Exploiting Her Baby

I've been reading Teresa Strasser's blog, Exploiting My Baby, for the past few months. She and I were due at the same time, and I loved reading her dry, funny, neurotic take on the pregnancy experience. As my time drew near, I occasionally wondered how she was feeling about hers.

We must have given birth within a day or two of each other because she just made a funny and touching blog post about her experience and I wish I'd written it. This was my favorite part because I understand exactly what she's trying to say:

There aren’t that many main courses on the menu in this life, when it comes to the big experiences.

So, despite wanting to be terminally unique, at some point you order
the chicken or the steak. Maybe the surf and turf. Because there are
only so many dinners available at the cosmic table. The real comfort,
and the big bombshell, isn’t how I felt too good to have what the rest
of you were having, but not good enough. And here I am with my baby,
like a billion and a half mothers before me, and we all want to hear
that our children are chunky monkeys, and that we are not,
and that’s where I find magic where I least expected it, right in the
hackiness. There aren’t many offerings for dessert, either, and that’s
the sweetest part, that we’re all telling the same stories and scooping
our cold spoon into one infinite pint.

Snapshots of one day in L.A.

It's 6pm. Scott and I are jumpy and nervous. We can't think of anything in particular we'd like to go do.

We decide to get manicures. But when we get there, they're too busy to take us. We decide to go to Solley's next door for deli instead. My belly gets to the door about five minutes before the rest of me.

"I don't want to answer another pregnancy question, ever," I tell Scott, just before the waitress comes up and asks me when I'm due. "Tonight," I tell her, and for the rest of the meal I am peppered with questions from a woman who, I'm fairly sure, is twice as excited about my baby as I've ever been.

When we leave, she asks me what kind of dessert I like and sends me off with a black and white cookie, on the house.

We try for manicures again and again are told that it will be a wait. I tell Scott it's okay, I don't need nice nails for the birth, but I do feel bad that he didn't get his done. "I didn't need it. I just thought it would calm you down," he replies.

I'm not allowed to call the hospital to confirm my induction until 9pm. To pass the time, I watch America's Next Top Model. I am absolutely positive that when I do call, I will be told that an army of laboring women have just taken up all the beds and I'll have to wait to come in until next week -- so why not get absorbed in a little prime time television?

At exactly 8:50, I lose my patience and call. I am told to come in at exactly 10pm.

As we fly around the house, making last minute phone calls and double-checking hospital bags, I try to catch the final segment to find out who is no longer in the running towards becoming America's Next Top Model. It turns out to be Lulu, which is good because she was really mean to Bianca and also had a nasty boob tattoo.

Our ride to the hospital is surreal. Sunset Boulevard is hopping and so is La Cienega. I start thinking back to only a year or two ago, when I was going out three or four nights a week. We shake our heads at two drunk guys wearing black shirts, trying to jaywalk across the street. So irresponsible!

I expect to wait a long time once we arrive at the hospital. But instead, everything rushes way too quickly. We're crammed into the tiniest room possible and Scott has to fit his body into a chair too narrow for him.

A doctor -- not my doctor, but one in her practice -- comes to check me. They're supposed to put in a Foley catheter to help me dilate, to get me ready for the Pitocin. "She doesn't need the Foley," he pronounces. "She's already 2-3 centimeters dilated. Let's go right to the Pit." My first thought is, "this should shorten labor by a few hours. Good."

I listen to a couple of Adam Carolla podcasts, and watch some bad late night television. Every time I have to pee, which seems like every twenty minutes, Scott has to unhook the fetal monitor and help me across the room with all my IV tubes and bags hanging everywhere. This alone is embarrassing enough that I kind of just want to get the epidural already.

I get the epidural around 4:30am. I'm only 4 cm at this point, but I'm also a giant wuss. I explain this to the anesthesiologist. He's young and handsome and his name is Dr. Yang. He understands. Scott and I try to think of friends we have who we could set up with Dr. Yang because this guy is a serious catch.

