Still putting finishing touches on the nursery and will have lots more to wash and put away after the family baby shower on Saturday, but it's fully outfitted now.  I even made up some spray for the reusable flannel baby wipes I still haven't finish making.  I have about ten of them done, another 20 that need to be turned and ironed and finished, and another 20 or so that are just cut out and haven't been pieced together yet.  I keep putting it off, but maybe I'll have some time to sit down at the sewing machine and finish them this weekend.  I have finished several of my other projects for the baby, though.  I made two book slings, a diaper stacker, a valance, a diapering caddy, and a hamper.  I also made a few pairs of booties and I have several more in various stages of completion.  I wanted to latch hook a rug for the nursery, but these things will have to wait till I'm home with  him all day and can find the time while he naps.  

Our pediatrician that we met with a few weeks ago suggested I get a TdaP vaccination to cover the baby for whooping cough which is really bad this year and can be fatal to infants.  I asked my midwife about it and she agreed that I should get it, but that they don't stock vaccines in the office so I would need to go to my primary care physician.  I thought it would be faster and easier to go to the clinic in the local drugstore.  They gave my husband one, no problem, but couldn't go near me with a ten foot pole unless my midwife faxed them a prescription for the vaccine.  Sigh.  I called the midwives and they agreed to fax it, but I couldn't get the fax number to the clinic.  Their national customer support people were extremely rude on the phone, telling me that they don't have fax machines at the clinics (which isn't true at all because the nurse at the clinic told me they accept faxes) and that she couldn't give me their phone number to give to my physician because they don't take direct calls.  So the vial of vaccine that was leftover from my husband getting his injection that was sitting in their fridge with my name on it is going to go to waste.  I called my regular doc and talked to the lady in the lab who ran it past my doc and the nurse midwife just to be double sure that it was okay to give to a lady in her 37th week of pregnancy and they got me in and out in like 5 minutes.  I should have done that first instead of waste a morning on the phone trying to get the clinic sorted out.  I also saw my doc a couple weeks ago to check out my tongue which we had all thought had an oral thrush infection but which turned out to be geographic tongue.  I had tried EVERYTHING including a round of anti-fungal mouthwash prescribed by the midwives and nothing cleared it up, so I was relieved to find out that this geographic tongue is something completely benign and slightly mysterious that no one is really sure what causes it, let alone how to get rid of it.  I'll just have to live with the sore tongue for a few more weeks.  My doc says it might have been set off by the hormonal changes of the pregnancy and that it should clear up after I give birth.  

I've had a crampy feeling and a few contractions over the last few days and loose stools.  I keep trying to talk myself out of thinking that I'll go into labor earlier than expected, but it's really feeling like things are starting to get moving.  I've also had mild nausea.  But now that I've gotten that darned vaccine, I'm hoping to make it two more weeks, since that is the recommended time table before exposure to a newborn.  In any event, I'm trying to get lots of sleep in spite of the million little things I still have on my to do list before the baby gets here, you know just in case I do go into labor I'll have some energy to get me through.  

3 weeks to go

Well, my L&D bag is mostly packed and we spent the day out and about picking up some things for the baby and doing returns from the first baby shower.  Ended up picking up some floating shelves for the nursery, a small speaker dock for the nursery so I can load up one of the MP3 players with baby's music, and a diaper bag since we really needed one and I doubt we'll get one at the shower next weekend.  I've already stocked up the diaper bag with everything I'll need initially and finished packing some of the things I might want at the hospital in another bag.  Tomorrow we'll install the car seats and I'll make an appointment to get them inspected next week.

My in-laws had decided they were taking off on Monday to go up to Niagara Falls for four days.  I'm like, "but what if I go into labor?"  They hadn't thought of that.  LOL.  I know I have three weeks left, but it's really feeling like it could be any day now.  For real.  All day long today I had twinges in my cervix, so there's definitely some changes going on there.  I had my strep B test on Thursday, and the midwife wanted to do a quick check to feel the baby's head from the interior to make sure it was indeed a head and not a squishy tushie.  I gave her the okay and she had commented while performing the check that he was head down and engaged, my cervix was still very posterior but soft and perhaps a bit dilated already.  He dropped down like two weeks ago, so I wouldn't be terribly surprised if I went into labor a bit early.  Perhaps that's just wishful thinking, though.  I've been feeling fairly uncomfortable with terribly hip and pubic bone pain.  The first few steps I take after standing up are excruciating.  And I'm just generally enormous and lumber around like a hippo!

I've been to cloth diapering class and have an in-house consultation coming up, 26 hours of Bradley Method birthing class, breastfeeding class, and infant CPR class; and I've hired one of the most experienced doulas in the area. I feel like we can't possibly do anything more to get ready than we've already done except for performing a really deep clean on the whole house.  I spent some of the night tonight putting finishing touches on the nursery and it's almost ready for baby.  We even set up the video monitor tonight and put in the outlet covers.

