The Care Package has been hit or miss. I kept up with it until I had weird pains in my lower right abdomen on a Friday evening and freaked myself the freak out, dialing up L and T to find out what they thought could be going on. When I couldn’t reach them, I called my doc’s office and got the after hours number justincase and programmed my doc and both numbers into my phone and told M that I did – justincase. Turns out it was an abdominal strain from all the crunches. I haven’t done any since. My sleeping is whacked most days, so most mornings I don’t do more than stretching and squats. I need to do more, but even the squats have been sidelined by sciatic nerve pain (which I begged M to massage out for me – he obliged).
Meanwhile, my metabolism has skyrocketed. I’m always hungry. So I’m always eating, but I’m trying to make good choices – and I haven’t gained any weight in the past week. I’m feeling OK with my weight, even though I’ve officially hit the weight at which I was previously my heaviest – before I started all the water drinking, good food eating, and the running to lose it. I felt especially special after my visit to HR last week where all the girls there gushed over how small I’m looking and how good I’m looking, etc. etc. Let me tell you – that was comforting.
Even so, I feel the extra weight in my hips, back, and knees. I don’t feel much like myself. I don’t walk the way I used to. My gait is all off. I walk around my hips instead of from my hips. In short, I waddle. Most of this is from the sciatic nerve pain (stupid piriformis muscle!), but I still loathe it.
We finally finished M’s grad statistics class. A good two weeks of my life (if not longer) were wrapped up in trying to help him finish by his 7/8 deadline. Which means I had to put off all my baby sewing projects (nursing covers, crib skirt, changing pad, valence, diaper bag, binding a quilt). I’ve now resumed, but I’m sewing for L’s baby shower this Saturday (nursing cover and binding a quilt), after which I have got to get cracking on my sewing to do list for my baby.
This past Saturday, we spent the larger (hotter) portion of the day at IKEA negotiating over furniture. I had my heart set on colored (red and yellow) furniture. Turns out he hated the colors and preferred white. The negotiations came down to whether we’d repaint the lavender colored walls. My color scheme is bright and I wasn’t sure the lavender would cut it, even with all white furniture. So we settled on “we’ll see” with me conceding to maybe give up the red crib sheets I was hoping for against a yellow palette of walls.
Once we got home and cooled off, the papa got to work putting the dresser and storage bench together, while I ordered the crib online and commenced constructing wooden frames for my wall hangings. I decided the fabric panel (that is the central nursery theme) would be much easier to incorporate as a wall hanging if it was stretched over a wooden frame or two than if I had to sew a wall quilt. Turns out I was right. When the furniture was constructed, we moved it into the room against the walls (because the rest of the room is filled with our camping/kayaking/fishing gear and other miscellaneous crap. Oh, and a “guest” bed that’s only seen about 3 guests in 4 years.) He also put together a matching side table we bought to go beside the recliner that’s going into that room.
With the white in the room, I held the fabric wall hangings against the wall. I think it’s going to work just fine. M is very relieved that his hard work of painting that room will not have been in vain (I’ll never live down the “oops” paint fiasco of 2.5 years ago), and that he gets to keep his “but it’s soothing!” lavender colored walls. I figure I have enough to worry about in the coming months, and simply switched the color palette in my head (which consisted mostly of coordinating crib sheets). It’ll work.
M’s already a good dad. He’s recently been around a guy with a 9 month old who got chicken pox and was worried about being exposed to an active virus and bringing it home to me and the baby. Yesterday he e-mailed me asking about the risk to the baby. I Googled it and we both learned that as long as I’ve had chicken pox, I’m not susceptible to it, so there’s no risk to the baby. And he teared up a little while we were watching Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire because when Cedric Diggory dies his dad yells "That's my son! My boy!" because it made him sad to think about.
On Monday, we went and toured The Hospital. V&L went too, and the hospital smell (which I thought was very mild) made the guys feel ill. Secretly I’m convinced it was a psychosomatic reaction to the thought of having their wives go through those doors – the point of no return – and their lives never being the same again. (Too late now, boys!) Meanwhile, we chicks were sizing up all the other pregnant ladies (“I wonder how far along she is” “She looks about the same as me – wouldn’t it be awful if she’s 2 months ahead of me instead?”)
The hospital was nice. I really liked that words like exploring different labor positions, walking around and laboring naturally came up at the very beginning of the tour. They showed us each stage of a typical L&D visit: registration, triage, the labor/delivery rooms (totally nice, btw), the postpartum recovery rooms, plus the bonus features like a Japanese soaking tub, an OB “garden”, a special care nursery. I couldn’t believe more people weren’t asking questions. I asked several and was told by M that I was being sized up for it. Whatever.
I asked about being able to go in the soaking tub after your membranes were ruptured (it’s up to your doc), about whether fetal monitoring is continuous given that they encourage different positions and walking (it’s intermittent), about whether eating or drinking is permitted during labor (nope - ice chips or IV only, which is why I’ll try to labor at home for as long as is possible/safe) and whether the father can immediately accompany a baby who may need to go to the special care nursery or if he has to wait (he can immediately go with). I wanted to ask more – like how long does the wellness check take after the baby is born (“give me mah baby!”) and whether an IV is mandatory (no extraneous needles, please). One other girl asked a few questions and I found out that they have nurses on staff trained in natural childbirthing methods, but they do not have doulas on staff.
I left there with my head spinning, and that’s with having a knowledge of what the crap the woman was talking about. I can’t imagine what M must be thinking. I already warned him on Sunday that if he’s going to be The Man and be my labor coach, he’d better start reading up. Regardless, last night I gave him the Reader's Digest version of labor and delivery. All he had to say is "I'm sorry you have to go through that."
I am now armed with a list of questions for my doc and I’m sure we’ll have a conversation about all this in the near future. Regardless, I’m determined to maintain my “wait and see” attitude because there’s no sense getting myself all worked up or planning details over which I have little or no control. I have a general idea of how I would like things to go, but it’s very flexible depending on how things play out over the next few months and even in early labor.
Meanwhile, my belly continues to burgeon and the kicking and moving gets stronger and stronger. One night last week, we both watched in awe as my belly was punched outward with the thrust of this kid’s kicking. Shortly after that, I felt kicking feet in my pelvis, felt a full body flip against my left hand resting on my belly, then the feet were up above my navel. And last night as we were pillow talking, I grabbed M’s hand and put it on my belly. Neither of us have ever felt him be so active before and he was kicking like crazy. It’s funny because when I would talk, he would stop kicking, but when I was quiet he’d kick in rapid succession. What’s even funnier is when M says “he shouldn’t be kicking at this time of night! He should be sleeping!” Uh, yeah. Good luck with that.
~Nichole
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