No news

I got nothin'. Yesterday we tried sex, spicy food (Chipotle burritos with hot salsa), lots of walking (through stores), and also seeing Avatar in 3D... we had heard that seeing it in I.MAX could trigger labor but we had a movie gift card that didn't apply so we just went to the regular cinema. Baby was moving around pretty good during the movie but no contractions for me. I did have some mild cramps in the middle of the night, but very mild.

I am definitely a lot more easily fatigued these days, though... more than I realized. We went on our usual trip to Target for sundries and it wasn't long before I was glancing about with desperation for a place to sit. It feels like each of my legs is attached to a separate walking mechanism, like some kind of kooky marionette... each step I take seems to require an independent communication from the brain. Left leg move. Right leg move. Kind of exhausting.

My mom and sister are arriving in just over a week, and I don't think I'm doing a great job of *not caring* about that. Really hoping to see some progress at my appointment this Thursday, or better yet, not make it to my appointment. It doesn't help when all these people - on FB and everyone I talk to in real life as well - keep telling me that they think I'm going to go early, I'm going to deliver any day now, or Mr. I saying last night he was sure I was going to go into labor before morning. It's really ramping up the impatience!

38 weeks (and 2 days)

38 weeks and I feel smaller this week, but I don't look it apparently! Haha... that belly is looking a bit crazy at this point. He is all out in front of me. This week people keep telling me that I look fake pregnant or that I'm carrying a basketball around under my shirt.

I kind of feel fake pregnant too. By which I mean that I feel perfectly fine. So fine that I kind of feel like I might never have this baby. Like, wouldn't I feel more uncomfortable if I were about to go into labor? Certainly I feel heavier, can't bend over, have trouble rolling over in bed, walk with a waddle, and am more easily fatigued. But - maybe I've just gotten used to this body - mostly I just feel like my normal self. Sometimes I have moments of almost forgetting I'm pregnant, like when we were heading to a football party yesterday and for a brief moment I was looking forward to drinking some beer because I had some kind of time warping amnesia about still being pregnant.

On New Years Eve Mr. Ibis and I went to bed early and slept for eleven hours. Not only did we sleep for half a day, I slept normally on my side(s) and woke up without back pain. Last night I slept that way again and woke up feeling fine. My belly almost feels smaller I guess because he's dropped so low into my pelvis. A lot of the time I feel as though I've returned to my second trimester.

I enjoyed being the pregnant girl at a party yesterday - it was an afternoon affair centered around eating and talking, with college football on in the background. It was a fun group of mostly people we didn't know but who were friendly enough to strike up conversation. Of course it's always easy for people to think of something to talk to me about, even the men, even the gay men, because everyone at least knows someone who's been pregnant. I know these are my last days of being the center of attention, which is fine with me, since I'm more comfortable being at the edge of the spotlight anyway - but it has been fun to be doted on for a while.

Now I have to point out... on a good day like this I'm all sunshine and I forget the bad days. On the bad ones when I keep dropping shit and my pants won't stay up and my shirt won't stay down and the house is a mess, I'm a terror. Usually those are the days that I didn't manage to sleep so well the night before. Hopefully I will go into labor after a good night's sleep, or at least after a good day.

The last two weeks of pregnancy stretch before me like an eternity. I don't really believe in any of the old wives' tales to jump start labor, but I'll probably try a few. Mr. Ibis and I still have sex per our usual once a week pregnancy frequency and will likely just stick to that. We're trying not to spend money on eating out, but I'm sure we can work some spicy food into the menu. I drink a cup of red raspberry leaf tea a day but should probably step it up to two or three. I do think sitting on my birthing ball is helpful, because I can actually feel my pelvis spreading when I do it - when I stand up I walk like a cowboy for a while. I could increase my birthing ball time too. Walks are pretty much out of the question since it doesn't look like the snow is going anywhere anytime soon and our street is short on sidewalk - not to mention the fact that it's -10 outside right now - but I'll keep doing yoga for exercise.

Things left on the to-do list now... I talked to Judy yesterday and we're all set for daycare! She was happy with our two-day minimum proposal so we're going to send in a deposit and reserve our spot. I'm so relieved to have that set up. The one thing left to do is install the car seat - pretty important since I could go any day now! Mr. Ibis is going to bring my car to work this week because he can bring it inside the warehouse and install the car seat indoors. The reason we've been procrastinating on this is because it's barely gotten into the 20s for weeks and neither of us feels like sitting outside in the cold fiddling with a car seat! Then on Thursday morning I can take it in for inspection.

Later that afternoon is my 39 week appointment with Dr. J. I am anticipating that she might start talking induction, and I think what I'm going to tell her is that I would rather wait until 42 weeks for a medical induction (as much as it pains me to imagine that) but one thing I will consent to trying earlier would be stripping my membranes.

