Are we there yet?

I am so totally and completely over being pregnant right now. I don't even know what else to say about it, other than I am DONE. I would like my body back, I would like to be able to sit or lie down comfortably, I would like to not be woken up in the middle of the night by the worst heartburn I have ever had, I would like to be able to pick something up off the floor without thinking too hard about it. I would also really like to fit into more than three of the things in my closet, but that seems slightly less worth whining about.

37 weeks

38 weeks

Everything seems to be going just about as boring as smoothly as possible, so that is good. We've been head down for almost as long as they've been checking, and he seems happy there, so that is a good sign. I've been feeling awfully crampy lately, and I've been having a ton of contractions, so while there aren't really any signs that labor is imminent, I feel like I can assume that some progress is being made, and my body is getting itself ready. I hope.

We have officially hired our doula and had our pre-labor meetings with her, so that's one more thing checked off the scary list-of-doom in my head, and one more thing that makes me feel ready to get going with this birth already. I still have things that I would like to have done before we have a baby, but at this point they are all pretty superficial, and I would welcome labor at any time. Like right this moment. So I don't have to stay at work all day. Or go back again at all for a while.

Term

Dear Baby,

We made it! Today we are officially 37 weeks pregnant, which means it's safe for you to come out, anytime you want within the next five weeks. I'm hoping you choose sooner rather than later, though. You're getting really big, and I think we're both a little uncomfortable sharing my body these days. But if you're anything like me and your daddy, you won't make us wait too long. And I'm  pretty sure you're at least a little like me and your daddy. Did you know that he was three weeks early? That would be like you coming TODAY! I don't think we'd be quite 100% prepared for that though, so give us a little time to get all the finishing touches together.

I am probably going to miss this time that I always have you with me and it being just the two of us, but I'm also so excited to get to see you on the outside and to introduce you to everybody. There are just so many people that can't wait to meet you. And I'm sure that you'll be just as thrilled to finally get to see your dad and all your grandparents and your aunts and uncles. They can't wait to meet you, either.

Okay, baby, let's get this show on the road!

Love, Mommy

So close.

36 weeks and counting.  Holy cow. Things are starting to come together. "Surprise" work baby shower this morning, so I finally have a car seat and my midwives can stop yelling at me about that. I am right now pre-washing all my cloth diapers. Laundered all the tiny clothes and blankets and bedding and stuff. Wednesday I will be officially 37 weeks and therefore full term, oh geez.

I am so uncomfortable right now. Baby boy's movements are no longer fun or cute. They hurt. I think he's dropped some, too. Today my lady parts feel all swollen and crazy and sitting is really unpleasant and I had to go find bigger underpants and put on a dress because I needed the room down there. Ridiculous. He's definitely got a hand or two up by his face, because I'm getting painful cervix pokes every few minutes. Thank you, son. And I've been having a lot more braxton hicks. And the heartburn. And today I feel vaguely nauseous. Today is almost different enough for me to feel a bit worried. I suppose if things are still weird tomorrow I will call someone. It would suck, though, to go into labor only a few days before term, because that would fuck up the whole birth center midwives thing. In any case, I have a very strong feeling I'm not going to still be pregnant on my due date. I know I shouldn't get my hopes up, but I don't know. What can you do about gut feelings?

Thirty five and then some.

I really do intend on writing posts on a regular basis, but like, life seems to happen and omg what day is it now? Fuck.

Pretty much. Thirty five weeks as of this past Wednesday. Which means I will be offficially full term omg the baby can come anytime in TEN DAYS. Let me repeat that, TEN DAYS. WHAT! I am not exactly ready. Between trying to get everything done and being freaking exhausted from all the gestating I'm doing, yeah, blog posts have been few and far between. But watch me end up going right to 42 weeks or something and writing three posts a day out of boredom because I have nothing else to do. I hope not.

Things I still have to do: hire a doula, pick a doctor, install my carseat, write my birth plan, see a shrink, clean my entire stupid house, and oh yeah, figure out what the hell to do about daycare, because the solution we thought we had fell through and oh my god there is nothing left in the city of Seattle available before January, apparently. And that's not even including all the "little" things. Ten days. I spend a lot of time trying not to hyperventilate.

