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Yeps, baby, it is time... time to come out into the world!

Yesterday I had to have a NST (Non-stress test). This is where they sit you down in a recliner or some such contraption and strap monitors to your belly to monitor any uterine activity, baby's heartbeat, and you have this push button thingy you are supposed to click every time baby moves. They are looking to see if baby's heartbeat goes up a certain amount after each movement and stays up the proper amount of time.

'Cept... *my* baby did not like these things poking her and kept moving away. So for about an hour (instead of 20 minutes), I sat there being poked, prodded, slimed with lube (it's a conductor), and praying for my baby to... simultaneously move and hold still. How is that for confusing her? My prenatal appointment, which usually only takes about a half hour, took me almost two hours! I was so exhausted, hungry, and poked out by the time I got home.

And, they didn't get good results, so I had to go for a biophysical profile today at a radiology clinic... for this they use sonogram and measure baby, make sure she is breathing ok, make sure the amniotic fluid is ok, make sure she is moving, etc. All was perfect! This baby is fine, she is just happy in there.

But... baby... come OUT!!!!

I don't want another NST on Tuesday. Then another on Thursday. This increased monitoring is making me tense and nervous, not to mention the fact that it is just not fun. So I want baby to come out! Even though I'm nervous about my birthing too. (Nerves regarding the unknown!) We have the tub set up for me to enjoy during my birthing time, I have my Hypnobabies stuff ready to go, and... well it's just about Christmas, so there is not much going on here.

But with all this thinking about getting her out, I'm realizing how much I'm going to miss her being IN THERE. I have really gotten used to rolling over in the middle of the night, feeling her kick inside me, cuddling her and going back to sleep. I love sitting here at the computer and watching my belly undulate as she shifts and squirms around inside me. I just love her being in there. I can't imagine anything more worthwhile to do with my time than grow this beautiful girl in my belly... and I'm going to miss her like crazy when she comes out... even though I *know* she is going to keep me so busy once she is out, that I hopefully won't notice so much!

Baby... come out!!!!!

Posted by JoAnna at 07:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This baby girl apparently *really* likes it in there, as thus far there is no sign of her making an appearance anytime soon. I know due dates are really "guess" dates, but my "guess" date was five days ago. It's fine with me, actually... I'm enjoying myself right now and I'll never have the luxury of being so pregnant without a child to care for, again! I am browsing and reading all kinds of vaccine information, which fascinates me. I am surfing and chatting with my friends online. I am chilling out, basically!

'Course I should be cleaning my house so my midwives aren't terrified when they arrive for my birthing time!

Posted by JoAnna at 04:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I wasn't sure if I was going to do another sonogram... I don't think I really *needed* one, per se. They recommended a follow-up after my first scan, but apparently that is just routine. Nothing was abnormal or anything.

But, for me.. I was still in a state of disbelief that there really is an actual baby-sized baby in my belly. I look down at myself and I just look and feel so BIG... it's like, where's the baby? Even with all the kicking. Even with being able to look down and see my belly jiggling from her kicking and moving inside me. Even with all that, it still wasn't real to me. In my head, baby was still a teensy little four month old fetus. Not really a BABY, yet.

Well, we decided to go, and it was today, and it was amazing. Amazing. This technology is just phenomenal. That they can just touch me, and up pops my baby's face, right there, just like that. Amazing!!!!

She is fine. She is perfect. She was moving, opening her mouth, blinking her little eyes, squirming around. I could feel the movement inside of me while watching her move on the screen. She was head down, but sort of diagonal, and had her hands both up in front of her face, like a little boxer. She smiled! Honestly she is just perfect.

Tears were leaking out my eyes while I watched the screen, I just couldn't help it. The whole thing is such an incomprehensible miracle. No matter how much I may *know* about babies (having been doing sooooo much research!), or anything else... that there is a baby inside of me is still just... astonishing!

The fact that MY body, which I've always viewed with more than a little contempt, could create something so perfect... well that is even more astonishing. For the first time in my life, I feel proud of my body. Years and years of shame over my weight are completely overwhelmed by the fact that my body is making this perfect little person, and all I have to do is allow it to do its work. Millions and billions of tiny little cells knowing just where to go, just what to do, creating the placenta, feeding the baby, helping her grow, getting my breasts ready to feed her, getting my pelvis ready to birth her, all this going on at once... and going RIGHT.

All along I feel like I've just been waiting for something to go wrong. Not that I would lose my baby!!! But that I would have all kinds of problems, as most of my friends have had. That I'd wind up with exactly what I don't want, a medicalized pregnancy leading to a birth full of interventions because my body MUST be broken.

