Kicking into high gear!

I'm definitely not the only person of my acquaintance who is pregnant right now. In fact, it seems as if half the people I know are pregnant (or, if male, married to someone who is pregnant). In what, for lack of better term, I'll call the current baby batch, I'm one of the first people due...but I'm not the first. The first was my good buddy Myra, who was due June 18th.

Notice I said "was"? Yeah, because her little boy decided to make his debut juuust a little early. To the tune of May 20th early. (That was a day shy of 36 weeks, if you don't want to do the math yourself). Mom and baby are doing great, by all accounts. Unfortunately she lives 2 hours away and I may not get to see them in person for awhile, but he's a handsome little devil from the pictures I've seen.

The news that Myra was in labor had two effects on me. First and foremost, of course, was a bit of anxiety-tinged excitement. I was thrilled for them that their lil guy was coming, but until I heard everything had gone well and everyone was healthy, I worried a bit. (Full disclosure: I'm a worrier by nature, so he could have come exactly on his due date and I still would have been a bit anxious.)

The second effect was that I had one of those mind-bending, gut-churning epiphanies that completely throws you off your equilibrium. It all of a sudden dawned on me that in spite of the fact that Locke's due date isn't even on the current calendar page (yet), he could come any day now.

Maybe that's one of those things that I knew in the back of my mind without really ever fully acknowledging it. But it hit me like a ton of bricks on the 20th, and all of a sudden I realized just how much stuff I still have to do to be ready for him.

All of a sudden my nesting instinct kicked into overdrive. In the last 3 days, I did tons of Locke prep-work. I did all the prewashing my cloth diapers required (my washing machine ran constantly for 8+ solid hours...6 prewashes per color family seemed excessive, but I followed the directions, dang it). I hung the decorations on the walls of his nursery. I installed the pad on the changing table (you have to screw those things down. Who knew?). I washed the most recent round of baby clothes that I've acquired (Locke won't have to wear the same thing twice until he's six months, at least). I caught up on all the thank you notes that I've needed to write to all the generous souls who have given us gifts for our baby. I went shopping for all the things I could think of that I have to have in my house before Locke arrives (newborn and size 1 disposable diapers [because I reserve the right not to start on my clothies until I feel like doing laundry again, dangit], wipes, formula in case my milk takes awhile to come in, nursing pads in case my milk comes in too fast, etc etc). But the biggest and most time-consuming project of all? I started and finished his crocheted baby blanket. Hey, that may not look like a lot of work to you, but I basically did nothing else for two of those three days. I was feeling especially guilty about it, because I've made blankets for two other expectant mamas since I've been gestating...I would have felt like a lousy mommy if I'd finished blankets for other kids without making one for my own. I'm pretty proud of how Locke's blanket came out, especially since I'm still a crochet beginner. :) (In the picture there, the blanket is draped over Locke's crib. Can you see the balloons in the crib itself? We're trying to train the cats not to jump in there. Since we put the balloons in, Arya has tried it...twice. She doesn't like the sound of them popping underneath her, though, so I hope she gives up on the crib soon...)

I gave myself today off, but Monday, I'm back at it. The next task is cleaning out and reorganizing the kitchen, top to bottom. This probably doesn't seem like a necessary baby prep project, but in a way, it is. If I'm not the one doing the cooking for the first few weeks after Locke is here (and I won't be), I need to make my kitchen as user-friendly for other people as possible. Not just for Matthew (whose culinary prowess is limited to peanut butter and jelly or anything that can be stuck into a toaster), but for a dear friend of ours who is planning to come stay with us for a little while after the baby comes, and has generously offered to keep me fed for those first few days. :)

So, after all that, do I feel more ready now? You know, I do...a little. I may be weird here, and I may change my mind about this in a couple of weeks, but I'd like for my little guy to give me another 5 weeks-ish before he makes his debut. But if he gets antsy and decides to jump ship early? Well, bring it on. ;)

6 weeks to go!

Well, I'm getting down to the homestretch. I'm 34 weeks today! 6 more to go. I had an appointment with the obsetrician today, and everything looked and sounded good. Really the only part of these things I look forward to anymore is the listening to the baby's heartbeat bit...that never gets old. :) What does eventually wear upon a gal is the hour and a half of waiting room time for less than 5 minutes of doctor time. Granted, I'm terribly grateful I only need that 5 minutes...if Locke were having any problems they'd make more time for me. But still! I'm 8 months pregnant and therefore allowed to be slightly whiny, right? So that hour and a half? It suuuuucks. ;)

I'm starting to get cautiously optimistic about the cats and the baby, thanks to all of the time I've spent watching my sister's six month old at my house. Sansa (my cat) is doing a lot better than Arya (Matthew's cat), but I think they have both made some progress. Sansa no longer hisses at the baby, and doesn't even leave the room when the baby is in it, even if the baby is crying or being noisy. She'll even approach me while I'm holding the baby now, and she is developing an inconvenient habit of wanting me to pet her right when I've started giving the baby a bottle (and therefore both hands are occupied, as Lexi can't hold the bottle on her own yet).

