Heartburn...

This is a new experience for me. An internal burning sensation that makes me suspect that if I speak out loud I will breathe fire. So I only speak in my head. It hit me last night, after scarfing down ~3 more chocolate chip cookies than I should have. It stayed with me all night. This morning, in my drooling-incoherency, I lifted my head from the pillow as A was getting ready and asked him to drug me. He likes when I do this. Usually he tells me to take something and I ignore him, and he gets all bitter and mumbles something sarcastic about how I'm not complying with treatment recommendations. This morning, ranitidine was a godsend.

My waddle has a soundtrack

Can. Not. Concentrate. And since I believe in overcompensating to make up for lost time, I think 2 posts in one day is a great idea. Here's my random thoughts on pregnancy for the moment, at exactly 30 weeks.

1. No real food cravings, but I have been eating strawberries like a mad woman. I've always liked strawberries, but only to the degree of buy-them-a-few-times-each-season. I've been going through about a pound every two days. I would probably go through more, but that would require more trips to the store. But I've had no wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-because-I-need-pickles moments.

2. Other favorite ingestable right now is fruit iced tea. Specifically, Celestial Seasonings True Blueberry and Black Cherry Berry. Though my trip to their website just now brings to my attention Acai Mango Zinger and Tropic of Strawberry. I'll add those to my must try list. Drop 5 teabags in a pitcher of water, stick in fridge overnight. Voila.

3. I hurt. All over. My feet constantly feel like I've just walked 60 Manhattan city blocks (I did that once, I speak from experience). I went shoe shopping for some comfier flip flops yesterday, because even Chaco's weren't cutting it. I found these Teva flip flops, they are like glorious little foot cushions. The only downside is that they squeak so much when I walk that my waddle has a soundtrack.

4. In 1.5 months I will be full term. Holy crap, that's soon.

5. As I mentioned a few posts ago, A will be my birth coach. He's taking it very seriously, which is just about the cutest thing I've ever seen. He really doesn't take very much seriously, except maybe his job. But compared to the ER trauma he sees most of the time, he could care less about most other things that I tell him he should take serously. Like money. Or the many personal property items (including wallet) he frequently loses. Or a dirty toilet. It's sometimes a source of frustration to me. I was afraid he would approach this the same way, since he's seen plenty of women give birth and they all manage to pull it off. So what's the need of the coach? But that has not been the case. He takes my desire to forego meds seriously and is reading up on how he can coach me through this. I feel very, very lucky.

A spattering of nursery.

Well, I'm apparently already a slacker momma. The weight gain metaphor? Still at 27 weeks. Today? 30 weeks!!! 3 weeks overdue. I know everyone loves sock monkeys, but that's insufficient justification. But it turns out that Parents.com, where I was linking to, has no comparisons past 27 weeks (though I didn't realize this until today, it's just a convenient excuse). Apparently, from here on out there is so much variability in fetal weight gain that they stop the metaphors. Half the time I'm hoping for a big baby, to justify my above average weight gain, but then I remember that no matter the size of the baby it has to come out of the same size hole. Then I hope for an average baby.

It's hard for me to realize that baby could survive on her own right now. I'm hoping she doesn't make a go of it for a while yet, but she could. And in two more weeks her survivability dramatically goes up outside of this here ute. Wow, how did she already get so big? I went to Babies 'R Us yesterday to register (some stuff you can't register for online) and was looking at the 12 month clothing, already sad about how quickly she'll apparently grow.

The other debacle of the past few weeks has been the nursery. I had a whole scheme. I had an inspiration nursery. I bought paint. But it's not going to work. I started scraping the cracked paint from the previous owners, only to realize I was scraping off 5 layers of paint, not 1. Which means, in our 100 year old house, that it was certainly leaded. I talked to the paint people: no good way around this, other than to scrape everything down, prime and try again. But, being as the previous paint really wasn't in bad shape, and was a nice cream color, I just couldn't do it. Fatigue has been hitting me hard core, and my feet constantly hurt. It was no longer worth dealing with something that didn't need to be done.