Now I just have to get through the shower next weekend and get all fo that put washed and put away and then I can pick up a few last-minute necessities and we'll be READY!

Our birth class:

We met with a very nice lady pediatrician today.  I think we're really going to like that practice.

I still can't walk around normally because apparently I have Pubic Symphysis Dysfunction and it's really kind of bumming me out.  I have so much to get done, and not so much time left to do it in.

I have made good progress in the baby's room, though.  The closet is painted and shelves re-installed.  I've even washed all of the onesies and blankets I got at my shower and have folded and put them all away.  This weekend, I hope to get some things hung up on the walls and install the monitor and smoke detector.  I finally got the curtain I made forever ago put up, and my cousin recovered the old rocking chair my husband got for me at an auction for $2 with about $30 of fabric I picked out.  It's so much softer and it's a bright lime green now.  I love it!  And we scored a glider rocker for the living room at the Goodwill for $25!  My husband loves those.

Swelling

So I'm pre-registered at the hospital. We're signed up for the diaper
service and are pre-paid for 6 weeks of service. We've contracted with a
doula and she's been paid in full. We had our last Bradley Method class on
Tuesday, and our midwife looked over our birth plan and signed off on it
today. The few things remaining on our baby to do list are to finish
setting up the baby's room, install the carseats and get them inspected by
the sheriff, pay for placenta encapsulation, and finish packing a labor and
delivery bag. Oh, and get some more prenatal pics done. A photographer
friend of mine took some after my baby shower the other day and they looked
pretty good, but she wanted to do some more one day. I've also got another
baby shower coming up in four more weeks, a breastfeeding class and a baby
CPR class.

In other news, a lady at work mused that it looked like I was starting to
carry lower. That same day, I started noticing some pretty severe hip and
pubic bone pain. It's really bad today, so I asked about it and the
midwives say it's completely normal and that the baby is probably preparing
to engage in my pelvis (albeit a little early). Also, my fundal height
measured 36cm at 34 weeks today, so it's right on. I've been drinking red
raspberry leaf tea and eating figs and doing anything else I can to make
sure that everything goes smoothly for delivery.

I've had pretty bad swelling since Sunday when I spent a few hours outside
in really bad heat on a riverboat cruise. I didn't drink enough water that
day either, so when I swelled up on Monday, I wasn't too surprised. What
did surprise me is that it persisted. I kept trying to put my feet up and
even iced them, which usually does the trick. When I woke up on Wednesday
with swollen feet AND ankles (which was new since usually I just notice a
bit of puffiness on the tops of my feet, but my ankles are okay) and my
hands were also feeling stiff and swollen, I decided to take some drastic
action. When I got off work, I soaked in a tub of epsom salts with the jets
on for over an hour. That seemed to do the trick. I have also been sucking
down massive amounts of water. I was really worried about the swelling, but
my blood pressure if still fine and I haven't had any protein in my urine,
so it looks like I'm not headed towards pre-eclampsia.


****

Whining

I'm just going to gripe for a bit.

On my way to work, a police cruiser turned in front of me. The uniformed
office behind the wheel was talking on his cell phone without using a hands
free device. Now, it's not illegal in my state if you're over 18 to talk on
the phone while driving without using a hands free device. Texting is
illegal, but not using hand held devices. But I still think the sheriff's
office should be setting a better example.

When I got to work all of the reserved spaces near the building were
occupied and I had to park in the back of the lot. My back is killing me
and it's really hot out when I get to work at 11, so this really ruffled my
feathers, especially since there are a lot of people parked in the reserved
spots who don't have the right tags to be allowed to use them. I e-mailed
our parking attendant and she got with the managers of the departments whose
employees were in violation of our policy. I felt kind of like a whiney
bitch for ratting people out, but this has been happening a lot lately.
People on first shift think these spaces are just spares and park in them,
making me have to hike my pregnant butt in from the back 40 in scalding
heat. It's just annoying.

My kitchen in unusable. Okay, a little background, here. We purchased our
home two years ago and got the first time home-buyer's tax refund which we
used to re-wire the whole house, install a new HVAC system and water heater
and put in new floors. Yay, for economic stimulation. Well, the contractor
we hired was my husband's cousin "Beaver". When they installed the HVAC
system, they ran a long line for the condensation to run out of the house
and they used PVC piping. Last week, during record heat, the condensation
built up in the line and bowed the long, unsupported line, causing
condensation to build up and start running back into the system. Thank God
that no damage was done to the air handler, but water started leaking into
the ceiling of my pantry (the air handler is in the attic) and eventually
saturated the drywall, ran down a wall and pooled in the hallway flooring,
ruining some of the new laminate we'd laid down the year before. Sigh. So
we had to tear down a wall, the ceiling in the pantry (and remove all of the
food that didn't get wet) and rip up the flooring and threshholds in the
hallway. Right now, the kitchen is unusable until we get the pantry put
back together, but at least the instant mold bloom that was created by the
leak has been cleaned up. My husband is very allergic to mold, so that's a
relief.

