited to be on his way to daycare. Then it happened all of a sudden: my eyes and mouth water, and I projectile vomit all over my neighbors’ lawn. Banana wasn’t so bad; the vitamins were. Sandwiches wagged his tail stump all excitedly, like, “Hey mom! That’s what I do on walks too!”

What’s with that? Morning sickness has stuck at full force after the thirtieth week for me. When I told my midwife about it, she suggested that I journal my thoughts about the impending arrival of my little one because I’m probably secretly really terrified of having a child. After silently telling her to eff off in my mind, I researched extensively and found that it’s probably just a big huge surge of hormones, which can happen at any time during pregnancy.

I don’t want to say what I actually did, but… what is the etiquette when you throw up on someone’s lawn?

33 week belly



She's growing!!!

Monday, October 4, 2010

33 Weeks

Well, this little baby is a mere month from being considered “full term.” After all this time, I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around that. Currently she’s weighing in at 2 kilos and is about 44 centimeters tall. I’m definitely noticing her growth spurts – the tummy seems to be growing daily. Supposedly in this particular week, the baby will to move into my pelvis and press her head “firmly” against my cervix. So far, though, she seems to be staying put. I think this weekend brought my first contraction – it was just like a Braxton Hicks contraction, except quite hurty. Hurty is the word of the day, it seems. With my incredibly swollen and painful ankle along with everything I have to get done lately is making me fairly sullen and cranky. But oh well… This too shall pass.

Last weekend I did my blood test for iron and hopefully that’ll be my last prick before labour! I’m amazed with all the blood-tests this whole process has brought about. This week also brings a midwife appointment, and I’m really looking forward to hearing her heartbeat and getting a second opinion on her positioning!

Friday, October 1, 2010

49 days! What!

I’m not done being pregnant! And now all of a sudden our daughter will arrive! Unbelievable.

Lately I’m feeling very pregnant and hurty. I’m hoping that spending the weekend healing my ankle will serve in maybe expediting the process. There’s just so much that I want/need to be doing at this point, and lying on the couch waiting for my ankle to heal doesn’t really help anyone (except for maybe my ankle).

So much exciting stuff is upcoming, but I think that for now I should just focus on today. Because all of this is suddenly going way too fast.