36 weeks

Well, my 36 week appt was a bit shocking. I was dreading my first internal exam to check the baby's progress. I didn't expect that the appt would resemble a scene from ER. The appt began just like all of my other routine appts. However, when the dr placed the doppler on my belly I knew that things didn't sound right. She immediately snatched the doppler off of my belly and asked me if I realized that I was having contractions. Well, I had no clue. Then we moved on to the thrills of the internal exam. Let me say it was excruciating. The dr couldn't find the baby's head, and freaked out thinking the baby is no longer "head down." She rushed out of the room and hurried back in with the u/s machine. Well, the baby is head down, but just not dropped as much as she could be. So, she resumed with the internal exam. Well, I'm already 2 cm dilated and 80% effaced. My dr expects me to deliver the baby in two weeks or less. (I will have to give this post some more attention another time, since blogger is not allowing me to use the enter key or the tab key to begin new paragraphs, and this is already becoming a major mess.)

Thirty Four Weeks

Wow! I haven't posted in over a month. Partially because I've been busy progressing from one small panic attack to the next. However, another reason I've avoided this blog is due to being inundated by people's comments advertising completely unrelated products/sites. It's amazing that some of those people have no clue. I'll admit I'm even a bit surprised to see that anyone actually reads my meaningless drivel.

A lot has happened in the past month. Dh and I have gotten a lot done in the nursery. However, I'm learning that it's never going to be "finished." And apparently my life is never going to be complete without feeling the need to have a panic attack about something.

I'm doing fine. In fact, so far I'm probably experiencing the most routine pregnancy in history, which seems amazing considering the route I traveled to get to this point. I've finally been bumped up to appointments every two weeks, but they are still just regular appointments: pee in a cup, weight, blood pressure, fundus measurements, and doppler readings. I'm grateful to get to experience a bit of life as a "normal" patient. Surely things will become a bit more exciting very soon.

Anastasia has become a lot more active in the past month. I was first able to visibly see her kick on Christmas Eve, and she hasn't stopped since. In fact, the doctor was able to see her kicking at my last appointment, and she was so active that the doctor couldn't get an accurate measurement of her heartrate with the doppler. However, I was assured the her heart was beating at an appropriate rate from what the doctor could hear.

I guess the one thing that has upset me is that I've really started to pack on the pounds the last couple of months. In December I gained 8 pounds, and I didn't even think I ate excessively. This wouldn't be such a huge deal if it weren't for the fact that my sister only gained 25 pounds during her pregnancy and my Mom never gained more than 18. Both of them seem to be enjoying the fact that my formerly size 2 self has seemed to have less self-control. I'm trying to remind myself that there are no prizes for the pregnant woman who gains the least weight and I need to ignore them. There have been days my mother has made me feel like a fat cow.

So, what's been going on with me other than mundane doctor appointments? I'm now thinking of my infertility years as my own personal "Category 5 Storm." And, I'm starting to realize that infertility isn't the only Category 5 personal storm out there. One of my best friend's is separated from her husband and their baby is only a year old; she's one of the people who unintentionally caused some very teary days for me amidst my IF crisis. And sadly a teacher at my school just returned from maternity leave after having her second child, but she's not wearing her wedding ring. This is the very teacher who upset me the most last year asking me about adoption and declaring herself infertile because she had been ttc for 7 months. I don't know all of the details, but I have gathered she and her husband are no longer together from tidbits of conversation. My heart aches for both of these women. And I realize there is no telling how many people around me have been going through their own Category 5 storms the last five years while I've been too self-absorbed to notice.

I had my first baby shower this past weekend. My MIL's friends were the hostesses, and the event was truly lovely. She and her friends are the tightest group of women that I know; I'd love to have such a close group of buddies myself. At first I was distraught, because my baby shower was a double baby shower, and I didn't know the other pregnant lady who was being honored at the event. Yet, I did know the other honoree had not had difficulty getting pregnant. I felt slighted to have traveled through great depths of darkness and despair only to have to share my first baby shower. However, I couldn't tell my MIL that, so I just sucked it up. Amazingly, there were no awkward questions, and I hardly knew there was a shower going on at the same time for someone else I hardly knew. I even managed to pull off a conversation with her about baby items and pregnancy before and after the event without appearing to be a flucked up infertile.

Like I said though, the panic attacks don't end. Since I had a three day weekend due to MLK, I thought it would be a good time to finally wash the pink toile crib set and put it on the beautiful Munire crib dh and I chose. The anticipation of the moment when I got to see how it looked has been enormous. Anyway, the result was an emotional breakdown. Despite all of my planning, the nursery is not perfect. The chunky pieces of wood on Anastasia's convertible crib don't allow quite enough room for the bumper pad in the front of the crib, and it's slightly squished. And the ties on the bumper pad aren't nearly long enough to be tied around the corner pieces, so right now it looks like an amateur put the bumper pad on the bed. Oh yeah, right, I am an amateur. It's not like I've ever put on a crib set before. Anyway, I'm formulating a plan to fix it that involves getting more of the cribset fabric and having a few longer ties, maybe even sashes, made for it. Those rinky dink ties will not stand in the way of my vision of the perfect nursery.

I've also learned that it seems like no matter how hard I work in the nursery, the work is never done. I spent hours putting away shower gifts, and the nursery is still a mess. Dh assembled Anastasia's travel system, bouncer seat, and activity center, but for now they are in the middle of the nursery out of the way behind a closed door so the cat won't get any ideas about napping in them. And I have two more baby showers in the next week: one for work and one with close friends. I have my work cut out for me.

Finally, we've been going to childbirth classes each week, and quite frankly I don't feel like I'm learning a lot from them. In fact, my husband and I dread them because it seems we're in a class with rednecks of historical proportions. Seriously, there is some stiff competition in the class, but the biggest redneck of all is amazingly from Chicago. And, he had the nerve to ask if our local hospital has birthing rooms. It was all I could do not to tell him that all of the locals actually give birth in a barn down the road before coming to the hospital.

Things are coming together though. It's hard to believe that the odds of me bringing home a child by the end of February are well in my favor. In the meantime, I'm just afraid I'll outgrow all of my maternity clothes before my due date.