HECK. i am not ready for this.

today's appointment at the doctor was another quick one. brian has been amazed at how quick they are lately, but they are just brief checkups. yes, i am still pregnant. yes, kiddo is still head-down with a good strong heartbeat. nope, not dilated yet BUT apparently things are changing (softening) enough that doc said i may not make it to next wednesday's appointment.

SAY WHAT?

if i do make it that far, we'll just schedule another appointment for the following week, but i might not make it that far.

EXCUSE ME?

i am not ready to have this kid yet. i have too much to do. the shelves for her closet still need to be painted. i still need to get brackets so i can hang the shelf on the wall above her dresser. i have cooking to do and a freezer to stock. i need time to just put my feet up and rest with a good book that i know i will not be able to finish once she arrives.

i called brian to let him know how things went:

brian: you're out of there already? what did she say?

me: everything is fine, she is still healthy and head-down. she also said i might not make it to my appointment next week.

brian: why not?

me: because of how my body is changing, she is getting ready to be born.

brian: but why does that mean you might not go to the appointment? is the doctor not going to be there or something? why wouldn't you go?

me: BECAUSE WE MIGHT HAVE A BABY BEFORE THEN.

brian: no! we can't have a baby yet! i haven't slept in a month!

me: honey, i haven't slept in FOUR months.

we are at: 38 weeks 3 days.

cute mommy love

don't forget to enter my green birthday giveaway! you have until 8pm pdt tonight. it's awesome, and who doesn't like free?

random things i'm liking lately:

- mommy necklaces, especially the sunset and earth collections.

- mama merit badges.

- reusable sandwich bags for kiddo snacks. obviously we're not there yet, but this little idea will get filed away for later.

- oh plah teething bracelet.

- mother's day chocolates in a sweet butterfly box. generally i am not a big chocolate person, but how cute is that box? and maybe it is just the hormones but those chocolates look pretty heavenly right now.

- these little silver claw-foot bathtubs that would be so perfect for my green birthday giveaway. the relaxing bath stuff... well, mine's way better. go enter!

we are at: 38 weeks 2 days.

for those of you who said i looked so sad last week

don't forget to enter my green birthday giveaway! you have until 8pm pdt on wednesday, april 29, 2009. it's awesome, and who doesn't like free?

i'm happy! so happy! just thrilled to be as big as my house!



just as soon as i think i've adjusted to some new part of pregnancy, everything changes and i feel like i have to relearn my life. i'm (finally) figuring out how to get a decent night's sleep in between waking up every two hours, but then kiddo will be here and all that will go out the window, i'm sure.

i wonder if she realizes her lease is up in two weeks. i am not sure i am ready for that. i am certainly ready to be done with being pregnant, but that's completely separate from being ready to have a child. and the amount of crap that still needs to be done before she gets here! it's a good thing nature gives us this nesting instinct, because i don't know where else i'd come up with all this manic energy.

we are at: 38 weeks.

mo' money

don't forget to enter my green birthday giveaway! you have until 8pm pdt on wednesday, april 29, 2009. it's awesome, and who doesn't like free?

i just found out the other day that BOTH brian and i can take paid family leave (pfl) when the kiddo comes!

this is fabulous news to us. brian had been planning on taking a bunch of time off - 6 weeks to be exact - starting may 4, so he and i could spend time together before the baby and also so he could spend time with me and the baby after she arrives. he has two weeks of vacation and we had expected the other 4 weeks to be unpaid. we would just watch our pennies and be very careful with our savings.

because i am the one actually doing the hard work of being pregnant and giving birth, i get state disability (sdi) for 4 weeks before and 6 weeks after baby arrives. i am not taking the full 4 weeks before because i feel fine and we need the money. i also have a private individual disability policy that we purchased about a year and a half ago for this specific reason, which will also help to replace my income - 4 weeks before and 6 weeks after. (nor are my benefits reduced by sdi - thank you, california.) we had assumed that i would go back to work approximately 8 weeks after the baby, as we don't want to completely deplete our savings just for the sake of keeping the kiddo out of day care.

