26 February 2009

Still an effing eggplant

I'm at 28 weeks today, which I was under the impression was the beginning of my last trimester but noooooo ... I don't know why I can't do basic multiplication to work out my months but I am always off on how far along I actually am. Anyway, here's the scoop:

You're in the home stretch. The third trimester typically starts at week 29 and lasts until you give birth, at around 40 weeks. Most women gain an average of five kilograms during this trimester. By this week, your baby weighs a little over 1 kilogram and may measure 38 centimetres from top to toe. At about this time, your baby can open his eyes and turn his head in utero if he notices a continuous, bright light shining from the outside. His fat layers are forming and his fingernails appear.

He got his first case of the hiccups last night (well, the first we've felt) & it was really the first time I thought "Oh my goodness, my son is adorable!" The best part was Marcel got to feel them first - at night he always puts his hand on there and usually shakes my stomach like a snowglobe, which is less than pleasant for me, to make the boy move so he can have his bonding moments. Apparently this got the kid hiccuping - it was fantastic.

Nothing else new. Stomach is g-r-o-w-i-n-g but I like it for now. It does scare me that I still have 3 months of growing left - yowza, it's gonna be BIG. I have actually been wearing maternity clothes a bit this week and when I wear my normal t-shirts, I've had to drag out the belly band to keep everything in check. Again, why is all so surprising to me? I've seen pregnant women before.

My brain is still steadily fading. I came home the other night from work to find our screendoor open, which is fine because the real door was closed & locked. But I still called Marcel at work to say that I thougth someone must have tried to visit us or deliver something because I was the last one to leave & there is NO WAY I could have walked away with that screen door stuck open. He had his doubts and those doubts turn into rude raucous laughter when he got home an hour later and I had left my keys in the front door from when I got home. If you see my brain, tell it I want it to come home.

Anyway, that's it from over here. I'm dragging Marcel to So You Think You Can Dance tonight so he can experience his son's love of loud dance music and I think we're finally going to brave IKEA tomorrow so I can put our damn nursery together. So basically Marcel may kill me before this weekend is over because neither of these awesomely fun activities fall into his world of excitement.

19 February 2009

Uterus, be polite.

One step forward, two steps back. Not cool. I'm 27 weeks now and I read this today: Starting now and continuing through the last three months of pregnancy, you may be plagued by leg cramps, haemorrhoids, varicose veins and an itchy abdomen. I was feeling pretty damn smug that I've almost made it to 7 months without any of these issues - are they seriously going to start just now?? Pregnancy is for the birds, my friend, it makes me want to scream some days.

Here's the other latest baby news:
Your baby now weighs nearly 2 pounds/ 875 grams and measures 14.5 inches/ 36.6 centimetres from head to toe. Her eyes open and close, she sleeps and wakes at regular intervals and she may suck a finger or thumb. Sweet dreams, little baby! Some experts believe that babies begin to dream by the 28th week. What do they dream about? No one knows for certain but the brain is active this week as well. The characteristic grooves on the brain's surface start to appear and more brain tissue develops. Chalk up any rhythmic movement you may be feeling to a case of the hiccups, which are common this week and throughout the pregnancy. Your baby has them but is breathing in amniotic fluid rather than air. A paper bag can't cure her hiccups, obviously, but an episode usually lasts only momentarily. The sensation for you may be strange but not unpleasant.

I think we've decided on a name, just one name. We're going to wait before we share it (unless you live in the greater Lebanon, TN area in which my mother has probably already left it on your voicemail) just in case we change our mind.

This weekend I'm going to take some pictures of the most ridiculous parts of my pregnancy life as of now. Like my current zipper situation - I insisted on squeezing into my skinny jeans and all is well except my extended belt is not cooperating with the little panel that's supposed to hide the fact that my zipper is hanging open. Luckily my maternity t-shirt is covering up the scene but I feel like a moron walking around with my pants half undone. I also need to introduce you to my Snoodle ... or is it Snoogle? Whatever it's called, it's the pillow that surrounds me like a force field and keeps my hips in alignment and my stomach supported. Again, it make me feel like an ass and I always wake up to Marcel hanging off of it - he must miss me when I'm locked away behind my Snoogle.

That's it in my world today. I'm off to drink my 2-3 litres of water and keep my feet up and do some work. Yee-haw.

17 February 2009

Nobody knows the sorrow I've seen

Yes, I've disappeared. Finally got too lazy to write - that's right, I admit it. Work has been getting busier & busier so I just kind of melt when I get home, eat, then sleep. On a constant cycle.

Baby is apparently the size of an eggplant and that makes me mad because it makes me think of eggplant parmigiana from Olive Garden and I can't have any. Go eat some for me ... but don't tell me about it or I'll cry.

I may have the single most active son known to women's wombs worldwide. He doesn't stop moving. We went to a taping of So You Think You Can Dance (we rep one of the judges) and once that loud music starting going so did the little one - I do believe he may enjoy dancing as much as his mother. Too bad it feels like he picked up my rhythm as well. Oh well.

The boy has also discovered my ribs recently. And I don't know which one of you jerks gave my little jailbird one of those tin cups like the old prison movies but he just seems to clang around up there all day. And because he spends so much time moving up, the heartburn and indigestion is a joke. I eat Tums like candy and it barely takes the edge off. Still, the scheme of things, I'm having a very easy pregnancy.