New Years Deja Vu

If you'll look at my "Baby Wednesday" sidebar you will see that this time of year is significant for Mr. Ibis and me in ways not pertaining to the changing of the calendar. I'm battling a little deja vu this morning and a little superstitious anxiety as well. I hope you all won't mind if I tell this story again and just get it out....

Last year and this year Mr. Ibis and I rang in the New Year in the same way: by sleeping. We went to bed early both New Years Eves and slept in a bit in the morning. Waking up to a quiet winter morning feels eerily similar. Of course there is one major difference between that morning last year and this one: last year on this day I was 9 weeks 1 day pregnant and this year I am 38 weeks 1 day pregnant.

... I just typed out my whole miscarriage story again and then I erased it. I think that I don't really want to retell it today. Suddenly I feel that I've told that story, and now I have a new story.

There would be a kind of poetic coincidence if I were to go into labor this weekend, and give birth to a healthy baby on the anniversary of the day I lost my first one. But this baby is his own person, and this pregnancy is its own whole, complete experience - it's not a rerun of what happened last year. Today we'll go to a party and watch football with some friends. Today I'm 38 weeks and 1 day pregnant and feeling wonderful.

Daycare Win!

After my unfortunate visit with the Sue the daycare lady, Mr. Ibis took a quick look at Crai.gslist and found someone in our part of town opening a daycare in March. Both CL and our neighborhood are potentially scary (our street is nice but borders some sketchy areas) but I decided to check this person out and went over there last night to meet her.

I think this is the one! The deal is she is a young, single woman (age 24) who has worked in daycare her whole adult life (and even as a kid) and loves it, but doesn't love the daycare center environment so she decided to start her own home daycare. She is currently employed at a center, has a little house about a half a mile away from ours, and she's completing her schoolwork expecting to receive her license in March so she's trying to enroll kids now for this spring.

In contrast to Sue, everything about Judy gave me good gut feelings. She is very sweet, earnest, a little nerdy (I mean that in a good way), but also seems very professional and really sounds like she knows what she's doing. I actually learned some valuable information from her, which is that legally a daycare provider can only have a 1:4 ratio for infants, which means Sue with her 6 babies plus a preschooler plus adding 2 more infants is WAY out of line, despite being licensed (crazy!). Judy's kind of the best of both worlds in that she is intimately familiar with all the rules and regulations of a professional daycare center but is offering more personal care in her home.

Her plans is/was to stick with one age group at a time so she can more easily coordinate activities for them by herself. She would choose whichever group happened to enroll, but she said she did prefer to start with infants, so she would be happy if that's how things ended up. She wants to get four kids enrolled, but could financially manage with only three. She said she was okay with my part-time flexible schedule as long as we could still give her certain paid holidays and one paid vacation week per year. Mr. Ibis is concerned that she's going to have second thoughts about us because of the unpredictability of my work, so we are going to offer her a two-day minimum and pay her for two days on the weeks that I don't work at all (this is what Sue suggested and seems fair to us).

Other highlights:

- She has plans to do activities with the kids. Initially I was not looking for "educational" child care, but I definitely prefer activities over just sitting around and watching TV. She'd like to teach a little baby sign language, take little field trips, etc., and what was cool about it was that she sounded so excited to do those things. She said she would only turn the TV on to occupy the kids when she's preparing a lunch, and would follow the 1 hour per day rule of her center.

- I asked about bringing in breast milk and mentioned my weird experience with the anti-breastfeeding Sue. Judy said, "Oh no, if anything I might be a little anti-formula, I mean if you can manage... nursing is just so much better for their immune systems and everything else." Yay!

- Her enthusiasm in general was great. People who work in child care always say they "just love kids," but I really believed that this is a passion for her. She seems so excited to be venturing out on her own making a dream come true for herself. As a woman who started my own business at about the same age, it makes me happy to help someone else get started in this way.

- Again, the fact that she has been working in centers for years is a plus. Leaving my baby with a stranger, alone in her home, is a little nervewracking. But I know that to work with children in a professional setting you have to pass background checks, and she told me where she works now, so I can check that reference and feel a little safer with her.

- She's affordable. For us, any daycare is financially taxing, but I know there is absolutely no way we will be able to beat $125/week and $25/day! That is crazy reasonable.

- Location. I love that it's so close to our house. We could even walk to and from daycare when the weather allows.

Mr. Ibis and I were so pumped about it last night, but then we had to stay quiet about it all night because we went to have belated Christmas dinner with his family and we didn't want to talk about daycare in front of his mom yet. I'm so excited about this girl that now I'm afraid it's going to fall through somehow. Mr. I is worried she's going to have second thoughts after I sprung the whole flex time schedule on her. I'm going to call her this morning as soon as is decent and make our proposal for the two day minimum, and try to put down a deposit. YAY!!