Well, it's just... NOT. Everything is working. Everything is growing exactly as it should. I feel like I've gained a little too much weight, but my body apparently knows exactly what is needed to care for this little girl in my belly. So maybe I'll be able to quiet my worries, and trust myself and my body a little bit, for the very first time in my life. Surrender to the process. Be at peace.

I can't wait to meet my little girl!

Posted by JoAnna at 07:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Charlie and I went to our first birth class last night. We don't really *need* it, to be honest. I'm doing Hypnobabies at home, and I actually really am enjoying it. Who knew it would be so much fun?

I mostly wanted to do a class because of the social aspect of it... meeting other pregnant mamas! I chose a Birthing from Within class because I loved the book, and because it seemed very likely that I'd find other semi-crunchy mamas there to talk to.

Right before we went, I started having second thoughts about the class. The book Birthing from Within is wonderful, and I enjoyed it. I loved the discussions about our expectations, fears, worries about both birthing and becoming a mother/parent. I loved the idea of sitting around with other mamas/parents doing birth art and chatting. Fun! But the book also includes pain tolerance exercises using a piece of ice. A teeeeeensy part of the book for me, but I wondered if it would be such a teensy part of the class?

Doing pain tolerance exercises would actually be totally contrary to the whole idea of Hypnobabies, which is focusing on birth as an intense series of sensations. Intense, powerful, but not *painful.*

Well, I decided to give it a try, and now I'm kind of wishing I hadn't. Expectations, expectations!

Here's what I did NOT expect.

I did not expect to be in a tiny basement with only two other couples. Which apparently fosters intimacy and that is wonderful, but it's not very many people to meet and be social with.

I did not expect both of the two other couples to be completely uninformed about birth. I mean, I expected that they had at least read... yanno, Birthing From Within! Nope. One woman had read one book (Active Birth, so a good one!), the other had not read any. At about 30 weeks pregnant.

I know that I go overboard with things like this. (Well, really, what other thing is LIKE becoming a mother for the first time?) I've wanted to have a baby my entire life. I've been totally obsessed with learning everything I can about pregnancy, birth, babies, motherhood. I am well aware that there is lots I cannot know until I go through it, but darnit... I plan to be prepared! :) I am always a prolific reader, and I've read... maybe 20 books. Plus I'm addicted to the Mothering message boards, where I read all different kinds of debates that make me go seek more information on the internet on my own. Plus tons and tons of birth stories! Oh how I love the birth stories! :)

But it honestly scared me to see a mama telling the class that she trusts her doctor, feels safest in the hospital, and hasn't read much about birth because there's so much conflicting information out there. It scared me to hear her say that her doctor told her at her 26 week appointment that she was having a HUGE baby and would need a c-section (based on a notoriously inaccurate sonogram!). It scared me to hear her say that she feels empowered going into the hospital when the reality is that she obviously had NO CLUE about the basic pitfalls of having a baby in a hospital.

Don't get me wrong; I believe a mama should be able to birth wherever she chooses. Whether she is informed or not. The choice is ALWAYS with the mama. But I wanted to sit down and rattle off some statistics for her, I did, I wanted to! I didn't!!!! But I SO wanted to.

The other woman was not so scary; she was only six months along, was reading Active Birth, and was birthing at a birthing center with midwives. It was just this one woman, C, who made my stress levels go shooting through the roof. I have this awful tendency to want to rescue everyone, and I wanted to rescue her!

So, anyways, then began the pain tolerance stuff. The teacher started out by asking us, on a scale of 1 to 100, how painful we expected childbirth to be. Well, yanno, I'm doing the Hypnobabies thing. I believe I deserve an easy, safe, comfortable birth! I believe that I can have that. But I knew that if I said I believed birth to be TOO easy, she'd correct me. I just knew it. My husband and I both put our expectations of birth at around 50, and yes, she corrected us, and told us that she didn't want us to be expecting an easy birth and get a really hard one. I responded that for me, I felt that believing I'd have a really hard, painful birth, would be setting myself up for a hard, painful birth. She disagreed. *sigh* I don't necessarily think that is true for everyone, btw... but it IS true for me.

So then she passed out the ice, and we went through a series of exercises holding the ice. Now here is one thing that really upset me. C, the woman headed straight for a c-section happy doctor attended birth, was not really feeling any pain or discomfort from the ice. All the rest of us were! (Try holding a piece of ice in your hand for 60 seconds. To me, very uncomfy!) Anyways, C tried a few different things. She moved the ice to the inside of her wrist. She tried it on her neck. She just wasn't really perceiving it as painful at all. The teacher, however, seemed determined that she WOULD feel pain, she'd find a way!

I mean, isn't it possible that this woman has a high tolerance for pain, and is going to have a super easy labor? Isn't it possible that giving her confidence about her bodies ability to cope, vs. making her feel "broken" for not experiencing it the same way everyone else did, might have done more for her birth?

