Bliss of Life

If the cradle is my belly, then it is definitely dropping down. The past few days, I’ve had all sorts of baby dropping sensations. Sometimes it feels like my bladder is trying to exit through my yoni (yogi word for vagina) and other times it feels like gravity is pulling on my belly button from inside my body. Today, my baby seemed to be wiggling and squirming her way toward the exit aisle. About every other time I stood up I had one or both of these dropping sensations. What followed was the feeling that my legs were made of lead and entirely too heavy to be lifted for walking purposes, not that I let my leaden legs keep me down. Nope.

Today, I broke from my week of hibernation to run some necessary errands. The dogs desperately needed their monthly flea treatment, so I stopped by the veterinarian’s office, my baby-blanket-in-the-making needed a couple more skeins of yarn (just in case I actually finish it before the baby is born), and I had to stop by my midwife’s office to take the Strep B Test.

I’m crossing my fingers about the Strep B Test. So far, I haven’t passed any of the standard pregnancy required tests with flying colors, not my gestational diabetes test and not even the initial pregnancy test, which showed that my progesterone level was on the low side and led to me taking progesterone through week 12 of my pregnancy. So I’ll just have to wait and see about this one.

By the way, you have to go to my husband’s site and check out his latest post.

I stayed in again today, partly because I am just so darn tired and partly because I look a little bit like a raccoon.  The rash around my eyes makes a little red mask of irritated and swollen skin.  Sunglasses can hide it, but I always feel like I’m trying to be too Hollywood when I wear sunglasses indoors.

On a more cheerful note, the online orders I made last week are trickling in, and we now have both our birthing tub and birthing tub liner.  We also have the lead free hose and the faucet attachment to hook it up to the bathroom sink.  Do I dare say that we may actually have everything we need for the birth?  No, I do not dare say.  I still have another 13 days until my due date.  13 DAYS!  Holy cow!  Where did the time go?

My body has a different idea about what I need to be doing right now. Stubborn as I am, it made me listen. Today, I am resting. The rashes I mentioned in an earlier post are having a heyday with my body. It’s been so long since I had these rashes, I had almost forgotten all my old skin soothing remedies. This time, I think the trigger is a parasite in the form of an amoeba. I went to the doctor today, and there is pretty much nothing I can do about it right now, while I am pregnant. After the Little Mung Bean is born, I’ll need to figure out a game plan that will involve pumping and freezing milk, because more than likely, I won’t be able to nurse while taking the medication.

Right now, I’m just glad that I got all of my errands taken care of last week, and even though the house isn’t as organized as I would like it to be and the baby’s room isn’t fixed up the way I want it to be, I now feel like I am ready to have this baby. Apparently, just being 9 1/2 months pregnant wasn’t enough to get me to this point.

Last night, I fell asleep at 8:30 this morning and woke up at 11:00. You’d think that would require me to take a nap or just to just lay low all day. Nah. I cleaned and reorganized the bathroom and kitchen cabinets. To be fair, the bathroom cabinets are tiny and I didn’t make it through all the kitchen cabinets, just the ones that are nearly impossible to reach when you are 9 1/2 months pregnant.

I keep hearing about how women get a burst of energy right before they go into labor. This has me wondering if I’m going to go into labor tomorrow. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing, but I would appreciate at least 8 full hours of sleep before hand.

(Austin Town Lake Park)

That’s right. We just hung out. There was no talk of homework, or birthing plans or labor. We started out our day with the usual Saturday shenanigans — sleeping in, eating a late breakfast, lounging on the sofa and doing some serious belly worship, but then, it got even better. We picked up some tasty food and had a little picnic at Town Lake Park with Lisa, Ben’s sister. Afterwards, Ben and I headed over to the Austin Baby Store and Whole Foods where I picked up the remaining items on my baby/postpartum supply list. I know this doesn’t sound like goofin’ around, but how I enjoy crossing items off of a list.

