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July 28, 2003
38 Weeks
Wow, this was one heck of a busy week, so I’ll get right into it all.
First thing, our appointment with my doctor, for my 37 Week check-up. Before we got into the office with her, I did the usual urine testing stuff in their bathroom… I noticed that the taps were splattered with soap and dum dee dum dum… I HAD to clean them. It was the funniest thing, really :-) I haven’t had much of a nesting instinct yet, I think partially because we already keep our house so tidy and clean that there isn’t much for me to nest about! So anyway, there I was, paper towel in hand, cleaning away the soap that the last person had left on the taps. I didn’t mention this little incident to my doula or Simon when I came out – no need to invite any teasing from that corner! LOL
This time, as you may have gathered already, our doula was able to come and meet the doctor, my doctor asked her what her role would be and seemed quite comfortable with her. On her behalf, our doula is really straightforward, one of the reasons we like her so much, so it is easy to see or gather what her role will be – she was quite clear in her description of what she’ll be doing during my labour. So, that went well. Blood pressure is still excellent, very low, weight was down from last week, but it seems my swelling this week wasn’t as bad as it was last week, so that could be why. I am measuring a full week ahead now, up from a half week last week, and the heart rate was good at 142. Because I had told her about the cramp-like feelings I have been having of late, we decided to do an internal exam just to check out whether I was progressing or they were not really doing anything. Turns out that my cervix is still closed and firm, but is starting to shorten, which basically means that I could go tonight, or wait for another four weeks! I do love the whole scientific-ness of labour :-) Any moment… Or weeks from now… No one knows! Little One is still head down, I definitely think that if there was a flip, I would have felt it because it really feels like it’s getting tight down there, my belly is feeling increasingly hard in multiple areas as it fills up with baby :-) This is the last appointment I will see her before she goes on vacation, I will have my next appointment with her partner, then if I have not gone into labour yet, I will see her when she gets back in early August.
One thing – I forgot to put in last week’s entry that my doctor is pregnant! Isn’t that wonderful? She has a 20 month old little girl and is 21 Weeks at this appointment of mine, so she will have a 2 year old and a newborn in December. I wished her congratulations of course :-) I am completely unconcerned about her going on maternity leave and leaving me and my Little One without a family doctor, because first of all, it is her second child, which *does* make a difference and also, she *just* started up this practice with her partner (the sole reason why I was able to get her as a doctor, because she was looking for patients) and so we know that she is really dedicated to making sure that this practice works. Besides, by that time, the Little One will be four months old or so and past the time when we would be going in for very frequent check-ups and such. So, anyway, I think it’s great, because she is young, is dedicated to both expanding her family and maintaining her medical practice :-)
After the appointment we came home and talked with our doula about our birth plan. I had printed out a couple of different ones that I had found online, one was extremely detailed, the other quite short and to the point. We combined the two a bit and crossed out a number of requests from the long one that would have made it seem like a novel. The one thing that I have learned about birth plans is to keep them short and sweet and to try to be as ‘nice’ as possible in them, for instance, not putting in outright demands as this can rub nurses the wrong way, it is better to word it a little more differently so that you do end up getting your way. We noted ones that I need to talk to my doctor about before putting into the plan, we will do that the next time I see her, in two weeks time… If I don’t go! :-)
When I arrived home after dropping her off at her place, Simon met me on the stairs as there was a package dropped off while I was out… Our diaper bags from Land’s End – how exciting! We ate lunch first (priorities, right!) before opening it up and checking them out. I have to say I am *very* impressed :-) The monogram looks awesome, I think I said that we got them in black in my last entry, and the monogram is in this medium grey, which is great because it won’t get all dirty and nasty looking as it would if it was done in white. The change pad is absolutely gigantic, which is great and there is just enough pockets and such inside to make it organized enough for me. Oh, the key ring is also really long, another great thing, because who wants to fumble around trying to get a key off if you have your hands full – I know that I will be able to just use it right on the strap. The little bag is also just the right size, nice and small enough to make it a good choice for those short little ventures I am sure I will be going on. The big one is quite cavernous, but I am also just as sure that it will fill up quite well, given the fact that we will be using cloth diapers, which are considerably larger than disposables! :-) I have started to make up a list of things that I will need for the diaper bags, we will go out shopping for them later this week.
