37 weeks and change...

Still pregnant.
Still having tons of contractions.
Still feeling great in the mornings, exhausted in the afternoons, significantly uncomfortable at night.
Nothing terribly interesting going on.

I keep trying to compare this pregnancy to Suzannah's, but obviously that's ridiculous, and I'm only succeeding in driving myself crazy. I know perfectly well I could go into labor tomorrow or still be pregnant two weeks from now, and that's all fine; it's just hard for me, the eternal control-freak, to accept the fact that I can't predict when or how labor will start. Or how it will go. I know there's some annoying life lesson in all this.

Thanksgiving was, overall, quite pleasant. Matt baked his famous pies, my dad took care of the turkey and stuffing, and my mom cooked pretty much everything else and cleaned my house and put up my Christmas decorations. (See, Friday or Saturday would have been such a convenient day for me to go into labor -- so much help, a clean house...which is why I knew it wouldn't happen.) On Saturday, we drove up to Seattle and wandered around a bit; I wanted to hit up the Elliott Bay Book Company and we had some good coffee. I didn't think I'd make it to Seattle again before I had this baby, but suddenly it seemed like a good idea. And it was fine, but every time I start to feel guilty about leaving work before I'm actually in labor, I go out and walk more than twenty feet and realize that I'm really, really not up for working days anymore. Matt parked just down the street from the bookstore, and by the time I waddled in the door I was really, really uncomfortable. If I'm on my feet, I'm pretty much contracting non-stop.

BUT, I have officially passed the 37-week mark! Which means that whenever I do go into labor, I can head to the birth center and deliver with my fabulous midwife. It also means I can vigorously scrub the kitchen at 10:30 at night if I feel like it without worrying that I'm going to send my body into preterm labor, and that's exactly what I did last night. It took a long time, because by that time of night I am one big ball of Braxton-Hicks contractions and I actually have to breathe through some of them, but wow, did it feel good to scrub things. I haven't done much more than light dusting for over three weeks now, and my nesting urges have been pretty unbearable.

But it made Matt nervous. "Is this a LABOR PROJECT?" he kept asking.

"I don't think so," I said. But then I reminded him that labor, at this point, is pretty inevitable. And also, it's going to happen soon regardless of whether I scrub the kitchen or lie on the couch.

"Well, yeah," he said. "But you know me. I like to procrastinate."

At any rate, I woke up very much Not In Labor this morning. Matt and I headed to my 37-week prenatal appointment (I wasn't sure I'd make it this far!) and things are fine -- now we're just waiting. I vacuumed my house today (ahhhh!) and did some laundry and squeezed in a nap. It's weird not to be teaching. This morning I felt so energetic that I wasted a good chunk of time second-guessing my "early" maternity leave, but as usual, once lunchtime hit, I couldn't keep my eyes open or remain comfortably on my feet, so I guess that's my answer.

35 weeks 2 days

Hello, my poor little neglected blog. Let's see if I remember how this thing works.

First things first: I did not go into labor last night and I am not in labor this morning! Of this I am reasonably certain! Now, you ask, why are you even announcing this, since you are not due for weeks? Because. Last night, Matt and Suzannah and I went out to dinner with Kyanne and her husband, and the last time we made actual concrete plans to do this together, husbands in tow, we wound up having the following conversation late in the afternoon:

Me: Yeah, so, I'm feeling really tired and uncomfortable. Do you think we could maybe meet somewhere closer to home? I don't know if I can handle a car ride all the way to Tacoma.
Kyanne: Uh, do you want to maybe just not go?
Me: No, I can go, I think, I just don't think I want to be that far away from home.
Kyanne: Are you SURE? Maybe we can just go another time?
Me: Well...maybe.

And a few hours later I was on all fours in the hallway, in very active labor with Suzannah. For the record, her husband totally called that I would go into labor that night, and last night when I told Matt we'd be meeting them, he called on his way and said, "Oh, by the way? DON'T GO INTO LABOR YET."