While the guys were tearing apart the house, I went to get my purple
highlights re-bleached and changed to turquoise. I didn't want to spend a
lot of money since we just hired a doula and paid her in full and we'll be
eating the repair costs for the kitchen, so I decided to go to the local
beauty college to have them done. Sigh...what can I say. I went in at 9:30
and didn't get out until 12:30. My baby shower was at 1 and it takes a half
an hour to drive there. I had to go home and shower (in cold water since
the guys had the electricity to the hot water heater turned off) and change
really fast. I was an hour late and felt like a giant tool and was just so
frustrated that I wanted to cry. My poor friends came to see me and didn't
get to talk to me before they all had to go about their days. And to top it
off, I had to cut out of the salon before the stain had fully set, so my
blue is not going to hold up well. Oh well, I can always purple over it at
home, though separating the dyed parts will be difficult since they "wove"
them in...yikes! And she was really rough with the combing, so
unfortunately, I have a lot of broken strands now. Might be time to start
cutting out my awesome highlights. Oh well.

I still haven't unpacked the car of all the baby loot yet since the house is
in such an uproar until the kitchen gets squared away. It'll have to get
done tonight, though, since we'll need to pick up new flooring tomorrow for
the hallway. Sigh again.

And on top of it all, my husband's company is threatening to close down his
division. He's getting ready to be our sole income earner and he carries
the insurance on us all, so that is a major stressor. I don't think he'd
have too much trouble finding another job (he's already had a couple of
offers, but he declined because the salary wouldn't have been much higher
than his current job and he'd have to start commuting again which he isn't
keen to do after two years of working from home). He's in a high demand and
highly specialized IT sector, so I'm hoping he can get a few interviews and
come up with a good offer and can tell his current company to eat his dust.
I doubt he'd want to try to work from home with me and the baby home all day
to distract him anyway, so he would have had to start going to the office
eventually anyway.

Yesterday my feet were so puffy that I had to elevate and ice them. We had
been out in the heat all day doing a sightseeing cruise on the river that
runs by our house, so I wasn't too surprised that I was swelling.



****

8 weeks to go (give or take)

You can tell that it's getting crowded in there for the baby because he's
not just giving me little cute kicks anymore, he's rocking and rolling!

I'm drinking red raspberry leaf tea for the first time today. It's
recommended to help speed early stages of labor. I don't think I have the
steeping down to a science just yet. I'll have to make some at home tonight
and loose leaves instead of packing them into my infuser. I think that
would work better because the leaves aren't seeming to get soaked in the
infuser.

I can't believe next weekend is the baby shower! I've also got my
photographer friend doing some maternity photos that day, too, since I'll
already be all dressed up. LOL. I really need to re-dye my purple
highlights and get my toes painted. I've been tempted to go to the salon to
get the highlights redone because I just don't feel like messing with it
myself and they look horrible now. They've faded to pink. Yeck! I have
even half considered having them re-bleached and dyed turquoise.

A friend and I went on an epic search for the right dress to wear a few
weeks ago and found a really nice one, but it's bright orange (which is "in"
right now because it's the Pantone color of the year). I figured I'd pair
it with some turquoise accents and I really have been salivating after some
druzy earrings on etsy, but they're too pricey, so I cheaped out and bought
some bezel set faceted turquoise pendants and am going to make a matching
set of earrings and necklace for myself. I was going to check the pawn
shops for a better gold plated chain, though, because the findings I got at
the local craft store aren't long enough and I'm not exactly sure how to
join them. I'm sure it'll work out.


****

Oh, for the love of Pete!

My work buddy/neighbor who is due a week or so before me got in trouble for
stopping by my desk and chatting. This happened a grand total of three
times for a max of 15 minutes. And the person who made the complaint was my
boss's boss who stops by my cubicle neighbor's desk every day for about 45
minutes and talks about sports and workouts and playing video games. Double
standard much? Apparently, they were uncomfortable with us talking about
"lady stuff". Well, I'd rather not hear about you blowing someone's head
off and seeing the "red rain" in your violent video game, but I just put my
headphones on and ignore the chatter. And it's not like we were standing
there talking about our vaginas. We were discussing glucose testing and
cloth diapers.

