Party of Four?

friday i came home from work a little early because it was time to be tired. after resting a bit, i started prepping for tonight’s party by consolidating the gifts from last weekend’s shower. i had them all in their original bags while i wrote the thank you notes, but i wanted them all sort of “away” before they house got full of folks.

i worked too hard. i know that. i irritated my bursitis and my swollen-ish ankles got seriously swollen. ah well, it was fun and worth it. afterwards i went to sit on the couch for a while and make up for all that labor. charlotte woke up, did a little yoga (lots of stretches) and went back to sleep. about an hour later, i got up to change back into “going out” clothes (ie: jeans and a tshirt for running errands) and noticed that my stomach was a different shape.

charlotte is lightening!

i look like a man with a beer gut hanging over his pants, without having anything constricting at my “waist”. my belly button had been pointing straight forward, now points to a spot about two feet in front of me on the floor. i can no longer set things on the top of my stomach because there’s a slope where the shelf used to be. unfortunately this also means that she has all new places to kick and stretch, fun new nerves and body parts to press on, and *plenty* of room for her feet to move about by my ribs, but i’ll take it.

i know this isn’t really any indicator of anything other than i’m a first time mother nearing the end of her pregnancy. it’s not like lightening occurs exactly 2 weeks before labor or anything, but it’s progress and progress makes me happy.

in other news, our friends had their baby earlier this week. this is significant outside of the realm of generally happy news because her due date was a month ahead of mine. there is only one more baby in queue before charlotte and the two others that are due the first few days in november. visiting elisabeth in the hospital was another “now please” boost as well. i held her and all i could think of was charlotte and how much i wanted to meet her.

(insert standard lack-of-picture excuse here)

today marked the beginning of a key milestone in my pregnancy. it was my last 2-week appointment. starting with my next appt (36 weeks) i’ll be going every week. it was also the first appointment where the doctor (or in this case, the nurse practitioner) checked for dilation and effacement. no news other than we’re both still plenty healthy. the np guesstimated that she’s mostly head down, but definitely favoring my right side. she was concerned about my ankles, which were considerably swollen by the time i had my appointment. they were worse than i’ve seen them in weeks, though, since my appointment a month ago where i got scolded, so she let me off with a warning. truth be told, it was the drive, the waiting room, and sitting on that examining bench that did it. they were “fine” before i’d left the office.

last night we took the breastfeeding class, which we both really enjoyed. it helped me go from “i’m going to try and breastfeed, and hopefully succeed” to “i’m going to breastfeed and persevere through the hard parts.” it also convinced us to get a really-real pump. before i was thinking that a hand-pump wound get me through any bumps along the way, and that we would rent a pump when i went back to work. after last night, the hand-pump felt like a waste of money. even a decent one would be awkward and time consuming, and not necessarily help much with over-engorgement. buying one of the pricey but high quality pumps will ultimately be cheaper than renting, and much more convenient for traveling. plus, if i pump while also feeding charlotte during the day, there will be milk available for ryan and charlotte’s extended family to feed her as well (once we’re out of the “nipple confusion” woods, that is). this is important to me not only because i want others to have the bonding experience, but because it’ll be easier for charlotte to transition if she’s used to various people feeding her.

my attitude has taken a lovely shift towards eagerness in the past few days. the classes and the support of everyone who was at sunday’s shower have given me a real boost of confidence in my ability to take care of an itty, bitty baby. so now i want the itty, bitty baby to show up. i’d like to wait a couple of weeks to get her fully baked in there, but once she’s good to go, it will be time to go!

ah well, if having so many pregnant people in my life recently has taught me anything, it’s that the baby clearly has his or her own timetable and the moms are completely at their mercy.

no pictures just yet. i’ll try to get one tomorrow.

oh! and as a supplement to talking about how great my husband is, i’d like to mention how great my family, friends, co-workers, and house guests have been in the past few months as well. this would be so much harder without all of their support and generosity.

