Love/Hate @ 32 Weeks

32 weeks. Scary, really, that I have, at most, 10 more weeks of pregnancy to go. With all of my other babies I was already feeling done with pregnancy by now. I was eager to meet my baby, and be done with the whole pregnancy thing.

I don't feel that way this time. I wouldn't mind if I stayed pregnant another 12 weeks, or 14 weeks. I am savoring every moment of having my baby inside me, and trying to remember exactly how it feels to have a watermelon belly, because I know I won't ever do this again, so long as I live. I will never, ever, ever stare at two lines on a pregnancy test, or spend three months barfing my head off, or have a tiny bump in my lower belly, or feel those early flutters, or spend an evening with baby feet in my ribs and hiccups below my navel.



There are a few things I could do without, though. Heartburn, for one. I have the worst heartburn, and nothing helps it. Nothing I try prevents it, and I can't even reassure myself with "Maybe the baby will have hair," because my babies never have hair. They never have anything more than the tiniest peach fuzz. Even at two years old, my baby Beast has baby hair, short and wispy, with a few strawberry blonde curls in the back.



I wish I didn't have pelvic pain. It's terrible pain. It feels like my pubic bone is split in half and my legs are falling out of my hip sockets. Yolanda says this is good and normal for a multipara. She also said my abdominal muscle tone is phenomenal, especially since I'm having my fifth baby. (This is funny, because non-pregnant, I'm pretty sure I don't even have abdominal muscles.)



I hate the nosebleeds that always accompany pregnancy for me. They strike at the most inopportune times, usually when I don't have any tissue with me.



I would really like it if my cervix would cooperate. I haven't been checked, of course, but I can tell my cervix is ripening slowly, preparing for birth, and it doesn't feel good. It feels like the baby is sticking it's little finger through it, and it hurts. It's not an indicator of preterm labor for me, just my normal.



Otherwise, I love being pregnant. I love feeling all the baby's movements, and guessing about whether it will be a boy or a girl. I really like the way my belly looks - perfectly round and taut. I love the special bond the baby and I share. I don't understand women who want their pregnancies to be over as quickly as possible.

Stocking up for baby, and sleeping arrangements

I've been really stockpiling for the new baby. Just today I was able to pick up a yellow sleeper, brand new, at a sale for just seventy five cents. I also got five pairs of socks for a dollar, and two adorable little hats for a dollar. One hat is yellow and the other is deep blue and violet tie-dye.

But today I got the best deal of all - an Arm's Reach Co-sleeper, in brand new condition, for just $20. This exact same model is still in stores for $139.99 (ish) - can you believe the steal of a deal I got?

I've always wanted a co-sleeper but never bought one because my babies always sleep with me anyway. Plus, it was always a pretty steep expense for us. Our babies tend to come at the very least convenient time possible, money-wise, and I could never justify spending that amount of money on something that would be used so little.

This time, the co-sleeper is an absolute must for safety. The Babe is 11 months old, and still nursing and co-sleeping happily. He'll be 13 months when the new baby comes, big enough to smoosh the little bugger in the middle of the night, but still so much a baby himself. He is starting to sleep through the night once in awhile now, but generally he wakes up once or twice for a nurse. (I hate it, because nursing during pregnancy gives me wicked heebie jeebies. Its impossible to explain unless you've experienced it.) How can I deny one baby in order to care for another? Do you realize how much of a hassle it will be to have either of them in a separate room? The Babe will be inconsolable, I'm sure, because he is still a needy, dependent baby. And the new baby will be up thirty seven times a night to eat. If either of them is in a different room, I will be the one who gets no sleep and ends up wanting to jump out a window. (It's okay though. My new house is a one story.)

So obviously I need to make sure both babies are happy and safe, and I think the best way to do that is to keep The Babe in bed with me, and put the new baby in the co-sleeper right next to me. The Hub and I sleep in separate rooms, because he snores and I'm a bed hog. He was on third shift for the great majority of our marriage and now that he's not, we just can't get used to sleeping in the same room, let alone the same bed. Beastie sleeps in the same room as The Hub, on a pull out chair. In the new house, she'll share a room with Four, and will have her very own toddler bed. I'm even making her some Yo Gabba Gabba blankets to put on it. EJ gets to have a room of her own, because she's earned it. She's an awesome big sister and very responsible, and is desperate for some space of her own.

We do have a fourth bedroom in the new house, but it's quite a distance from the other bedrooms. This will be used for a guest room right now, and then in a few years, when my children are old enough to get themselves out of the house in case of fire, that will become a bedroom for one or two of the kids. It's a big room and could easily accommodate two.

