Author: althea

Posted on

Week 37 – Full term!

Jan. 20: I’m lounging on our comfy chair as I type, and my entire belly is rocking and rolling.  It’s sort of amazing to watch!
Bryan and Andrew are playing with play-doh and listening to fun songs.
Things are approaching readiness for the little one’s arrival.  I got a sweet blanket from Aunt Kate in the mail last week, and I’ve been sleeping with it since a) it’s so very soft and sweet and b) to get it smelling like Mama so the little one doesn’t have to cuddle up to a more sterile world.
I’ve been reading my books on labor, we are registered to do a tour of the Meriter Hospital birthing area this afternoon, and tomorrow evening, we are meeting with our doula (birthing assistant), Laura Anderson.  Laura was a great help and support for both Bryan and me when Andrew was born, so we’re looking forward to working with her again.
I have a set of baby clothes picked out to pack for the hospital.  I think this weekend I’ll at least make a list of the things I want to bring for myself.
We’re still working on names, and I think we have our list narrowed down to four.  I like them all, so we’re just going to wait until we meet her to decide.  It’s super cold outside.  I hope the weather warms a bit before we bring the little one home.  On the other hand, Andrew was born when it was 95 degrees, so if it happened to be -5 degrees when little sister is born, that would be a bit of a cool coincidence!

BabyCenter.com Week 37 Update:

How your baby’s growing:

Congratulations — your baby is full term! This means that if your baby arrives now, his lungs should be fully mature and ready to adjust to life outside the womb, even though your due date is still three weeks away.

Your baby weighs 6 1/3 pounds and measures a bit over 19 inches, head to heel (like a stalk of Swiss chard). Many babies have a full head of hair at birth, with locks from 1/2 inch to 1 1/2 inches long. But don’t be surprised if your baby’s hair isn’t the same color as yours.
Dark-haired couples are sometimes thrown for a loop when their children come out as blonds or redheads, and fair-haired couples have been surprised by Elvis look-alikes. And then, of course, some babies sport only peach fuzz.

Posted on

Last day of work

Jan. 17: It’s a wintry Thursday morning, and I’m sitting in my office for the last time.  Today is my last day at Gathering Waters, and we’re all getting ready to head to Milwaukee for a board meeting and Stewardship Fund celebration event.  I’ve wrapped everything up, so weird!  Andrew’s having his last day at Karen’s today too.  It’s almost time for some big changes!

Posted on

Baby sister Week 36 update

Jan. 14: I’ve been fluctuating these days between feeling really-ultra pregnant-this-can’t-go-on with totally-normal-no-symptoms-even-sleeping-though-the-night.  Now that I had a weekend of accomplishing things at home, I feel calmer knowing that “little sister” has a space prepared for her.  Andrew has been so excited about tending to his dolly…putting her down for naps in the cradle, patting her when she cries, bringing her to me to give kisses.

I’m home with Andrew today, and then I have three days of work this week.  My last day is Thursday!  Hard to believe.  It’s going to be some big life changes.

Babycenter.com Week 36 update
Your baby is still packing on the pounds — at the rate of about an ounce a day. She now weighs almost 6 pounds (like a crenshaw melon) and is more than 18 1/2 inches long. She’s shedding most of the downy covering of hair that covered her body as well as the vernix caseosa, the waxy substance that covered and protected her skin during her nine-month amniotic bath. Your baby swallows both of these substances, along with other secretions, resulting in a blackish mixture, called meconium, will form the contents of her first bowel movement.

At the end of this week, your baby will be considered full-term. (Full-term is 37 to 42 weeks; babies born before 37 weeks are pre-term and those born after 42 are post-term.) Most likely she’s in a head-down position.

Posted on

One of those moms

Jan. 14: Andrew decided not to nap yesterday.  He was in his room for a couple hours, but he was singing and shouting and very much not sleeping.
After he got up, I decided to make a run back to Target with him to pick up a few more big plastic tubs (red and green on sale post-Christmas) so I can store all the books that got bumped when I made space for “little sister’s” pretty things.
The drive to Target was fine, but as I turned off the car, the CD we were listening to switched tracks, and the story Goldilocks and the Three Bears was up next.  Andrew decided he wanted to listen to the whole story NOW.  As I pulled him out of the car, he threw an incredible tantrum.
So I got stubborn and put him under one arm and carried him into the store kicking and screaming.  As we walked through the store, me 8 1/2 months pregnant, Andrew screaming and thrashing under one arm as I pushed the cart with the other arm, I couldn’t help but imagine all the other shoppers who must be looking at me with varying degrees of pity and relief that they weren’t me!

