Daffodils

The daffodils are out! The daffodils are out! I LOVE this time of the year. I've always loved spring time when you get to watch the world come to life around you, but it's been especially true the last few years because daffodils (the first flower you usually see in spring) remind me of my Ellie. They are such happy flowers, aren't they? God I love spring. Life is good.

Fond memories

I just found out that a good friend of mine is pregnant and I couldn't be happier for her. I find myself thinking back on my pregnancy and how much I enjoyed the whole thing. Sure there were annoying moments like morning sickness and acid reflux, but overall my pregnancy was quite pleasant. I hope my friend, C, has the same experience. Congrats, my friend! I'll try not to be too envious. I wanna be pregnant again!

Today's random fond memory

Is it strange that 9.5 months after my baby was born I still think about how much I miss being pregnant whenever I feel my stomach grumble?

Pregnancy Induced Memory Loss

I'm beginning to realize that pregnancy has a real affect on memory. I know it's been a while since I was pregnant (can you believe it's already been 7.5 months?) but here's the deal... Apparently if I met you while I was pregnant, then I do not remember you. Do not assume that just because I pretend to know what you're talking about when you say "it's been a long time!" that I agree. Do not take it personally. Actually, since you don't know I don't know you then you probably won't.

Can we just work this out?

It's obvious that my baby misses me. If she's upset, all I need to do to calm her down is to remind her of what it was like inside me. Wrapping her up tightly and putting on a DVD with loud womb sounds is the ultimate relaxation trick*. Being in her "fourth trimester", I'm sure she wishes she was back inside.

Anyway, the point is this... I know she misses me. And I know I miss her. Can't we just work this out and find a solution so that we can both be happy? Maybe some kind of hidden trap door to my uterus?

* Not sure if I've mentioned it before, but the relaxation tricks come from "Happiest Baby on the Block". I highly recommend it. No, wait, I take that back... let me know if you're expecting, and I'll buy you a copy. No recommendations here. That would imply you have a choice in the matter.

To be stressed or not to be stressed

Being pregnant was by far one of the most enjoyable experiences I have ever had. Granted, I had a very easy pregnancy, one that was not over-run by the standard pregnancy woes like morning sickness. I know I was lucky, but I absolutely loved being pregnant!

Actually, I really miss it. I miss feeling my baby move inside me and I miss the sense of calmness that I always seemed to have even if things got stressful at work. I miss my fingernails. Yes, you heard me correct. I was actually able to grow my fingernails out during my pregnancy! Would you believe me if I told you that I even had to trim them a couple times!

All that is gone now. My fingernails are no more. They were chewed off within days of Ellie's birth.

That being said, I don't think I can really say I'm stressed right now either. No, I no longer have my picturesque nails, but I'm not as stressed or exhausted as I expected to be considering I have a newborn baby to take care of.

Michael and I have been sleeping relatively well. I'd be lying if I said we're not affected by the sudden change in schedule. We tend to have dreams about getting up to feed her, only to wake up and realize we haven't started yet. Those are exhausting because it feels like we have to go through the whole process twice, which means twice as much energy. Not to mention it always makes it seem like she's eating twice as much.

However, she tends to sleep in 3-4 hour spurts at night, which is significantly better than what we have heard.

We've gotten quite a few comments about how calm we seem to be considering our new situation... and I owe that two to major things:
1. Happiest Baby on the Block - the techniques to calm a baby is just gold.
2. Ellie is a patient baby - She really does well when it comes to me trying to get accustomed to things.

So, for those of you who want to know how things are going... that's about it. I am amazed and grateful at how easy-going Ellie is. We are tired, but not exhausted.

I guess the true test of time will be how I handle things once my mom leaves town... =)

Now, now. Be good, Niffer.

My office is not on the "main campus" and thus I often have to ride a shuttle over to see people, run errands, or just get stuff done. On average, the ride over there is less than 10 minutes.

Is it bad of me to find entertainment value in the reactions I get from some of the drivers? There is a distinct difference in the way the female and male drivers respond to me. The females have been through this before. They have kids of their own, so when they see me waddling up to the bus, there is often a smile of sorts on their face.

It's different for the guys. They have recently gotten a look of horror when they see me approach the bus. One guy even had the gutts to ask me "When are you due?" and when I said "About a week, if not sooner." His response? His eyes got wide and full of fear and then he spent the remainder of the ride exclaiming things like "Oh, geeze! If you go into labor on this shuttle, we'll need to call for an ambulance for both of us."