I know I'm overreacting, but this seriously upset me. The whole thing upset me. It got me all discombobulated and I wound up having insomnia all night till 4am, which I haven't had in a while. (Baby makes me sleepy!) So I'm going to try to get out of the class. The other aspect, btw, is that I already know all the information the teacher is giving us. I know the stages of labor, I know how the uterus works, I have seen tons of pictures of it, I can't wait to see my placenta! I know that if I start freaking out and saying I cannot do it, that means I'm in transition and ALMOST DONE! I know that I'm a little bit bossy sometimes (ok, maybe more than a little), and I have a hard time finding a balance between chatting and being... pushy. It's the Leo in me. It comes from a good place (wanting to help), but almost always engenders a bad reaction. I'm working on finding better ways to do it, or just hushing up, but I am not there yet... and I know I won't be able to help myself in this class! And, as you can see, the result is totally stressing me out.

I wonder if she'll refund at least half of our money!

Posted by JoAnna at 03:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I really, really do. I asked my mother-in-law the other day if she enjoyed being pregnant, and she just looked disgruntled. She said she hated getting so large and that she wouldn't have wanted to do it again.

Hmmmm, Charlie is going to have his hands full keeping me from wanting to do it again!

In spite of all the negatives; weight gain (20 lbs so far!), aching ankles, indigestion, random crazy headaches, emotional outbursts... I just love it! I love knowing that my baby is safe and sound inside of me. I love feeling her move around and push at me and spin and flip and squirm. I love seeing my stomach ripple when she gets a particularly good kick going!

I have wanted to have a baby for so long. I remember as a little girl dreaming (literal, dream while asleep) of having a little girl. I could see myself holding her in my arms and loving on her. It was a repetetive dream that I had over and over again. Now she is here, in my belly, growing and growing. I can't wait to meet her!!! But at the same time I'm perfectly content to keep her safe and sound inside of me where nothing can hurt her.

One of my favorite books, "In pursuit of the Green Lion," by Judith Merkle Riley, the protaganist is pregnant. When she first feels the baby move, she says she can hear/feel the baby saying... "Joy, joy, joy!" And flipping, swimming, squirming. That's how I feel. I love it. I'm honored to be the vessel for this little one to make her way into the world.

I dunno if I will feel that way during labor, though... how good IS that hypnobabies stuff anyways? :)

Posted by JoAnna at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am a slacker... I never post here... but I can't figure out if I'm writing this for the baby in my belly, or for other mom-bloggers or what! I am definitely NOT writing it for family as I want to be able to be less inhibited. So who is it for?

Charlie and I just got back from Vegas, and the plane is the first time I've really felt the baby kick, squirm, flip, go crazy in my belly, WITHOUT lying on my back with my hand on my belly waiting quietly for every gurgle. Baby decided to start doing baby aerobics on my bladder right when that stupid seat belt sign came on, of course! How to describe what it feels like. A fish flipping around in your belly. Your bladder being jabbed so hard you involuntarily go "OH!" really loudly and people stare at you like you are a nut. Urge to pee like the worst you have ever felt to send you dashing to the bathroom only to have a few drops come out. LOL! :) It's definitely not like anything else I've ever felt before! It doesn't feel to me like having gas or having any other kind of tummy gurgle. It feels like there is SOMEONE in there. Someone OTHER. Someone NOT ME.

Amazing how someone can be so tiny and still be their very own person, right away.

Posted by JoAnna at 10:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So Charlie and I were out for a day of shopping and "getting me out of the house" stuff; I have been so tired all I have wanted to do is sleep and sleep and also lie on the couch to rest from all that sleeping! So it was so nice to finally have a day out.

I've been feeling pretty normal aside from sleepy and queasy, and getting hungry much more quickly than normal. But I hadn't felt anything at all like this before.

Charlie and I decided we were a little hungry, and stopped for dinner. Nice Italian restaurant, beautiful ambience. As we walked up to the restaurant door, suddenly it hit me so hard I almost doubled over. Crazy, insane, ravenous, growling, positively-dying-for-food tummy pains! "OMG," I told Charlie. "I am seriously STARVING all of a sudden!"

"It's a good thing we're having dinner," he replied. Smartypants.

So we go in, and sit down, and I am totally on edge. I feel like my every nerve ending is screaming for food. I wait impatiently for the waitress to come over, which she does, ambling along all calm and collected. Charlie and I order our drinks and I say in one breath "Iced tea and could I have somebreadpleasenow?" "Oh," she smiles at me "sure! They'll be bringing you bread shortly." Then she leaves the table and ambles off.

If looks could kill, that girl would surely be lying there still, a pile of smoldering ash and rubble.

