May 31

So here I am once again in the middle of the night…awake. 

But this time it’s more nerves and excitement that is keeping me awake.  Just over 24 hours until our baby arrives! SQUEEE!!!!

I was just lying in bed going over and over all the details of what I need to do, what is going to happen on Thursday, the surgery, who I need to phone, how Avery will be, what kind of hospital room will we get, things I don’t want to forget to pack to take with me to the hospital, how will my recovery be, will my nurses be good, will my parents like the name we picked. My mind is racing. I’ve been trying to tell myself to just leave it alone and sleep as this is my second last night to do so uninterrupted for a while, but it’s just not happening. So I gave up and here I am. 

It’s 3:30am and the sky is just starting to get light. The birds are chirping like crazy outside.  The baby is fairly calm with just an occasional wiggle to remind me that he’s there.  A bus just drove by outside.  It’s actually a very peaceful time of day.   I’m really tired.  I hope I’ll be able to settle back in to sleep soon.  I’ll have to make the most of my nap tomorrow.  I mean….today.

May 27

1.  Those sensor operated paper towel dispensers in bathrooms.  There is always someone standing in front of them waving their hands like crazy and the paper towel refuses to come out. Why are they so crappy?  And they always give you the dumbest amount of paper towel so it takes like 5 hours to dry your hands.

2.  Stupid drivers who can’t merge properly.  Drive faster people!  You cannot merge into traffic that is driving 90+kmh when you drive 50 and then slow down to 40 before you merge.  ARGH!  I think pregnancy is aggravating my road rage. :)

3. The fact that none of my shirts are long enough to cover my belly. 

Sorry. My blog has become a forum for whining lately.  Oh well. It’s my blog.  I can whine if I want. But honestly, today was a good day and I’m feeling ok.  I saw my obstetrician for the last time before the c-section and I’m not too achy and it’s not hot out which is really nice for me.  The hubby is out tonight so I am going to dowload a girly movie and enjoy it all by myself!

May 24

It’s official. I’m HUGE.  I took Avery to the mall this morning to play at their indoor playground.  They have those typical food-court-type-tables where the chairs are attached to the tables. I can just BARELY fit in there and when I’m sitting down with my butt all the way back, my stomach pushes against the table.  Yikes. And when I thought about telling the internet this, I didn’t even cringe. My dignity suffered the death blow LONG AGO. Still, it’s good thing we just have one more week.  That’s depressing.

May 24
     

I have noticed that the blossoming trees are doing their thing in full force now. This is evidenced by my husband’s inability to stop sneezing.  I really like those trees that are just dripping with pink blossoms so you can’t even see the branches.  But somehow they remind me of the movie What Dreams May Come which was a good movie but bizarre and surreal and a bit creepy.  Is the fact that I’m letting entertainment taint my perception of nature not a little sick?

My son is attempting to weigh more than his father by the time he is born.  Latest ultrasound weight estimate: 10 pounds.  Time until scheduled c-section at that time: two weeks.  Average weight gain of baby per week: One pound. You do the math! 

Avery loves to watch this Barney video called “The Land of Make Believe”. The plot centers around Barney and a group of kids helping the princess of the LOMB return to her world after she is magically transported to our world.  At the end of the journey they are held up by a guard on the edge of the kingdom who requires the princess to prove her identity by saying the “magic words”.  After she has been missing for a total of about 40 minutes.  The guard says “Only a REAL princess would know the magic words.”  This bugs me because the guard obviously knows the magic words.  The princess turns to Barney and immediately asks him what the magic words are and he, of course, breaks into a song about saying “please” and “thank you”.  So what does this prove?  That Barney is a princess, I suppose.  Or the guard is a princess.

    I had my preadmission appointment yesterday where they go through the procedures for the c-section with me and check me out, etc.  I think it’s made me more nervous.  I only remember Avery’s birth in a hazy fog and now that they went through all the gory details with me I’m feeling kind of jittery about it.  I know I’ll be nervous on June 1 because this time I won’t be exhausted and high on all kinds of pain medication before they slice me open.  But I’m really ready to get this baby out so that will be motivation enough!

      May 13

      Well, we are less than 3 weeks from June 1 which is the date of our scheduled c-section. I have realized that I am now at the point where I just have nothing left to give to other people. I sincerely want to be involved in people’s lives and to care for them and do things for and with them…but I am empty.

