Week 30

Baby: Your baby measures about 17 inches from head to toe and weighs about 3 pounds. Baby is growing plumper and beginning to control its own body temperature. Eyebrows and eyelashes are fully developed, and hair on the head is getting thicker. Head and body are now proportioned like a newborn’s. Hands are now fully formed and fingernails are growing.

Mom-to-be: Your uterus is about four inches above your navel, and it’s hard to believe you still have about 10 weeks to go as baby continues to push on your ribs. You may be feeling more discomfort in your pelvis and abdomen. You’ll probably be gaining about a pound a week.

Thanks, Web MD.

Yeah, hard to believe is a bit of an understatement.  It feels like I’ve been pregnant forever.  How do I have 2 full months left?  Not that I actually have anything ready - I’ve bought no stuff, the room is still cluttered with boxes of crap we don’t use but haven’t committed to throwing away, the bag isn’t packed, the car seat isn’t even purchased yet let alone installed in the car… you get the point.  So I should be grateful that I have 10 more weeks to do, well, everything.  But I also can’t believe I have that much more time to get bigger.  I’m quite big enough, thank you very much.  And tired enough.  And I certainly get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom enough. 

Last week in my yoga class a woman was officially three days from her due date, and when the instructor asked how she was feeling her reply was simply ” I want this baby out now.”  Everyone in the room nodded in silent agreement.

Timing isn’t always everything

I’ve decided that the more pregnant ladies and parents I meet, the more I believe that there really is no good time to have a baby - the plus side of which means there’s really no bad time to have a baby either.  Babies happen.  Kinda like natural disasters.

My situation has been pretty mild - sure, nobody plans to change jobs three times while gestating but everything has worked out better than had I stayed put (not that I could, being I gave notice to job No. 1 a week before I found out I was pregnant, but you get the point).  I have a friend who is due the month her husband is in training for his new job, so despite having been pregnant in Virginia and their pending move to Chicago, the kid’s going to be born in NYC while mom and dad are living in a hotel.  Or the story I recently heard over dinner of the couple who met up for R&R for one weekend in Dubai while he was serving in Iraq and low and behold, they are now expecting their second child.  He won’t be able to see his wife again until after the baby is born.  My accountant’s wife’s mother passed away a mere month after their first child was born - which was both a hardship and a comfort in a time of grief.  And don’t get me started on the number of women in my yoga class that seem to think 8 months pregnant is the perfect time to move, those poor souls.   

And then there are the folks who plan everything perfectly.  And it always seems like fate just wants to fuck with them, doesn’t it?  They already have the house, the extra cash stowed away in a bank account, the perfect childcare plan, the stable jobs, and then the fertility gods decide to go on hiatus.  Who decided that it should be completely impossible for getting and being pregnant to go smoothly?  If there is some life lesson in this, I refuse to acknowledge it. 

I’ve been thinking about this recently because a dear friend of mine is on the verge of miscarriage.  She had been trying to get pregnant and then decided to put things on hold as she started a new job, so of course the fertility gods decided it was the opportune time to grant her a zygote.  And now that she’s decided that, timing be damned, she’s ready, those same fickle deities are ready to welsh.

Week 29

Baby: Your baby measures about 10.4 inches from crown to rump, or a total length of about 16.7 inches from head to toe, and weighs about 2.7 pounds. At this stage a fetus’s eyes are almost always blue and can distinguish bright sunlight or artificial light through the uterine wall. Baby is performing fewer acrobatics as conditions in the womb become more cramped, but still doing a lot of kicking and stretching.

Mom-to-be: Your uterus is about 3.5 to 4 inches above your navel. Weight gain is probably between 19 and 25 pounds. As odds improve that baby could survive outside the womb — although in a neonatal intensive-care unit — you may be feeling relieved and excited, or anxious about motherhood, your baby’s health, and labor and delivery. If you do experience premature labor, signs include menstrual-like cramps or lower back pain, a trickle of amniotic fluid, or a watery pinkish or brownish discharge preceded sometimes by the passage of a thick, gelatinous mucus plug. Your practitioner often can stop labor from progressing with bed rest, muscle relaxants or other drugs, possibly requiring hospitalization.

and?