In other news, my husband and I went on a bike ride down to the nearby boat
ramp yesterday evening and I kept feeling a little crampy and stopped
peddling a few times to stretch the muscles in my lower belly. Apparently,
the activity had set off my very first noticeable Braxton Hicks contractions
and I didn't really realize it. My back has been killing me for the past
two days in the late afternoons (located higher in the back than my usual
hip pain) and I wonder now if the two things were at all connected. I'll
have to pay attention to that.


****

I had my glucose test the other day and haven't gotten a call so that means I passed!  Joy!

Kicks

My husband got to feel the baby kick last night for the first time. He
could probably have felt it earlier, but the timing was never quite right.
And one time I told him that the baby was kicking if he wanted to feel and
he actually said, "is it important that I feel that?"

We've had four Bradley Method classes so far. I really like the focus on
relaxation, nutrition and exercise to prep for labor, and I appreciate that
they don't try to "sell" you on a bunch of gimmicks. Everything they teach
in the method is proven and fairly common sense-ical.

The cat was sitting on my lap the other night and a loud noise freaked him
out and he clawed me. I thought he might have gotten me on the stomach, but
I couldn't see the underside of it, so I asked my husband if I had a scratch
and he said, "no, just some stretch marks". I completely didn't know they
were there! Oh well. I'd rather have more stretch marks than killer
heartburn, and so far that has been fairly mild.

We went camping for Memorial Day and the heat really got to me. My feet
plumped up pretty big, so I spent most of my time in the camper in the air
conditioning. I kept meaning to get in the pool, but never got around to
it.

I meant to post when my little countdown ticker said I had 100 days left to
go, but never did because really, due dates are so inaccurate.


****

Scheduling

Ugh, I just realized that, in addition to have a Bradley class every Tuesday, I'm going to have to start having a prenatal appointment with my midwives every two weeks now.  I do my glucose test the first week of June and I'll be 28 weeks, then, so they'll start having me come in more often.  My appointments are usually super boring, and I hope they stay that way!

New Couch Blues

The book slings for the baby's room are done.  I've sewn the first and middle names we've chosen onto them, so they're official.  We can't change them now!

I'm getting so bored with the BabyCenter birth board I've been visiting.  It's just a bunch of women whining about their awful symptoms, and most of the time it's things like peeing when you sneeze that are completely unnecessary if they'd only be bothered to do some Kegels.  They're installing new carpet at work and have kicked up a bunch of dust and I've been sneezing like crazy, but I don't pee myself for Pete's sake.  I do my Kegels and that eliminates any incontinence issues I might have otherwise have.  And there's always someone posting about on the board wanting sympathy for their peeing problems, and I just have no use for that.

I mean, I know I've been extraordinarily lucky to have had a really easy pregnancy so far...but I just don't think it's all luck.  A lot of it is work.  I read up and change my bad habits if they could cause any issues.  Even the bit of back pain I was having has been remedied by doing pelvic rock exercises.  I was making plans with a friend for this weekend and she was hesitant to ask me to go out and do anything because she worried I might swell up in the heat.  Uhm...I'm fine, thanks.  My feet get a little puffy if I've been on my feet all day, and I tend to lose energy after about 8pm, but other than that, I'm good to go.  I haven't changed my daily routine and if anything I try to be a bit more active than I normally would be inclined to be.  Maybe I'm just lucky, or maybe I'm just not a wimp.  It's hard to say.

Also, I left the final decision to circumcise or not up to my husband, and he's decided not to.  Don't know if I'd mentioned that before or not.  I'm totally okay with either way.  There are advantages and drawbacks to both, but I'm a lot more comfortable with not doing it than I am with doing it, so I totally support his decision.

Our old couch was a hand-me-down huge old sectional.  The sections don't stick together anymore and it's all broken down from being moved.  Like, seriously, if the arm weren't propped against the wall, it would straight up fall off.  And one of the recliners is jacked up and a metal bar sticks out of it.  We decided it would be hazardous to a baby, so we ordered a new couch.  We have specific space constraints, so we are having it custom made in Tennessee (yay made in the USA!) and it should be here in a couple of weeks.  My husband keeps threatening to have the old couch picked up by the city trash disposal to make me sit on the floor for the next two weeks.  Our Bradley class exercises say I should be sitting Indian style as often as possible, and I don't do it.  Anyway, here I was thinking that having a new couch would be so much better for the baby, and then I get to listening to "Fresh Air" on NPR today which was an interview with author Florence Williams about her new book "Breasts: a Natural and Unnatural History" where I learned that stuff like the fire retardants that they put on new furniture gets into your body and aggregates in breast tissue, passing into your breast milk.  That stuff is a serious carcinogen!  So now I'm freaked out about the new couch.  My husband e-mailed the manufacturer today to ask what kinds of chemicals they use and what we can do to mitigate our exposure.  Sigh.