Tonight, Ben made a yummy dinner of vegetarian fajitas. We watched some serious geek TV in the form of Battlestar Galactica, and we stayed up late to do my belly cast, which I procrastinated doing all week. Making the belly cast was messy, partly because we had no idea what we were doing. I had to stand for longer than my feet cared for, but now I have this ENORMOUS souvenir of my pregnancy that can also double as a chip and dip tray.

Once again, it’s late and I need to do my nightly mediation.

One thing I’ve noticed about first time moms is that we are usually prone to denial in some shape or form. I know one woman who burst into tears when she was five months pregnant with her first child, all because someone gave her baby wipes. She now has three children, so it’s safe to say that she moved beyond her diaper-wipe denial. I hadn’t run into anything that I considered to be denial-like behavior, until yesterday. I barely have a little over two weeks until my due date, and what do I do? Do I decide to take a spa day, have a pedicure or just find a good novel to settle into for the remainder of my pregnancy? Nope. I marched myself right over to the knitting store and picked out some beautiful organic cotton yarn to make another baby blanket. Never mind that the last blanket I made took me two months to finish, give or take a week. My little voice of denial told me that I can finish it in two weeks, no problem. I wasn’t working on the last blanket everyday, and what the hey, it’s a simple square pattern. I should be able to finish after the baby is born, if it’s not done in time. Yeah, right!

Truth is, I’m doing a lot knitting after dark. I haven’t been able to get to sleep before 2:00 am in few weeks, and I’ve given up trying. It just puts me in a sour mood. Now, when 10:00 comes around, I pull out my knitting. It passes the time and I get to feel productive, even if the television is on. There is something meditative about the repetitive movement of knitting. If my legs are antsy from restless leg syndrome, it goes away while I’m knitting. I can sit and connect with my breath or I can loose myself in the movement of my hands and let my mind completely empty. And right now, my body is up to it’s old tricks again. I have a fresh batch of rashes sprouting from all the old places — neck, arms, chest, and eyes. Knitting provides my mind with a distraction which keeps me from fixating on the itchies.

Gifts from friends and family are still trickling in, and so are the boxes in which they were packaged. After trying to ignore a growing collection of cardboard boxes in the living room for the past week, I took some time to break them apart. The City of Austin has persnickety recycling requirements, so it took a little while to get them down to size. But when I considering how long it took the trees to grow that they were made from, it seem like it was the least I could do.

The wise words of Kermit the Frog come to mind. It’s not easy being green.

• what it feels like to have a person being made inside of me.
• that I often wake up in the morning to the Little Mung Bean hiccuping away.
• that my baby gets the hiccups when I drink something cold, or sweet, or nothing at all.
• that if my baby gets the hiccups in the morning, she will usually have them two more times that day, just like me.
• that when I bend over my belly the baby will reach a hand down and poke towards my right hip bone, as if to say, give me some room in here.
• that the baby loves to hear her daddy’s voice
• that when I sing Twameva Mata the baby usually responds by stretching or reaching out a hand or foot.
• that if I get cranky and toss and turn because I can’t sleep, the baby does too.
• how at 8 months pregnant I could feel my baby’s foot stretch out and trace the outside of my ribcage, and how it usually makes me giggle out loud because it tickles.
• how often I think about what that foot looks like, and what it will feel like when it is on the outside.
• that from the time I was about 4 months pregnant, I have not felt alone.
• that when I explained to the baby that she needed to be head down and have her back against my left side so that it would be easier for her to come out when it was time, I felt her move in that slow rolling-ocean way that babies do when they make big movements and change their positions inside the womb.
• that when we were in Houston, and I was afraid the baby was going to come early because I was having pre-term labor contractions, I told the baby that it wasn’t time yet. I explained why it would be better for her to wait. Ben suggested that she could hook a foot onto a rib or push herself back up–whatever she needed to do to stay in for a few more weeks. When I went to see the midwife a couple days later, she said that the baby’s position was higher than it had been before, and that I didn’t need to worry about delivering early.
• that I have never loved my body more than I do now.
• that at 9 months pregnant I often catch men, even gay ones, looking at my body with an expression of awe and wonder.
• how walking with my big ol’ pregnant belly will often make women smile and beam at me.
• that being pregnant really brought home the yogic lesson that my body is different everyday and to honor where it is that day.
• that it is possible to feel healthier and stronger at 9 months pregnant than at 10 weeks.
• that the full moon will bring on pre-term labor contractions and braxton-hicks.
• that fear is a choice and so is judgment.
• how touched I was when I first noticed my husband’s protective paternal nature reveal itself during my pregnancy.
• that spicy food causes heart burn.
• that gas pains can knock the wind out of you when you’re pregnant.
• that this baby did not come from me, but it will come through me.

