The pace is picking up . . .

It feels as though time is ticking more rapidly now. Last week, it was 12 more weeks until my due date and now it's only 11. That may not seem like a big difference, but next week it will be 10 weeks and the week after that it will be only 9! Yes, I know that this is how time works, but to me it still feels a little shocking to think that in just two more weeks I will be in single-digit countdown. 

I thought that time would start to start to drag throughout the entire third trimester, but I think it's actually picked up ever since about 25 weeks and I'm guessing it will continue to do so until 37 weeks or so, when it will probably start to drag again. I'm hypothesizing that I will feel compelled to get things ready before the baby is full-term, and then once it is, I will be tapping my fingers waiting for it to arrive. 

At our midwife appointment on Friday, I asked a lot of questions about birthing options. Here's the rundown of what I found out: 

1. As long as my weight gain continues to stay under control, I will be eligible for a waterbirth! I actually found this out at the appointment before this last one, but it was good to have a second midwife confirm it. I'm not sure of my exact preferences, but it's really nice to know it's a possibility. I asked a few other questions about it on Friday -- mostly about whether I'd need any special preparation (to which the answer was no) and whether I could still do it even if I end up testing positive for strep b or needing an IV for other reasons (apparently, there are no problems with that and I could even do it if I needed pitocin).

2. There are virtually no circumstances in which they'd allow for a scheduled cesarean. As long as I don't have placenta previa or other serious conditions that would make a vaginal birth impossible or dangerous, they don't schedule them.  Even if the baby is breech, they will try a ton of other stuff to get the baby to turn rather than schedule a cesarean in advance. 

3. There are very, very few circumstances in which they'd send me for an "emergency" c-section. Basically, the baby would have to be in pretty serious distress and there would have to be evidence that it wasn't going to work any other way. 

4. They don't do any kind of elective inductions. They don't even discuss an "induction plan" until 41 weeks and there'd have to be a medically-indicated reason for any labor-inducing procedures (even just a membrane strip) before that. 

I'm really glad that I'm finding this all out now and not later. I'd always kind of assumed that the standard of care at my midwife group meant, "We want you to have the kind of birth that you'd like to have." I was pretty surprised that there wasn't much, if any, wiggle room. Of course I'd rather have a low-intervention approach rather than a high-intervention one . . . and I appreciate that all of their decisions have the healthiest outcomes in mind, but my need for some level of control or choice is starting to make me anxious. 

So many people, when I've stressed out about how this baby's arrival is going to work with my school schedule if it comes late, have said something to the effect of, "Well, have you considered an induction if it really gets to that point?" I've always said, "No, no, of course not. I'd want to let the baby come on it's own schedule." Even though this had been my preference (when I thought I had a choice), it's kinda scary to know that I have no option for encouraging it to come on my schedule. 

Anyway, having these discussions has made me realize that I should perhaps really start thinking of my countdown differently. Perhaps instead of thinking of myself as having 11 more weeks to go, I should start thinking of myself as having 12. Just to keep things in perspective, since I'm less scared of the baby coming early than I am of the baby coming late. 

Heading into Trimester #3

Measuring the passage of time in pregnancy is a hotly-debated topic.

The easiest way to measure the passage of time, of course, is to simply measure a pregnancy in weeks -- using Naegele's rule, this gives you a due date that is exactly 40 weeks from your last menstrual period. Measuring in weeks seems simple enough. We all can agree on what a week is, and there's so much that happens in a pregnancy that weeks are a convenient unit of time for describing these changes. Everyone knows that you're not really pregnant for the first few weeks before you've even ovulated, and everyone knows that baby's rarely come on their due dates, but according to this technically-unscientific-but-very-interesting website and graph, it's a good way of measuring for a reason. 

So weeks are nice. 

The trouble comes from the fact that, for whatever reason, most people don't like to describe pregnancies in weeks. I'm not really sure why this is, but most people seem to prefer months or trimesters. Months I can kind of understand -- it's a throwback to "how many periods have I missed?" kind of thinking. I'm not sure where trimesters came from, but I can also kind of see the appeal -- first you're "newly pregnant" and then you're "happily pregnant" and then you're "uncomfortably pregnant." It's nice, when you're in that "uncomfortably pregnant" stage to think of it as "the home stretch." 