I signed up for a breastfeeding class close to the due date.  I would have gone to the one at the hospital I'm using, but they charge $20 for it and the one at the hospital nearest my workplace offers theirs for free and they have monthly La Leche League meetings that are free and open to the public, too.  I also signed up for a baby CPR class in August.  They do charge a little bit for that, but it's only $10, so how can you go wrong?

I also ordered the invitations for the baby shower today.  I'm a graphic designer and am super picky about the invitations I send out for things, so I nearly always have to design things myself and send them to a printer to be done on good paperstock.  I also picked out the games and sent my mom a list of foods to make for the shower.  Am I a bit of a control freak?  Yes.  Have I planned about a gillion bridal and baby showers?  Yes.  So, the way I look at is is that it's a lot easier for me to come up with ideas and send them over to mom than for her to grope around in the dark trying to read my mind.  In any event, my good friend has taken over decoration, which was a big load off of my mind because my mom has an odd sense of aesthetics, to put it mildly.  She likes tacky things.

There are a couple of parenting books that I've thought about buying, but I would just go nuts if I started trying to do things "by the book" or started quoting to people "well the book says not to do that".  I don't know if I'd find the books reassuring or if they would just stress me out more by trying to follow all of the advice instead of just finding my way.  But maybe I'll pick up Mayim Bialik's "Beyond the Sling" and Pamela Druckerman's "Bringing Up Bebe" anyway.

Diapers and Onesies on sale!

At the cloth diapering meeting on Monday night, I got a lot of good
information and played with a ton of different diapering systems and covers.
I liked the Thirsties covers, especially the velcro closures and the double
gusset around the legs, but they come in different sizes for infants and
toddlers whereas the Flips are one size with adjustable snaps that "grow"
with the baby. I thought they only came in snap closures, but they also
make them with velcro now, so I was sold! Especially since The Diaper Fairy
herself recommends them and is going to start offering them for rental this
summer. She says the gussets in the front and back perfectly accommodate
standard pre-fold diapers and keep them from slipping up out of the back of
the cover.

I found a buy 2 get one free sale online with free shipping and even found a
coupon code for an additional 5% off, so I ended up getting six Flip covers
(4 velcro and 2 snaps) for $8.84 apiece. I'm stoked! Target lists them as
$16.95 apiece and doesn't even carry the velcro ones so I can put them on my
registry. I did put some disposable liners on the registry, though. And I
ordered a wet bag for on-the-go changes. Now all I need is some Snappis and
I'm all set!

The diaper laundering service I'm going to contract with rents the prefolds
with a bin and washable bin liner and costs $80 a month for weekly drop off
and pick up. Sweet! I could order my own stash of prefolds and wash them
myself or pay around $25 for laundering, but eh. We're not really laundry
people!

I've ordered a selection of yellow and greens and blues. Some bright, some
more muted. They're going to be awesome!

In other news, I have a ton of sewing projects going on for the baby. I am
going to make a taggie blanket out of minky and flannel, a door muff out of
flannel and ribbon, a book sling in bright primary colors, a ribbon valance,
a height chart, a terry cloth hanging caddy for the changing area, and about
50 washable wipes. Shew! And here I thought that once I got the nursery
done, I'd be able to relax. But once I got the paint and furniture in, I
realized how bare it was and how much more there was to do.

Also, a friend of mine recommended the Disney brand of onesies because the
"Grow an inch" snaps along the bottom provide a good fit and she says
they're well-made and hold up to washing. I found some on a good deal the
other day and snapped up 6 of them in newborn and 3-6 sizes. With shipping,
I ended up paying $3.83 apiece for them!!

I knew I'd end up not being able to prevent myself from buying every baby
thing in sight before the shower. I'm a sucker for a good deal and am so
excited about the baby that I can't help myself!

I met the second of the three midwives in the practice yesterday. She was
warm, and nice, and not in a rush. I'll meet the third midwife on the 5th
when they do the big glucose test. I've got a Bradley class that afternoon
as well, so I've gone ahead and asked the day off work. Perhaps, I can get
some of my sewing done.


****

Lots happening!

Well, all has been going well.  We have been working ourselves to death the last couple of weekends and have finished painting the nursery and setting up the baby's furniture.  I ordered a rocking cradle because I wanted to have it in our room right by the bed for convenience, and when we assembled it, it turned out to be HUGE, so I'm going to have to stash my bedside table somewhere else while the cradle is on my side of the bed.

One weekend when we were working on the room, I got super worn out and a little light headed and my heart was hammering.  I'd forgotten to take my prenatal vitamin the night before, which rarely happens, so I think maybe my iron got really low.  I go in for my next visit tomorrow morning, so they're going to test it.  And I was a little worried about being tired all the time and tested my blood pressure on those sit-down supermarket machines and it was 140/70.  I e-mailed my midwife and she said it wasn't anything to worry about since I'd been walking around the shopping center for an hour, and they don't get concerned until the bottom number gets high.  So that was a big relief.