Right now I’m just tired.  Really tired.  As in took a two hour plus nap on Friday, Saturday and Sunday tired.  Let’s see how I get through work today without my mandatory nap time.  And I’m uncomfortable.  The gall bladder is now just a general soreness that doesn’t go away (like a bruise almost), but does get more pronounced after eating.  Yeah, I sound like I really love being pregnant, don’t I?  But I don’t feel any bigger, so I guess that’s something. 

So far no signs of early labor (thank god) - not even any braxton hicks.  We’re not even going to entertain the idea that the small one might make such an early appearance, and that’s all I’m going to say on the matter (at least until I’m singing a different tune when I’m two weeks past my due date and the size of an adolescent whale).

I’m beginning to get anxious about being ready, but I blame that on my not having any stuff yet (something my two September showers will remedy and then some).  So now, when I’m not napping, I’m trying to get through Babywise, which is so horribly written I’m finding it difficult to finish (but that’s just me being snobby - like someone who claimed they couldn’t follow a recipe because the grammar was so poor).  I’ll post more on the book at a later date, assuming I ever struggle through. 

The husband is getting anxious as well, but I think it’s mostly that he is really ready for me not to be pregnant anymore so he can have his wife back (he has no idea what he’s in for post partum, the poor guy).

Eggs for Breakfast

So the dizzy spells kept up most of last week, culminating on Friday with my having to sit down halfway through my walk to work, which then lead to my trying to lay down at work (awkward when you’re in a cube and not an office) until I decided that it was time to head home (a whooping 35 minutes after my having arrived).  My neighbor was so kind as to pick me up and then feed me scrambled eggs and goat cheese to hasten my recovery.  I love my neighbor.

And it turns out the neighbor was right (she usually is) - the nurse who called me back said I need to make sure I have protein and lots of it every morning and that I drink at least a gallon of water a day.  It looks like my granola and fruit breakfast just isn’t enough to maintain my blood sugar so it’s eggs eggs eggs for me.  And this weekend the husband was quite obliging - serving me scrambled eggs in bed on Saturday and soft boiled eggs on Sunday.

Today I opted for yogart, but at 10 grams of protein per cup and distinctly less dishes involved in making a smoothie vs. an omlet (not to mention time), it seemed like a reasonable gamble this morning (and so far I’m still upright).  Why can’t I come down with something that requires me to eat more muffins or pasta?  Is there such a thing as a high protein danish?

Week 28

Baby: Your baby measures about 10 inches from crown to rump, or a total length of about 15.75 inches from head to toe, and weighs about 2.4 pounds. Brain waves show rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which means your baby may be dreaming. Eyelids are opening. Branches of lungs are developing, so there’s a good chance that baby would survive if born prematurely now.

Mom-to-be: Your uterus extends well above your navel. As baby gets bigger and stronger this month, you may be experiencing leg cramps and mild swelling of ankles and feet, difficulty sleeping, shortness of breath, lower abdominal achiness, clumsiness or scattered Braxton Hicks contractions (hardening and relaxing of the uterus, like rehearsals for labor). You may also be urinating more frequently again as the uterus continues to push on your bladder.

and not so little me?

Yeah, the frequent urination never actually went away, but it is a bit ridicules these days.  During the relatively quick task of making plum and peach cobbler, I had to run to the rest room four times.  No wonder I’m not drinking enough water - it’s like being punished for good behavior. 

Speaking of not drinking enough water, I had another dizzy spell this weekend.  We attempted to go to church and by the time the sermon was over, I was gripping the pew and praying not for my salvation but for my not falling over in the middle of the hymn.  We exited before communion and I plopped down on the front steps with my head indelicately hung between my knees until I recovered.  When we got home, I drank some lemonade and proceeded to nap on the couch for three hours.  Not a real big fan of this whole light-headed thing, but the new strategy is to always be armed with a sugary beverage so we’ll see how that goes. 