Blah

I'm feeling strangely depressed today. A little yesterday too. Not about anything in particular. Or even anything in general. I suppose it's hormones or just the late-pregnancy doldrums. I'm sure the brutal winter isn't helping. I mean, I am fine really, it's just kind of a low-level funk.

It's weird how universal so many of the emotions of pregnancy are. It convinces me more than ever that we are just really smart animals, not as elevated beyond our fundamental biology as we like to think. Even though I'm not physically uncomfortable (for the most part - barring the occasional bad night), I am still getting that "so done being pregnant" feeling, that feeling that I've been pregnant forever and will never not be pregnant again.

My most irritating symptom at this stage, and trust me I know how petty this is, is being a giant butterfingers. I drop things and knock things over about 200 times a day. And of course, when you drop something, it usually lands on the floor. And one thing that really sucks to do right now is pick things up from the floor. It's hard to convey how exasperating this can be, but when you have dropped ONE MORE THING at the end of the day, or better yet dropped the same thing twice at the end of the day, and you once more face the prospect of spreading your legs, squatting down, lunging at the thing with your carpal tunnel fingers, and hoisting yourself upright thus triggering a mighty Braxton Hicks contraction, it just makes you want to scream.

At this point, by the time it's evening I am starting to just let some things stay on the floor, or asking Mr. I to pick them up for me. Which he sometimes says he will do and then forgets to do, and I have to decide if it will annoy me more to ask again or just leave it there. That's why there's been a plastic BRU bag sitting on the kitchen floor for two days, because I asked Mr. I to put it under the sink with the other bags for me, he forgot, I can't deal with asking again OR putting it away, and he has male pattern blindness. Ohhhhh dear I am cranky. I think I am acting reasonably nice for the most part, and I will say that if I'm not, I'm still giving myself credit for only voicing about 5% of the totally irritated thoughts that run through my head, because I DO realize that I'm in an irrationally bitchy state of mind. Please tell me this is a sign of impending labor.

For a little while I was telling myself (and Mr. Ibis) that I thought I was going to "go" early and maybe even the full moon on New Years Eve would propel me into labor, but now I'm thinking I'll probably go to my due date. Those pesky internal exams do have an influence no matter how much you try to tell yourself they don't mean anything. No progress in a week makes me think I'm going to hang out like this for a while.

After work today I'm going to interview a second home daycare option. Not getting my hopes up. Then tonight we are having a postponed Christmas dinner with Mr. I's family - hopefully I won't be too much of a Bitchasaurus this evening.

38 week OB appointment

I had my 38 week appointment this morning even though I'm 2 days shy of 38 weeks. Dr. J is out this week so I saw a nurse practitioner, different one than last time. She had a different style, not so much with the numbers and statistics... she didn't tell me a fundal height measurement, baby heart rate, nor a baby head station, but whatevs. None of it's all that crucial at this point as long as they tell me everything looks good, which it does.

I had a few pretty bad contractions last night so I was hoping for a little more progress in the cervical department, but it sounded like everything is the same as last week. The NP said she would say I'm 70% effaced, but I think that's probably just a difference of personal guesstimation rather than actual regression from what Dr. J found.

I told her about my contractions and she said that's a good thing, should be helping my cervix efface. They felt like bad menstrual cramps - which I usually get pretty bad - only they came in waves instead of continual pain. Just three or four random ones with no pattern to them, but pretty painful.

The NP also remarked on the fact that once again I didn't gain any weight, saying, "You didn't go wild on Christmas! You could have, you know." Well, we didn't have a Christmas dinner, but we're having it tomorrow, so maybe I can still stock up on some apple pie. But I actually haven't been nearly as hungry as usual lately... I've even been skipping lunch some days and just eating a few snacks throughout the afternoon.

When she did my internal she said she thought she could feel hair - !! - and that the head feels a little "grainy" when the baby has hair (yes, they can actually feel my baby's head from inside my vag, how weird is that). I said with surprise that we were guessing he'd be bald... so she backpedaled, "Well, if he has hair, remember I said that, but if he doesn't, forget it!" Ha. And she also commented "another week and you could have this baby!" I was a little confused by what she meant, like, she thinks I'll have him in a week or... ? Because I can safely have him now, if that's what she was getting at. Who knows.

Oh, and there was also this - she asked if my doctor and I have talked about induction yet. I thought that was a little odd given that I'm barely 38 weeks... but I don't know, maybe that's a standard question? I just said no, it hasn't come up, and she was like "Oh, just going to go with it and see what happens, huh!" Weird.

So, yeah. Pretty unexciting but there you have it.

Daycare Ugh

I finally made it over to Sue the daycare lady's house yesterday. I called ahead by about 10 minutes (which turned into 20 as I got somewhat lost on the way). She said to come on by as they were just taking it easy and hanging around.