The intensity of my hunger growing, I grabbed a poor bus-lady walking by. "Bread, please?" I whimpered. Wonderful lady. Wonderful wonderful kind gracious mother-theresa-esque lady who smiled, immediately brought me bread, and apologized for not having it sooner, which I barely noticed because I was too busy stuffing the bread down my face. Bread, glorious bread!!!!

Baby, I'm hungry!!!

Posted by JoAnna at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don't mean to sound like I'm not happy to be pregnant... I am, I am, I really really am! It's pretty amazing to go from an entire lifetime of trying EVERYTHING you can think of to Not. Get. Pregnant., to saying HEY, let's have a baby, to saying, "Whoa, I am pregnant!" I am very very happy about it. When I'm not queasy, falling asleep on the couch, feeling like an utterly useless lump, or moping around constipated. (I've named the lil' guy "Baby ButtCork," for his/her effect on my body.)

On a kind of related note, how is it that my digestion is all slowwwwww (causing constipation and allowing babykins to suck out every last mineral from my food), and I am hungry EVERY HOUR on the HOUR! How's that work again? It seems kind of contradictory to me.

But the main thing bugging me is the exhaustion... and honestly, I am kind of depressed. I do love my Charlie beyond all comprehension, but I need some FRIENDS to chat up... and all my girlfriends live out-of-state and cannot just get together for coffee (or not-coffee in my case) and chats. Plus I need to get out of the house more, I am seriously feeling like a zombie in here! See??? Depressing!

But really, I am happy! Really, truly I am!!!!!!

Maybe it's just the Jew in me. My Dad *always* needed something to complain about, and maybe I am just that way too. In fact, I know I am.

Almost 8 weeks along now... :)

Posted by JoAnna at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yeps, in fact right now my boobs feel like someone has been pounding them with a baseball bat. Maybe it's because it's so springy, but a baseball bat seems like exactly the thing to have caused the horribly painful-to-the-oh-so-soft-touch infecting my boobs right now.

Luckily they don't seem to be any bigger at the moment!!!!!

I am very, very emotional still, and frustrated with ALL of my friends. All three of them, whom, luckily will never read this as they are far too self-absorbed. One is too busy with ... stuff... to bother even writing back to an email. One is so boy crazy she cannot talk about anything else, and no she is not 16, she is 24! One refuses to believe that my having Lyme Disease could possibly be making my joints and muscles ache and insists that it is my age. (31!)

I sound bitter, and I'm supposed to be all happy and stuff!!! The truth is that I AM happy, I just wish I had someone, anyone, to really talk to about all of these things. I mention cloth diaper to friend number 3, and she gasps in shock and horror. I tell friend number 1 I'm considering a home birth and she passes out cold amidst murmurs of "but my baby was blue when he came out!!!!" I tell friend number 2 ANYthing baby related and she responds "But, do you think he likes me?"

I need some new friends.

*whew* I needed the rant, but I am really NOT depressed like that. I am blessed to have an amazing, wonderful, adorable, supportive husband. And that is way more than many women ever get. But some girltalk amongst equals sure would be nice!

Posted by JoAnna at 09:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

And I'm only 5 weeks pregnant. Or 3 weeks if you count from date of conception... which, come to think of it, would be way more logical to me! It just seems like it is way too soon for me to be feeling ANYthing, yet here I am with gonzo big boobs, so emotional I feel like a cross between a screaming banshee and a weeping willow, and seriously sleepy.

It just seems too early for this!!!!

Of course I tested early. I wish I could remember why I tested so early! There must have been some *thing* that happened or that I thought of, which made me think I should. Because I tested a week before my period was even due, and got this tiny, faint, barely visible line on the test. I told my Charlie that night, "Honey, we have a definite maybe we are pregnant!"

Over the course of the next week I went through *ahem* a dozen or so tests. Errrr... ok, ok, more like six or seven. I kept getting these soft little lines, and thinking to myself... "HcG doubles every 48 hours, so the line should get DARKER, shouldn't it? Shouldn't it?" To make matters even more confusing, the test I had said that if you don't read the results fast enough, you might get a "phantom" line. Which doesn't mean you are pregnant, it just means you waited too long to read the test.

ARGGHH!!!

Finally I went out and bought the EPT Certainty test, the digital one. Peed on the stick and sat there frantically waiting while the little digital screen blinked, blinked, blinked.. PREGNANT.

I mean, I knew before. I knew. But when I saw that, I REALLY knew. And really knowing makes all the difference. I feel so wierd, like I am having these glimpses of the future where this tiny little thing inside of me is a crazy teenager slamming doors in my face. That's wierd, isn't it? To be thinking of something like that this early in?

Maybe I just need more rest...

Posted by JoAnna at 03:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)