Something shifted this morning after one of my trips to bathroom. I was crawling back into bed when I felt the unmistakable pulling pressure in my abdomen that usually coincides with that time of the month. It went on for a few minutes and for some reason, I thought it was significant enough to tell Ben about it. Lucky for him he sleeps like a stone, which was fine. It wasn’t any big deal, just a little sign that my body is getting ready to let this baby come through me and into the world.

And speaking of the world, I’m still getting my world ready for the Little Mung Bean. The last two mornings my routine has been to wake up, eat and hit the computer to do some last minute online shopping. It’s weird buying so much stuff, I’m not used to it. But now is the time to buy those last minute items. So yesterday, I found a great deal on nursing bras. They are pretty basic and sporty, which means I should be able to sleep in them too, and I treated myself to a sweet little nursing pajama set, because every woman deserves to put on something cozy after giving birth. Today, I ordered this baby wipe warmer that works on cloth wipes, this natural rubber pacifier and some nursing pads. My husband was unclear about what nursing pads were used for, so if you don’t know, I’ll keep the mystery alive.

Tomorrow, I think I’m going to order the Baby Massage Therapy DVD, which came highly recommended from my friend Elizabeth, and hopefully, The Austin Baby Store will call and say that our cloth diaper pail is in.

When you’re planning a home birth, there are certain things you need to have prepared ahead of time, like a plethora of towels and a set of sheets that can be thrown away. Since we live in tiny house, we make a habit of not acquiring too many things. If something new comes in, something old goes out. We have two shoe-box-sized closets, which means we don’t keep many things that are dispensable.

Fortunately, my husband took care of the disposable sheet need by accidentally turning a set of sage green sheets into a dull shade of tangerine in a Clorox mishap several weeks ago. As far as the towels are concerned, I wasn’t really comfortable going to a thrift store to find used towels for birthing my baby. Instead, I’m going to use our dingy, once-white towels that we’ve had for at least 7 to 10 years, which meant that I got to go towel and sheet shopping this weekend.

After stopping at two different Tuesday Mornings in our area, I found some fluffy Egyptian cotton towels that were so well priced I bought a complete set of 8. And I was able to pick up a set of super soft unbleached organic sheets at Target to replace the tangerine ones. Also, my mom bought us the last of our cloth diapers from our registry. We now have enough cloth diapers to go two days with a newborn without doing laundry. This was a HUGE relief to me. I kept imagining myself giving birth in the middle of the night and only having a handful of diapers to get us to the morning. We’ll probably buy another day’s worth once the baby is born, just to give us a little slack on our laundry schedule. But this is a good starting point.

All this gathering of supplies affects how prepared I feel. I am now at the point in my pregnancy where strangers come up to me and ask me how close I am to my due date, and if I am ready yet. That question bothers me. Am I really ready? In many ways I am ready, but now that I’m 34 years old and literally three weeks away from the due date of my first child, it’s funny how the little tangible details are keeping me from feeling ready to have a baby, like towels, sheets, diapers, and the birthing tub. Oh, yeah, I’m still waiting for the birthing tub… and I need nursing bras… and good robe and… nursing pajamas… See what I mean? I’m ready, but not quite.