I swear one of these days I will have enough time to write something of substance.

34

You know what sucks? Rain. Still messing with my all dresses all the time plan. I am probably unecessarily angry about this. I think I went through 12 outfits today before I settled on one that didn't make me feel like crying, and I wasn't really even planning to leave the house or do anything productive. This last bit of pregnancy? Infuriating.

34 weeks today. I need to get my shit together. Today I googled every single family practice and pediatrician covered by my insurance so I can get going on finding a doctor for baby boy. It's 2011, you'd think the internet would be a lot more helpful when it comes to finding a doctor, but no, not really. Rarely did I find a doctor that had reviews, and almost never was the information in the reviews helpful. That's nice that he had a friendly receptionist, but what's his attitude on vaccines? Ugh. I keep getting the feeling that I'm going about this all wrong, because if it was this hard for everyone I would have heard about it, right? Maybe?

But hard as they are, things are going. Kyle is going to put our childcare deposit down tomorrow, assuming the space is still open--cross your fingers, because otherwise we are shit outta luck on that front. Our childbirth class is going well. Penny Simkin is truly the bees knees. I wish she could be my doula.  We're setting up appointments with doulas, too. Better late than never, I suppose. And I got myself accepted into a pilot study about placenta encapsulation and post partum mood disorders, so get that done for free. And I'm like, participating in science, woo. Tomorrow mom is coming over to help me paint our "nursery." I don't know why I am using the quotes there, since it is just the nursery, but it doesn't really feel real yet. Something.

I've gone down to four days a week at work. Three this week because of the holiday. I'm not super happy about it, and I'm only doing it because I have PTO I have to use up by the end of the month. I was hoping it would last a little longer and I could roll it into my maternity leave, but no such luck. But honestly, I think I kind of needed to step back a little anyway, because I am exhausted.

Too exhausted to think of a way to wrap this up. The end.

33 Weeks and Things

So I am a terrible blogger it seems. Sorry. This past Wednesday was 33 weeks. According to my stupid baby center emails, he's the size of a pineapple. When I asked Kyle how big he thought baby boy was this week he guessed the right fruit. Unbelievable! Considering it has been as varied as "an English hothouse cucumber" or "an average sized rutabaga" or "four navel oranges".  I was kind of upset by his correct guess, but I'm not sure why.

Anyway, I feel huge, but everyone still tells me I look small. The scrawny arms and legs will do that, I guess. Even though we're FINALLY getting a few sunny days here and there, there still has been a lot of rain, and my plans to wear nothing but dresses for this last leg of my pregnancy is not working out so well. Pants are really not my favorite thing right now, but oh well.

Today was baby shower numero dos, with my mom's side of the family. I haven't seen any of them since I announced my pregnancy, so it was exciting for everyone, especially since baby boy is going to be the first great-grandchild for my Grandpa. My youngest cousin is turning 21 this summer, so it's been a LOOOONNNGG time since we had a baby around. My uncle sent me some pictures from the festivities.

My cousin-in-law (?), Nancy is a graphic designer, and these flags match the invitations she designed. Cute!

Someone dug up a baby picture of me. I was a chubster.

Highly flattering picture of my enormity in way too expensive boutiquey maternity dress. 

Hopefully he will send me some more, because I love that dress and spent FAR too much money on it and would like as many photos of myself in it as possible. And I am a big narcissist. 

Tomorrow is my third (and final?) baby shower, hosted by my glorious and also-pregnant BFF and I'm really excited for that. The guests are a hodgepodge of people that are awesome and also unrelated to me, and I think it will be really fun. She did an amazing job on my bridal shower way back when. I get to return the favor in two weeks!

Eight "Months"

Hot damn, I am 32 weeks pregnant today! That's eight months, I guess, if you're the sort who likes to pretend that every month is made up of exactly four weeks, but then you would be wrong. Still. Saying that I am eight months pregnant is kind of awesome, so I will do that a little bit right now. EIGHT MONTHS, BITCHES!

