OMG I am so bored. Yesterday was my due date and this waiting is getting real old! I had a high blood pressure scare a week and a half ago, but fortunately that passed and things are back to normal. My midwife threatened to induce me if it didn't get lower, so I started napping in the afternoons and avoiding as much conflict as I could and it worked! Now I'll only get induced if I'm still pregnant next week, and I sure hope it doesn't come to that!

Last night Mr. Spouse and I went out for spicy Thai food hoping that would move things along. I felt a lot of activity until I had some rice pudding with condensed milk to cool things off! I brought home some more hot spicy, so maybe I'll try again at lunch today.

My midwife told me to try a few capsules of evening primrose oil in an Instead cup every night, and lots and lots of sex to help push things along. I never thought sex would be such a chore, but it has been. What a drag.

So. Tired.

I cannot sleep anymore. I had a nice long stretch where I was sleeping very well, but that's been over for about a week and a half. If I sleep on my left side my hip hurts. If I sleep on my right side my shoulder hurts. If I sleep on my back I crush my organs and stop blood flow to my legs.

This morning I woke up and my edema from yesterday had not subsided. I woke up every two hours to pee and change position, which wakes me up sufficiently to keep me from falling back asleep for a while. Last night I had a nice two hour nap where I slept so soundly that I didn't hear the phone ring twice, even though it was merely three feet from my head. Of course I woke up and couldn't move my arm.

I'd go sit in the hot tub but I'm afraid I'll fall asleep.

40 weeks

Weeks 12-40

Mr. Spouse and I went to the midwife today and it was just thrilling. I was really happy because we actually got to see one of the midwives that's been there since I started going in December or whenever it was, so I felt like I was getting better care. The last two midwives I've seen were not altogether sure of the procedures of the office, and now is not really the time for me to be seeing inexperienced midwives, as far as I'm concerned. Don't get me wrong, they're experienced as midwives, just not experienced with this office!

She said my son has a bony butt and I have a lot of amniotic fluid. No one has told me that before, but I guess I already knew it since that bony butt is constantly pushing itself into my ribcage and my belly is absolutely HUGE and taught! I don't pee much anymore it seems, it all goes to my womb, bloated feet, ankles, calves, and hands. The only time my boating isn't horrid is when I'm dehydrated!

Did I mention I'm anxious to give birth and meet this boy growing inside me?

The midwife told me that I'm still not dilated at all but my cervix has started effacing. She said it was about 2 cm thick, as opposed to a normal 3. I'm just glad that something has started! I just read somewhere that in first time mothers it's normal for effacement to start before dilation so I guess things are going normally. Braxton Hicks contractions have slowed down a lot today, regardless of the fact that we've had sex three times. The midwife suggested I try evening primrose oil in an instead cup overnight to help with the dilation, in addition to making lots of bunnies. Hopefully that will work. I tell ya, sex is a lot of hard work right now...

She also gave me the number for an acupuncturist, so I'll probably make an appointment for next week and cancel it if things start moving along on their own beforehand. I'm trying really hard not to get cranky, but it's really hard.

Whine...

I have to go to a big dinner for my husband's work tonight. I am so tired of people talking to the pregnant lady I can't even begin to tell you. Why is it that every awkward person on the planet comes over to talk to the pregnant lady?

Yesterday I was at the thrift store and these three ladies were like, "OMG WHEN ARE YOU DUE? LIKE YESTERDAY?!" Then they held me up for five minutes asking me how much weight I gained, if it's a boy or girl (they didn't even let me answer that, they guessed it for me), told me how much they gained, expressed envy and confessed they could only have one, on and on and on...

I try to be nice to these people, after all, being pregnant totally rocks and I love it even though I complain a lot. I totally understand why they want to talk to me and reminisce about their own pregnancies and share their experience. They think they're being helpful when they offer their advice and stories, and they get to think about how much fun (or not) they had with their own prenatal experiences.

Sure, it's invasive of people to corner me for their own memory fest and I resent it. However, I realize I'm just a foil for a lot of them and that's no reason to be mean, which would only stress me out more. It's just that all this attention makes me feel pretty antisocial. I miss being anonymous.

I would really like to take a nice warm bath right now, but I know if I did I'd fall asleep in the tub. I did that when we were in Milan in April. It was great being able to take naps in the afternoon while we were there, but now I just can't seem to relax enough to nap. Something about being at home where there's so much to do makes it super hard to get any naptime in!

But napping in a full bathtub, scary!

Procrastination, or denial?