I'm still able to feel contractions, and it makes me nervous. The question I want someone to answer is, Is this normal? No, I'm not in too much pain. I'm just concerned. Is it normal that I can still feel contractions, that they're still uncomfortable? Does that mean as they get worse, my pain will get worse -- that the epidural hasn't taken effect correctly? This is what I try to ask, but what happens is that Dr. Yang comes back, thinks I'm saying I need more painkillers, and ups my medication. Suddenly I am completely, utterly deadened. This annoys me because I totally COULD have handled the pain and now I'm that girl who demanded the super-powered ultra-extreme epidural and yes I'm a wuss, but not THAT much of a wuss.

Our nurse is gruff and Canadian. This makes no sense to me. I thought all Canadians were really nice?

I'm being wheeled into the delivery room because the doctor is on her way. It's already early morning, 7am. How did that happen?

I am fully dilated -- after three hours? Wow. Apparently it's unusual for things to move this quickly. We don't know what to do. The doctor leaves to deliver another baby, and we realize for the first time that this baby might come a whole lot quicker than we'd anticipated. None of our family is scheduled to arrive until after lunch. Scott starts making phone calls. We're trying to stay calm. No wait -- I'm not trying. I AM calm. Very calm. Hell, I can't feel a thing!

Strike that. I'm really cold. Shivering a lot. When is the doctor coming back?

She's back! And gruff Canadian nurse has been replaced by awesome Jamaican nurse. She and my doctor ask me to push. I do, as hard as I can, and they look concerned. They need to wait for the baby to move down, and for my epidural to wear off enough for me to aid in pushing. They comically lift my legs, which fall over of their own accord. "She's really numb," Jamaican nurse says, amused. DAMN IT, DR. YANG.

The doctor is gone, will be back in two hours, and awesome Jamaican nurse is leaning over me. She counsels me to push on my own with each contraction, to help move the baby down while we wait for the doctor. It's like she's letting me in on some guilty little nurse secret.

Time passes. It's really cold.

I joke about the little hoity toity touches I can see all around us that remind me Cedars is the favorite birthing hospital of really, really rich people everywhere. I order Scott to take pictures of the sink in the corner, which isn't standard issue stainless steel, but rather one of those aesthetically pleasing stone bowls that stand separate from the faucet. I also really want him to take a picture of the popsicle they have given me to suck on, which is actually an imported Italian strawberry sorbetto. It strikes me as hilarious that the ingredients listed on the side of the wrapped are in Italian.

I ask Scott to turn on the television. Even though there's no sound, it's a distraction. We find a station that seems to be nothing but beautiful nature images: flowers floating on a lake, an oak tree at the top of a misty hill. "How nice," I think. "The hospital has a labor channel."

After two hours, the doctor comes back and checks me again. I'm still not ready. She tells me she's going to the office and will come back at eleven. That gives me another two hours.

I fret, thinking about everyone arriving at the hospital already expecting the baby to have arrived. What if they get impatient sitting in the waiting room together? What if they leave? Will they be mad that we called them all at 7am to tell them the baby was on her way when she really wasn't?

I'm noticing a definite change. I can feel more. Things are finally happening.

At 11am exactly, I have a total classic birthing moment: I turn to the nurse and say, "I think I need to push." And suddenly the doctor is back in the room and we are getting ready to push. "I think this baby will come in the next hour," the nurse informs me. I want to cheer!

Being on my back isn't working.

I'm turned over on my side.

I'm turned over on my back. "Did you remember to take a picture of of the Italian popsicle?" I ask Scott as one point. He tells me he forgot, which annoys me. My job is to push a child out of my womb. His is to take a picture of a popsicle. I'm temporarily very disappointed in my husband.

We use something called a squat bar. We take it away.

Scott and the nurse wait in silence, watching the contraction monitor.

I realize I can see the monitor in a reflection from the mirror across the room and watch as well.

The doctor returns. I can tell from her concern that it's been too long. Progress is not being made.

I can feel the tension in the room. Above me, the doctor, the nurse and my husband all stare intently at the monitor, waiting for the next contraction, then the one after that.