The three methods make oodles of sense on their own right up until the point where people try to start converting between these methods. All of a sudden, 40 weeks isn't divisible by three, so figuring out when you graduate to a new trimester becomes complicated. A month is not exactly 4 weeks, so calculating how many months pregnant you are becomes a headache. 

It would be nice if someone would just do the math and make a blanket statement to everyone about what the official policy is, but for some reason nobody can agree. The end of the first trimester (to my knowledge) is never described as starting before 12 weeks, but it is alternatively listed as 12 weeks, 13 weeks, and 14 weeks (and various decimal or fractional amounts contained within these weeks, such as "12 weeks and such and such number of days"). The end of the second trimester is even more variably described, with authors listing anything between 25-28 weeks. By some calculators, I won't be in the third trimester for another week and a half and by others I have already been in the third trimester for a week and a half. 

Calculating months is even more complicated. My last menstrual period was on June 9. Therefore, on December 9, I considered myself "6 months pregnant." By some people's calculators, I was at the 6 month mark over 2 weeks prior to this, because 24 weeks/~4 weeks per month = 6 months. However, of course we only actually have one month that is actually 28 days, and those other 2 or 3 days a month really add up. By the "a month is 4 weeks" logic, a pregnancy would last 10 months on average, and it really doesn't -- it's more like 9 months and a week extra. 

Again, this is where I turn to the blog that I cited earlier, as the author has a mathematical formula for determining what she considers the appropriate milestone. 

According to her formula, I am in my third trimester. (Yay! I don't have to wait another 3 days for the 27 week mark OR another 10 days for the 28 week mark -- I'm already there!). I am 6.1 months along, and have completed approximately 66.7% of my pregnancy. 

To be honest, looking at the math involved, I have to say that I don't know why there is so much of a discrepancy between methods. This definitely seems the most logical to me. 

It also seems to match up with what I have been feeling as I've entered the final trimester. I feel as though I've encountered some interesting shifts in the pregnancy within the last week or so. Not only has the hunger increased, but  I've felt my belly getting larger, heavier and more noticeable. When I walk, I can see it swinging from side to side. 

My midwife appointments have changed a bit too. At my appointment yesterday, the midwife palpated me more than usual and finally said, "I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty sure that this is a baby head." They hadn't tried to locate specific body parts before. She also found the heartbeat almost instantly and commented that the baby was running out of places to hide. 

I also had my glucose screening yesterday. There had been some miscommunication about when we would be conducting the screening and so I was unprepared for the test (I had just eaten before my appointment). It made for a long evening (three hours for an appointment that I'd expected to take half an hour!), but I was glad that I waited around for my blood sugar to return to normal and then did the test that same evening. The blood draw wasn't as bad as I'd expected, and the result (a passing blood sugar level that was actually lower than the one that I had when they tested me at 6 weeks), was worth the extra wait time. 

Overall, life is good. I'm in the home stretch!

The Hunger Games (but in a more literal way . . . without the bloodshed)

I am starting to understand why weight gain can get out of control during pregnancy.

According to the scale, my weight gain is just fine. Because I started my pregnancy with a high BMI, a healthy pregnancy for me means gaining less than the average amount. I have been diligently watching the scale to make sure that I'm not gaining weight too fast or too much. I have my personalized weight gain goals from my midwife, and so far I've stayed within the recommended range. So far.

But what I've noticed is that something dramatic has happened in the last week. I can't seem to get full anymore. I will eat what used to be a normal breakfast and immediately think, "Well, what else can I eat in order to stop being so hungry?" It's like the food isn't even getting to my stomach.

This is certainly the case with anything "normal-sized" that I make at home. If I go out to eat and eat a big, restaurant portion, I will get full. But if I try to just eat small portions, snacks, etc at home, I will feel almost exactly as hungry as I did before eating anything at all. Either that, or I will think that I am full, but will actually be famished again within two hours.

Let's look at today as an example.

I woke up at 4am and couldn't get back to sleep. This wouldn't be such a horrible problem if it had been a weekday and I had to be up at 5am anyway, but today was a Saturday. I'm not supposed to be up at 4am on a Saturday. Anyway, I tried to stay in bed for as long as possible, convincing myself that if I didn't leave the bed, I would be able to fall back asleep. Eventually, I had to get up and eat, though, so I did. Since it was early in the morning and I wanted to get back in bed, I didn't eat too much -- just some toast to settle my stomach. The toast silenced the "MUST HAVE FOOD NOW" alarm that was going off in my head, but didn't actually fill me up. I was fine with this, though, because my main objective was to silence the alarm and get back in bed. I was hungry, but I was able to ignore the urge to eat and pay attention to the urge to sleep.