I still haven't packed my hospital bag or written my birth plan. I just don't know where to begin with either of these things! I feel like when I pack my bag I won't know what to put in it anyway, so why bother? And the birth plan is simple: bring me a healthy baby, let my mom catch the baby and let my husband cut the cord.

Then there are some lesser things I'd like to go by, like as little intervention as possible.

I have 15 days until my due date.

Love!

Oh boy, nothing says love like hours of a tiny butt in the ribcage!

Time

Time is really getting away from me nowadays. Today I am officially at thirty-eight weeks!

Yesterday I bought a couple nursing bras. Nordstrom didn't even carry my size, which is a first! My whole life I've turned to Nordstrom for my breast support needs, and I feel bereft (and freakish) that they can't help me now. I'm a 36G, and they don't even carry that size in nursing bras. I ended up finding a sleeping bra and a daytime nursing bra at Birth and Beyond, but wouldn't you know, the sleeping bra isn't supportive enough and the underwires in the other one poke me in the armpit, causing pain.

I wore the daytime bra while trying my new breast pump this morning, which was a lovely gift from my last shower! It makes a beeping sound that the dog gets very anxious about...I'm sure it will be charming when it comes time to actually use the pump for real. So I was sitting there in my chair trying to have a serene breast pumping moment while my dog ran around the room in circles whining. Charming.

I've got quite a few recent changes that I'm both stoked and dismayed by, and I think they're mostly because the baby has dropped. I'm having trouble sleeping at night now because I constantly need to get up to pee, my stretch marks are in alarming vivid color as of yesterday, the edema in my ankles seems to have gone down a bit, and I can actually walk around as long as the baby's not settled on my bladder, making me need to pee. In the morning I wake up and he's usually crosswise in my uterus, which is quite uncomfortable but he generally moves back to head down position after I'm vertical for a bit. He moves around so much that I'm a little concerned he's getting the umbilical cord all tangled around him!

As for the millions of house projects we've got going on around here, the contractor has completely fucked up our kitchen floors and I'm hoping he won't try coming to the house again. He likes to show up unannounced. I don't think he's used to working INSIDE people's homes. Of course now we have lots more little projects, like finishing painting in the Man Room, and we need to paint the new cabinet in the kitchen as well. We had some new windows installed this week so now we need to get someone to come over and paint them and the new trim as well. They did a nice job!

And we still haven't found anyone to take care of the rotten wall in the nursery, so we can't paint the room yet. sigh...

Every day for the last week I've sat exhausted in front of the computer, feeling guilty for not working on the house more. There's still just so much to do, and now my mom is here and she says she'll take care of the rest of the painting, but I feel guilty putting my mom to work!! I need to learn to accept help when it's offered, I'm sure I'll get the hang of it soon.

Daily Affirmation

I've been bitching an awful lot about all of the hellish side effects of this pregnancy, and just last night my sister-in-law was saying that I've had pretty much all of the bad ones you read about. That got me thinking...

I still think I've been pretty lucky.

Sure, I've got some bad physical side effects from this pregnancy, but all in all, I think I've come through the process really well. I don't have any serious complications. No high blood pressure, no gestational diabetes, the baby isn't breech (although he's moving around a lot so I'm not holding my breath!), I'm not super moody, I still have a high energy level, I sleep like the dead (for an hour at a time), and most important, I have the support and encouragement of my friends, family and my extraordinary husband. Not to mention the fact that according to others this pregnancy is making me glow, which doesn't happen with every pregnancy.

So I can bitch about my vanity and how scarred for life I am by this process, but overall I am thrilled to bits that this pregnancy is going as smoothly as it is.

Full Term!

I made the grand error of writing my dad an email saying that I would be considered full term this week, without any explanation. A few days later I got a panicked email from my mom (cc'd to my brother, sister-in-law, and husband) saying she's changing all her plans next week so that she'll be available for the birth. My sister-in-law even canceled her plans to visit her grandmother in Spokane because my mom said she wouldn't be available to watch my nephew Zachary!

I am such an ass.

I will be 37 weeks this week. According to my pregnancy book, that is considered full term. So is 42 weeks. I explained to my mom in a hastily written email that "full term" just means that if the baby is born after this point that he won't be considered premature. This doesn't mean that he's early, in fact I bet he's going take after his mother and stay in there as long as possible just to be obtuse.

I don't think I was late, but I sure was obtuse!

Poor Mom, I got her all excited for no reason. She said she's been jumping around the house all distracted. I feel like such a heel!