I study the images on the television. An image of a maple leaf is replaced by a bible verse and suddenly I am struck by the realization that for the last two hours, I have not been watching the labor channel -- I'm watching the God channel. And I don't even care.

Clear snapshots fade into a blur here as the last hour ticks down. Scary words and phrases are flung about. Words like vacuum, c-section, episiotomy, you need to try harder. It's this last one that really gets me. Nobody gets to tell me I didn't try hard enough. I try harder.

The ceiling of the room is white. If I weren't an athiest, I'd be praying. But instead, I'm just talking to myself. Try harder. Try harder. Try harder.

"It's her stupid shoulders," I say, frustrated after another failed push. My doctor gets angry. "Don't talk like that. Not in my delivery room," she snaps at me. I'm not too distracted to feel guilty. I just called my daughter's shoulders stupid. I'm going to be a bad mother!

What's going on? When did all these people come in?

The baby is here! She's here! Hi, baby! I'm sorry I called your shoulders stupid. They're beautiful. And...ugh, kind of messy.

She cries right away.

I have never, ever seen Scott's eyes so wide in my life.

It's 2pm and I have a baby. Her name is Sadie.

I hold her on my chest. For a long time. This sounded like a good idea when they told us about it on the hospital tour, but now everyone's gone and I'm kind of really wishing they would just wheel me to recovery already. The room is really, really, really cold.

Scott walks in the door with a chicken salad sandwich from Starbucks and a giant Coke. He offers me water, but the Coke is what I want. It is the best thing I have ever tasted.

The sandwich has cranberries in it. Scott wonders why Starbucks needs to ruin a perfectly good chicken salad sandwich with cranberries.

Now I'm being wheeled down a long, long hallway towards my room. In this snapshot, I'm not sure if the baby is in my arms or if someone is carrying her next to me. All I know is that a group of people is standing just beyond a set of automatic double doors. They aren't my people -- they're waiting for someone else. Another mom is being wheeled in behind me. But I get there first, and the people greet me as if all along, it's me they have been waiting for. They cheer for me. They wear huge smiles and congratulate me and tell me my daughter is beautiful.

In the recovery room, my family files in. Everyone got there in time! Their faces are filled with happiness. I have been holding it together pretty well this entire time, but when my dad walks in I can barely look at him because I know if I do I will burst into tears.

It's funny, the lasting impressions you leave with after an experience like this. They're small and personal, rather than large and monumental. A nurse with a Jamaican accent, the God Channel, a chicken salad sandwich with cranberries, and a little girl who was almost named for a great American scientist, but wound up with a name cobbled together from the letters of the names of her grandparents -- made up of parts of us all.

I'm Already Ready, Already

For the last few mornings I've woken up and realized that, to my supreme irritation, I feel great.

"Great" being a relative term, of course. The recent heat wave has exacerbated my carpal tunnel, which manifests itself as soreness in the middle fingers of both hands and makes me feel like a crotchety old woman paying her dues after a lifetime of flipping pesky little kids the bird. Walking further than half a block makes my back feel like it's going to give out, and the simple act of sitting down to pee in the middle of the night is more of an ordeal than ever because when I try to stand up again, my knees respond thusly: "AW HELL NO."

Despite all of this, my overall feeling this week has been one of good health. I'm nowhere near the crying, hysterical mess I was two weeks ago when, without warning, I collapsed in Scott's arms and moaned, "Everything hurts so much. I can't DO this anymore." Is this the last-minute burst of energy they always tell you about, where the day before you go into labor you get the sudden, uncontrollable urge to buff the house clean with a nailbrush? If so, it's gone on an awful long time.

I'm not the only impatient one, either. My mother and sister have taken to answering the phone with a breathless, "Hello? Hello?" Every time I call, expecting to hear that I'm on my way to the hospital. I know there are people who have been crossing their fingers that nature will take its own course before the doctors help prod me along starting tomorrow night. Looks like we're all out of luck in that regard.

The ironic thing about feeling so capable right now is that I literally have NOTHING LEFT TO DO. I actually planned too well. As a result, my hospital bag is packed, I've pre-registered at the hospital, the laundry has been done, the house is clean, the dogs are taken care of, there are groceries in the fridge for when we get home, and I've completed all my freelance work.