Otherwise, I do get winded more easily but the ankles remain recognizable and the leg cramps have not returned.  I haven’t had any braxton hicks yet.  Overall I’m tired but not exhausted, uncomfortable but not miserable, big but not huge (everyone keeps insisting I’m still so tiny but my doctor and I beg to differ on that one - I think mothers can only remember the misery of that last month, hence their misperception of my size).

And the small one?  He likes to kick.  A lot.  So far they aren’t so strong they hurt, but watching my belly is comical these days. 

And my husband?  He’s ready to be a dad already.  I’m ready to not be pregnant anymore, but I feel like we need every minute as we haven’t begun to prepare, but he’d rather just get started.  And that’s why I’m the planner and he’d the do-er in the family.

I hate you, gall bladder

So remember me bitching about how every time I eat it feels like I have a tennis ball under my ribcage?  Well, it turns out what I’d failed to specify was that the tennis ball always appears on the right side.  You see, last night I was casually mentioning (read: complaining) to someone that other than the discomfort after I eat and the hip pain, so far I’m doing okay, and how I guess that’s what happens when my stomach is pushed up so high thanks to the small one.  In my audience was an ER doc, who said that my stomach is actually on my left side, and that it sounded like something with my gall bladder (he specifically asked me if gall bladder disease runs in my family).  Huh. 

So today I thought, what the hell, I’ll give my doctor a call.  And sure enough, the nurse tells me that it sounds like a gall bladder thing, and that as long as I’m not miserable, to just ride things out.  And I’m not miserable - at best I’d call the pain an annoying discomfort, and nothing near debilitating.  Not that I’m excited about this new turn of events, but at least she didn’t respond by sending me to the hospital.  So now I’m supposed to keep an eye out for signs of nausea or fever, as either new symptom should prompt me to call them back (and might result in the dreaded trip to the hospital).

And what does the world wide web suggest?  Cutting down on fatty foods… and they specifically mentioned ice cream.  ICE CREAM!  Are you shitting me?  I pass my fucking glucose test and the pregnancy gods still manage to take away my vanilla milk shake?  Bastards!

So yeah, I’m no longer on speaking terms with my gall bladder.  That asshole.

Not the best morning

So last night I didn’t sleep so well - my back hurt and my hips decided they needed to chime in as well, lest the lower back earn all the proverbial grease.  And then, around 6 AM I started to feel nauseous, in that dehydrated sort of way (despite my having drank at least two liters of water yesterday), but upon attempting to hug my toilet I was struck down by a wave a dizziness that left me laying on the floor in a sprawl usually reserved for drunk college freshmen or the attendees of a particularly eventful bachelorette party. 

I proceeded to call for my husband, who I sent downstairs to fetch me a sweet beverage to up my blood sugar and he called back to report that we had nothing in the house - no lemonade, no oj, no emergency stash of ginger ale for the hung over, nothing.  “Just mix some sugar in a glass of water,” I replied, at which point the dog jumped off the bed to make sure I was alive.  After sniffing my face, he seemed satisfied that I wasn’t dead but not completely confident that his masseuse would be up to her job so he laid beside me as a precaution.  I love my dog.  Then my dear husband arrived with a glass of makeshift lemonade he squeezed in the dark from the random lemons we had in the house, finding my request for sugar water to be too desperate to possibly take as a direct order.  I love my husband.  It did the trick and five minutes later I was able to crawl back to bed.

Needless to say, I didn’t roll into work until around 10 AM this morning.  I am really starting to be over this whole pregnant thing.

one hundred thirty-seven

Yup, I am officially a fatty.  I somehow managed to pack on ten (10!) pounds in the past month and am now weighing in at 137 pounds.  Sure, I’m pregnant, I’m supposed to gain weight, but my doc was pretty insistent I gain between 20 and 25 lbs for the entire pregnancy and this puts me at a 17 lb increase with 13 long weeks to go.  There is no way I’m only gaining 3 to 8 pounds in the next three months. 

The doc insisted that he must have had the “wow, slow down there” talk with at least four preggos yesterday alone, and that at some point almost everybody has the ten pound month, but that now it’s time to be diligent. 