Arya still hisses at the baby whenever she gets close to her, and she still climbs into my bed and sulks the whole time the baby is in the house, so I guess I can't claim that she's made all that much progress. But the other day she did something that was kind of interesting. I'd just gotten Lexi to sleep for a nap, and had left her in the swing (turning the swing off after she drifted off, of course). I guess at that point Arya decided it was safe to come out, because she walked into my living room, and walked right up to the baby. She started sniffing the back of her head from the back side of the swing. Now, as you can imagine, Aunt Kim was poised to tackle the kitty. I didn't believe Arya would actually hurt the baby, but I wasn't taking any chances, particularly with a baby who is not my own and a baby-hating, front-claw-possessing cat who has shown nothing but defensive/antisocial behaviors towards all babies it's ever encountered. But all she did after getting a good sniff in was hiss twice, very quietly, and strut into the kitchen, where I gave her a treat. This may not sound like progress to you, but it seemed like it to me. She approached the baby on her own. Gotta celebrate the little victories, right?

Oh, the basic baby care class that I mentioned in my last post? Well, basic was the right word, for sure. We're talking the don't shake the baby type of advice...the sort of stuff that just about anybody who has ever spent any time with an infant already knows. I was hoping for pictures or a video...like, here is what a normally healing belly button looks like, and here's what it looks like when it's gotten infected and you need to call your pediatrician. That would have been useful, right? Instead we got a stack of handouts and a long, boring lecture that put Matthew to sleep. Three times, because I was ruthless and evil and kept waking him up. Ah, well. Next up is the labor & delivery class, in two weeks. I have a feeling pictures and video are inevitable in that one. ;) We'll see how it goes...

So I had a sobering realization today. Both my mother and Matthew's mother went into labor about a month early on their firstborn children. Now, there's probably nothing genetic in this...hell, my sister was induced just past 41 weeks, and her husband was a preemie, but it's enough to make me worry a little bit.

Oh, and yesterday was our anniversary! We've been married now for 8 years. Kinda sucked that we didn't get to pop open the bottle of wine we'd been saving for it, but we had diet ginger ale in champagne flutes, which was fun in a dorky sentimental kinda way. I guess we'll just have to save that wine for Locke's homecoming, eh? Six weeks....yikes!

The nursery and sundry

Locke finally has a nursery! I'm pretty excited about how it came together. There are still some things I need to do to finish it off (there are no decorations on the walls, for example), and a few more things I need to buy (pad for the changing table, clothes hamper, etc), but for the most part, it's done. I could bring him home today and make due without any other changes, I think. Especially since he'll actually be sleeping in the bassinet next to my bed, and will be unlikely to actually spend much time in here for, oh, the first four months or so. ;)

I'm 32 weeks now. Just when I had gotten used to the idea of being 7 months along, all of a sudden I'm 8! Yeah, yeah, lunar months don't exactly equal calendar months, but it's going to take me long enough to get used to the 8 months idea that I may as well get started now. I have it on good authority that the obsetrician group that I'm seeing pushes pretty hard for induction if I've reached/passed my due date, so it's pretty much a guarantee that Locke will be here sometime during the next 8 weeks. Another 8 to try and get my head around.

Daunted? Errr....yes. Yes, I am.

The hospital where I'm delivering offers free classes on various topics for us deer-in-the-headlights type moms (oh, and I guess those who just want to be informed, too ;)), and I had the first of those this week. The topic: breastfeeding. I tried to go into this with an open mind. Like every pregnant woman I know, I've received all kinds of conflicting advice and anecdotes on the subject, ranging from breastfeeding being an onerous, painful, difficult pain in the patoot to its being pretty much the closest a woman can aspire to achieving earthly goddess-hood, and just about every shade in between. It seems like the scales tip slightly towards the people who hated it, though, but I can't say whether that's a function of numbers, or just of the fact that people who are miserable about stuff tend to be more vocal about it than people who are happy. (Work in retail for as long as I did, and you accept this basic tenet of life.)

So, while I was trying to be open-minded, I was aware that there is a part of me that was flatly unconvinced that I can manage it at all.

After enduring two hours of slides and a no-holds-barred video (I lost track of the nipple count in the first 2 minutes), I can admit to having felt a bit shellshocked when I left the class. It took a day or two afterwards (and re-reading the handouts) for everything to sink in. Even knowing as little as I did about breastfeeding when I went in, I was surprised by how much I didn't know. The evils of pacifiers? The best shape/design of a nipple on a bottle if I plan to pump and let daddy have a turn feeding? How much alcohol I can drink before the dreaded pump-and-dump? When to start an exclusively breastfed baby on food other than breastmilk? Even how to properly hold the baby while breastfeeding? All news to me. But I feel more informed, and as GI Joe taught us long ago, knowing is half the battle. ;) Now, of course the woman who taught the class fell into the earth goddess school of thought on breastfeeding, so I'm aware that she trumpeted all the positives while minimizing any potential negatives, but the end result is that I'm feeling a bit more optimistic about my chances of success.

Though there was one glaring problem with the class, in my humble opinion. When we took a break, they had snacks available...but all they gave us to drink was orange juice. A room full of 50 or so third trimester preggos, all of whom are probably fighting acid reflux to some extent, and at 8:00 at night the only option they gave us to wash down those stale graham crackers was citrus??? Just wondering who thought that one through. ;)

The next class is next week, and this time the husband is getting dragged along. Topic: basic baby care. I almost didn't sign up for that one, but after the breastfeeding class, I'm glad I did. You never know what you'll learn, right?