Okay then. So this means I will be officially full term, and in my "due time" (as my yoga teacher says) in five weeks. FIVE. WEEKS. Holy shit do I have a lot to do.

Although I haven't yet done a lot of what I need to do, I'm feeling a lot better about my situation, and at the very least I have a PLAN and things. And my very first ever diapers came in the mail today! And I got permission from my landlord to paint! And we started our childbirth class! Things are feeling fairly imminent, and right now that's a good feeling. Can't guarantee anything about tomorrow, though.

31 Weeks

Hmm, I should probably do a 31 week post before I hit 32 weeks tomorrow. Perhaps. Maybe.

This might be the first ever picture of
me where I look 25 and not 17.

Things are rolling right along. Pregnancy is starting to feel interesting again. The second trimester was kind of boring me out of my mind, what with the nothing happening and all that, so it's nice to feel like there are milestones and changes and stuff again. Midwife appointments every two weeks! Childbirth classes! Dearest son kicking me in the cervix on a regular basis! Crying for no reason! Wheeeeee!

But things are mostly good. I've come to terms with staying put in our terrible crappy townhouse for the time being, probably at least through next January. Kyle helped me rearrange pretty much all our furniture so we can turn our second bedroom into a nursery, and we got permission from our landlord to paint, so I can expend my nervous energy on something slightly more productive than hand-wringing.

Things are still terrifying on the daycare front, as every center in our area and price range (and most of those out of it) have waiting lists until at least January, when I need to go back to work in October, so, um.... yeah. I guess the plan is to stick ourselves on all those lists and cross our fingers that something opens up. Because I HAVE TO go back to work after 12 weeks, and I HAVE TO go back full time, otherwise we no longer have like, health insurance, and that seems kind of important with a new baby and everything. It really sucks to be in a position that we don't get to choose the best care for our kid, but are instead just waiting for something, anything to open up. Clearly I'm not quite okay with this yet. I have stopped crying about it, though, so there's been some progress.

Start the countdown

Ten weeks left. Give or take, I suppose.

Interesting, on Wednesday, when I officially hit the 30 week mark I woke up feeling way more pregnant than I did the day before. All of the sudden I am constantly uncomfortable. Just navigating the world normally has become far more difficult. I'm all unwieldy and off balance and I can't walk at a reasonably fast speed to save my life. It seems strange that things don't happen at a slow constant rate, but rather pop up overnight.

At 28 weeks it felt like I had forever to go, but with ten weeks left I realize how much I have left to do and I am sure this time is going to just fly by. Kyle helped me rearrange furniture last weekend. We brought his desk down into our living room to free up space in our second bedroom for a nursery. But the room needs a serious deep clean, and (pending landlord approval) a couple coats of paint before I can start unpacking all the boxes of baby gear, and organizing tiny clothing and what have you. Lots to do.

to do

Hi blog.

I'm doing much better than I was the last time I posted. Still, though, this becoming a parent business is stressful. I've managed to feel pretty okay with the fact that I will soon have a baby, but the idea that I will soon be someone's mother is still hard to swallow. Yes, they sounds like the same thing, but really they are different, and the second is much harder for me.

I've finally stopped dragging my feet about finding a daycare, and called the local referral network today. We now have a list of providers to research and call and visit and omg. The consultant I spoke with on the phone was really wonderful and sweet, but that didn't stop me from crying when it hit me that someone else is going to be hanging out with my baby all day. Remind me not to wear mascara on my first day back to work. Or possibly ever again.

We also need to find a doctor for baby boy. We're leaning towards finding a family practitioner versus a pediatrician, especially since neither Kyle nor I have a doctor right now. Lots to do and only a few weeks left.

29 Weeks

Here's your picture. I'm having a bad day and I am too cranky to write a post. Blah.

Picture Perfect

After many months of begging and pleading and demanding and threatening Kyle finally bought me a new camera. I suppose I could have just bought myself a new camera, but somehow I got it in my head that he should buy me one, so... Clearly, we have a camera, or else you wouldn't have all these lovely terrible pictures of me. But it is really bad at taking pictures. At least ones that are any good. Because we bought it to take high speed video. And it does that very well. But that's about all.