"Maybe I should buy some new underwear," I muse to myself as I play my 500th game of fetch with Pepper and idly surf Go Fug Yourself. "Like, some ugly granny ones I can throw away in a couple months. That's probably a smart idea." Then I turn over the idea of negotiating Target in my head, ultimately reject it, and decide that the granny panties I currently own will probably do just fine.

The induction process is an odd one in part because it's potentially so long. Unlike labor, where they urge you to hold off checking in for as long as possible so that you can hang out at your own house through the first phase, with an induction they are monitoring you for the entire process, and the process can run 24 hours or longer. When I check into the hospital tomorrow night, they will be inserting a balloon in order to begin the dilation process, and throughout the night I will simply be hanging out, waiting for it to do its job well enough to move to the second, more serious phase of labor, which is the point where I can demand painkillers without feeling like a total wuss.

This gives us an entire night to basically sit around and wait. Once Scott determined that I was not going to allow him to just go home and sleep until things started getting interesting, we came up with a gameplan of ways to pass the time. We're bringing cards for games of gin rummy, we've loaded up our iPods with podcasts, and we're downloading some TV shows to watch on his laptop. Knowing me, I'll probably wind up surfing the internet, posting to Facebook and various forums from my hospital bed, because that's how much of an internet addict I am.

"OMG nurse just said 4cm dilated! Water just broke all over the bed! They just gave me opiates! Sooooo excited, y'all!"

If you get a cracked out email from me at 2am Thursday morning, reporting facts about my uterus that you never, ever wanted or needed to know, this is why.

So that's it, people. If you don't hear from me again, you know where I'll be.

 

Natural Birth Advocates In My Life, Read This Editorial

I don't expect it to change your mindset.

I just expect it to help you understand my own.

Rational Moms

39 Week Appointment and Some Big News

Yesterday we went back to the doctor's office for my 39 week appointment.

This one was bound to be exciting for a couple reasons. For one, ever since I measured 1cm dilated at my last appointment, I've been trying to encourage the process through various means, and was excited to see if any of it had paid off.

Also I was scheduled for an ultrasound, and have been looking forward to seeing how she was growing. I've had two ultrasounds in the past two months -- in the first one the baby measured unusually large (76th percentile) and in the second, she was right on track (54th percentile), which just goes to show you how imperfect these things are. So I was less concerned with her potential size and more interested to see how she's positioned and to make sure everything looks good otherwise.

I should have been concerned about the size. She's back to being big. Quite big, as in she's measuring well over 8 lbs. "She has a very round belly," the tech told me cheerfully.

But it wasn't the belly that concerned my doctor. Rather, she explained to me that the baby's shoulders are measuring broad, and that's the kind of thing that makes doctors nervous because it increases the risk of getting a shoulder stuck in the birth canal.

"Ouch," was my reaction.

Next came the cervical check. I've had my hopes up this past week that I could do some basic tricks to help speed up this process and help with dilation. So I've been walking every day, sitting on an exercise ball, eating spicy food at night, and, well, you know. The other thing you're supposed to do, that your partner has to help you with, that I can't mention because my dad reads this blog.

None of it worked. I'm fully effaced but I'm still only 1cm dilated, the same as I was at 38 weeks.

So my doctor sat us down for a "little discussion." She told us flat out she didn't intend to let the baby go too far overdue because of her size and the breadth of her shoulders. She asked us how we felt about induction.

As it happens, I've been thinking quite a bit about induction over the past couple of days, although I've never considered it as a likelihood before. My thought process went a bit like this:

"Scott's leaving town the middle of next month. I really, really, really hope I don't go a few weeks overdue, because it would suck to come home with a newborn and then say goodbye to my husband for a week. I wonder what my doctor's feelings on scheduled inductions are."