Verdict: my gut was really screaming NO. There was nothing really horrible about it, and sometimes when I mentally review everything I wonder if I'm being too picky. It was clean, she was nice, and the kids seemed content. But here were my problems:

- The TV was blaring the whole time I was there, and most of the kids were babies. There was one preschooler and everyone else seemed to be under 18 months. I'm really not a fan of kids under 2 watching TV at all. However, it's not a total dealbreaker for me (mainly because I know how popular it is now for babies to watch TV) and I could tolerate some TV. But it was on for the entire hour that I was there (pretty loudly, too) and I just had a feeling that it's on all day. As a result the kids were all just kind of lolling on the carpet glued to the TV.

- She had a lot of babies and no help. She had an 8 mo old, a 12 mo old, and another kid just about a year, plus the preschooler, and then she had two little ones napping in the back room. And that wasn't even her full group. Plus she's getting another newborn in February, and my newborn in March?? That's at least 8 kids, almost all of them in bottles & diapers, for one woman. Mr. Ibis especially was bothered by this.

- I felt like she was stereotyping the kids, and on top of that favored the one girl over all of the boys. One boy she said somewhat mockingly was "Mr. Emotional" and was always crying... while I was there he got accidentally sat on and bopped in the head with a Batman toy, which seem like pretty good reasons to cry to me. Another boy she said was "into everything all the time," and I was thinking, I hope so! That's a baby's job, to be curious! Meanwhile she said the baby girl (the youngest) was so good all the time, never any trouble, etc. The girl seemed to get all the cuddles and attention, while I actually saw her push the boys away a couple of times when they wanted a hug or to sit on her lap. This would bother me anyway, but especially since we're having a boy!

- She didn't seem to listen to me or answer my questions. She invited me to ask questions, but when I did she didn't listen and didn't answer me directly. I asked her if she followed a schedule or just followed whatever mom does at home. She responded that with tiny babies of course they don't really follow a schedule but then just went on a tangent about something else. The answer I'm looking for there is what I heard from a daycare center - that she'll follow what I do so baby has consistency from home to daycare. I also did not like the way she spoke about some of her kids' parents, saying about Mr. Emotional, "Oh, you know they pick him up all the time and never let him do anything for himself." That may be true but I want a daycare provider who's going to be a friend and kind of teammate with me, not an adversary.

- This again is just a gut feeling, but I had a suspicion that she doesn't really play with the kids that much. Initially when I spoke with her I liked the fact that she doesn't overemphasize "education" with babies. But I have a feeling that she doesn't do that much with them at all (I wish I had asked specifically this question). I know that while I was there she was busy talking to me, but still... the kids all just sat around, left to entertain themselves. She had lots of toys but no activities in sight. After feeding the baby girl, she stuck her in an exersaucer off in the corner of the room. The kids seemed pretty understimulated. This may not be her fault at all, but none of them was talking or babbling the whole hour I was there (because of the loud TV I wonder?) and one of the 12 mo olds did not even appear to be able to crawl yet. The preschooler sat there holding a Batman doll for an hour and barely moved.

- Now for the really weird part, and this is what finally put me over the edge. She asked if I was planning to nurse, and I said yes... I would probably pump when I went back to work. She told me that babies really can't gain weight properly on breast milk, and that I should at least give him some supplemental formula to "fatten him up" properly. *RECORD SCREECH.* Now, I have nothing against formula per se but this is so wrong I could hardly believe my ears. Of course babies do well on breast milk, that's what they're designed to eat for goodness's sake! And beyond just being factually off the wall, it made me feel like she really would not respect the choices I make for my child, even something as fundamental as what he eats, and that does not work for me. (Now I would love to have seen the look on her face if I told her we were going to raise him vegetarian too!)

So... yeah, that was pretty much a bust. I'm disappointed, and I'm a little mad at myself for procrastinating so much and just putting all my eggs in this one lady's basket. The fact is that I loved the price and location and I thought I could overlook any minor discrepancies. I just had a failure of imagination about how many little things could be wrong with a daycare situation. It's going to be hard enough to leave my baby with a daycare provider, without that person being someone who I do not trust to do the right thing for him.

I still like the center that I visited but am still thinking the price is too high if I'd have to pay for weeks when I'm not working. But now I'm tempted to go back there and kind of beg for special arrangements. I could give them a lot of advanced notice, like a month in advance, about my schedule - and I could agree to certain minimums. I just couldn't pay for full weeks when I'm out of work.

I guess the search goes on. I found a lady on Craigslist last night who currently works at a center and is opening her own licensed home care in March. I called her right away and made an appointment to visit this Wednesday evening. This is so hard. Most likely I'm going to still be searching after I have Miles. I wish I had some mommy friends around here, but I don't... no coworkers... nobody. I wish that my inlaws were well enough to babysit him, because I know they desperately want to, but they're just not physically capable of doing it. So frustrating.