I went to a cloth diapering class on Monday night and met up with The Diaper Fairy, a lady who runs a diaper laundering service in our town.  She gave us the run down on what to buy and how the laundering service works, and also how to launder at home if we choose.  Super helpful.  She also had a ton of diaper covers and diapering systems to show us, so we got to play with all the different types.  I like the Flips the best.

Today was our first Bradley Method class.  It was fun to meet the other couples.  One of them is due the same day as me and is using the same midwife practice and hospital.  She seemed nice.  The teacher gave us a bunch of exercises to learn, so I need to start doing them.  And also walking more.  For real.

Gender drama

So we're having a baby boy, but we decided that we weren't going to tell
anyone but family what the gender is because we don't want a bunch of pink
or blue things. We'd rather people buy us neutral things.

An example of the kind of idiocy that we're trying to avoid:
I was showing my mother-in-law the crib that we'd picked out before we'd
learned the gender. The picture was of the model we'd chosen in a white
finish.
"Oh, a white finish?" she said, "you know if you have a boy, he's not
going to like that white."
I was baffled, "Why wouldn't a boy like a white finish?" The only
explanation I got was "it just looks girly". Ooookay.
"So what if I was really looking at this natural oak finish?" I asked.
"Well, you know a girl won't like wood finish."
!!!!! WHY WOULDN'T A GIRL LIKE WOOD FINISH?!?!?!?!

This whole conversation just made no sense to me, but people have some wacky
ideas about gender, gender roles, and the 'genderization' of infants. I've
come to the conclusion that although it confuses the heck out of me why
people have such strong opinions on the matter, that this is just the way
that it is. So the best way to avoid having to confront people's strange
gender ideas is to not tell them the gender. So there!
Of course, if you go around telling people that you're not finding out
the gender, then that opens you up to a whole different variety of
criticism, so my husband and I decided to essentially lie to our friends and
tell them that we tried to find out the gender, but the baby just wasn't in
a good position and we weren't able to tell.
Unfortunately, I neglected to specifically instruct my mother not to go
around telling non-family members what the gender of the baby was going to
be, so she told her obnoxious friend and of course that obnoxious friend
went and blabbed all over my facebook wall about not being able to wait to
meet my "little man". Grrr. I deleted the post and sent her a short
message (I was late getting back to my desk from lunch and was typing on my
phone) to please watch what she says on Facebook because we weren't publicly
announcing the gender of the baby. If she would have bothered to read any of
my recent statuses, she would have seen that we "didn't know" what the
gender was and that might have given her pause, but I found the comment
quickly and deleted I hope before anyone could see. She wasn't told not to
tell, so I really couldn't blame her or my mom. It was my oversight that
cause the issue in the first place.
I called my mom and left her a voicemail that I goofed up and forgot to
tell her not to tell everyone and their mother that we were having a boy.
She called me back and said she understood why we'd want to do it that way
and that was that...so I thought.
A bit later in the day, I got a call on my phone from my mom's friend.
I was working, so I let it go to voicemail figuring she'd just want to
apologize anyway. Boy was I ever wrong! She left me a long, hateful
voicemail about how I was being rude to her and that she was unfriending me
immediately. Apparently, the main source of injury was that my message to
her was so short and brusk. Sigh. I don't even think I'm going to call her
back to try to explain that I was in a hurry and typing on my phone which is
difficult and that it wasn't really her fault. She's emotionally unstable
and this is not the first round of drama she's brought into my life
unnecessarily, so I'm thinking I'm just going to have to let her go. I know
she'll probably hound my mother about how unfair I was to her, but if mom
doesn't want to deal with people who bring the drama, then it's her
responsibility to cut ties.
I'm in a good place in my life. My marriage is good, I have good
friends (that I really should make more time for), our finances are stable
and life is pretty stress-free. Of course a lot of the reason that life is
stress free is because I consciously made an effort to eliminate the people
and habits in my life that were the sources of my stress. So yeah. Each
person has to determine what level of drama they're willing to live with.
Some people like it. Some thrive off of it. Some go through a drama phase.
It's just not for me.
So hopefully nobody was checking their facebook feed today midday. And
if they did, maybe I'll just play it off by saying "well, everyone has their
guesses".

****

It's a...BOY!

Well, things have been very uneventful until today. My belly is getting
pretty big now, which is a big laugh for everyone. My neighbor who is due a
week before me still isn't really showing all that much. She's having a
boy, and we found out this morning that we're having a boy, too!!!