That night, we had made arrangements with one of the other couples on our cul-de-sac who are pregnant to get together and chat. This was the one couple who we had not really had the opportunity to talk much with yet, as they live a little further down the cul-de-sac than we do, we are at the top and in our roaming around our house we don’t really have chance to talk with them. So, we went over and had a great chat with them, leaving quite late that night actually, time flew by so quickly! Really great couple, I am sure that I will be good friends with the mum, when our babies arrive. She had laid out a big platter of fresh fruit and the funniest thing was that she and I totally porked out for lack of a better word – the guys ate hardly anything and we ate almost all the fruit! LOL I would have been embarrassed except that she was keeping up with me – it was just sooo good, and this was also after Simon and I had had a fairly large dinner. Woah baby! Guess the Little One was still hungry :-) We talked about all sorts of things, from how both of us met our husbands (respectively of course) to why we moved out here, how we told our families we were pregnant, things going on in the cul-de-sac, some of our moving experiences – both of us have had wretchedly horrid experiences renting from UHAUL. It was a really great evening. I am really curious to see which one of us goes into labour first, who is going to be last, what the difference in days is going to be… Such a mystery life holds for us, hmm?
Okay… now for what some of you will think to be the very best part of this entry… Meeting Jeanette and Bella! We hadn’t expected to meet early in the week as they were planning to come to town later in the week, but we all know how plans can change quickly especially when visiting family, so as it turns out, we got a phone call on Tuesday morning from Jeanette saying that she was coming into town, and did we have any plans for later that afternoon? WELL! I would have changed any plans that we did have, so it was all good that we didn’t – except for me trying to do another entry for all you loyal readers of mine :-) Simon answered the door as I was just finishing putting the cushions back into their regular positions on the sofa (recall that we were leaving the sofa set up so that I could just sit and immediately have my feet elevated), so I met her as she and Bella came up the stairs…
I was surprised at how small a person she is – she is always been so much the larger than life sort of figure in my mind that I really was surprised when I was physically meeting her at how… petite she was. I mean, I am a pretty big person at over 5’10” and big boned, let alone almost 9 months pregnant, that she just seemed so much smaller than me :-) Her personality is so vivid, so much more so than in her writing and from the couple of phone calls that we have had, and those instant message chats that it again surprised me. I mean, I felt like I had a pretty good sense of her as a person and a mum, yet when I met her, she was so much more… alive? Sparkling, vivacious? And what a fashionista she was too, not totally decked out, but just looking so ‘put together’ and Bella was wearing this beautiful Esprit dress, so cute! And Bella! My goodness, she is so precocious, full of life, shy and yet babbling away, it was wonderful. There was no doubt that this was a mum and daughter, and Jeanette is such a great mum, so patient with Bella who is speaking and yet not *always* making sense. We just sat in the living room for most of the visit and chatted away about all sorts of stuff, like her visit so far, how Bella was doing, how I am doing, what we would like for my labour and the birth.
I do recall giving a quick tour of the house, and she LOVED our crib bedding, so did Bella, because it has ladybugs on it, one of Bella’s favourite… animals? bugs? Whatever! Jeanette’s first comment when she saw our huge 6’ Jacuzzi tub was how she would LOVE to have a waterbirth in it :-) We didn’t get the chance to go really into depth on any topic, what with Bella being her busy bee self and our puppy Brook intent on figuring out who this wonderful little person was (really, it was too cute watching Brook try to figure out what this tiny creature was, and Bella is so used to dogs that she paid her no mind). All of a sudden Jeanette’s brother and sister were outside in their car, honking at her to go, I felt like time had just whipped by so quickly that afternoon. We made tentative plans to go to a bead store the next time she was in town so that we could make a bracelet or necklace for me to wear during labour and said our goodbye’s. I know we’ll get together at least once before I go into labour… at least I think! :-) Anyway, it was so awesome meeting her that I just wished we had more time to talk!