Hahahha! I'm such a horrible person for finding this so funny. Do you think I should tell him that the chances of me having a baby during a 10 minute shuttle ride are slim to none?

Shy baby

I have heard various stories from my email buddies about how active their babies are. In general, I think their babies seem to be more active than mine. Well, maybe that's not quite the case. Maybe I just have a shy baby.

My baby will kick and dance and seem to be content to continue forever, unless someone tries to feel her. I'm told that if you press on the foot kicking on the tummy, then most babies will withdraw the foot then continue kicking after a moment or two. Not my baby.

It seems that the moment my baby detects any outside involvement, she freezes. This means if she is stretching her foot (or arm - how would I know?) and you apply pressure to it... she stops. The foot isn't withdrawn back into the tummy. It stays right where it is. It's almost as though the baby is thinking "Shhh... If I stay still, they won't notice me."

The advantage of this is that it's relatively easy for me to have someone feel the baby's foot, since it feels like a hard bump inside my tummy. The disadvantage is that it's difficult convincing people that indeed they are feeling a foot and not just a funky hard growth.

I wonder how this trait will show itself after the baby is finally born. How can you tell a shy baby? It's not like they can run and hide behind Mommy's leg like cute little shy children do. Am I going to have a baby that freezes whenever I introduce him to a new person?

"Ah, yes, meet my baby... I swear he's not just a doll!"

Contractions are your friend

I'm sure I'm going to have to be reminded of that when the time actually comes for labor. However, at this moment in time, it's pretty easy to appreciate the contractions.

What? Contractions? Yep. You heard me. I have finally caught up to other pregnant friends and am experiencing relatively frequent false contractions. They don't hurt, though. At the most, so far they feel like minor menstrual cramps.

As strange as this sounds, I would almost call them funny. I think it depends on how the baby is placed inside, but sometimes the contractions end up distorting my stomach into a shape you'd never really imagined on a pregnant woman before.

Ever thought you'd see a big pregnant tummy in the shape of a square? Trapezoid? How about a triangle of sorts? No, I didn't think so.

Michael thought it was interesting that he could tell better than I could if I was having a contraction. Every now and then, I'd exclaim "Damn! What is up with the baby?!" and he'd look at my parallelogram-shaped tummy and say "you're having a contraction." In my defense, he can see my tummy much better than I can! Besides, I have gotten better at recognizing the contractions, so leave me alone. :P

You may ask "how often do the contractions occur?" or "how long do they last?" because these would both be good data points to have in possibly predicting my upcoming labor. However, I do not know the answers. I'll try to start paying closer attention so that hopefully I can say more than just "often" and "not long".

Bets anyone?

Someone mentioned that I should start taking bets on when my baby will be born and then give a prize to the winner. Anyone wanna play? Anyone?

Some data points to consider when betting:
Due date based off of last period - April 10
Due date based off of first ultrasound - April 21
Incredibly uneventful, easy pregnancy.
Typically 2 or so weeks behind on any updates (ie feeling the baby move).
Only recently started noticing Braxton Hicks contractions (false labor).
Braxton Hicks seem to happen often but are not painful yet.

Update... if you can call it that

Once again my appointment this week wasn't very exciting. I have a text-book pregnancy (with the exception of the false scare for needing to do the extended glucose tolerance test), which I'm not complaining about. But when I go into my weekly appointments, it means that not much is said.

"Still looks good."
"All we can do is sit back and wait."
"We're on auto-pilot from here."
"Your weight gain is good."
"Heart beat looks good."
"Baby is still growing."
"Is the weather still cold outside?"

However, if you really want an update... My baby has decided to be a boy. Up until appointment last week, Baby had a high heart rate, which had the midwives predicting a girl. Last week and this week, the heart rate has been lower, so Baby is now a boy. Hehehe... I know you can never tell (I've heard a lot of exceptions to every prediction method, heart rates included), but that's the best I can come up with for an update.

Original Due Date

Most due dates are determined based off of the last day of your last menstrual cycle. I don't think many people know this, but my original due date was April 10th. And for those not-so-observant people... yes, that's today.

They pushed our due date off because when we went in for our first appointment and had our first ultrasound, the size of the baby indicated a due date much later than the original one (by 11 days, of course).

But it's strange to think that today could be my due date. I doubt that it is (not that the due date really means anything anyway), though, because I tend to be a couple weeks behind all the updates I read about or hear about from friends due around the same time as myself. And that's even taking into account the later due date.