but! we have now learned about pfl! pfl means brian can get paid for those 4 weeks after his vacation time! pfl also means i get an additional 6 weeks paid after my sdi runs out! of course, the payments are reduced compared to what we would be earning if we were working full time, but it's money coming in, so i'm not going to complain.

pfl is slightly different from the family medical leave act (fmla) but seems to work in conjuction with it. from what i understand, fmla basically preserves your job, seniority, and benefits for up to 12 weeks each year, for specific reasons (like your own medical condition or caring for a family member or a newborn child). the leave is unpaid. pfl, in california, is up to 6 weeks of paid leave for the same kind of reasons. so our jobs and benefits are protected for 12 weeks, but we only get paid for 6. fortunately, we both work for great people who do not want to lose us. this isn't so much of an issue for brian as he is only taking 6 weeks of his available 12-week fmla leave. it is VERY important for me because i will be off work for 14-16 weeks, so my employer is not required to hold my job for that amount of time.

i am so thrilled. not only am i going to have my husband home for 6 weeks (at which point you may well find me shoving him out the door to go back to work, if he drives me up a wall), but we can delay putting kiddo into daycare until the middle or possibly even end of august. and we will have some money coming in to help us out. such a burden off my shoulders!

we are at: 37 weeks 2 days.

37 weeks = full term

according to my doctor, i WILL get even larger. wonderful!


i know now why the third trimester is the dreaded one. what you can't see in this photo, thank god, is how swollen and hot and uncomfortable the rest of my body is. my wedding ring is on a chain around my neck as i cannot get it on anymore in this heat. you also cannot see how unbalanced i still am. brian discovered that this weekend after i burst into tears after one too many comments about my cankles. it's okay for me to make fun of me, but not him! he deals with stress and tension by cracking jokes... i think this whole pregnancy thing (and what it is doing to my body) is weirding him out as much as it is me.

in other news, the dresser finally arrived! and we have knobs! i had been searching for knobs for quite a while and had not been able to find anything that we could both agree on. in the end we put on our creative aprons, got out some acrylic paint, and painted plain wooden knobs:


i love them. they are so sweet, and go with her room, and were made special for kiddo with love by her mom and dad. i love love love them. and they look so pretty on her beautiful dresser:


we still have to get a changing pad and a diaper pail (the dresser will double as a changing table). i did an unbelieveable amount of laundry this weekend and now all those drawers are full of teeny sweet kiddo things.

at this point kiddo can come at any time and be considered full term. doc says we want to get through april and then we will be happy whenever she comes. due date is may 11 and at the moment (uncomfortable and all) i would like her to be later than that, just so i can have the extra time to rest.

we are at: 37 weeks.

wherein boobs are discussed, but not at great length.

weekly checkup was today, very quick. kiddo's heartbeat is a nice strong 140 beats per minute and my blood pressure is fine.

brian has been bugging me lately to get the hospital bag packed. he asked me last night, do you want to bring a deck of cards with us? i said, do you honestly think we'll have time to play cards? he said, i might be bored. i said, i think will be keeping you pretty busy with the whole BIRTHING A BABY thing.

we (possibly just me) have a breastfeeding class tonight. this morning at the doctor they had me fill out a quick little questionnaire about my boobs in general and breastfeeding in particular. since i've never had a kiddo it was pretty easy, lots of no's. the very first question kind of threw me, though: have your breasts changed size since you became pregnant? of course they have. they are monsters attached to my chest, rivaled only in size by my stomach. there was a box to check to say "increased in size" or a box to say "stayed the same." WHOSE BOOBS STAY THE SAME SIZE DURING PREGNANCY?

negative!

my test for group b strep came back negative! no antibiotics! yay!

we are at: 35 weeks 4 days.