Then I went and did a whole bunch of research on the subject, most of which agrees that unless there's a sound medical reason for it, most doctors don't like to schedule inductions before the 41st week or so. I'm not against elective induction, but at the same time, the thought of asking my doctor to do it just because I'm physically uncomfortable all the time and afraid of being alone in a house with a one week old newborn also didn't sit right with me.

So I'd pretty much already made the decision not to press the issue and to let nature take its course, but it was still in my head. The fact that the doctor is the one who brought up induction as a possibility was a relief. My immediate answer to her was, "I would be fine with it." Scott agreed.

After that? Everything was a bit of a blur. My doctor suggested we come in for it first thing next week. Scott wigged out a little bit and suggested the end of the week instead. We compromised on checking into the hospital late Wednesday night, which means that in all likelihood, I will be induced on my original due date, Sept. 24th.

So there you have it! All of a sudden, the game has changed -- I know for a fact that even if I don't go into labor naturally within the next few days, I will still be greeting my daughter in less than a week.

In future entries, I'll write a little bit about what the induction process involves, because I find it very interesting. In the meantime, I feel like a little kid 5 days before Christmas -- who has just been told that you never know, Christmas could always come early.

Getting Organ-ized

In the past few days, I've devoted more thought to the dispersal of several of my internal body parts than any normal person should. Other than an organ donor, I mean. And even if you do choose to become an organ donor, you generally think of your body as one whole unit, as in "I am donating my organs...to somebody, maybe," rather than, "I think I'll donate my left eyeball to some guy in Dubuke who poked his out with a fork, and my liver could definitely do some good for someone who's had a few too many Jager shots at the old Chimneysweep."

Today I worked out the details of three body parts which will soon become separate from the rest of my self:

1. We registered at a cord blood bank, which stores and freezes blood from a baby's umbilical cord. There are public donation banks and private banks, and we're paying the fees to have the blood preserved privately -- that is, stored in giant freezers. It's not wacky like cryogenics, I swear. There are already proven uses for cord blood, in that it can be used to harvest healthy stem cells which could then be used to help family members with various medical conditions. The technology is still being developed, but as Scott pointed out when I hedged on the cost of collection and storage, "It's worth it to gamble on science." That was the right thing to say.

So there you go. I get a collection kit in the mail, which I then bring with me when I check into the hospital, and instead of being chucked in the garbage, my baby's umbilical cord may one day be capable of doing great things.

2. Let me just ask you a question. If you found yourself in possession of a spare placenta, what would you do with it? Would you take it home and toss it around like Laura and Mary Ingalls did with a pig bladder in "Little House on The Prairie"? Would you use it to play practical jokes on people? Would you save it for Halloween and then donate it to a local haunted house to be used as realistic guts?

Or, would you find someone willing to freeze-dry the thing and turn it into pills, which you could then take on a daily basis for aid in post-partum depression?

If you chose the fourth option, then you're me. This unusual detour into crunch-itude was brought to me by my sister-in-law, and my doctor thinks it might not be that bad an idea. Whether it does anything is completely unproven -- there's no scientific research either way. It's one of those anecdotal things, where women have been doing it for centuries and so some of them swear by it and blah, blah, blah, they say that about homeopathy too. In this case, there's actually some kind of legitimate theory behind the idea, which is that you're replenishing iron and hormones that have been depleted from your body through the process of delivering. At the very worst, it will do nothing at all and I'll have an interesting story to tell my grandkids.  

The only obstacle is for me to get past the idea of what I'll be putting in my mouth every day, and I figure if I've been able to swallow giant horse-pill-sized fish oil supplements for the past nine months, this should be a cakewalk.

3. Oh, I almost forgot the third item. The third item is a baby. Shut up, it's a body part! She's currently a part of my body, is she not? The third item is a baby, which we will be bringing home with us, very soon.

One Billion Trillion Days

I was going to post something today about patience and how I have been searching deep within myself to make it through these final days of pregnancy with fortitude and grace. I was feeling very magnanimous when I woke up this morning (after a rough, rough night) and was kind of floating around with a Mona Lisa smile on my face.

"Oh, another Braxton Hicks contraction! What a positive sign. I will take this discomfort, internalize it and use it to build my strength for when the real thing happens in a few days. What a blessing this all is!"