thanks guys!

so, my husband is pretty damn spectacular.

he has, in the past few months, taken every crazy thing i’ve done in complete stride. he picks up everything i drop (when i let him), he helps me up when i get stuck in a chair (also when i let him), and basically has gone out of his way on a daily basis to make sure there’s nothing i need. occasionally he gets a bit over-zealous with the water offering, but you know, nobody’s perfect ;)

the past week or so, i’ve been particularly crazy.

monday i burst into random tears at lunch. he pulled his chair closer to mine, calmed me down, and then did random silly things until i was smiling.

wednesday i came to the conclusion that “nobody was ever going to buy the mattress and the bedding” and that we needed to buy it right then. even if it meant treking out to the far, far county to get it. and we did. the next day my mother expressed disappointment that someone had bought the bedding and now she couldn’t. oh well.

friday morning, after a random nightmare i started crying as well (love them hormones!). ryan woke up, listened to the litany of things that might be upsetting me, and then cheered me up to the point i was able to go back to sleep.

today, to thank him, i woke him up 2 hours before he got up naturally to have him feel a braxton-hicks contraction. after he expressed appropriate awe at the hardness of my abdomen, he thanked me for waking him up and promptly went back to sleep.

we both know this will only get worse, and you wouldn’t know it to look at him.

hooray for him!

oh gosh, what a difference a few weeks make. let’s see…

oh! two weeks ago we went and took a tour of the hospital/birthing center that we’ll be using. it was a very surreal experience. seeing everything, imagining us in that place made me feel better (one less unknown), but knowing we’d back in 4-7 weeks most likely was very … intimidating. even ryan got a bit spooked and he’s been relatively un-spookable this entire time.

we’ve also started taking classes. i procrastinated a bit with calling, so we’re stacking them up fairly tightly in the 8th month at about one per week. last week we took the cpr class, which made me feel much more prepared. next week is breastfeeding, followed by “baby weekend” where we have massage (for pregnancy and labor) on friday night and a full day (8ish-3ish) of infant care on sunday.

and then there’s the showers. one tomorrow, one next weekend (which is also a house-warming party for us), and one the weekend after (smack dab between the two classes). we’re about to go from very little baby stuff to more than we have room for. it’s going to ease my mind considerably in terms of how prepared we are for charlotte’s arrival.

one more thing i’m doing to prepare for her big day is reading up on a bunch of different laboring techniques. i’ve already decided that science is my friend, so i’ll be going the medicated/iv’d/monitored route, but i know there still somethings to learn from “natural” methods. Specifically how to manage pain *before* the drugs kick in. i’ve picked up a couple of books, one on the bradley method and one that’s more of a general meditation guide. they aren’t telling me much i don’t know about meditation and channeling your focus inward (something i’m already familiar with), but they’re all over the “why doctors and medicine is evil” stuff. one of the books is so out of date (first published in 1984) that it’s just flat out wrong. i thought i was doing a decent job of filtering out the propaganda, but it seems to be catching up a bit with me. i blame hormones and stress and “omg i’m giving birth very soon!” stuff. once i get through them completely, i’ll probably post really-real reviews. …you know, like i’ve been planning for the books i’ve actually completed ;)

i’m also napping almost every day. fortunately everyone at work is very understanding. i take off around 2 or 3pm, sleep for a couple of hours and catch up on work later in the day. i do not like this, because it requires giving up way more control than i’d like way earlier than i’d like (you know, before the day i go into labor ;) ) but there’s little i can do about it.

so that’s pretty much it. there’s really not much to report on charlotte. we get checkups every couple of weeks now, and she’s doing just fine. at 36 weeks (2ish weeks from now), we’ll have another sonogram. i’m looking forward to seeing her again, to see how much she’s actually grown and such.

no decent pictures either this week (we’re such slackers), but i’ve got a couple from random events that are share-worthy and show how much my belly has grown.

bye now!