Within a few hours, though, I was still unable to get to sleep and now no longer able to ignore the alarm. I went downstairs and ate a large portion of soup. Even after finishing it, I was still hungry, but we were planning to go out to eat with some of Ben's family for lunch, so I tried to ignore the feeling again. I didn't want to eat three meals before lunch. But by the time that we were leaving for the restaurant, I had to eat a few Thin Mints on my way out the door because I was so hungry I worried that if there was even a modest wait that I would start to lose my humanity in front of respectable restaurant patrons.

When we got to the restaurant, I ate a sandwich, a pickle, a large cup of coleslaw and 1.5 latkes. I felt full -- full enough that I left most of my bun on my plate -- but not regrettably full. Normally, I would have probably eaten the same amount of food (sandwiches and latkes just aren't as good as leftovers as they are right there in the restaurant), but I would have felt as though I should have stopped about halfway through. Instead, I felt fine. Full and good.

The lunch ended around 2pm and I didn't really start to feel hungry again until 5:30. At that time, I started to think about food, but got distracted enough that I didn't hear the "MUST HAVE FOOD NOW" alarm until 7pm. At that point, I heated up some hearty leftover chili. After a bowl of that, I thought that I was done for the evening. But two hours later, I was famished again.

So here I am at nearly 11pm, eating a tuna salad and crackers when all I really want to be doing is going to sleep for the night. And I won't be able to go to sleep as soon as I'm done either, since lying down right after eating gives me heartburn. And I've just eaten the last bite of the tuna and I'm not full enough to be able to trust that I'll be able to actually coax myself to sleep before the next hunger alarm goes off. So I may still have one more late-night snack that I'll have to do before I can really get myself to sleep.

The most frustrating part of all this is that food isn't really all that appealing. It's not normal hunger that makes you want food. Instead, I want to be doing other things. Like sleeping. But instead I have to plan more and more of my day around my ability to procure nourishment. Eating small frequent meals doesn't seem to do much -- I feel almost as hungry as when I started, so it's terribly unsatisfying, and there's only so many options for food that can be furtively consumed when you are teaching a room full of middle-schoolers. But eating bigger meals only tricks me into thinking that the problem will be solved, when really it only sometimes works. The rest of the time, it's only a temporary fix and then I end up ridiculously hungry again -- as though the first meal didn't even count.

Anyway, I have yet to see how all this eating is going to affect my weight gain, but I can only assume that this is why most women typically gain the bulk of their weight during this last part of the pregnancy. I am certainly going to keep trying to maintain a healthy and slow gain, but if this hunger keeps up I'm not sure I'm going to be as happy with my daily hops onto the scale as I have been.

Nesting -- Part II

I am often amazed by my husband's commitment and follow-through with an idea. 

Until this weekend, we'd done almost nothing as far as setting up the nursery or any other nesting activities. We'd bought some baby clothes at a consignment sale and that was about it. 

On Friday, I used my extra holiday-season employee discount at the Science Museum's gift shop to buy the "Stim-Mobile" that I had had my eye on. I think that this was our first new baby purchase. 

On Saturday, I first mentioned the idea of us switching rooms with Bambin@ and we took our measurements and explored our options, as described in yesterday's post. 

On Sunday, my father-in-law came up and he and Ben installed a hanging bar in my closet. 

Afterwards, we went to IKEA and bought a crib, a mattress, a changing table, and all the related linens so that we could set them up at my in-laws house for holiday guests this Christmas and then move them to our home once they'd served their temporary purpose. We also bought the rug that I'd wanted for the nursery. 