But then I went and read on the internet that the average pregnancy for a first-time mother is actually 41 weeks and 1 day. That's average. As in, two and a half weeks from now. As in, half of them actually go longer than that.

Eff magnanimity. I'm going to go sulk now.

I Snore Now

Snoring has always been the one thing I could confidently give Scott a hard time about. Well, that and his habit of absentmindedly rubbing his hands together while ordering food at a restaurant, as if he's a cartoon villain sharing the details of his latest diabolical plot. But that's just really cute. The snoring, not so much.

He's always been a snorer, but we've figured out a way to maintain a good sense of humor about it. I compromise by wearing earplugs on the rare nights that it really bothers me. He compromises by not getting grumpy when I wake him up to turn him over by leaning into his ear and whisper-yelling, "Honey. You're SNORING."

But neither of us really knows how to deal with this new symptom of my pregnancy: I now snore. A lot. Every night.

It's not like cute, petite girl-snoring, either. It's like that choking, rat-tat-tat machine-gun type snoring where you're struggling to pull air in and you wake yourself up from a combination of suffocation and sheer noise. As of last week, I discovered that the only safe position was to sleep on my left side -- that way I didn't snore. And it's easier than you'd imagine to sleep in one position all night, because turning over is such a huge pain-in-the-ass procedure these days that I'm not likely to change positions accidentally in the middle of the night.

But last night was the first night that, no matter what position I shifted into, the snoring would not go away. Every time I was about to slide into sleep, I'd feel my own breath catch in my throat and hear a giant, loud HUUUUUUUNK sound and then Scott would get up and stomp his way into the bathroom, which in husband language means "You are really, really irritating me right now but I am too polite to say so."

Now, after so many years teasing my husband about his own breathing issues, I finally know what he's been going through. Sleep apnea both sucks and blows.

Checkup: 38 Weeks

Exciting news! Scott and I went in for my 38 week checkup today, and things are progressing very nicely.

Shortly after warning us that first-time moms often progress slowly and that I shouldn't be disappointed if there hasn't been much change, my doctor checked me out and reported that I am currently 1 cm dilated and 80% effaced (that's the shortening of the cervix, for all you laymen out there.) The baby's head is also at a +1 station, meaning she's dropped low and is ready to go.

I have a baby's head lodged in my pelvis. It is attached to arms, a torso and legs. She has a heartbeat I can feel, a diaphragm that gives her hiccups after I've eaten a meal, and a thumb she sometimes likes to suck, making her body undulate softly. They all make up a tiny person who will very soon come out of me. This still blows my mind when I think about it.

The checkup doesn't mean anything as far as knowing when labor will begin, but it's definitely a positive sign. And now, my friends, the final countdown begins. Next week I'll get one last ultrasound to make sure everything looks okay, but it appears the baby is already eager to reassure us that she's just as ready to get going as we are to get her there.

An Actual Phone Call that Took Place Today

*Ring ring*

ME: Hello?

NURSE PRACTITIONER: Hi, Amanda? This is the nurse practitioner from your doctor's office. You left a message for me?

ME: Oh! Yes.

NP: Is everything okay?

ME: I think so. Well -- here's the thing. I'm 38 weeks pregnant. And I receive these weekly emailed updates on what I should expect during my pregnancy? From a website I signed up for?

NP: Uh huh.

ME: And -- well, I'm sure it's nothing. But in this week's update, it mentioned I should be conscious of any vision changes, like if you start seeing flashing lights or floaters? And the thing is, two days ago, I noticed that sometimes I see little flashing lights, if I turn my head really fast?

NP: Okay...

ME: And um...the site said it could be a sign of pre-eclampsia. And that I should call you. Just to be safe.

NP: Have you experienced any dizziness?

ME: No.

NP: (tiny, barely audible sigh) Well...you haven't had any other symptoms, have you? Swelling? Rapid weight gain?

ME: Just...normal amounts, I guess.

NP: Have you had issues with high blood pressure?