So if things progress the way the rest of my pregnancy has, the baby will come after my due date of April 21. Or, maybe after my original due date of April 10th. Hmm... Interesting... At least we're packed for the hospital!

Daily Soundtrack

I have recently had people comment on how I have added sounds to my daily routine. Apparently I grunt, sigh or moan when I do random things like bend over, reach for something or even stand up. I find it funny to think that I make enough additional sounds throughout the day that multiple people have commented on it.

Niffer Tsunami

I am a huge fan of a nice hot bath. In fact, I prefer baths over showers. I think that might be one of the things I miss most since becoming pregnant. Though I can take a bath, I can not have the water as hot as I'd like.

Anyway, this results in me taking more showers than I normally do (hehehe... doesn't that sound like I'm normally a nasty, dirty person?), but the other day I did find myself taking a relaxing warm bath. Mmmm... Niffer soup.

You know how they say that natural disasters can come as a surprise? Apparently it's been a while since I've taken a bath. When I pushed myself out of the water to sit after washing my hair, that's when it hit! It was all in slow motion like you see on TV. As I sat up, I could see a huge swell of water form and as I watched it approach the bathtub shoreline, I just barely had enough time to think "Oh $#!+" before disaster struck.

You'll be relieved to hear that the cats made it out safely, with only minor emotional damage due to being cold and wet. However, the dust-mites were not so lucky. Poor Dust-Mites. There wasn't enough time to warn them. I don't know the death toll, but I'm sure it's in the millions. Poor Dust-Mites. They never had a chance.

A moment of silence in their memory...

Confession

I think that I am ready for the whole labor process. I feel like I have accepted my role and am OK with the concept of childbirth. I believe that Michael and I will kick ass with the whole labor thing! I've come a long way, haven't I?

However, I have confession to make.

The biggest issue I have to deal with now is the idea of being empty inside after the baby is gone. I'm not speaking emotionally. I'm speaking physically.

In our childbirth class, we were shown a picture of a woman's body before and during pregnancy. The before picture showed the organs all nicely spread out throughout the body's cavity. I had always assumed that when a woman is pregnant her guts were essentially still in the same spot, just behind the baby. We'll add that to the growing list of bad assumptions. The picture showing how a pregnant woman's body is laid out showed all the guts pushed up into the rib cage. Yes, all of them. The baby is essentially the only thing occupying my body cavity (with the exception of my bladder, conveniently located under the baby's head).

So my problem? My confession is this:

It totally weirds me out to know that I am going to be completely empty inside after the baby is born. Oh, I know that my guts will all fall back into place, but YUCK! Gross. Ewww! Blech. It's the "in between stage" that is the most difficult thing for me to accept at the moment.

I just shared this issue with a coworker a few minutes ago and she said that she remembers how a few days after her baby was born, she bent over to turn on the water in the bath tub and her skin on her stomach fell forward and totally grossed her out. She said she never realized how "empty" she was until that moment. I politely thanked her for the warning and came back to my office to vent into a post.

Ick.

A bed for all occasions*

Our baby is going to have so many beds that it's almost pathetic. First, we have the obvious... the crib. Every baby needs a crib, so this one should come as no surprise.


Second, we have the baby basket. This is actually the same basket that I slept in when I was a baby, so it means a lot to me that we use it for our little one. This basket has been through a lot, though, and needed to be mended. The bedding is different than when I used it, but that's because the original bedding had been through a lot (my cat had kittens in this basket too!).




And last but definitely not least is the cradle. How beautiful is that? My mom and her husband made it a year or so ago for his first grandson. Since then, they have decided to pass it around to all the grand babies (a plaque on the back names all the babies who have used it). Little do they know that I might just like it enough to keep it all to myself! Maybe once my baby is too big for it, I can hide it somewhere so that no one can threaten to steal it from me just because they feel the need to have another baby. =)

So where do we put all these beds? Most likely the crib will be in the nursery. Duh. The basket will be in our bedroom. And the cradle will be in the living room. That way the baby is free to sleep where ever and whenever she chooses. We want to encourage sleep, you know!


* I have been wanting to write this post for a long time, ever since I got pictures of the cradle from my mom. Impressed that I waited to get pictures of the other two? I am! Please, please, no applause. Just throw money. =)

Poll Update

I had my weekly appointment yesterday, and for the most part it was boring like the other appointments (I mean that with a great deal of relief). However, this one was interesting just because when I laid down for her to check the baby's vitals, she said "you're having a contraction". Apparently I have been having braxton hicks contractions without knowing it. I've read that some mothers think that it's the baby moving and have to be told that it's a contraction. Well I'm not even that good. I didn't think anything of it. Go figure.