Anyway, with the birth of my child imminently approaching, I was starting to get desperate. It's one thing to have blurry bathroom mirror belly photos, but it's another thing entirely to have unclear and unfocused snapshots of MY BABY OH MY GOD. You know.

I demanded a Canon. Kyle bought one. It showed up the other day. I am in love.

Thusly, BFF and I went to the Tulip Festival. When we were there last year we discussed what a perfect place it would be to take maternity photos. And here we are, both pregnant, so...

On the way home we stopped by the outlet mall to visit the Carter's and the Gymboree. Sigh. Today was a lovely day.

Trimester the Third

Well then. Yesterday marked the first day of this last trimester of my pregnancy. The home stretch! 12 weeks right now feels about 10 weeks too many, but I know the time will just fly by. The last trimester certainly did. I have no idea where the last three months went.

And happy third trimester to me, what should I find when I leave my house for work but my brand new stroller waiting for me on my front step. (Kyle's aunties all chipped in.)

Yay! I was expecting it, but still. I probably let out some sort of high-pitched yelp when I opened the door.  It feels like a huge weight off my shoulders to have some of the big stuff out of the way. I'm expecting our crib to arrive tomorrow. A gift from Kyle's parents... you know, on top of hosting us and throwing me an awesome baby shower and making me that beautiful mobile. Cool.

Another exciting third trimester milestone: yesterday was the first time I peed myself a little bit when I coughed. Awesome.

Cleveland Part II: The Luck of the Irish

Kyle is half Irish. Yeah. His dad is the oldest of nine. He has approximately a billion cousins, ranging from age 6 to almost 30. Almost the entire family live in the same zip code. Holy cow is right. While we were in town, Grandma held her annual Irish corned beef and cabbage feast. Because they like to celebrate St. Patrick's day for a whole month. Because they are really into being Irish. Here is some of the decor, but I will have you know that their house looks like this year round, not just for this particular occasion.

Shamrocks on everything!

Just in case you forgot!

They do it up right.

Kyle's grandparents live in a modest suburban single family home. Approximately fifty people were at the party. And it was still too cool to move the festivities outside.

Yes you did count six tables. Suffice it to say, family gatherings can be overwhelming and exhausting. But also fun when you only have to do it once a year.

My brother-in-law, Chris with our cousin Kelly

Bonnie explaining the meaning of all of her bracelets to my mother-in-law.

Omigosh! An iPad!

We also spent some time with our friends and took in a baseball game, and Kyle ate at a few of his favorite local restaurants. One Chinese place in particular remembers him and still knows his regular order! We had a good trip, but I am so so glad to be home. 

From Seattle Rain to Cleveland Showers

Well, we're back in Seattle, and so glad to be home. Our trip was great, but spending time with Kyle's family is exhausting, and it's a relief for things to return to normal,  or at least as normal as they can be on the eve of my third trimester.

We got into Cleveland on Wednesday morning, but we didn't do a whole lot that day. Kyle caught up on sleep, as he is terrible at red-eye flights. Mostly just some catching up with the in-laws, and enjoying some free time off from work and home responsibilities.

On Thursday night Kyle got a chance to spend some time with some of his college buddies when my Mother-in-Law threw me a baby shower. It was fun, if very traditional and totally not me. I joke that I get to have a midwestern version of everything. We had our traditional midwestern reception in Ohio after our offbeat Seattle wedding, and this was definitely my traditional midwestern shower.

MIL got the whole set of corny decorations, and had me put my merchandising skills to work doing the decorating.

The shower was "small" with "only" very close family. So, about seventeen of us. And lots of wine. It was rowdy, to say the least. I think rowdy is the only way that Kyle's family does things. We'd played dumb shower games, and had some of Kyle's cousins show us their latest Irish step dancing routine.

We made out with a ton of loot, including some of the "big things" that I was starting to get anxious about, but my favorite gift was inexpensive and homemade. My MIL sent a piece of origami paper to each home in Kyle's family and had them all write us a wish. And then she folded them all into paper cranes and turned it into a mobile.