ME: No, as of last week everything was normal. (beat) I mean, I know it was nothing. I just thought...because it said I should call my doctor and check, just to make sure.

NP: (gently) It's something new, every day, isn't it? The good news is you won't have much longer to wait.

ME: Can't be soon enough! Ha ha!

NP: (dead silence)

ME: Well, okay then! I feel better! Thanks!

NP: Uh-huh.

*click*

This conversation brought to you by my extreme paranoia.

Drop It Like It's Hot

So, this happened!

After so much waiting, it's a relief to finally get an obvious, irrefutable sign that this crazy journey is almost at an end.

I realize now that the dropping ("lightening," if you prefer, although I have no idea what part of me has gotten any lighter) has actually been taking place over the past week, maybe longer than that. Walking is tougher, I get up now every hour at night, and by mid-day I've developed a pronounced waddle -- usually accompanied by some muttering and groaning under my breath. Guess all that bouncing on the exercise ball didn't hurt, either.

It's a good thing, too. I was desperately in need of a sign. I'm 16 days out from my due date, and up until this past weekend, there's been no indication that this child will ever, ever come out of me. No Braxton Hicks, no identifiable false contractions, nothing. I really was convinced that I might be the first woman in history to be pregnant forever. Yeah, I'm aware every woman thinks this. But I was going to be the first one who was RIGHT.

In three days I have my 38 week doctor's appointment, where they will check me for cervical dilation for the first time. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that things are getting started.

Nursery Photos

Nursery

Click on the photo above to access a bunch of nursery photos. The room will never, ever be this clean again, which is why I try to go in there once every day to appreciate it.

Surfing Ventura

You know it's hot and I'm pregnant when something like this happens and my first thought is not, "Oh, those poor businesses," but rather, "You know, if we went out and bought a couple of inner tubes, we could TOTALLY float in that."

Water main break

Ouch

Last night the baby was sitting in such a position that she had some sort of appendage -- a knee, a fist, a foot, I couldn't tell -- poking outwards, stuck between her body and the uterine wall. Every time she moved, she'd jab me in the same spot on the left side of my stomach. Hard.

I usually don't mind when she does this, but it was the same damn spot, every time, and after a few hours it really hurt. At one point Scott came home to see how I was and when he kissed me hello I responded, "Hey baby, how was your massage -- OH OWWWWW."

I went through a couple of tricks to try to move her, and when none of them worked I decided to take a stab at bouncing up and down on the giant blue exercise ball we bought a few weeks back for laboring purposes.

I wound up spending a good while on the ball, which I found conducive to rooting for the Dodgers while watching the game. Yelling "COME ON, ETHIER, WE NEED A CLUTCH HIT!" feels much more effective when you're bouncing enthusiastically up and down on a rubber sphere, gesturing wildly at the screen.

So did it work? Well...I'm not sure. She stopped jabbing me, I think because the motion of the bouncing eventually put her to sleep, so it worked in that regard. But today, everything feels different. My pelvis is KILLING ME. Like, every time I get up I groan in pain, killing me.

I figure this could be great news, or bad news. Great news if, as some of the birthing books say, all that bouncing on the exercise ball has helped the baby drop. This means that she's begun to move into position, her head settling downward toward the birth canal. It means increased pressure and discomfort, but it also means the body is preparing for labor, which, yay!

Or, option #2, what I've essentially done is spend two hours banging my child's head repeatedly into my pelvic bone for no reason, bruising us both. This would also explain the pain. It would also explain why she seemed to be hellbent on getting revenge on me last night, around 2:30 am, by SHOVING HER FOOT UNDERNEATH MY RIBCAGE and wiggling it around for approximately the next two hours. Physically it seems suspect that she would be able to do this if she has dropped, unless she's figured out a way to stretch out two feet in either direction inside me. Which I wouldn't put past her, come to think of it. The ultrasound technician has told me twice now that she has crazy long legs.

So...last night. An important first step toward labor, or a needlessly self-inflicted wound? Only time will tell.

The Waiting Game

Now that I'm in week 37 of this pregnancy, labor could theoretically happen any time between now and 4-5 weeks from now.