We got to see him moving around a lot and kicking. He was feet down and my
placenta is in the front, apparently. Everything looked great, though they
said the baby was a tad large (in the 65% for size, whatever that means.
Larger than 65% of all other babies at that gestational age??) In any
event, the ultrasound tech estimated the due date at August 25th, but the
midwife said we'll keep the official date at September 1st and assume he's a
bit large. Also, I've gained 6 pounds, right on target.

Next month we start our birthing classes and will also have a cloth
diapering class with a local diaper service vendor which should be really
informative. I'm looking forward to both.

Everyone is really excited to have another boy in the family. My mom said I
am "ruining the tribe of girls" since our side of the family is all women.
My husband's troupe is all men, though, so I suppose it all balances out. I
told my husband that the decision about circumcision is all up to him since
he's the family's resident penis expert. He's leaning towards not having
him circumcised and I'm all for it. My only two cons to not circumcising is
if he asks at some point why his parts don't look like daddy's parts and the
advantage of not contracting sexually transmitted diseases as easily. But
then if our son decides to be circumcised later in life, he always has that
option.

We celebrated our second anniversary this weekend by going out of town
overnight and eating at a fancy French restaurant in Cincinnati. Then we
hit up the museum to see a special exhibit on Pompeii, which was very cool,
but I get worn out a bit faster than normal when there is a lot of walking
to do. Also, the hard hotel mattress tried to murder me in my sleep! I
woke up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and my hips hurt so
badly I almost had to crawl. My legs were weak all day, so we headed home
in the early afternoon instead of staying out until evening. I've taken to
tucking an extra pillow between my knees at home and this seems to help me
wake up with less back pain. My snoring hasn't let up any (womp womp). I
still haven't started walking more, which I really, really should do. On
Monday, our actual anniversary, I came home from work to a lovely bouquet in
my favorite colors.

A lady at work gave me a bunch of maternity shirts in my size. I'm thrilled
to have them. I have one pair of dedicated maternity pants, about three
pairs of goucho pants that are stretchy enough to serve me well, and then I
have two pairs of stretchy slacks that are also wearable. I also have a lot
of skirts with elastic waistbands, but I've been preferring pants so far.

We haven't made any progress on the nursery...sigh. We'll have to get on
that when we have a free weekend. I did buy new blinds, though.

****

Update!

I am starving ALL the time!

In other news, my husband is concerned and annoyed that I've started to be a full-time snorer.  I would sometimes snore before getting pregnant, but now he says it's out of control and he's been sleeping on his on-call bed in the office.  Womp womp.  I e-mailed my midwife and she got right back to me (she's awesome) and told me to try the Breathe Right strips.  She uses them and said that they don't stop her snoring completely, but they make it much less noisy.  I picked up a pack and was surprised by the cost - $15 for a month's supply - but I suppose it's worth it if it saved my husband's sanity.

The awful acne that I've had is started to let up a bit.  My belly is just huge already!  I've stocked up on some maternity tops and I have a few good skirts, dresses and pants that will likely see me through.  I'm a size 20, so I already have a lot of pants and skirts that are stretchy and comfy.  But my shirts were all too short, so I went out to Motherhood Maternity and stocked up off of the clearance rack.  I got several shirts for $10 and $12, and spent only $20 on the most expensive one.

I can feel the baby fluttering around all the time now.  And tonight is the first night that I've had any sort of heartburn.  It's mild, but I'm really hoping it won't start to be a nightly occurrence.  I HATE heartburn.

I've been trying to ride my bike for exercise, but I'm so terrible about not getting enough physical activity.  We have a membership to The Y and we hardly ever go.  Maybe once in a month, if that.  So I'm going to try to be better at that.  I also need to do some of the exercises that my midwife gave me to help with my lower back pain.  Sweeping the floors and folding laundry put a hurting on me today!

Stocking up

My cubicle neighbor from work sold me a car seat, two bases and a stroller for about half of what I was going to pay to buy almost the exact same system new.  Sweet!  The set is black and gray, which matches the car interior fine, so hopefully people won't be looking at the car seat for gender cues.  We're bound to have some confused people, though, because I don't plan on dressing the baby in anything too gender specific.  Because really, the baby doesn't care if it's in a pink onesie or a blue onesie.

I ordered a bunch of Burt's Bees belly balm online and it finally came.  I like the oil and butter, but the balm is kind of weird.  It's too solid which makes it hard to apply.  But it smells divine!

Tonight, I was leaving straight from work to meet my husband at a meet and greet for the candidates for Congress in our upcoming primary.  I don't wear makeup usually and had put on a sweater this morning that I knew wasn't really big enough to cover my rapidly expanding belly.  I felt so frumpy and awful that I had to stop at Target and buy a shirt to wear just to boost my confidence a little.   I thought I'd scored a good deal when I found an XXL on the sale rack for under $10.  I was in a rush, so I didn't try it on.  It fit, but it won't fit for long.  I mean, really, how idiotic is it to not make maternity wear out of something stretchy?!