Anyway...

I think this is where the gender poll currently stands:

Votes for Girl: 7
My mom, because she really wants (and almost insists on) to have a grand daughter.
Michael's mom, I'm guessing for the same reason.
Michael's stepfather, because my facial features haven't changed much.
Midwife #1, because of the baby's heartbeat.
Midwife #2, because of the baby's heartbeat.
Coworker #1, because my physical features haven't changed much.
Coworker #3, because I crave sweets instead of sour food.

Votes for Boy: 6
My sister, because she disagrees with my mom.
Michael's brother, just because.
Midwife #3, because of the baby's heartbeat.
My mom's husband, because I think he likes the grandsons.
Neighbor, because of the way I'm carrying the baby.
Coworker #2, because of the way I'm carrying the baby.

Who else wants to vote?

Weekend Rambling

I'm going to ramble on about my weekend, so please excuse me if it ends up being really long without being witty or exciting for you to read.

As you might have gathered, the number of weekends we have left before out lives change forever are very limited. Because of this, Michael and I have tried to do something we really enjoy doing every weekend. We've also been very productive trying to get our "to do" list done.


Saturday marked the day that officially my baby is considered "full term" and what better way to celebrate than practically insisting on going to see the cherry blossoms because I LOVE THEM!!! Michael said that this last weekend would be the last one that he would feel comfortable venturing "so far" from home. His argument had something to do with not wanting me to go into labor on the metro. Where's the fun in that?

The cherry blossoms were spectacular and the kite festival was fun too. The weather was perfect. We even had a picnic!


As far as how well the pregnancy mixes in with cherry blossoms goes, here is a summary:

1. Pregnant women do not get harassed as much for using a restroom in a cafe without buying anything.

2. Pregnant women can not stop to ask for directions, offer to take some one's picture, ask someone to take a picture, pick a toy up off the ground for a mother, or sit or stand next to anyone else without them striking up a conversation of "Oh, when is the baby due? Three weeks?! Why are you still walking around!?"

3. Pregnant women bring out the friendly side in complete strangers.

4. Everyone is always so happy for a pregnant woman and always want the best for them (of course, that is the polite way to go).

5. Much to my disappointment, pregnant women do not get preference while standing in line for the restroom. Come on people!? I know my bladder is smaller than yours!

But all in all, the day was fabulous. We got a few great pictures with Niffer and cherry trees, but the fun didn't stop there!


After cherry blossoms, we met some friends at a really pretty garden so that they could help us take more tummy shots. I even bought a cute sun dress for the special occasion! (by the way, next time I want to be pregnant for more of the spring season because the clothes are all so cute!)


I don't have any of the pictures my friend took (with both Michael and I), but I know we ended up with some great ones with us in front of the daffodils (I'll have to post them later). And man were the daffodils beautiful!

Life is good.

I don't think Saturday could have been any better. I even got a foot massage when we got home!

Sunday was a good day too, but only because it was another productive day. Michael worked on power washing the deck and I started packing for the hospital and doing baby laundry. Somehow I ended up with a purple crib sheet. It was white when I put it into the laundry and definitely purple when it came out. This was particularly strange when you consider the fact that everything in the load was yellow or white. Anyway, I decided to try to bleach it back to white and ended up with a pink crib sheet. Michael tried to make me feel better by suggesting that it's a sign of things to come. I hope he wasn't referring to years of embarrassing my son by turning all his socks pink.

Sigh. Oh well. I hope your weekend was as nice as mine!

Baby born at 21 weeks, 6 days

Have you seen this?! Look at the picture showing the baby's feet!!! It's just amazing to think that the baby survived! For those of you who don't know, the typical pregnancy lasts 40 weeks, so this baby was just barely more than 4.5 months into the pregnancy before being born. Ummm... let's all have a moment to give that some thought, shall we?

Wow.

On a slightly related "wow" note, in our childbirth class we learned that the mother's milk is tailored completely to the baby. Yeah, yeah, we all know that, right? Well, did you consider the fact that this is also true for preterm babies? The mother's milk for a preterm baby is different than that of a full-term baby, because the mother's body somehow knows what nutrients the baby needs. Same is true as the baby ages, the mother's milk changes accordingly.

Wow.

The human body is quite something.

Today's Random Thought

I bet it's weird to be a guy (let me finish) and see a girl you once dated, who you haven't seen in say 8-9 months, about to pop with a baby.