30 Weeks DOWN

Just like that 30 weeks have flown by. My weekly countdown is in the single digits. YAY! I have a ton of updating to do and lots of pictures, but a little monkey took off with my camera cord somewhere...

I am doing really well. I don't have any big problems, except that my belly seems to get to places before I do. I have to re-evaluate my belly to counter ratio often and my poor baby seems to get in the way of me closing my mother in law's car door...

Anyway, I'm still wearing these:

I can still do this:

But am really feeling this:

Like everything is all squished up. Which it is. And that must be why. Especially my lungs. I am definitely feeling a lot more pressure on my lungs than I did with P.

So with 10 weeks (ish) left I have the big things done:

Nursery - Check (not our actual room. photos to come.)

Closet full of adorable baby boy clothes - Check

I still have to make decisions about diapers. I'm totally unmotivated right now to do the cloth diaper thing. Maybe after he's here and I have a schedule down and I'm not so tired.

I think the only other real thing to do is make our birth plan. It's going to be pretty simple. Basically I want to be left alone. I don't want to be hooked up to anything unless I decide to get meds. Last time a nurse gave me a shot without telling me what she was doing or askin for permission and if I had known what it was and what side effects there were, I would have declined. I was pretty ticked afterwards because I don't know who thinks it's ok to inject someone without any kind of warning. I had JUST given birth so maybe she thought I wasn't lucid enough to talk to, but behavior like that will not be tolerated so I need a way to word it that's firm but hopefully not rude. I'm willing to be rude if necessary. Any ideas?

FreeBirthing

So I watched a documentary tonight on freebirthing. It's when women not only want to have their babies at home, but with no midwife, doctor or even a doula. They say that women have been having babies for thousands of years and it's a natural thing and that they don't need anyone there.

Now I don't know the exact numbers, but I do know that the fatality rate for mother and babies was sky high back then... Just a thought. And when they were asked about things that could go wrong, they all just said, "Oh, we don't like to think about that."

Only one woman looked like she had it together. She had her baby in a little blow up pool in her living room and said, "I'm attempting a pain free birth." Me too. I mean, I'll also attempt a pain free birth. I'll let you know how that goes. But she delivered her baby all by herself, pulling him out and everything. No screaming or hollering or swearing and what not.

The other three women were nothing like that. They were all screaming. A lot. And saying they were scared and "DON'T TOUCH ME!" The thing was, they were so uneducated. One girl didn't even know where to cut the cord after her baby had been born. I mean, if you're going to deliver a baby, especially your own baby, don't you think you should know what you're doing? At least? It was so ridiculous. Then her placenta didn't deliver and she waited hours and hours before going to the hospital where she was very demanding asking the doctor how he was going to fix it. And he was just kind of, "Well, what will you let me do?" Then she actually had the nerve to say, "I'm glad I did it myself. My baby could have been in danger if someone professional had been there."

Anyway, the short of it is this for me: Home births can be great. All though the ones kneeling down in a narrow tub of 4" of water didn't look it AT ALL. I'm all about water births and midwives, etc etc. If you can do it drug free, good for you.

BUT, I don't see any glory or trophies in freebirthing. While having a baby in the hospital is obviously not the only choice, why deliberately deprive yourself of some of the good things that have come from medical technology? Why risk your health and especially your baby's? Midwives (some of them) are brilliant and help you have a more peaceful atmosphere than a hospital. Most doctors now adays let you have complete control over your "ambience". Mine is great.

So I'm planning a hospital delivery. I'll get an epidural if I feel like one. I'm not knocking home births or midwives or anything in anyway. But don't be stupid and put your family at risk. Saying you did a freebirth for the sake of a freebirth, especially if you're so dim you don't even bother to research where to cut the cord, just makes you sound stupid.

Happy 3rd Trimester

So that is a baby in the seventh month. Wow. Seven months makes it sound like I'm pretty far along. But it's not. I still have 3 entire months to go. SIGH. I can't complain though, things are going very well.

So far I've had little to no swelling. I'm thinking my toes look fatter than normal, but that's a good thing as they were too skinny. I can comfortably wear my wedding rings. My belly button hasn't popped, but it's only a matter of time. Right now it's unrecognizable. I don't have any new stretch marks and I've gained about 20lbs from my start date, all which is where it's supposed to be. I can still bend over, just not without a fatty grunt. I actually feel less tired, but P has slept in until 8:30a the last couple of days. I have no problem walking around and all my shoes still fit. Sitting down though, I can feel pressure on my lungs and have to take big asthmatic like breaths. 90% of the time I wear maternity shirts, but maternity pants are a problem because they all slide off. Like I need that problem! I have two pairs of old jeans I can button and one pair I bought a size up that can button. The rest of my jeans I can still fit into, I just use a hair tie as a belt since they are unbuttonable. Remembering when most of them were too big...

We had our 28 week dr appt complete with our third ultrasound to check my placental location, which is no longer an issue :) It was really neat to see an ultrasound of our boy this late in the game too because he's so big and takes up a lot more room on the screen. A couple of cool things: I got to see him squish up his tiny face like someone had shined a light on him AND I saw him kick on the screen and felt it at the same time. Technology is amazing.

D got called in on business last minute, so our two visiting grandmothers went with me. His grandmother had never seen an ultrasound before and she was so cute and excited like a little kid. It was neat she could be there and the tech took a long time explaining what everything was.

My platelet count is on the low end of the normal range so we'll test that later. Our baby isn't measuring too small anymore, but he is measuring only in the 11 percentile, which is ok by me. His profile is a lot different from P's and he seem to have full lips and chubby cheeks.

I asked the tech if there is ever an issue of the baby being too big and a normal birth isn't possible and she thought that was ridiculous. Which is what I thought. I had asked P's doctor that and they didn't answer, just set an induction date. I told her I definitely didn't want to be induced again and she said that they won't induce unless I'm more than 10 days late because risk to mother and baby increases a lot more at that time. I know conception dates can be off anyway so I'm not worried about it. I like the adventure of not knowing when he'll come and trying to figure out if I'm having real labor. In my head I have a Father of the Bride II scenario going with D running to get our hospital bags and P and nearly forgetting me.

Time to make our birth plan! And here's to no swelling! (yet. hopefully at all.)

I would do anything for Twilight...

But I won't do that:

Umm... WOW.

County Fair!

Saturday on a whim, we decided to go to the fair. It was fun to take our son and go with our best friend. We actually were only there for about an hour, but we got a lot accomplished. We took P to look at all of the animals, which he thought was Awesome!

Then I saw the pony rides and just had to take him! Let's just say he humored me because he wasn't near as excited as I was.

The boys found time to get in some target practice.

But really, let's face it- I'm 6 and half months pregnant, so after taking my baby on his first pony ride, I was mostly excited about the food. And we tried all of our favorites! To our credit though, I shared my cheesecake on a stick with P and all four of us shared the cotton candy and elephant ear. YUMMM!