back to the fruit again

at the beginning of pregnancy, all the books and the doctor liken the size of your baby to fruit. your baby is the size of a blueberry! now it's the size of a strawberry, how sweet! your uterus is about the size of a grapefruit now! at some point they stop using the produce department as a metaphor for your child and just start using real measurements: the baby weighs approximately 10 ounces, the baby is approximately 14 inches long, the top of your uterus can be felt approximately 4 inches above your bellybutton. i guess this is because it could be detrimental to an ob/gyn's health to tell someone in an irrational hyperemotional state that they are carrying around a squash or a watermelon and by the way YOU ARE NOT DONE GROWING, NOT BY A LONG SHOT.

i realized last night when my ankles disappeared that i think i am back to the fruit again. i knew my feet would swell, but i didn't expect it to be this bad. i always thought i had kind of nice-looking feet - they're not bony or anything but have nice little curves and hollows on them, kind of like the curves and hollows of a woman's collarbone. (which imho is very sexy.) it's not like i could be a foot model or anything but i don't think i'm scaring small children when i go barefoot. but this! no more curves. no hollows. my ankles are completely gone. my foot has been replaced by a puffy, stiff, tingly THING.

and that thing? is approximately the size of a papaya. one of the large ones, the mexican papayas. i have papayas at the ends of my legs. we've come full circle, folks.

we are at: 35 weeks 3 days.

sweet baby showers

last weekend was my baby shower, hosted for me by my lovely best girl alice. unfortunately because she was "working" and behind the camera i think i don't have any pictures of her, unless there happen to be some on her camera or someone else's that i don't know about.

brian would not let me "travel" to san diego so alice or my mother could host a shower down there, so they came to us up here in sacramento and we had the shower at our house. when we were initially talking around dates and locations i did not think the 8 hour drive would be an issue. after all i made it in january no problem, just a regular trip. as is the case so very often, i was glad he got his way and that i did not make the drive down at 7½ months pregnant. ugh. i probably could have flown... but i hate flying.

i fell in love with the decorations for nicole balch's baby shower so we made our own baby clothesline. cheap (free!) and easy decor.


i really like how ours turned out. so sweet.

allie had the girls decorate onesies:


and bibs for hannah. the orange giants one ("i drool like my daddy") was made by brian.


though it wasn't really a co-ed shower because he had said he had no desire to be involved, brian stuck around some to see what all the fuss was about.

alice also had the girls dressing babies for time (mil and heather):


only the dresser was blindfolded, and their partner had to give them instructions. my mother, ella, and kirsten:


nichole and kelsey finished pretty quickly and won the game:


while carrie and brenda came in a pretty close second:


alice also had everyone identify baby food by a blind taste test. we tried not to pick out yucky ones when we were at the grocery store.

i don't have pictures of the gifts everyone gave us but suffice to say those ladies were overly generous, each and every one of them. there was just too much to take pictures of. and what good taste they all have as well! hannah is going to be the best dressed kid on the block, that's for sure. at least, until i have to start picking out her clothes on my own. this gift came a day or so later, from my aunt in seattle:


i could not resist posting a photo, because those little sheep booties? are called "best of chums." how sweet is that?

speaking of sweet, it was kind of a warm day so we had ice cream cake instead of regular cake. i love ice cream cake.


(we all got a kick out of seeing how the decorator drizzled "welcome baby hannah" over the roses on the cake, so you might see this one show up on cake wrecks!)

the truly best part of the shower was seeing all my girlfriends (well, most of them) and getting to spend some time with them. for pretty much all it was a bit of a drive out to our house and because of that i don't get to see them altogether that often, and i really miss them. like miss kelsey here.


i really appreciated everyone taking the time to come out and see me. (we should have parties more often!) i hope everyone had fun, because i certainly had a great time. thank you, ladies!

we are at: 35 weeks 2 days.