Posted on

Glorious lack of weekend plans

Jan. 12: Could it get better than this?  Andrew and Bryan are outside playing in the falling snow.  They are having a great time going, “woohoohhwowooooo” and then falling down.  Andrew has his Curious George ball ready to kick down the street.  It’s a quiet, gray morning, and the snow is falling softly.
These last weeks, Andrew wakes up in the morning and climbs in bed with me for a cuddle.  His sleeper is usually unzipped, and one of his legs is hanging out.  He likes me to smell his feet and say, “STINKY!  Ahhh choo!”  Then I zip him up, and we cuddle for five minutes or so before he gets up and goes back to his room to play for a bit.  Sometimes we both lie quietly, but this morning, we were looking at each other nose-to-nose, and he whispered, “I have dark brown eyes, Mama.”  Before he climbed out of bed, he patted my tummy and said, “Hi little sister.  She is coming soon.  Then it will be Daddy and Andrew and little sister and Mommy.”  He seems to be catching on to the idea.

I think I’ve entered some new nesting phase.  I decided in the last couple days that we needed to have more things ready for the baby, so since she won’t have her own nursery, I have plans this weekend to clear out one of our bookshelves and organize her dresser and pull up more of the baby items from the basement.  I also bought baby announcements when Joe and I went shopping yesterday, and I have a strong urge to address them.  I also have a strong urge to finish Andrew’s sweater.  But I just discovered last night that I haven’t ever done normal increases before, so first I need to learn how to do those so I can finish the sleeves.

We have nearly zilch scheduled for the weekend.  Wonderful.  I’m hoping to help Bryan prep the bathroom so he can paint it and then I can put up my little wall stickers and put out the new towels I got.  That will be a good project to have checked off.

Yesterday Joe and I made a shopping run to Target, and while Joe amused Andrew (fixing the cart with pretend super glue and racing around), I was able to get all sorts of random items that I’ve been wanting for a long time.  All day, I’ve been happy that Andrew’s craft drawer is better organized because of those new plastic tubs! And we got a new coffee maker.  It’s replacing Bryan’s from college, and it’s red, pretty, and doesn’t seem to spill coffee when you pour a cup.   Brilliant!

Posted on

At this time during my last pregnancy…

Jan. 9: While I was in the shower this morning, I was marveling at the fact that I have less than five weeks until my “due date.”  The new one’s approaching birth feels more real.  In fact, I took tags off newborn clothes and washed them last night.  SO CUTE!!!
My mind drifted to think about what I was doing when I was at this point in my pregnancy with Andrew.  On the equivalent of New Year’s, Bryan and I had walked the Syttende Mai walk together.  Then I had a fun surprise baby shower.  It was late May when I was 35 weeks pregnant with Andrew.  Ben and Melanie had just visited, and I had just set up this website.
And the equivalent of this week was when my mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  I remember getting a phone call from her on a Thursday afternoon saying cheerfully that she was in the hospital, but it was just to have some tests run.  No need to panic.  I could come by to visit after work.

My first real posts to my website were about Mom’s health.
I remember how sad she sounded when we started getting bad news, and she said that she didn’t want me to have to put that kind of news on my website because it was supposed to be a place to post things about the new baby.  I told her that I thought of my website as a place to post things about life, and this was life, so from my perspective, there shouldn’t be censorship to limit it to the planned and the happy.
It feels like there was a lot of time between the point when Mom was diagnosed and when Andrew was born one month later.  There were so many doctor’s appointments. SO much overwhelming research and learning about cancer and treatments.  We had the first of what became two-and-a-quarter years of packing my entire family into doctor’s offices to talk about treatment options.  Urgh.
I guess that as I’ve had that flashback, I’ll just be glad that we had as much time with Mom as we did after that initial hard diagnosis.  And I’ll be glad that we don’t have any reason to expect that the last month of this pregnancy will be filled with such difficult times.
It’s a pretty day today.  The sun seems to have come out from the clouds, and there’s good music on the radio:)

Posted on

About a month to go (?)

Jan. 7: Andrew and I had our first joint prenatal visit to my midwife today.  Andrew thought the whole thing was really cool, and my midwife was nice about including him.  They measured my belly together (33 cm from bottom to top).  Andrew was excited to keep the tape measurer.  They also put some jelly on my belly and used a doppler to listen to the heart beat.  She was at 148 beats/minute today.  Andrew was a little concerned about the noise of the doppler…it’s a loud swishing sound with lots of static instead of a quiet “ba-dum” heart beat.  When my midwife stepped out, Andrew said, “That lady put peanut butter…I mean jelly on your belly.  And I was nervous.”
My midwife was having a hard time confirming that the baby was head down, so she brought in an ultrasound machine.  More jelly on the belly, and Andrew and I got to see “pictures” of little sister.  Andrew quickly lost interest because the images look nothing like a person.  She confirmed that the baby is indeed head-down, which is a really nice thing.  It also means that the lump that moves around up by my ribs is her baby bottom.  She spent a couple moments confirming that there was a good amount of amniotic fluid, and she took a peek at the heart and the umbilical cord.  Amazing to see her heart valves pumping and the arteries in the umbilical cord!
As we left, Andrew received a sticker.  Later in the day, he woke up from his nap and said, “We measured you with the measurer.  Then we put jelly on you and listened to the baby’s heart beat.  Then we saw a picture.  And I got a sticker of a warthog!”  He clearly thought it was a pretty neat experience.  My next appointment is in two weeks.  I’ll be 37 weeks!