      I think maybe this is a natural process at the end of the pregnancy where one’s focus turns inward. I want to have everything ready for the baby and prepare my home and bond with my family but my energy runs out after that. I am frustrated with myself because I don’t want to become a hermit or become totally self-sbsorbed. So, my friends, if I seem a little distant, that’s why. I hope you will bear with me and keep talking to me!

      May 11

      There is literally no time of the day or night right now that I don’t have to pee.

      May 6

      I’ve only been awake for an hour and I’ve already had cravings for the following items:

      *Strawberry Poptarts

      *breakfast sausages

      *eggs

      *spinach salad

      *chocolate cake

      Wow… I’m going nuts! This may be the most boring pregnant post yet.

      May 3

      I have had an ultrasound every two weeks for the past month. At each appointment they have estimated the weight of the baby. He has been gaining approximately a pound a week for the past month and is already a whopping 7 pounds 14 ounces! In case you are wondering…this is HUGE for this stage. If he kept gaining weight at this rate and I didn’t deliver til 40 weeks (which is the average length of a pregnancy) he would gain 5 MORE POUNDS!!!

      Thank goodness I will be delivering early, and hopefully the weight gain will slow down a bit as we near the end of the pregnancy. But this is going to be one ENORMOUS baby. Even if the ultrasound estimate was off by a pound, which is possible, he would still be big. I feel much more justified in feeling uncomfortable now! No wonder I can’t sleep. Thank God for c-sections is all I can say. My doctor is very supportive of my decision to have a planned section. We’re looking at about June 1 for the birthday. I am so looking forward to the end!

      May 3

      Somewhere in my body I must have some wires crossed or my brain forgot to send the memo to my body that night time is for sleeping. Because here I am playing endless, mindless games of solitaire at 5:30am. I have a pounding headache, I have my second run at a sinus infection, and I am catching the cold that my daughter has been fighting for the last week. I suppose this last one is inevitable. Even a reasonably good immune system (which I do not have) would fail after a week of being coughed on, sneezed on, and spending most of it’s time in close proximity to the various bodily fluids of a sick toddler. I can hardly blame my sub-par immune system for not withstanding the assault.

      But I am just so tired of being sick. I am tired of being tired. I am tired of being pregnant and dealing with all the uncomfortable side effects of pregnancy. I hesitate to whine because my mind always goes to the place where I think “What if something happened and you lost the baby? Just imagine how guilty you’d feel for complaining!” This is true. But at this moment, after dealing with my daughter who is currently waking up half a dozen times a night for no other reason than to interrrupt my sleep, after getting up to pee another half dozen times a night, and after being awake as the sun comes up for the third time in the past week, I am kind of worn thin. Ha! Thin. That’s another word I don’t want to talk about at this point in my life.

      On top of all this, my insulin pump is broken. A button got jammed for no apparent reason. The good news is that it will be replaced under warranty and will hopefully arrive today by Purolator. The bad news is, I am back to good old fashioned injections with syringes. I feel like I’m returning to the dark ages of insulin therapy. It sucks.

      Four more weeks to go. Just four. Sigh…

      May 1

      Yesterday I was reminded again of something I really appreciate about my husband and I felt compelled to write about it.

      He had decided he was going to clean out the inside of the car after dinner and he took Avery outside with him to “help”. She is in the glory of full-blown toddlerhood, wanting to do things for herself and to try everything that we do. While this is a great stage and an important one, I find it really frustrating at times because I can be such a perfectionist and I know that I can do it faster and better on my own and I often don’t have the patience to do a task slower so that my little girl can “help” me.

      This is to my shame because when I have taken time to let her try the things that I do I am rewarded with seeing her develop a sense of self and feeling proud of her ability to do grown-up things. My husband, on the other hand, often goes out of his way to let Avery “help” him and yesterday was no exception. He seems unperturbed by the fact that she often makes more work for him and just delights in letting her try things, even when they are clearly not activities she will be able to master yet. But the result of this patience is that Avery knows that her daddy believes in her and she is learning the importance of working hard and taking pride in a job well done. Most importantly, he is spending time with her and that is doing more for her and speaking more into her little life than all the things we could buy her in this world.

      I frequently think to myself “Gee, I’m married to a really great guy” and just as often I think “I should tell him how much I appreciated….” and of course, I rarely follow through. These things are easy to forget about and there are so many other important (and totally insignificant but time consuming) things happening in life. But really, sometimes you just need to brag a little. So here it is: My husband is a spectacular father. I know he’ll do just as well with number two, arriving in just four weeks!