i wore a dress, and did my makeup, and even shaved my legs

we are now at the point where i go to the doctor once a week until kiddo comes. this morning i had to have a swab taken to test for group b strep which is a bacteria 40% of women carry in their digestive or reproductive systems. it's harmless to me but can be harmful to kiddo if she gets it during birth. the test is vastly quicker than your usual pelvic exam/pap smear but DON'T BE FOOLED LADIES, this is not as comfortable. good God. could we use anything more uncomfortable and less lubricated than a cotton swab? how about two swabs and no speculum? i mean, i'm sure it's nothing compared to what i'll go through in labor, but still.

kiddo is still happy and healthy as far as anyone can tell, nice strong heartbeat. she is also head-down, which i hear is GREAT for birthing babies. i had kind of figured she was already head-down because when she gets the hiccups i can feel it down by my left hip. apparently doc could feel the top of her head when she did the exam (and apparently i'm not dilated at all either, which is a good thing). i had no idea. i called brian and told him that he could probably feel the head also and did he want to try when he got home from work tonight? thankfully he declined because that would be too weird.

and yes, i even managed to shave my legs. which tells you how weird pregnancy is: i shaved my legs for my doctor, but i don't bother for my husband.

we are at: 35 weeks 1 day.

childbirth education, or, how to shove out that kid

this month is full of all our classes. and more doctor's appointments that i could imagine, but lots of classes. last wednesday we had a class on keeping baby safe from harm including infant cpr. there are so many ways for kiddo to get hurt/die! how did i ever make it through my own childhood? at least, the instructor reinforced what i have always felt: you take reasonable precautions and understand that while kids are going to get hurt, they are remarkably resilient. i remember when our niece ella was born and brian was terrified to hold her because he thought he might break her. we all tried to remind him that he did have to support her head but other than that she was pretty mooshy and unbreakable in his arms.

it was recommended that we babyproof our house now (outlet covers, blinds strings, et cetera) because we will be too exhausted when kiddo comes, and then by the time we get around to it she will be crawling anyways. we're supposed to do it from the ground up - lay on the floor and see what she sees. how am i supposed to lay on the floor? come on, now.

infant cpr was good to learn. i had to do cpr a couple years in a row back in high school and college, but it's been a while since that last refresher. hopefully we'll never need to use it, but i'd rather know how and never need to do it than need to and not know what to do. brian gets his cpr updated every year for his job, but i think the emphasis on infants (as opposed to seniors!) was good for him too.

we also took our birthing class yesterday. a lot of it was "review" of information we had already gotten out of our myriad books and the late pregnancy and natural childbirth classes we took last month. we spent a lot of time practicing birthing positions, relaxation, and breathing, and it was very good for me to actually actively practice those with brian. it gave me a lot of confidence in him as my labor coach... which i had previously been somewhat worried about. brian's response to stressful situations is to get all jokey to diffuse the tension, which doesn't help me at all. i feel like he isn't taking things (me) seriously when he does that. but he showed me that not only could he be jokey to help ease the stress, but he could also provide the strength and calm that i will need to get through those hard, painful contractions.

the class also reinforced my decision to birth this baby as naturally and drug-free as possible. i'm not against the idea of having stadol or an epidural if i can't endure the pain... i'd just rather avoid it if at all possible. not only is one attached to the iv drip, confined to the bed, and continuously monitored when on medication, but it can really slow things down and increases the possibility of needing other interventions like amniotomy, vacuum extraction, episiotomy, or cesarean section. NO WAY do i want them to cut me open. after watching the (animated) video of a cesarean and hearing the risks of medications and interventions, brian was even more supportive than ever of my decision to go natural.

i think the best thing about the class was how much it reinforced to me (and hopefully to brian) how we are in this together. and we want to be. there is no one else i would want more to be by my side when i give birth to this baby than brian. this whole pregnancy thing has been a bit of a roller coaster ride, up and down, and our relationship has definitely had its ups and downs along with it. and we know things are about to change dramatically, both within our relationship and in our lives in general. these next 5 weeks, postpartum, and especially labor/delivery are going to be really difficult and i know i'm going to need all the hand-holding in the world to get me through. i'm really thankful that it's brian's hand that i'll be holding.

we are at: 34 weeks 6 days.