Nursery Wall Melt Down

So, I've thought and thought and though about what to do with the nursery.  Right now our second bedroom is a catch all room that is a jumble of tools and remnants of old home improvement projects.  We're working on cleaning it out and I wanted to go buy paint this weekend.  At first, since the room is already bright yellow (I didn't do that, it was that way when we moved in) I was just going to paint some little bees on the wall and go with a bee theme since it's gender neutral and I kind of like that small room having bright paint.  Well, my husband is a SCUBA diver, so he really wanted to do a coral reef theme.  He rarely gets his way when it comes to decorating the house and I thought it was awesome that he'd even put the effort forth to come up with an idea since his approach to starting a family had been avoidance of the subject for the first years of our marriage and he still carries some of that attitude with him (though now I think he avoids the subject because it stresses him out to think about fatherhood.)  So I said, great, coral reef, done.  I'm a graphic designer, so I started doing some visual reference searches and came up with an idea to have a nice blue on blue silhouette mural.  I didn't want to do anything full color because not only is that a lot of effort to hand paint, I just don't like having to much of a jumble of color.  I made a mock up of what I was thinking and e-mailed it over to him for his approval (yeah, that's how we roll).  We get up early and drive to the hardware store and we walk in and I'm going to pick out some blues and he's like "we'll need some red and black and green, or should we just use acrylics?"  I'm like, what?!  Didn't you look at the mock up I sent you?  He was confused because he thought since I said it was a mock up, that I would be filling in the silhouettes of the fish with full color illustration.  I'm like ARE YOU CRAZY?!  Do you have any idea how long that will take???

Let me just say here that I haven't had any real emotional outbursts during my pregnancy.  I get cranky when I'm hungry, but that's easily solved.  I haven't gone on crazy crying jags or just flipped my lid for no reason.  I have gotten unnecessarily livid at work in response to an e-mail from a coworker that was really no big deal, but I realized it was probably hormones and let myself cool down before replying.  So when I say I freaked out in the hardware store, I mean, I really freaked out.  I was like yelling at my husband about how much time and effort I'd put into this, and I'm the designer in the family so that makes me the authority on what looks good and he should just suck it up because his idea was stupid and would look horrible while my idea was informed by hours of research into current trends.  And, really, we're talking probably about 20 hours of searching out source material, compiling some artwork resources and drawing a mockup - the same approach I take with all of my work, so I didn't take wasting that amount of time lightly.  We ended up having to go out into the parking lot and continuing our argument in the car where I pretty much melted down into a crying puddle.  Eventually, we decided that we would ditch the coral reef idea since we were obviously on two completely different pages and go to the bookstore to look through children's books to get another idea.

We considered Pooh bear (my husband is a big fan of Tigger), Peter Rabbit, Dr. Seuss' "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" and a few other ideas.  I don't really like over-exposure to branding, so we were about to settle on hot air balloons when we spotted a display that had an Angry Birds game on it.  He was obsessed with that game for a few weeks last year and then his mother and I played it all night one night while the guys worked out in the woodshop at his parents' house.  Anyway, we were like, hmmmm....Angry Birds nursery?

And so that's what it will be.  We went back to the hardware store and got some paint for the background, searched the web for a few images to base the wall mural on and will start painting one of these days when it's warm enough to open the windows.  I'm really glad we were able to come to a compromise and I'm a little embarrassed about how I freaked out about something so silly IN PUBLIC (which we never do.  If we have disagreements, we always work them out in private).

Must have popcorn

I ordered a book and some flash cards on how to teach your infant to sign.
Some friends of mine taught their little girl how to sign and it was very
helpful for them to know what the baby wanted before she was able to tell
them what was wrong and why she was crying. She's getting ready to go to
school later this year, and she's just a dream when we babysit for them.
She gets bored with us because we didn't have any fun projects lined up for
her to do, but she's just so smart and well-spoken. So, hopefully, this kit
will help us out when our little one arrives.

In other news, I'm craving potato chips and particular brand of spicy
popcorn. I think I'm going to have to stop at the store on the way home and
pick up a back of that popcorn or I'll die!

My godmother thinks it will be a boy. She didn't break out her tarot cards
or anything, but she's got good intuition. (Yeah, my family are pretty much
a bunch of hippies.)

****

palpitations

Woah! I just had a few heart palpitations. Crazy. I googled it and
apparently it's just one of those things that happens (like passing out)
during pregnancy and is nothing to worry about. Still, though, what a weird
sensation.

****