Posted on

Baking bread

dinosaurs.JPGJan. 6: As I look at 2008 and try to envision life as the mother of two children and in my new upcoming role as stay-at-home mom, I find that the future appears exciting and daunting and more than a little nebulous.  Since I tend to be an overly-organized person, I think that one of the things I am the most worried about with staying home is that home life doesn’t really require progress toward goals or plans or order.  But I think I need those things.  So at some point, I plan to sit down and begin to create a series of goals for myself over the next year.  One of the things that I know I want on my list is learning to easily and consistently make a good loaf of homemade bread.
Becky made some yummy bread for us at Jack’s and that inspired me.  So tonight, I made a loaf of bread, and I am still up at 11pm waiting to wrap it up for breakfast tomorrow.  I snitched a bit, and warm with a pat of butter, it was amazing.  I think it is the first loaf of bread I’ve made that has risen well ever.  Ahh, success!  I will sleep well tonight with the taste of bread on my tongue and the promise of bread with butter and strawberry jam for breakfast tomorrow!
Photos from the last week are in the gallery.

Posted on

Melting snowy weekend at Jack’s

jackswinter.JPGJan. 6: We’re back home from a really nice weekend at Jack’s house.  As we prepared for it, I was very aware that it was our first trip to Jack’s since Mom died.  In fact, as I was getting ready to go, I kept having sort of flashbacks to our trip last summer.
It was a few days after our trip to Mayo where we were told that Mom’s cancer had most likely returned and was not treatable.  Mom wasn’t feeling good, but she supervised the cooking, and in retrospect, it was one of the last fun things we did together as a family.  I still can’t believe that only two weeks later we were starting to work with Hospice and four weeks later she was gone.  I really still don’t feel like I can get my mind around all that.  But that background was  the undercurrent of my thoughts as we planned for our winter trip to Jack’s this year.
One thing that I haven’t been sure about how to approach is how to recognize or acknowledge Mom and the fact that she’s not here as we get together for family activities.  Our mode of operation thus far these last months has mostly been to try to get through milestones without melodrama and by trying to make evens as fun as possible.  I find so much comfort in being with my siblings.  When we’re all together, things just kind of seem OK at the same time that our togetherness makes it that much more obvious who is not there.
But there’s something about all of us and the parts of Mom that we all bring to situations just by being ourselves that makes the tightness in my heart soften and my worries about how we’ll move forward seem less relevant.
And our winter weekend at Jack’s was a lot of fun.  Andrew had a blast, and Bryan and I so appreciate having a house full of people who love and help to care for him.  On Saturday, we took a long walk on some roads near Jack’s house.  Andrew had fun throwing snowballs, getting thrown into snow banks, running fast down the hills, and getting carried about half the time.  Even so, he walked for perhaps a couple miles, and he had a good time about 98% of the time.   Jack mad a big bonfire, and several of us enjoyed sitting near it and watching the fire burn.  There was a lot of Trivial Persuit and a poker tournament, which Becky-who-has-never-played-poker won:)  I made a chocolate cake last night.  I love baking cakes!  Bryan enjoyed some sauna time this morning interspersed with a jump in the snow.
Overall, it was a relaxing, fun, and feel-good kind of weekend.  Photos are in the gallery.

Posted on

You should see her move!

Jan. 6: Woof…I’m feeling pretty big.  At 35 weeks, this little one is supposed to be a bit over 5 lbs…the weight of a honeydew melon.  When she gets active, I really notice!  I think she’s still head-up, with her head nestled just under my right ribs.  I have a midwife appointment tomorrow, so perhaps she’ll be able to tell if the little one has flipped.  Because of the holidays, this will be my first appointment in a month.  Hard to believe that there are only three weeks until I am “term” and five weeks until our predicted due date.
Bryan’s mom is coming into town on February 2 with the hopes of being here to help with Andrew when the little one makes her entrance.
Tomorrow’s appointment will also be the first to which I am taking Andrew.  I’m working three days/week for the next two weeks, and my last official day at work is January 17.  So on Monday tomorrow, I’ll be home with the little guy for a day together.  I wonder if he’ll be interested in listening to the baby’s heart beat with the doppler.

BabyCenter.com Week 35 update

Your baby doesn’t have much room to maneuver now that he’s over 18 inches long and tips the scales at 5 1/4 pounds (pick up a honeydew).
Because it’s so snug in your womb, he isn’t likely to be doing somersaults anymore, but the number of times he kicks should remain about the same. His kidneys are fully developed now, and his liver can process some waste products. Most of his basic physical development is now complete — he’ll spend the next few weeks putting on weight.