It is beautiful. Like, I gasped. It was hanging in the dining room when we first arrived, and I noticed it right away. "Wow, that is so pretty, when did you get that?" I asked. I was totally blown away that it was for me. For us.

I can't imagine taking it apart, but I also can't wait to see what's been written inside all of the cranes.  I think I'm going to unfold each one, take a picture of the message, and put it all back together, and then make a blurb photobook or something, so we can enjoy all parts of it. Seriously, I love this.

Long Away

Greetings from Ohio. No time yet for the full writeup, but I wanted to post my week 27 picture before I forgot/avoided doing it altogether. Super not cute, but you wouldn't look so hot either after a red-eye flight. And my husband is no good at taking pictures. Or rather he is not patient enough to take approximately 57 frames so that I can find the one that's not quite as crappy as the others since our camera is so terrible. But whatever. Here you go.

Good trip so far, details later.

Dear Baby

Dear Baby,

Hey boy! You are wiggling around underneath my laptop right now. It's wonderful. I'm feeling you move around a lot these days. You are getting big and strong, and sometimes your kicks can even be a little painful for me. No matter, I wouldn't trade them for the world. You do a lot of your kicking in the car when I am driving home from work. I think of that time as us time. I play you lots of music, and I hope you are starting to develop an appreciation for it. I know you won't like everything I do, but I think it will be good for you to be exposed to a wide variety of stuff. Although perhaps today's Avril Lavigne was a little much.

This week is week 26. Things are moving along very nicely. When I say "July" it still sounds very far away, but this means we've only 14 weeks left, and really that's not very long at all. And we've both got a lot to do in that time. You're very busy in there working on getting bigger and stronger. Your Daddy and I out here are doing our best to prepare for your arrival. You already have a pretty nifty little wardrobe, and we're slowly acquiring other gear. In another month here we'll start our birth classes, so we'll be better prepared for your entrance into the world.

Next week your Daddy and I are going to visit Ohio. It will be our first time seeing your paternal grandparents since you've been around. And your uncles and great-grandparents and great aunts and once-removed cousins and honorary Ohio aunties. They are all so excited to meet you. And don't worry, they will meet you on the outside, too. We will bring you there again in the fall!

Baby boy, I can't wait until you're here!

Love, Mommy

Up to here

Yesterday was a hard day.

It started early. I woke up just before 5am from a terrible nightmare in which I couldn't warn my husband that he and our baby were about to be drowned by a nefarious evildoer because someone reprogrammed his number in my cellphone to one that called a nursing home. It sounds completely ridiculous now, but I awoke in a panic, and every time I closed my eyes I would see it again, so I ended up just laying in bed crying for a while.

But then I got up and decided to compulsively scrub my bathroom for a couple hours. Me. Bathroom cleaning. At five o'clock in the morning. Very strange.

It was also very depressing for me, because good god is our house crappy. Two hours of cleaning and the best I could get it to look is dingy.  It's funny, because I am so not a cleaner, and tidy but dingy is normally quite alright with me. But not anymore, I guess. Perhaps nesting has set in after all. But what more could I do? So I took a shower.

Freshly clean with my clean towels in my clean bathroom I am rubbing body oil into my belly to keep it from itching, and the hand towel bar above the counter that is really only very precariously balanced there rather than actually being affixed to the wall spontaneously falls and knocks my bottle of oil everywhere and into my drawer full of hair care implements and I. Just. Lose it.

I sat down, naked and wet, on the edge of the tub, bawling so loud that I woke Kyle in the bedroom, across the hallway through closed doors. So loud that he actually decided to get up and investigate instead of ignoring it and going back to sleep. Which, if you know Kyle, means I was really fucking loud. And I couldn't tell him what was wrong because I could catch my breath between sobs and I couldn't stop crying. Finally, when he got me back to bed, all I could manage was "WE HAVE TO MOVE RIGHT NOW." He assured me that we will move and it will be okay and he would fix the stupid towel rack and I was hysterical because "the lease isn't up until August! I can't put a baby in that bathtub! We can't live here!" Insane.