The basement at the new house has egress windows and is framed in for three rooms. Each of the three rooms has an egress window, which means that these rooms could be finished and made into even more bedroom space. I wouldn't feel comfortable with any of my kids in the basement until they were teenagers though, for safety reasons.

I have to tell you, it is so nice to know that we can live in our new house forever. It is very difficult to have this many people in such a small space, but I do wonder if I will miss the closeness. I don't think so, because we're a very close family. I don't think our family dynamics will change just because our living situation has.

Meeting the Doula

I met my doula today. Her name is Kellie, and she is fantastic. She is very low-key and quiet, just the type of person you want with you when you're laboring. She's never had a chance to attend a homebirth, so she'll be providing my doula services for free. You can't get better than free folks, unless you can also figure out a way to get a cash rebate for something free. I haven't figured it out yet.

Today I'm 30 weeks pregnant. 30 weeks! Doesn't it seem like just yesterday I was staring at two pink lines on a pregnancy test? I can't believe thirty weeks have gone by so quickly. That means I have anywhere from 8-12 weeks left of pregnancy, but I'm going with ten and hoping I deliver around my due date.

We close on our house this coming up Thursday. That is a huge relief for me. I have been so worried about the closing date, because I need to get EJ and Four enrolled in school, and I can't enroll them without proof of residency. This means I can get them enrolled and get all the school supplies and clothes and shoes purchased and not have to worry about that on top of moving. What I should do is get a big huge plastic storage tote and put all the school stuff in that, so it doesn't get lost in the move.

I'm also geeked because it means I can really start planning the birth. It's hard to plan a birth when you don't have a place to plan it. I can get started scrubbing my new house, and picking out carpeting and paint and stuff.

So anyway, thirty weeks. They say the baby weighs about three pounds now, and will gain 1/2 pound a week from here on out. That would mean an 8 pound baby, but mine tend to be a little heavier than that. (Okay a lot heavier.)

I can't believe October is this close already...

So Pregnant it Hurts...

... And I still have 11 weeks to go.

I keep reminding myself that this is the very last time I will ever be pregnant again, so I need to cherish each moment. And I do, I really do - I feel spiritually connected to this baby, and I love feeling him or her kicking and flipping around. I feel sad when I read other women's blogs and all I see are mothers who eat nothing but junk and complain about every little twinge and refuse to open their minds to alternative ways of laboring, delivering, and mothering. I feel sad for their poor little babies, trying to grow on sub-optimum nutrition and surrounded by negativity.

Science (and common sense) tells us that our unborn children can't read our minds. But people are people, whether they're here yet or not, and if your two day old newborn can pick up on your moods, don't tell me your unborn baby can't.

So I try to take some time out of each day to spend one on one time with the baby. I talk to him or her, rub my belly, and try to send calm, peaceful, beautiful thoughts to the baby. I'm also preparing a beautiful place for the baby - in my head.

My babies always sleep with me, so I've never had a nursery or anything. Now that we're moving into a bigger house, I'll be able to make a beautiful space for the baby to spend time. I can't wait to buy and arrange crystals for the baby (especially quartz and amber) and create a calm, peaceful place. There will be a small water fountain and lots of live plants. I really can't wait to get in the house (if we ever close on it... August 20th is so far away!)

Birth Place.

We're moving. We found the perfect house and we bought it and now we're moving, and I can't wait.

There is this great room. The Hub calls it a breezeway but I call it a great room, and I love it because no matter what time of day, it's filled with natural light. It's probably my favorite room in the house. I plan to put a table in there, and all the kids' art supplies, because it has linoleum floors for easy clean up.

But before I do that, I plan to have a baby there.

As we were touring houses, I tried to imagine myself giving birth in each one. I'm glad we got the one we did, because this house, this room in particular, screamed to me. It is the perfect place to have a baby.

I love it because it's close to the bathroom, should I want to shower or bathe or sit on the toilet. And it's close to the bedroom, should I decide the bed is a more comfortable place. And it's got a sliding glass door that overlooks... nothing. Just a yard. From the street, you can't even tell this part of the house exists. So I can be naked and laboring and really connect with the primal, animal, laboring-mother part of me, without fear of neighbors hearing or cars driving by.

The linoleum on the floor is great, should I decide to get a birth pool. And not only does it have the sliding glass doors, it also has a door on the other side of the room, which I can open, leaving the screen closed, if I feel like I need fresh air. It has a completely secluded deck so if I want to go outside and labor awhile, I can do that.

