Wow, 36 Weeks

Okay, I have finally made it to 36 weeks.  Just two more weeks until I am considered full-term!  And probably four or five weeks until I give birth.  It seems so close now.  Oh wait, that’s because it is close.

I have noticed that I am a lot moodier, which is probably due to a combination of factors:

1.) Not enough sleep.  Last night I was up until 11:30 with heartburn, but then I slept well until 7:15.  I only got up once to pee and fell right back asleep.  Also, tiring extra quickly.

2.) I think that the acyclovir makes me feel a bit out of sorts.  If I take it on an empty stomach I get a little nauseous.

3.) End of pregnancy hormones.  I have been extra weepy lately, and a little out of it – sort of disoriented, often having a feeling like I’ve forgotten something, not reacting sharply to situations that take actual thought.  It’s like the pregnancy brain fog I’ve been having has suddenly stepped up a bit.  On Saturday morning I spent like an hour weeping into the pillow for no reason.  Yay!

Kelly and I got a lot done, baby-wise, this weekend.  On Thursday after work we went to Diaper Lab and bought 10 newborn cloth diapers, some diaper covers (2 Thirsties X-Sm and 2 Happy Heinies X-Sm pocket diapers), 2 snappis, a roll of diaper liners, 12 flannel and 3 hemp cloth wipes, 2 pail liners, and 2 wet bags.  We wanted more newborn cloth diapers, but she was out of Green Mountain brand, and the alternate brand (All Together) hasn’t come in yet.   All Together doesn’t seem as soft and I wish we could have all Green Mountain brand, but on the other hand I have very little desire to spend an entire day in the laundromat washing and drying a load of diapers 8 times.  We also special ordered some Dappi diaper covers and Happy Heiny changing pads.

Yesterday we moved the other floor-to-ceiling shelves into the hallway and cleared out the corner for the baby.  He hauled the chair next to his side of the bed into the living room so I could take pictures of it and post the pair on craigslist.  We also moved the incredibly crappy chest of drawers out of the front room closet and into our bedroom for baby stuff.  I wiped all the drawers out, but I am going to try covering the bottoms with contact paper tonight.  We got this chest of drawers for free, and it was worth exactly what we paid.  It will be useful for the few weeks we are in Somerville with a baby, though.

Kelly also did some loads of baby laundry with a baby-friendly laundry soap, Ecos Free & Clear Liquid Laundry Detergent, purchased at our local Whole Foods.  Unlike All Free & Clear, which we currently use for laundry, Ecos has no additives or residues (such as optical brighteners).  Ecos is recommended for washing diapers.  We got the pleasure of going over all the cute outfits we received at our various showers and from Glenda and Alex.  Yay baby mittens!

The next step after getting all the baby clothes into the drawers will be cleaning the pile of clothes and junk off my chair and getting it out of the room and then setting up the bassinet (no, we haven’t done that yet).  We also really need to get the bags of books to sell and the bags of clothes to give away out of the house – they take up a LOT of space in the hallway.  The money the books generate will be poured back into baby and moving costs.  Some of the t-shirts we had planned to give away I rescued so I can cut them up into baby wipes.  I wish I had that sewing machine so I could serge the edges.  I found this awesome site about sewing your own diapers, but I am not sure that I am that motivated!

Kelly and I also prepared for baby in another way: we’ve received the advice to go to movies now, while we still can, so we went to see Hulk on the Fourth of July.  It was pretty good, except that the emotional climax of the film took place before the obligatory big-cgi-fight-scene climax, and the latter was waaay too long.  I really enjoyed the story, though.  Good characterization by Edward Norton and Bill Hurt, and actual chemistry between Liv Tyler and Norton (amazing since Liv never seems to have chemistry with anyone).  I’m really looking forward to the Batman movie coming out.  We’ve also been renting a lot of films, and two I highly recommend are Lone Star by John Sayles and Blame it on Fidel! by Julie Gavras.  Both really, really good examples of complex storytelling.  Of course, there’s been a lot of chaff as well.

We also got to hang with friends this weekend: Kelly at the Esplanade for fireworks on the 4th, and both of us on Saturday for an awesome game of Dungeon and Dragons at Summer’s house.  That was the most fun gaming I have had in a long time – not boring at all, and it made me want to do it again soon.

I got in a big argument with Kelly Saturday night though about whether we are living up to our vow to be hospitable, something we both take very seriously.  I’ve been so concerned lately with being at home and getting it all ready for the baby that I haven’t paid much attention to his desire to be social – and in the local group of friends maximum sociability comes with playing host to a party.  Not that we could have hosted the game (we just don’t have a table big enough), but we could have hosted the after-party and then offered a place for Josh and Casey to sleep over.  Or alternately, I could have personally opted out but not told Kelly he needed to be home by 10:30 so we could get a full night’s sleep and have the energy to work on the house the next day.  Sometimes my needs seem so loud to me that I forget that Kelly has needs too, and his priorities may not line up exactly with mine.  Or that even when our priorities do match, the way that we choose to fulfill them may differ.  Anyway, after talking it out we both felt a lot better.  We even had hot make-up sex the next day!