Alright, let’s get onto the rest of the week, I’ve only hit Tuesday so far, this entry will be huge if I’m not careful! I went shopping on Wednesday by myself as Simon went over his thesis presentation yet again at home. I picked up things for the diaper bags, some things for the medicine cabinet that are more infant specific than the things we already have on hand. What else… oh yes, I bought a headset for our phone so that I could just plug it in and not have to hold it to my ear when the Little One is here. Our phone is quite small and is *not* the type where you can cradle it between your shoulder and ear – it is just too small and end up getting a gigantic crick in your neck from doing this. I thought this was smart to get the headset, so I will be as hands-free as possible. The other thing I bought was some foam for a change table pad. I think it’s going to work out great because we can cut it to whatever size we want, and foam is so easy to cut. When I got home that is just what I did and I definitely would suggest this to anyone, it is so much cheaper than buying a pad from a store, I almost got a large enough piece for two pads and it was still $10 cheaper than the store pads. Because we were still going to buy pad sheets, it works out to be quite a bit less expensive – yeay!
Yoga is also on Wednesday and again I had a funny time. A couple of the ladies literally exclaimed – you’re still here? Uhmm.. yup? Not in labour, it’s only yoga, why would I not be? :-) Actually, Simon and I joke that even if I was in labour, if it was a Wednesday I would stop by for practice on our way to the hospital LOL My teacher is just more and more amazed by my growing shape (meaning both my belly and my poor feet!). She knows that I am really comfortable adapting the poses to the level at which I can do them, but this time she kept sending looks at my feet and then up at me – I exclaimed that they were only swollen, I wasn’t a freak! :-) She replied that she just felt so sorry that I had to deal with such awful swelling. She’s a real sweetie.
I had made an appointment to see the physio for 8:15 on Thursday morning, Simon dropped me off because his thesis defence was scheduled for 10:00 and he needed to be at the school by 9:00 in order to make sure that everything was set up etc. We had already decided that I was not going to go, because it would make him too nervous for me to be there, so it worked out fine with my appointment. The physio was glad to hear that I had indeed stopped my exercises when I found that they made my pelvis worse and she tested my mobility for a bit before we talked about the exercises that I could do. I will start them tonight and do them at least a couple times a day at her suggestion. I am sure that they will make my sciatica pain a little more bearable :-) Hopefully!
As I was coming out of the hospital, who do I run into but one of the girls from my Prenatal class. She was one of the two couples that I had gotten the phone numbers of to keep in touch between the last class and our reunion class. She was hooked up to an IV stand and so obviously something was wrong, and no longer pregnant (I should hope not, she was due June 29th!). I asked her first how her labour was and what she had, she just glowed when she talked about her baby girl, turns out that she was in the hospital again because she had a uterine infection – yuck! She had a 40 hour labour which ended in a c-section and because of the number of internal exams, ended up with this nasty infection. She apologized almost right away for not getting back to me after I had phoned her a couple of weeks ago, apparently she had inadvertently hit the wrong keypad number and erased our message instead of saving it (how many times have we ALL done that!) I asked how breastfeeding was going because I knew that she had initially planned to breastfeed. She said that her daughter had dropped almost a full pound in the days after the birth, but because she was just shy of 10lbs at birth, she wasn’t that concerned. Apparently she was getting a lot of pressure to supplement her milk because of the weight drop but she wouldn’t hear of it and refused again and again, instead just kept trying to breastfeed and low and behold, the little baby girl started to gain weight pretty soon after. I think there was probably more trouble than normal because she had to have a c-section and breast milk comes in more slowly with a section than with vaginal birth. Anyway, all of the things she said to me in that five minute conversation just reinforced my already positive thoughts about her – I think we are going to be really good friends :-) She invited me and Simon to come and visit as they would be there for the next couple of days and as she was heading inside said that I looked really great – ah, a best friend in the making, what 9-month pregnant woman *wouldn’t* want to hear those words? LOL I planned to talk to Simon about going for a visit when he got home from his defence.