Today, while I was at work, Ben and his dad made the room switch in its entirety. I came home to  an entirely different upstairs. The twin bed, baby's dresser, and glider/ottoman were in the new nursery. Space for the changing table and crib were demarcated and the Stim-Mobile was on the floor in the spot where the crib will eventually be. Our bed, my desk and our end tables were in what had formerly been our office/future-nursery. The printer was absent entirely -- no doubt, stashed somewhere waiting to be relocated. Everything looked perfect.  I have no idea how they did this. It seemed like a nightmarish round of tetris to me -- to get one large bed out of a small room and into a room where there is currently another bed, a desk, etc . . . and then to get the other furniture from that room out and over to the small room. The hallway separating the bedrooms is little more than a landing, so it seems like some sort of bizarre witchcraft that allowed this to happen.   

But that's Ben for you. I make an off-hand remark and think that enacting it will take several weeks of careful planning in order to execute. Instead, within 60 hours he turns it into a dream come true. "Oh, you'd like the back and front halves of the second floor to be flip-flopped? No problem, babe." 

Nesting

I've been out of communication for awhile, but a lot has been happening. Thanksgiving was a busy and fun trip. I really enjoyed hanging out with family and especially seeing my sister and brother-in-law for the first time since getting pregnant.

On the day that we left Chicago, though, I came down with some crazy muscle aches that -- coupled with a sore throat -- seem to have been virus-related rather than just aches and pains from traveling with a fetus. I ended up spending two sick days at home in bed. I have lost count of how many sick days I've taken so far this year, but I'm quite certain that I'm well beyond my paid time off for the year.

Coming back to school after two days of a sub (and after a week away from my students) was difficult for everyone involved, but at least I was starting to feel better.

Then on Thursday evening, my nose started feeling runny and stuffed-up at the same time. I started coughing more than I had been. All of a sudden, I felt like my face was puffed up with phlegm or something and all of Friday I was coughing uncontrollably and at times could hardly squeak, much less speak.

The timing of all of this couldn't be worse. It's right around the time that Ben and I had started to feel the pressure of "There's a lot we have to do to get ready for this baby!" in our ears. We'd been planning to spend the weekend working on cleaning and moving things around to get ready. Our plan was to move my desk to the living room to the spot where the TV is and the TV to the basement in order to make room for the baby's things. In order to do this, we needed to sort through and sell off a lot of books that were in boxes on the floor of the baby's room, and go through a lot of junk that was currently inhabiting my desk. And instead I was barely functional.

Saturday morning, as we were discussing some goals for trying to get things accomplished, I looked around our bedroom and said, "I was just thinking about when we first saw this house with [our realtor] and how we imagined this room as our kids' room and the other room as the our bedroom. Funny . . . sometimes that still kind of feels like the more natural fit to me."

Ben's ears perked up and he said, "Well, if we were going to do that, now would be the time to do it."

We spent the next few hours taking measurements and using floorplanning software to see if it would work. It was really fun. It reminded me of other "fresh starts" that we've had together -- moving into our apartment in MN, house shopping and setting up the new house . . . As a person who came home as a newborn to the same 2-bedroom apartment that her parents continue to call home, I've never had the experience of "moving" in the same way as some other people that I know. I have moved several times, but always as a couple or as a single person, never as a family. I can kind of see the appeal now, though. The freshness of it all. The chance to go through stuff and decide what's really important and what's not. Getting to set up furniture in new rooms and pick out new paint colors.  I love our house, but I am now understanding the appeal of moving to a new home every few years, as I know that some people do.

Even though we'll be staying in the same house, I'm excited to move bedrooms. It makes me so much more excited to set up the nursery, knowing that it will truly be the baby's room. (Up until now, there were lots of "loose ends" with the transition of our office into the baby's room. For example, my dresser has always been in the closet of the office. We didn't really have anywhere for my dresser to go in our room, and so my dresser was originally going to stay in the baby's room, at least for the short-term. Now instead of my dresser staying in the baby's room, I'll just move into the room with my dresser and all of our furniture will be in our room and all of Bambin@'s furniture will be in his/her room.) I'm almost tempted to paint the nursery, since we'll be emptying it of furniture anyway. But that feels wasteful, since the paint job was done right before we bought the house and it's a nice neutral color that will provide a good backdrop for other decor. Makes more sense to wait until Bambin@ is old enough to help choose the new color anyway.

The adrenaline of it all made it much easier to start going through some things. I've packed away nearly all of my non-maternity clothes that I won't be able to fit into for at least another 3 months and sorted through about half of the books and desk-clutter that needed to be dealt with. Now it truly feels like nesting season!