Here is the pile of stuff to bring to the hospital. The car seat and the birthing ball (don't ask) are both near the front door. The notebook shown in the picture is my crazy notebook. I have lists of everything: Phone numbers, birthing positions, acupressure points, birth plan, medical studies to give the doctors if they try and make me do something I don't want to.... oh yes... (For all you law students out there you will probably have noticed that I even have a highlighter... apparently law school has had a greater influence on me then I was previously aware of).
Top 5 things to do while waiting for baby to come:
(1) Learn to cook something new: I mean I could eat all the time, and I am one of those people that gets sick of eating the same thing over and over again so this is a good time to expand (my cooking horizon… and what used to be my waistline). So far I have made chicken casserole, eggplant parmesan, homemade macarroni and cheese, corned beef and cabbage, chili and a few other things. Don likes the outcome of this activity!
(2) Watch Movies: Netflix is a godsend, that and the copies of Harry Potter that I own.
(3) Clean: From past posts you know that I am all over this one. This weekend we did the cars. My car was full of books for which the classes have ended, Don had I believe 25 water bottles. For earth day Don gave up disposable water bottles so hopefully that won’t happen again.
(4) Walk: My neighborhood is great for walking, and now that the weather has gotten so good it is a pleasure. Ok not a pleasure but it does feel good to go outside. I may be the slowest walker of all times, baby feels like he might fall out so sometimes I have to stop and wait for him to reposition. Don usually comes with me on these walks so it is a good time to talk without distraction. My friend N is just about as pregnant as me she walks like 5 miles a day… she inspires me, I am no where near as good as her, but I’m trying.
(5) Go out on dates: This one is by far my favorite. It usually involves food and it always involves leaving the house for a specific purpose. Don is really good about this one. We have gone out to bookstores, restaurants, shopping, outdoor concerts etc. If I am feeling anxious we even do this on weekdays when Don gets back from work. Who knows when we will have the luxury of just picking up and going after the baby arrives.
NOTE TO BLOG READERS: If anyone has changed address or if you don’t think I have your address please send it to me. I am updating my address book and would like to add anyone who would like a birth announcement; I want to make sure everyone who would like one gets one!
Another doctor’s appointment has come and gone. They now start off appointments by asking me if I feel as though I am in labor. They ask so calmly as though I might have simply forgotten to mention it to them. Apparently I haven’t started dilation but I am 50% effaced… it means I have started the process but it could still be awhile (hours, days or weeks) before Ryan decides to make an appearance. Two weeks until the due date, however there is only like a 5% chance that babies are actually born on their due dates so that number isn’t very helpful either. I have a law school exam today (my last in-class anything for the semester) so Don predicted that I would go into labor tonight, I guess we will just have to wait and see.
Additional stuff I forgot to mention like 4 hours ago when I initially posted this:
(1) The doctor said the baby was about 7 pounds (yay Don's genetics)
(2) I have started getting the reaction of "wow how pregnant are you..?" from many people.. I told a waitress I was due in 2 weeks.. she looked at me and said "there is no way you are making it two weeks, there is no more room" Apparently I look as pregnant as I feel.
I tried to take a picture of the belly but I think I need Dons help, my pictures were too close and the belly just looked scary.. like it might come through the camera and eat someone...
I’ve heard that everyone has a junk drawer… that place where all the “I might use this someday, but until then I have no idea what to do with it” things go. Well I have a secret, Don and I have or rather had a junk room. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t the WHOLE room, it was half of a room the other half is a guest bed. So our lucky guests got to see the piles of stuff we had as they were shoved in the remaining half. It all started with the wedding. When you throw a wedding you end up with a lot of candle holders, flower vases, candles and what can only be called as miscellaneous junk. Now this stuff is perfectly good… and should you ever throw another wedding or equally elaborate party you will be all set. It is close enough to being maybe useful that you can’t convince yourself to throw it out or give it away.