Except for last night when I had another vomiting, etc. spell. Felt it coming on throughout the evening (it's a very specific feeling that builds right in the center of my stomach and I know exactly what I'm in for). I tried to fight it off with Tums and Immodium but that just seemed to anger it so I was nauseated and crampy (not baby problem cramps, just nausea cramps) ALL night, then finally puked it all out about 5 this morning. So I got a grand total of 2 hours sleep. I was already scheduled for a regular doctor's appointment for this morning at 9.30am but then they called at 8.50am to cancel because the doctor has changed his days and they forgot to tell his patients. So I went to the wise counsel of the midwives instead and they sorted me out. Bedrest today, which pisses me off because I have a lot of work to do and it's just going to wait for me - the thought of my emails building up makes me want to scream but that probably will go against the whole concept of relaxing on bedrest.

Eating crackers now and am contemplating whether to make a run to the library before I hop into bed. I need a good book to distract my little brain. Or maybe I'll just poke at my stomach to see if I can find the magic combination to get the boy wonder out of my ribcage - he's clonking around there as we speak.

xx

06 February 2009

the grouchy papaya

It has been the week from hell at work - seriously every bozo has come out the woodwork and people who are normally gorgeous turned into bozos. There were also a lot of absolutely wonderful people who were non-bozo and suffered with me. Don't feel sorry for me, I feel sorry enough for myself tonight. I decided I was going to leave a little early tonight because I'm so exhausted & owe it to myself and my unborn spawn. Why am I here an hour late after everyone else has gone home??? I jinxed myself, that's why. Now I'm grouchy and dreading the heatwave we're going to have this weekend & hungry & pissed off at absolutely no one because its no one's fault. And I have work to do this weekend because I just haven't had time to do it and it has to be done and done well and I can't think straight for 5 minutes to create a nice presentation. See, I'm absolutely feeling sorry for myself. Oh well.

On the lighter side of things, my belly button has started to turn just a bit. I noticed it this morning and was quite startled because I don't feel like I've grown much recently. Not much of a baby update this week - they don't seem to put much effort the longer I spend in this pregnancy:

The baby now weighs nearly 660 grams and is approximately 35 centimetres long from crown to heel. He makes breathing movements but has no air in his lungs yet. At 26 weeks, fetal brain scans show response to touch. If you shine a light on your abdomen, your baby will turn his head, which according to researchers, means his optic nerve is working.

It's also still a papaya if you're wondering because apparently it stays a papaya for the entire 6th month. Lazy fruit/baby writing jerks. Marcel's also working all weekend so I'm going to be alone so I'm going to have to go to movies, the library, the mall, anywhere with air conditioning ALONE. Do you feel sorry for me yet? I'm too bitchy to get sympathy I'm afraid. If you saw me hobble with my sciatica or saw my ankles when they swell you wouldn't be so mean.

Okay, I think I can go home now. Have a great weekend and my next blog will be butterflies and sunshine kisses I promise.

01 February 2009

the crazy has arrived

I've been pretty well-balanced throughout this pregnancy, cranky from time to time but nothing way out of the ordinary. Until this weekend. Someone let the loony loose. To be fair to myself, I was up half the night throwing up on Friday night and slept on the couch so then wasted half of Saturday snoozing to catch up and that always makes me miserable. Then I was just a bitch for the rest of the weekend (it's 7.30 on Sunday night so it's not even over yet). I even let the crazy hang out in public today when I went to the grocery store - had a loft goal of making chicken & dumplings with cornbread muffins to make me a happy girl. I decided it was wise to start my shopping adventure with the cornbread fixin's as Australia isn't known to carry the most Southern friendly products. Sure enough, not a damn bag of corn meal or corn nothing to be found. I spent a good few minutes staring and cursing out loud in the flour/sugar/baking aisle. I had already invested $18 in a mini-muffin pan so I had to do something so I stalked off and bought a box of cupcake mix instead & didn't bother trying to get stuff for chicken & dumplings because I was too damn mad. I will not go into the rage that started boiling beneath my skin while waiting for the world's stupidest people trying to work out the "scan your own crap" checkout aisles. It was not a pretty day and no amount of mini-cupcakes could make it right. It doesn't help that I'm reading a crime novel based in the south where the characters are all drinking sweet tea and eating friend okra and I have neither. Granted, I could make either of those things my damn self but I would prefer if someone would quickly build a Cracker Barrel here in Terrigal and solve this problem for me. Marcel is off fishing with his friends today just in case you were getting worried about him, by the way. I try to give him enough warning that I'm on the edge and he needs to keep his distance.

It's also a sticky hot evening tonight. The day was nice & breezy but for some reason the heat is hanging heavy tonight, which doubles the crankiness factor for me. I need to take a bath to shave my legs (hoisting them up on the shower wall is proving trickier these days) & it's too hot for that. I'm minutes away from pulling the trusty ice pack out of the freezer to cool me down. We saw the movie Doubt last night, which I looooved even though it was a bit quiet so I had to hold back on my popcorn chomping and frozen Coke slurping - but normally when watching these kind of movies I would sympathise with the friendly sweet nun played by Amy Adams but last night I was watching the overly critical judgments of Meryl Streep thinking to myself "She's got a point." I need to find the bitch dial and crank it down a couple of notches I'm afraid.

There is some positive news in my life, I promise I'm not all doom & gloom. I managed to find a bedspread/tapestry thing in the exact fabric of a pillow I bought last year that I always dreamed of having in a nursery so my lovely mother ordered it and is making it into a baby bedspread thing!! I'm very very excited because all of my nursery colours were based around that one pillow so it's nice to have a blanket to pull it all together. The room is finally coming together in my little brain so now I just have to physically get all of the item and put them in the room but we're putting that off so we don't have to stare at a completely furnished baby room for months. And let's face it, if I set it all up now I'll just keep adding to it & adding to it so eventually it will be packed full of useless items that the baby may or may not like.

I'm going to go now before I spend more time frolicking in the bitter barn. Have something deep friend or accompanied by sweet tea for me.