And he’s right - I was so on track for five months that I let several bad habits sneak in (the nightly ice cream sandwich instead of the glass of chocolate milk, the cheese sandwich when everyone else is eating cold cuts instead of opting for hummus, the sugary beverage when everyone else is drinking beer or wine instead of seltzer water, the new cupcake place down the street from my office…).  All this get compounded by the fact that I get winded so easily now that the nightly dog walk is more like a quarter mile than a mile, and the half mile walk to work is now a 15 minute stroll instead of my previously brisk pace.  I need to get my ass to the gym and start swimming laps until this summer heat breaks, as I refuse to give birth to some 8 lb. behemoth of a child. 

My goal for this month is to keep to weight gain down to two pounds - that’s 1/5 of what I packed on last month.  Looks like it’s time to switch back to skim milk.  I’ll miss you, vanilla milk shake.

Left is right is wrong

… I am so completely excited about a posting on The Washington Post website regarding people who confuse their left and right.  I am not alone!

I’ve had this silly little learning disability forever.  As a passenger in a car, I instruct someone to make a “my side” or a “your side” when giving verbal directions.  I methodically avoid aerobics classes and took up the one form of yoga (Bikram) that does the same 26 poses in the same order every class, so I don’t need to stare at my classmates in the mirror to know which leg I’m supposed to be standing on.  During my very brief stint in ROTC, drill and ceremony was a constant source of anxiety, and don’t even get me started on being a coxswain in college - I’d simply remember which teammates were ports or starboard and look to which way their oars were pointed before knowing which side to yell at as we drifted off course.  Can you imagine the agony of my poor fellow theater geeks when I was forced to differentiate between stage right and my right while going over blocking in high school?

The funny thing is, I have a great sense of direction.  On foot, I can almost always find my way around a city (with the exception of getting out of a subway station, as I need to reorient myself and the great left-right debacle rears it’s ugly head) - it seems the cardinal directions don’t give me any problems, probably because they remain fixed, whereas good old left and right change every time I move.  If I’m driving and someone else is giving me verbal directions, I’m okay as a right turn feels different from a left turn, but if I’m on foot and you say turn left, I will hesitate for a full 30 seconds and still probably get it wrong. 

My dad has the same difficulty and it drives my mother insane.  Sorry small one… in addition to the 50% chance that you’ll have inherited his color blindness, you may also get grandpa’s complete inability to tell your right from your left.  Now here’s hoping you also get his metabolism to balance out the bad with some good.

What’s in a name?

So I’ve probably mentioned this before, but we have a name and we’re not telling anyone. 

Actually, we have names for the first boy and the first two girls (not that we’re necessarily having more than two, but I digress) and have pretty much had these nailed down since before we were even engaged - yes, I realize that is completely weird. 

So why aren’t we telling?  Well, reason number one is that we’ve be advised not to by friends who’ve recently had children.  It seems people tend to have “opinions” about a name for an unborn child that they would never express once the legal papers were signed and the little fellow has officially arrived.  And while the names for the girls are decidedly old fashion, the name for the boy is a bit, well, let’s just say I’d never heard of it as a name before my husband mentioned it.  So needless to say, out choice would definitely be questioned.

The other big reason - all the names we’ve picked are family names, the problem being that neither the first girl name or the first boy name include anything from my mother-in-law’s side of the tree.  I can’t help it if her family is full of Miltons and Kings and that she already used all the normal names for her own children, but I can guarantee that she won’t see it that way and would spend the next three months campaigning on behalf of her lineage.  Let’s just say she already seems to have enough things to call me about without adding this one to the list of reasons why her son failed to marry a reasonable woman. 

So we’ve been telling people that we aren’t telling anyone based on superstition and that seems to end the prodding.  That being said, while at my husband’s family reunion, I had the opportunity to meet the one cousin of his who is also named after the same relative that the small one will be.  He’s a great guy, and upon hearing that we were having a boy, he promptly said “Have you considered [insert THE name here] as a name?” and proceeded to wait on us in a playful attempt to sway us to the wonder that is his name, much to our entertainment.  He then spent the rest of the week referring to my belly as little [insert THE name here].  I can’t wait to send him the birth announcement.