Well today I had had enough. I couldn’t take it; my nesting bug was at its wits end. So with Dons help we cleaned out the room… that’s right I went through and even let go of some of the stuff. We didn’t just move the stuff into another storage place either, we went through it. At the end I was having trouble letting the last few things go. We had these glass canister things that look very cool but are 100% not practical in my life. I told Don I wanted to keep them, he told me to get rid of them. We went back and forth and he said if I couldn’t come up with a use then I had to get rid of them. I gave in. Two minutes later I found something of his; it had been sitting in this room because there was no use for it. I told him he had to get rid of it if he couldn’t come up with a use. He gave in; it made it all worth giving up the glass canisters. We are officially out of items on the house to-do list now (at least things that don’t involve power tools)... at least until I find something else.
Our Maternity Pictures are up... http://www.pictage.com/457317... I am warning you I wasn't shy on the day these were taken. Enjoy!
We have officially made it to FULL TERM (37 weeks). This means that if he is born now he is as good as at the due date, he probably won’t need to stay at the hospital after I check out. He is developed enough to breathe and keep his temperature steady. Yay, I have been waiting for today for a long time!
We went to another doctor’s appointment today (yes we now go once a week... it seems like a lot to us also). Every week they say Ryan is a little bit on the small side for his gestations but close enough to normal to not be concerned or change the due date. This week we go in, everything is normal except that he is now measuring longer then what he should be. Apparently this was a big week for him, they measured twice to confirm. Well Ryan here is what I have to say about that… soak it in, this is the one time in your life you will be above average height (at least if you are anything like Don and I). I told Don that we had a bean pole on our hands and now he has taken to calling the baby “Beanie Baby” poor kid... the nicknames start early.
In this last month my dreams have gotten very strange. Many of them last what seems like half an hour, with like 5 of them in a night. Some of them are totally meaningless; literally it is like me watching people randomly go about their everyday life. Even the meaningless ones are extremely vivid and it's like they are actually happening. No one is safe from being in these dreams; people I haven’t talked to in years are especially prone to having something to do with them. All you undercover blog readers have probably made at least a cameo at some point.
A few weeks ago we started posting pictures of the nursery… well we are finally finished. It was delayed mostly because the bookshelf we ordered came with no hardware (their fault not ours) and we had to wait a long time for that to come in. I think I got all the angles in these pictures… it's hard to take a picture of a room from inside the room.
I found some good parenting tips on the web, and I wanted to share them with the rest of you....
At this point in the pregnancy Ryan could come at any time. They estimate that around 36 weeks babies are about 6 pounds (can be as little as 5 to bigger then 7). He should be growing at a rate of about an ounce a day (they said my weight gain should start to taper off… ha ha ha, I won’t hold my breath). The good news is that if he is born now he will likely be strong enough to come home with me when I checkout of the hospital.
What this all means to me is that I have developed this constant feeling that the other shoe is about to fall, that any Braxton Hicks contraction or other pain could be the beginning. There is a large window at this point of when he could come… all the way from now to the second half of May. I have become acutely aware of every changing feeling (and when you are pregnant things change from minute to minute), being a first time mom I have no idea what I should be feeling, and doctors say everything is normal (apparently there is a great variance of “normal”).
I should stay calm and stop thinking about it too much. I talked to a midwife and she gave me good advice: make future plans. So instead of sitting around waiting, we should make plans so that if he doesn’t come tomorrow I will be able to do whatever fun thing we have planned. Don and I are going to a Durham Bulls baseball game Saturday, last weekend we went on a fancy date… at this point the timing is all up to Ryan and all Don and I can do is keep on trucking.
So I've mentioned before that I have two friends (that I met in Prenatal Yoga) who are also pregnant with boys due around the same time as me. Well one of them had her baby on Friday! She was due 2 days after me. This is really going to happen isn't it? I mean her baby came out and is perfect, do I really have something like that inside me too?
Congrats Amy and baby Tyler! I saw her the weekend before and she had no signs, which means a week from now I could have a little baby! Holy Cow...
Ok I need to take a moment to take that in...
Hey All, We have set up a free online pool about when the baby will be born, everyone should take a guess (you can also guess weight, length, and time the baby will be born).
http://www.expectnet.com/games/RMason
Ryan is due next month!!! To put that in perspective, I have been pregnant for a little over 240 days, and we have 38 days until our due date.