And speaking of that defence… It went great. He didn’t get home until nearly 1:00, I was on complete pins and needles waiting for him to get home and tell me how it went! He has minor revisions to do, which is basically the best case scenario for a defence. What this means is that we have to have the changes done and the thesis submitted for publication and binding within 10 business days. So, this next week will be slightly busy for both of us, because he will do the writing and I will do all the edit changes that need to be done as well as checking over, page by page, his 350 page thesis (yup, 350 pages) so that there are no mistakes in formatting, grammar, spelling, the whole shebang. We work as a team really well, which is probably why we are such good friends and our marriage works so well – both of us put in equal effort on our goals so that we can achieve them together :-) While it still feels frustrating to be doing yet MORE work on this darn thesis at the same time we are so close to the end that it feels like we can reach out and actually touch it. It is going to feel SO wonderful to finally have it done! :-)
On Friday after doing some errands around the house, we went to have a visit with the Prenatal class couple and their new baby girl. She was really happy to see us because she had been bored out of her mind just sitting all day in the hospital bed reading and alternatively feeding her baby girl. We chatted about a whole bunch of stuff, primarily baby focussed or labour focussed. She gave us the full story of her labour and I get a clear feeling from her that she is fine with the decisions that she made at the times in her labour, such as when they opted for a walking epidural so that she could finally get some rest after 20 hours of hard labour. She wasn’t progressing very well however after that because the walking epidural was *not* a walking one for her – she couldn’t walk at all and so was started on pitocin, to get the labour started again. Anyway, I don’t feel it is my right to give her whole birth story here, I was just really pleased for her that she was satisfied and happy with the decisions that they made at the times when they needed to make them.
Her hubby came in halfway through the visit, he had just gotten off work, and so we had the chance to chat with both of them. When we told them that we had hired a doula, both of their eyes lit up and they were really happy that we had done this. They found with the length of her labour that they really could have used someone else besides her husband and another friend. Both Simon and I got to hold the little girl for quite a while and I am totally astonished at her strength – she is REALLY strong for someone who is just three weeks old! Apparently she was really active the entire labour as well and the nurses too have been surprised at her strength. Oh, one other good thing was her review of the labour nurses – they were really great, which is just awesome to hear! Because she was in labour so long, she had four shifts of nurses but lucked out on getting the same one on each of the two different shifts. Here, we get one-on-one care by a nurse for the entirety of her shift, which I hear is quite different from even other Canadian hospitals, let alone the care received by pregnant women in American hospitals. So, it was good to hear that she had such a good experience with the labour nurses.
Symptoms: First of all, I had a dizzy spell on Sunday night, starting around 5:00 pm and not ending until the next day, just before my doctor’s appointment. It was really the oddest sensation, it felt as if I was incredibly drunk and the room was spinning around me. I took it really slow, but many times I had to hold onto a solid surface because I was feeling so… spinny for lack of a better word. That night as I laid down to go to sleep, I found that it took me a good half hour’s time for me to settle down enough for it to be okay to close my eyes. When I closed them initially it felt like I was spinning downwards into a black abyss. Nice, huh? When I told my doctor though, she wasn’t that concerned because it had already faded, I didn’t experience spots or anything and my blood pressure was still very low. It was most likely an inner ear problem because it was worse when I was moving my head. Anyway, I am totally fine now. Next… I have come to regard my stretch marks with some pride, but the funniest marks are coming out right now… Do you know where they are? They ring my belly button! LOL Isn’t that just too funny? So, now I have a brace of marks that essentially run the full width of my belly and these little stretch marks that sort of ‘cup’ my belly button. Which is also starting to protrude a bit. Not enough to make me think that my belly button is going to pop out, but just so that my belly isn’t smooth across anymore. Wow, see I expected to get stretch marks, but not of this variety! :-)
The last thing is that the Little One is making different movements now. Whereas before watching my belly was like a full on event, now the movements have changed so that they are more subtle. There is still tons of movement, it has just changed. Now I feel much more in the pressure type of sensation as the Little One moves around inside my belly. There isn’t so much of the real physical showing of this movement. My belly will change it’s shape entirely now, one side becoming higher than the other as the baby moves and settles down again. I am feeling the shoulders more now, down low, but not regularly, which makes me think that it is only in certain positions the Little One is in that I will feel them. It is really so amazing to notice these types of changes as this pregnancy progresses and comes closer and closer to the time when I will be able to hold this precious bundle in my arms, not just my belly :-) As of this week, I am safe to go into labour at any point now, which is making me a little excited. I still feel that I will go over my due date, as 70% of women deliver within ten days after their due date, so I am not anxious, just starting to get excited… :-)
**Talk to Me**
When did you notice your first ‘nesting’ incident? Did you tell anyone or keep that moment to yourself, your own special memory?
What diaper bag company did you buy from, and how have you found them working over the years?
Did you notice any interesting stretch marks that you hadn’t come to expect, given that you already had them appear?
Namaste, Laura and the Little One
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