We haven't closed on the house yet, and the room is filthy right now, but here it is. My perfect birth place:

And here is the view of my private little deck, from my birth room:

Just looking at these photos makes me happy. I feel like I can finally get back to the business of being pregnant, because now I know for sure where my baby will be born, and it's a good, happy place.

You're going to do WHAT!?

Have you heard about eating your placenta?

Did you just throw up a little in your mouth when you read that?

Yeah, so did I.

But check this out. It would appear that the placenta is rich in what is believed to be the perfect balance of hormones for your body, and by somehow ingesting it (and not upchucking) you can make huge strides in warding off postpartum depression. Somehow I doubt that other mammals eat their placentas simply to avoid the blues, but then again, I've never seen a mother cat sobbing in her bedroom while the kids eat dried up spaghetti-o's off the kitchen floor. I'm just sayin.'

Here's what they say are the benefits of "placentophagy:"

Your baby's placenta, contained in capsule form, is believed to:

• contain your own natural hormones
• be perfectly made for you
• balance your system
• replenish depleted iron
• give you more energy
• lessen bleeding postnatally
• been shown to increase milk production
• help you have a happier postpartum period
• hasten return of uterus to pre-pregnancy state
• be helpful during menopause

What's all this "in capsule form" business?

See, instead of trying to eat a 2 pound chunk of delicious flesh (barf,) you have someone who knows what the hell they're doing take your placenta and dry it. Then they grind it all up and put it into little pills, and you take them just like any other pill. And really, it's not so gross. Premarin, for example, comes from the urine of pregnant mares. (Pregnant Mare Urine.) It might be synthetic these days, but honestly, I would rather take pills containing my baby's placenta than ones containing horse piss. For real. (Although, even if it wasn't horse piss, I wouldn't take Premarin. It's hormone replacement therapy, which I'll never do.)

So this time around, I'm going to save one small piece of the baby's placenta, and a piece of the cord, for spiritual purposes. (No, no one's going to eat it.) The rest of the placenta, I'll give to a lady I know named Amy, who will dry it up and grind it down and put it in little pills. Bless her heart - I don't know how she can deal with all the disgusting-ness that is afterbirth. But you probably get immune to it eventually. One would think.

And then, I'm going to take pills containing my own body parts. Or would it be considered the baby's body part? I don't know, because it's weird and gross and not fun to think about. But regardless of all that, it'll help the depression, and if you've ever had screamingly bad postpartum depression, you know that you'll do just about anything to feel better. Up to and including eating a placenta.

Stress.

I hate stress. It stresses me out to be stressed out. Just the thought of being stressed, makes me more stressed. These days, I'm ready to pack my bags and move away - just because of the stress.

Reader's Digest version - we can still stay in our house. But we may be forced into a house we don't want because a bid has been placed on our behalf and The Hub won't tell the lender to retract the bid. (We plan to have a certain family member purchase a house and then buy it from them on land contract.) So I am very afraid to be stuck in that house.

I keep trying to think positive. I recently read The Secret (better late than never I guess) and I'm trying to visualize and meditate on what needs to happen. Here are my current affirmations:

The bid will be rejected. The bid will be rejected. It will. It must be rejected. It must.

The house we want (insert visualization of the house I want) will come to us. We will have the house our family needs. We will have a safe, affordable family home. We will. We must.

So if you all feel like doing some affirmations on our behalf, go ahead and use those. Bid - reject. Good house - get.

Baby news: I saw the midwife this week. She yelled at me because I haven't been eating or drinking enough. Apparently I have to drink 64 ounces of fluids a day, and this is a problem for me because I never feel thirsty. I mean, I do sometimes, and I then I drink, but probably only 44 ounces a day. I have a 16 ounce water bottle that I keep filling up, but damn. I don't think even a fish could drink that much. Also she said my liver function was bad again, probably because of how concentrated my urine is. No, it's probably because I eat so much fast food and am taking mounds and mounds of vitamins. I'm telling you, vitamins will kill us all yet. They will find out that lettuce is fattening, lard makes great arterial lube, and vitamins are deadly. Mark my words.

Otherwise, the baby is growing well. I'm measuring 25/26 weeks, which is just about right. I've gained a cumulative total of 19 pounds. And at some point, a large squishy baby will be coming out of a very sensitive area. That scares me. But I have affirmations for that too, which you know, I think I'm going to actually make a separate post for those. But not now. Later.