Current pregnancy fear: that the baby is in a side-lying position and will not turn head-down before the birth.  (They still move around a lot, so there doesn’t seem to be a big reason for concern.  I don’t feel that the baby is stuck, for instance.)

Current pregnancy excitement: after some focused nipple stimulation, I can get a large drop of colostrum out of each of my nipples.  The taps are on!

Always hungry

So, now that the big decision has been made, there’s only a few more decisions to follow: what is maternity leave going to look like? How should I approach my boss with my plan for taking leave? And the all-important, should I finish my degree or not?

Thank you to everyone who sent good wishes to Kelly and I this weekend. I loved reading your emails and comments. I am very excited about moving to Rochester, and have created a google map here to chart out important sites to know and visit when we move there. We will probably look for places in the South Wedge because it is so close to Strong Memorial Hospital, where Kelly will be doing his residency.

Kelly and I spent a very productive weekend together, doing laundry, going grocery shopping, washing all the remaining Passover seder dishes (our kitchen is ours again!), completely cleaning out the pantry and mopping the floor, and stuffing more holes in our kitchen with steel wool to keep out the mice. We also managed to finally clean out the box where we dump the mail every day and to throw out a pile of old receipts. I even managed to fill another bag with books to sell, bringing me up to 5 large paper bags so far. I’ll probably double that number.

Even more exciting, we had great romance this weekend! We had recently had some pretty crummy attempted sex that left us both feeling frustrated, but this weekend we had hot sex multiple times. It’s nice to know that despite having so many changes in my body, which can leave me feeling uncomfortable swollen in the vulva (greater blood volume + worse circulation due to the weight of the placenta on my veins) and awkward and ungraceful as I roll around my belly weight, as well as having a constricted range of movement, I can still find a way to get it on. The trick, apparently, is having lots of space so that I don’t have to scrunch up (pregnant belly crunches are not sexy) or stretch out my stomach (it’s already a bit maxed). The other trick is not to wear lingerie that is now ridiculously, uncomfortably tight, and to find positions that are comfortable to maintain, like lying on my side. I haven’t really experienced either a reduction or an increase in sexual desire with pregnancy, although I have heard and read about that being common.

I am always hungry lately, and there is plenty of action going on in my tummy. I still can’t feel or see particular body parts (hand? elbow? foot? butt?), but I feel lots and lots of bumping, jumping, and swishing around. I wish I were getting a bit bigger in the belly, but hopefully I am just a late bloomer. My midwife says that my weight gain curve is fine. And little things have me noticing that I am still growing – I just bought a new bra a few weeks ago, and already I can’t wear it because between when I bought it and now, the band around my chest has become too constricting. I knew my cup size was bigger, but I hadn’t thought that my rib size was going to change. I guess it’s because all my organs are now sitting higher than normal.

For the last two nights, I have had horrible nightmares. Saturday night I dreamed about teaching the final day of my Ex College course, but everything went wrong. We couldn’t get to the project presentations – we couldn’t even get past the opening activity. The classroom was full of visitors who were alternately rude and distracting or there to observe me. I ended up threatening to drop my students’ grades by a letter unless we could conduct class and cover the content I had prepared. I felt ineffective, humiliated, and like I was violating my own values. Sunday night I dreamed I was trapped in a Nazi death camp where many of my friends had already been killed. The camp was located in a high-altitude mountain range with lots of snow (and also some magical, glowing, orange glass objects that were valuable and I might be able to trade for my freedom). I managed to temporarily escape, but the weather forced me back. After the war, my lover (not Kelly) had joined the resistance and was not interested in helping me find and extradite our baby from the Nazi-controlled territory, who had been adopted in the meantime by strangers. I felt afraid, alone, and betrayed. On the other hand, I have slept really well, going right to sleep and falling right back asleep after getting up in the middle of the night to pee, and waking feeling refreshed. I think it has helped that I have been stuffing one of my softer stuffed animals under my stomach to stabilize myself on my side.  I got the idea from my dad, who mentioned that there are tummy wedges to make pregnant women more comfortable during massage.

Kelly and I thought a lot about baby names this weekend, and we are singing a song to the baby every day, the baby’s song.  I got this idea from one of the videos we are watching in birth prep class.  If you read the same story or sing the same song to the baby before it is born every day, it will recognize it after it has been born and find it calming.  Our baby’s song is a slightly altered version of Lechi Lach (Go Forth), a song by Debbie Freidman (listen here). Our lyrics go:

Lechi lach in a land that I will show you
Lech l’cha in a place you do not know
Lechi lach on your journey I will bless you
And you shall be a blessing, you shall be a blessing
You shall be a blessing lechi lach

Lechi lach and I will never leave you
Lech l’cha wherever you may go
Lechi lach on your journey I will bless you
And you shall be a blessing, you shall be a blessing
You shall be a blessing lechi lach

The original lyrics are based on genesis 12:1-2, and our altered version is based on that plus Kelly’s remembered version of the second version, which to me more truly represents God’s love for humanity and parents’ love for children than the actual second verse, which is about making Abraham’s name great.

This is the last week of Hypnobirthing, and I have to say that we have been terrible at doing our homework.  We’re going to have to really gear up in the last trimester.