So the nursery design has started over. Here's what we have so far:
Crib set



















Crib
















Rug






















And art...











































Not to mention a garage sale glider and a dresser I picked up free off the curb. Everything looks a bit ragtag at the moment, we'll have to see how this comes together.

Happy blood and the waddle

So I officially don't have gestational diabetes. Which is a grandiose relief. I actually was nervous about this one, because I've gained so much weight, several members of my family have diabetes and.... because it gave me something to worry about. These are my non-scientific, totally irrational reasons that I was concerned. But I'm free and clear, and then my intense hunger hit. I've had this a few times throughout pregnancy, wherein no amount of food is sufficient to quell the hunger demon. But it's as though my body (or psyche) was waiting to be given the free food pass. And.... 3 pounds in 3 days. *sigh* My doctor even told me the weight gain was acceptable this month, though I could hardly believe my ears. Looks like that will not be true next month.

I scheduled all my OB appointments. Doing that made the birth seem... imminent. A formerly pregnant friend told me in early preganancy how it had dawned on her in month 8 that this creature has to come out (though she's too motherly to use the word creature). I think it's starting to dawn on me. It didn't need to dawn on me before, because I wasn't that big, and she wasn't that big, and therefore the prospect didn't seem scary. But the bigger she gets, the more unlikely the orange-through-a-grape-hole seems.

The other development of the week is the waddle. I was so pleased, just last week, to realize that I was still walking normally. But this week I find myself waddling, clomping one foot in front of the other. And having to pee so frequently that even when I've run dry I still feel the need to pee.

I've been reading, reading, reading. The Baby Catcher, which made me more excited and empowered about all this. It also convinced me we need a doula, until I realized it would be $800. So it made me realize A will just have to learn to be a doula. That's how it's got to be. So now I'm making him read The Birth Partner, though I'm reading it with him. This one was recommended by our birth class instructor, and it is very good. Practical and helpful, though perhaps a bit dry. The one I started and just couldn't handle was Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering. Absurdity. She rails against gestational diabetes testing... though the best reason she seems to list against it is inconvenience. I'm all for a certain degree of natural childbirth, but she takes it too far. Furthermore, she keeps calling herself a "physician" but never says more than that. With the frequency of the term "naturopathic physician" this leads me to question the authenticiity of her supposed training. I'm also reading Uranium: War, Energy and the Rock That Shaped the World for fun (I swear, it's really good.)

Bluetooth Foofoo

A woman got on the bus this morning carrying ~15 plastic bags. These were not I-just-went-grocery-shopping plastic bags, but rather these-are-holding-half-of-my-worldly-possessions-and-the-other-half-is-under-a-bridge plastic bags. Poor dear, etc. BUT she had a bluetooth. When I think bluetooth, I think of people who are so busy that they can't bother to hold their phone to their ear. And to be fair, her hands were full. But really? For some reason that I cannot fathom it seems that everybody I actually see with bluetooths is not of the super-busy-my-net-income-is-equivalent-to-a-small-island-nation's variety, but more of the bag-lady variety. There is likely a whole separate population of people that fit into the first category that I don't regularly encounter, but it still doesn't make sense to me. Is bluetooth really just the new lazy?

Messy can be cute

Distance

...and I know the distance is only going to grow. But seriously, not a single one of my friends have kids. I take that back, 2 of them do, but their kids have grown and they've had 20 some years to make peace with the mental distance between themselves and the rest of us. I love my friends, but it would sure be nice if there was someone I felt like I have something in common with (okay, really just this mentally all-consuming thing). These people do exist, and I even like them, but they don't come out very often. Which possibly means that will be us in 3 months, and it won't matter that I can't relate to anyone because I won't have time to relate to them. Or it's possible they all feel distant, too, and choose to be separate. Only time will tell which camp I fall into.

Anyway, other than feeling sorry for myself and being completely uninspired by work, life is good. And unexciting. A works all the time, I spend all my free time working on the basement. Hopefully to be completed this weekend. I'm trying to appreciate the peace, embrace the quiet, knowing it won't last forever. Le sigh. I think the peonies help with everything.