Monday, November 26, 2007

Home again

We made it back safely from our trip to Rochester this afternoon. We have so many wonderful new baby things to play with from two showers that I don't know where to start.

I think focusing on assembling things and laundry and setting up the nursery is a good distraction, though. I had the first waves of real fear this weekend as the showers wrapped up. Those were the last big milestones before the baby's born. Next time we see everybody we'll probably have a baby!!!! It's too exciting and terrifying to handle rationally. I woke up in the middle of the night last night (as usual, potty calls) and couldn't fall back asleep because my pulse was racing.

Fortunately the hormonal rollercoaster didn't kick in until the end of the weekend. Tinkerbell did her first (in utero) Black Friday Holly Trolly shopping trip. We made it all the way until the end of the evening before we got tired. We also had lots of yummy Thanksgiving food and pie, followed by two wonderful showers, one with Jim's family and one with mine. I'm surprised by how relaxed I feel now that we have pretty much all the gear we need for the baby. It's a big relief.

So, only about three days until the baby is considered full term. Just three more weeks until I start my maternity leave from work, unless the baby comes sooner -- that suddenly seems very short. I'm trying not to freak out about that, and about all the change that is about to happen in our lives. Ahhhhh!!!!

Friday, November 16, 2007

Baby laundry

I just did my first load of baby clothes yesterday. I'm sure this will feel like a chore at some point, but right now it's so much fun! It's probably the most fun I've ever had doing laundry. All those tiny socks and little outfits are so cute. And washing them makes it seem even more real that the baby is actually coming and will actually be wearing all these little things. Now they're clean and ready for her. :)

Monday, November 12, 2007

Hiccups

I just learned this week that babies can hiccup before they're born. That explains so much! Tinkerbell sometimes falls into a pattern of little punches that are sort of rhythmic and repeated in the same place. I counted more than 100 of them before I fell asleep the other night. Turns out these are hiccups. I feel bad for her now when she gets a hiccuping episode, but it's also neat because the little punching tells me where her head is.

We've had a busy week. My coworkers threw me a surprise baby shower Wednesday, which was really nice. Our last childbirth class was Thursday night. And our midwife appointments are now going to a weekly schedule so it seems as if we're constantly driving to the hospital.

By every measure the baby is healthy and happy. For a couple weeks she had a little extra blip in her heartbeat, but the doctors say that's perfectly normal and it will go away on its own (and when we heard her heart beat Friday Jim and I noticed that there didn't seem to be any extra beats).

We also had one borderline low measurement of amniotic fluid a couple weeks ago, but at a follow-up on Friday everything was back to normal again. I've been drinking crazy amounts of water to make sure it stays normal.

Another cool thing we learned is that the baby is already using her chest muscles to practice breathing, even though she gets all her oxygen from the umbilical cord until she's born. That's so amazing!

I'm feeling more relaxed the further we go toward the due date. Tinkerbell is now old enough that if she was born today she would certainly be able to survive on her own and probably wouldn't even need much medical help. By 37 weeks, around the end of November, she will be considered full term.

We've started to make plans for the big event -- making lists of things to pack for the hospital, figuring out how to install the car seat (why is that so hard!!???!!), rearranging all the toys and clothes in the nursery a million times, and generally trying to be patient.

Monday, November 5, 2007

Monkey practice

I have the day off work today with nothing to do, so I finally watched that Happiest Baby on the Block DVD. It's amazing to watch all the crying babies settle down, open their eyes wide and be soothed.

The doctor demonstrates how to swaddle a baby. I decided to practice before I forget:












The monkey calmed down almost instantly!! I can't tell you how much quieter it is around here without that monkey shrieking. Good monkey.

Friday, November 2, 2007

48 Days!!! AHHHH! Everybody panic!!!!

Really, I'm ok now. 48 is an awfully small number of days. Even the most degenerate and ill-tempered of debt collectors will give you 60. You can't even talk about 48 in terms of months any more (without some rather absurd rounding up). Weeks. It is just a matter of weeks. 6 weeks. Oh man.

On the upside, my fear of the actual labor itself has nicely obscured the previously staggering thought of the decades of parenting waiting on the other side. So that's something. Childbirth class last night was all about interventions: we discussed epidurals, narcotics, pitocin, cesareans, etc. etc. and boy was it, well, unnerving.

On the lighter side, I've decided that I'll start playing more gypsy music for Julie to get those hip muscles and the pelvis loosened up. She's also got her list of early labor activities pretty well settled, so when the thrill ride starts up I shouldn't have to think too much. Now we just need to get our hospital bag packed, do a little hut-ing, hout-ing, and self-hypnosis, and keep our fingers crossed for no major snow storms between 37 and 42 weeks (yay global warming).