T minus 11 days

Week 39

Yikes...only 11 days until my due date! Not that that means anything, as most days I think Peanut is perfectly content to keep cooking in there and just may overstay his welcome, for all that he pretends to be Searching for the Great Egress.

Saw Dr. O on Tuesday...nothing exciting to report. Listened to the heart, had a cervical check - still less than 2 cm dilated and Dr. O guesses still at least another week or two before b-day. I told her I was starting to get paranoid that something might be wrong. Not for any real reason, just - we've come so far and I don't want anything bad to happen now. And with everything else going on in my life right now, I'm just nervous. So if Peanut doesn't move for a little while, I get anxious (and start poking at him, and if he doesn't respond to that, well, then I get really anxious) and start thinking something's wrong. She told me at this point, it's so crowded he won't be moving as much and I should think about the quality of his movement as opposed to the quantity.

Dr. O was great about it though, and said that we have nothing to gain and everything to lose now, so I shouldn't think twice about calling her if I'm worried. And to help put my mind at ease, she did a quickie ultrasound herself to check fluid levels (all excellent) and then I did a non-stress test (NST), which is basically sitting in a chair for twenty minutes with a fetal heart rate monitor and another for uterine contractions. And they give you a little button to push whenever you feel the baby move. So I did that, and of course Peanut was romping around like a madman - I think he liked when they strapped the things around my belly.

Anyway, after the twenty minutes, Dr. O came in and looked at the printout and told me that with the fluid levels looking good and with "an absolutely gorgeous tracing" from the NST, that everything looked fabulous and I should feel good, and to please call her if I got worried again and she'd happily have me come in and do another NST or whatever would make me feel better.

I do feel better but am still ready to have this baby. Not that I'm EVER going to stop worrying about him in the next 50 years, but I feel like I'm ready to burst, I'm so big! I lost a pound from last week's appointment, but the books say that at the end sometimes you will actually lose a little weight. Still, I was somehow able to gain the 15 pounds I was supposed to but I imagine most or all of that will be gone quite quickly after the baby's born, especially if the breastfeeding works out.

Lessee...still not sleeping great, although Dr. O said I could take a benadryl to help, which I did last night. Helped a little, although it mostly just made me drowsy during the parts where I wasn't sleeping. And, good news...the angry lady parts seem to have calmed down to an occasional mild annoyance. Lots of low back pain, still being managed with heating pad, exercise ball and numerous nightly rubs by the uber-fantastic Mr. F. And of course, all this is accompanied by continually feeling as if I could not possibly be able to grow any bigger. The swaybacked waddle on me is hysterical.

Speaking of breastfeeding, I am planning on doing it for as long as I can - well, not years or anything, I don't think I could hack it - but hopefully a good six months. So now I'm reading The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, which is a La Leche League book, and while kind of earth-mothery-hippieish and agenda-oriented as LLL is known to be, is still very informative and supposed to be the best resource on breastfeeding.

Still, one of the things that ticks me off - they put this little note in the foreword explaining how throughout the book, they "...still write from the perspective of a household consisting of husband, wife, and child or children. Some have pointed out to us that times have changed and this is no longer a realistic approach to family life. But we are convinced that breastfeeding and mothering progress more easily in such an environment. From personal experience, we also know that this situation does not always hold true in real life. Sometimes the father is missing from the family, and mothering then becomes a solitary endeavor. It is not an easy situation for a woman to be in. Our hope is that any mother in that situation finds the support she needs in other ways."

Just...fail. La Leche League was formed in 1956, but this is from the 2004 7th edition. They're having a hard time getting the "sometimes moms are single" clue...when are they going to understand that there are all kinds of families now? Hey, guess what - sometimes there isn't a dad! But that doesn't mean mom is doing it by herself. Sometimes there's another mom! Or friend or parent or one (or two or three...) of a hundred other people who provide the same support to a new mother. Not to mention that they are basically saying they acknowledge that it's not always the "traditional" family setup and yet they still think it's the best way, so they are going to ignore all other possibilities. *headdesk* Anyway, despite the fact that I happen to be in the "traditional" setup they desire, I am reading this book through a filter and trying to ignore all the crap that's not specifically about how to breastfeed.

Also, speaking of breastfeeding, the fine bastards at Simlac have somehow discovered I'm about to give birth and helpfully sent me fairly large free sample of their most expensive formula. Literally everything I've read about breastfeeding says not to keep any formula, not even free samples, in the house because it's so tempting to give in and use when you're having trouble breastfeeding and worried that baby's not getting enough to eat, and that can cause huge setbacks in breastfeeding, if not disrupt it entirely. So that's how they suck you in...the first one's always free. Guess I'll be giving this to my cousin so I'm not tempted!

Anyway, that's about it from babyland.