And I didn't. I wasn't even unreasonably uncomfortable. We had a very pleasant evening at this wonderful little Greek restaurant in Kent, something I wanted to do while it's still relatively easy to hop in the car and go out for dinner if we feel like it...because I know those days are numbered. (And no, I'm not exactly planning to become a shut-in or anything, but right now all I have to do is say, "Okay, Zannah-pants, get your shoes on!" and we're gone. It's nice. And don't ask me why I call my daughter Zannah-pants, because I don't really know.)

Suzannah was an absolute ham all night. More than usual. She stayed up way too late, which meant that she slept in she woke us up about forty-five minutes before we normally have to haul her out of bed on weekdays. Charming how that works.

We've been asking her if she thinks we're having a baby girl or a baby boy, since everyone always says the siblings just intuitively know. Mostly, she announces that she wants a baby girl (is this the same thing as knowing we're having one, or is she just putting in her request?) but the other morning she switched it up and said, "Um...a baby boy." That afternoon, she flung her hands up in the air and said, "I don't know!"

Perhaps we're bugging her too much.

So anyway, things are going well. I have a nice stash of prefold diapers and covers washed up and ready to go, and this weekend my plan is to get some kind of storage for them. We haven't bought any of the pocket diapers I want yet, but I think the prefolds will last us nicely for the first several weeks at least (and really as long as we need or want them to). My other plan this weekend is to get everything packed for the birth center, since, as I recall, we hadn't packed a thing when I went into labor with Suzannah. Of course, that also means that I already know I don't need a lot of stuff, so this shouldn't be so difficult. (I always laughed at the "suggested" list of things to pack that you find in mainstream pregnancy books and magazines. Really? Reading material? Thank-you cards? Anyway, if all goes well, we'll only be at the birth center for a few hours after the birth, so I won't have to worry about killing time there.)

Matt has taken over all the vacuuming for the next couple of weeks; my midwife suggested that I take it easy at least until I hit full-term at 37 weeks. Which, incidentally, is twelve days from now, or Thanksgiving Day. I don't particularly feel that labor is imminent or anything, and I'm more than happy to be pregnant as long as this baby needs me to be, but Suzannah was born right around 37 weeks so I feel like I should at least try to prepare myself for that.

I'm going to go right ahead and admit that it's hard for me to relinquish control of the vacuuming. Matt told me I'd just have to lower my standards (yeah, that helped me relax), but he's actually been really wonderful about taking on far more than his share of the chores around here. Then again, he informed me that he doesn't envy me, being the one to carry and birth our baby, so I guess it all evens out in the end.

What the kids are up to this week...

Miss Suzannah and I have spent a quiet week at home, and it's been really, really nice. Originally, I'd drawn up a list of Fun! Things! To! Do! this week, probably because I'm just really a huge fan of making lists -- I thought we'd go to Seattle Children's Museum, maybe, or do some huge fun art projects, or -- I don't know. I realized very quickly on Monday morning that what we really both needed was a week to just chill after two weeks of doing the opposite of chilling.

It was fun not-chilling, but the not-chilling meant that I don't think Suzannah had one real nap on vacation. I am almost afraid to write this lest I jinx it, but Suzannah has taken a real nap -- without drama -- every single day this week. She has even turned to me and said, "Mama? I take a nap?" And she actually meant it. Also, and this is almost too much for me, she has gone to bed easily every single night. And slept all night long. By herself. I don't even remember the last time this happened five nights in a row. She must be recovering from some wicked sleep deprivation. (I'm more inclined to believe that than to actually hope that this is her new pattern. We've just been burned too many times before. But we'll enjoy it while it lasts.)

I've been perfectly content to just go with the flow this week, without really planning some huge fun agenda. On Tuesday, we spent most of the morning and a good chunk of the afternoon with Kyanne at IKEA while we had the CR-V serviced (ouuuuch) and yesterday, Zannah and I went to the mall for a change of scenery and read a lot of books in the children's section at Borders. Then she wanted to look at magazines, so the two of us sat on the floor and read our own. I caught up on People (once in awhile I splurge and buy a copy, and Matt always makes fun of me and/or makes his scorn quite apparent, but you KNOW he always reads it when I bring it home) and Suzannah read...a bunch of nature magazines, I think, and also something about getting your novel published. Then she politely requested that we go to lunch.