So yeah. I managed to do a load of laundry, completely scrub my bathroom, take a shower, and have a nervous breakdown all before 8am. And then I had a full day of work ahead of me. Needless to say, I wasn't completely on my A-game. In fact, I felt on the edge of tears for most of the day. My girlfriends have assured me that losing one's shit over something inane like the wrong kind of chicken during pregnancy is totally 100% normal, so I feel a little better. I still don't feel good about our home or how we're going to be able to move when we are scheduled to have a two-week old baby or how we'll be able to afford a place any nicer than the one where we currently reside, but Kyle said he'd worry about it for me, and it seems like I'm better off right now letting him take that responsibility.

This morning brings better news. My sister booked her tickets home from France for the summer, and she'll be back in Seattle on my due date!  And her French boyfriend will be joining her a month later. Now I have two things to look forward to.

Role Model

Okay, can I complain about something perhaps inappropriate for a moment?  How come it seems like nobody I know is any good at birthing?

P.S. 25 weeks

I mean, all my mama-friends are awesome, strong, wonderful women, who researched and planned and prepared and still, I seem to know very few people who have successfully birthed naturally. They all end up laboring for 40+ hours, which leads to hospital transfer, epidural, c-section, NICU or some combination of those things. I don't fault them. I know they did the best they could. But seriously, if they couldn't do it, how am I going to. Little ol' me.

I realize this is a silly thing to bitch about, but I'm starting worry about how I'm not hearing any positive birth experiences, and what if I'm not very tough, and maybe this isn't as easy and natural as I was telling myself and OMG. And clearly I can't talk about this with anyone who would get it, because I would be all," by the way your c-section is totally fucking me up" which is good for nobody because many of them still have not come to terms with it, and I don't want them to feel bad and geez.

But I needed to get that out there. I feel better now.

Via

Stealth cat!

24 Weeks! Fetal Viability! I win! 

I feel like I am getting boring. Pregnancy is still going well. I feel good most of the time, I'm big but not huge. No complications. Etc., etc. I did pull a muscle in my ass, but I'm pretty sure that's just an unrelated annoyance. I don't really have anything else to say about that. Sometimes heartburn wakes me up in the middle of the night and I can't get back to sleep and sometimes it's hard to get up out of a squatting position, and sometimes baby boy kicks me in the cervix, but I think if that's the worst of it, I'm doing pretty great. Still  no stretch marks or swollen ankles or any of that superficial nonsense. I almost feel like I am being cheated out of those experiences, but I suppose I should count my blessings. That said, I can't believe how time is flying. I can't believe it's almost April. I can't believe I'm going to have a baby in less than four months! 

In a couple of weeks we are flying out to Ohio to visit Kyle's friends and family. I am actually quite excited. His family is so awesomely excited for us, so I can't wait to see them all in person for the first time since I've been pregnant. Baby boy will be the first great-grandchild on both sides of his family, so this is, I guess, a really big deal. And there hasn't been a baby in his family for about 6 years now, which for them is a pretty long stretch.  So, yay! In the past I've been a little irritated that so many of our "vacations" end up being to Ohio, since we typically can't afford to take the time off of work/buy plane tickets for more than one destination every year, but right now I want to be surrounded by family and just hang out, which is exactly what I will get to do.

However, Ohio coming up means that baby shower the first is also coming up, and for some reason I am inordinately anxious about baby showers. But I'm all worried that everyone will hate my registry or that all I will get is a metric ton of diapers, even though I want to use cloth, or every single piece of clothing I receive will say some nonsense about how baby is "cute like mommy" and I still won't have any of the things that I actually need like a car seat and a breast pump and ACK! I guess I can't really get upset about those things, even if they all do happen, since I can't demand that anyone buy me a crib or a stroller or whatever, but baby stuff makes me crazy. I'm starting to worry about how in the world we're going to pay for everything, and how much this birth is going to cost, and what are we thinking(!!!) again. I know we'll work it out because we'll have to work it out, but I can't stop myself from regularly hyperventilating about it. Oh well.

Ok. I don't really have anything to tidily wrap up this entry. The end.