Around this time, the women on my baby internet boards go a little insane. I'm a member of what's probably the largest baby-centric website out there. It also caters to the lowest common denominator of pregnant woman -- it's like the AOL of baby boards. Okay, that sounded meaner than I meant it to, but it's also kind of true. These women are on the younger side, with a lot of military wives and pregnant teenagers. They're not especially well-read, as a general rule. They tend towards groupthink and are prone to panic. This last one especially.

The result is that you've got this restless melting pot of bored, hormonal, excitable pregnant women desperate for an excuse to stop concentrating on their physical and emotional discomfort. So when a meme sweeps through the board, everyone suddenly takes it extremely seriously and literally dozens upon dozens of threads are started to discuss it.

Right now, it's castor oil. Apparently, if you take a lot of it, you can possibly induce labor early if one type of abdominal cramp (the usual kind) triggers a different kind (baby-producing contractions.)  The board is passionately split on whether taking castor oil to induce early labor is a terrible idea that will potentially harm your child, or God's gift to uncomfortable pregnant women. It's not something I'd ever try, but it's also the most extreme of a long, loooooooong list of ways women have come up with to induce labor early.

Seems like everyone has their fail-safe suggestion for getting that baby out weeks before your body's prepared to do the deed on its own. Here are merely a few of the more popular ones:

- Evening primrose oil suppositories
- Spicy food
- Walking miles every day
- Sex every night
- Nipple stimulation for five minutes at fifteen minute intervals for three hours every day
- Eggplant parmesan
- This or that restaurant's "special salad" (every city has one)
- Bouncing on an exercise ball
- Mass quantities of pineapple

Listen...here's how I feel about all of this. I'm in pain. I'm uncomfortable. I don't sleep much. Our little girl is probably topping 7 lbs at this point, according to the latest ultrasounds, and I don't relish the idea of another month of grow-time.

But I don't want this baby to come out earlier than it needs to! I mean don't get me wrong -- if my body decides that 38 weeks is all the time it needs to bake her and so delivers her two weeks ahead of schedule, NOBODY will be happier about that than I will. But in the meantime, I feel like there's something distinctly weird about trying to coax her out by tricking my body into thinking it's done gestating before it really is.

I read these women's stories on the internet board, now that it's September and dozens of women on the September birth board are delivering every day. And while most of them are healthy deliveries, I also notice a trend: the babies who are born a few weeks early reflect the risks that come with early delivery. They spend a night, or several, in the NICU instead of in the postpartum room with their parents. They don't get skin-on-skin time with their moms right away but are whisked away to be hooked up to IVs and monitors. Mostly they're fine after the first day or two and are sent home perfectly healthy -- but for those first few hours, it's much more touch-and-go. It just goes to show that even three weeks can make a difference in the overall health of the baby. Even ONE week can make a difference. And the thought of delivering my daughter, then watching her be taken away from me before I've had a chance to hold and cuddle and feed her, hurts too much to think about.

So all right then, baby. You win. Take all the time you like -- at least, up until your due date. If you haven't appeared by then, it's open season on your tiny little butt.

CastorOil

My Hobby

At my 36 week appointment, I came in with a laundry list of issues for my OB.

I was concerned about the possibility that my amniotic fluid might be low. I wasn't getting enough sleep and wondered what could be done about it. When did they start regular cervical checks? Was I still measuring large? Did the heartbeat sound okay? Could I have an ultrasound just in case?

My OB looked me in the eye and said, in a perfectly calm voice, "You need to get a hobby for the next four weeks."

She was completely right. Reading Babycenter.com and obsessing over what it must feel like to lose your mucous plug is not a hobby. Eating is (unfortunately) not a hobby. Lying in bed watching "Models of the Runway" and groaning is not a hobby.

Therefore, I have finally taken it upon myself to start our baby blog. From here on out I will be posting regular updates concerning pregnancy, labor, delivery and all the many, many things that will follow once we get home. Photos, videos, anecdotes -- look for them all here.

And welcome to the Slurry baby blog.