Our Big Event this week was our "big" ultrasound, our anatomy scan for Baby #2. We brought Suzannah along so she could see the baby, and while I think most of it was a little abstract for her (she got bored with the close-up shots of the heart and kidneys and various limbs and focused on tickling my toes instead) she was very excited to see pictures of the baby, and she asked for them several times throughout the day. She says "Hi, Baby!" to my belly every day now (she has to lift up my shirt first -- reminds me a bit of her nursing days!), and she loves to touch it and rub lotion on it. (Sidenote: No, it doesn't matter how much I grease the belleh, so don't give me any advice on "preventing" stretch marks, please. If you're gonna get them, you're gonna get them. I thought I was safe when I was pregnant with Suzannah, so much so that I bragged noisily to a friend about not having a single one in my twenty-eighth week. Naturally, I woke up covered with them the very next morning. But whatever, I really like the lotion anyway.) Of course, then she lifts up her own shirt and jabs a finger at her belly button, announcing that she has a baby in her tummy too. Why not?

We read The Berenstein Bears' New Baby several times each day, which, in theory, should get Suzannah excited both about the baby and the new bed we're going to get her when we move the crib into the nursery. We're actually painting the nursery this weekend because I have this relentless need to Get Things Done; I'm reaching a point of panic here, with the school year approaching and all, and this is one manageable task we can take care of. Once we have paint on the walls, we can begin to put the room together and, more importantly, turn Suzannah's room into more of a little girl's room. (I say "more importantly" because if this baby is anything like Suzannah, we won't actually need the nursery for quite some time. But the room will look good.) We're losing our guest bed, due to an unforeseen, er, hiccup in our plans, but I allowed myself to stress about that for one afternoon only and I've made my peace with the fact that a.) it wasn't a great bed to begin with, as anyone who slept on it can attest to, and b.) for now, we'll have more room to organize everything that needs to be in that room. I imagine we'll replace it with something better in the next year or so, something that could actually be used as a regular bed for one of our children and guests.

Anyway, the ultrasound went well. I tend to go the route of fairly minimal prenatal care because I think so many of those "routine" things only serve to make women anxious or give the impression that they increase the odds of a good outcome, when of course they have nothing to do with it; I don't have betas drawn, I'm not a fan of more ultrasounds than are strictly necessary (with Suzannah I didn't even have a dating ultrasound, although this time I really wanted one to convince myself that there was actually a baby in there making me so sick), and we've declined all screens and tests. I did enjoy the ultrasound, though. I mean, it was fun to see the baby. I didn't have the same innocent excitement I had with Suzannah, and after carrying her I didn't have any expectations that I'd feel closer to my baby because of what we saw on the screen -- I felt Baby moving during the ultrasound (I didn't with Suzannah; I had it a few weeks earlier and hadn't felt much movement yet) and I was relieved, only because I felt reconnected with the baby after focusing on a screen. Frankly, it's strange to me to see my child above my head with someone else who doesn't know her talking to me about her, if that makes sense. But it was still good to see that everything is where it's supposed to be. Baby's growth is pretty symmetrical, and I'm measuring a few days ahead just like I did with Suzannah. The OB in the practice reads the results so I don't actually know much, but my midwife said she wouldn't be concerned; she talked to me about some of the numbers (cervix looks good, heartbeat is strong, fluid is fine, etc.) and said that the ultrasound tech usually leaves her a note if she finds anything of concern, which she didn't.

I will say that this baby was a wee bit more uncooperative -- and more wiggly -- than Suzannah was. It took quite awhile to get a good profile shot because Baby kept flinging her arms over her face; actually, it's exactly what Suzannah does now when we're trying to get her out of bed before she's ready to wake up. I could almost hear this child mutter, "Go away, I'm sleeping," just like her big sister. It's probably a good thing that we didn't try to find out the sex; I doubt she'd have appreciated the invasion.