37 weeks pregnant belly photo

Though I expect the baby to be overdue, I thought I'd do a belly photo a week earlier than normal... Just in case I'm totally wrong about when she's showing up (just did one three weeks ago, and usually I've been posting them every four weeks). My belly button hasn't really popped out but it's getting very flat. Sleeping on my side with a belly this big requires that I find some support for the belly - either leaning over so that the belly is resting on the bed, or stuffing a bit of the body pillow underneath it.

I'm so glad that Frac suggested that I take, or rather have DH take, these belly photos. For starters, they're fun and a nice way to document what's happened, especially for the many friends and family far away. But also, I can look back at me at 14 weeks and think to myself wow I was svelte! Unfortunately, I've also noticed that my butt isn't what it used to be. I blame not walking up the Metro escalators - I've been taking it easy, but I'll get back to that asap.

Overall, I'm feeling good so far. The baby is still moving a lot - I think she's still head down, which is the position we want. The other night, her movements seemed weird, like she'd moved into a transverse (head to one side, bum on the other, horizontal rather than vertical orientation), as all of a sudden when she was pushing her feet against my side, they were really coming out from my side rather than below my ribs. I've been spending a lot of time on all fours, doing cat/cow (arching my back) which is supposed to help in positioning the baby, and I think she's back to head down. I'm crap at telling though - my midwives poke my belly for a second or two and say with all the confidence in the world yep, she's still head down. I'll be heading back to see them for a checkup Wednesday and I'll ask where they think she is.

She hasn't dropped into my pelvis yet, which usually happens between two to four weeks before birth (according to our friends at WTEWYE at any rate). I haven't had any other real signs of early labour yet either - though I noticed yesterday that I'm having round ligament pain again for the first time in a few months, which I suspect has something to do with either her funny movements or starting to drop.

I'm still enjoying being pregnant, but I'm getting close to understanding what other women say about really being ready to give birth near the end. The belly is so big, it kind of gets in the way of things (like bending over to pick something up from the ground!). I'm walking really slowly these days too. I'm beginning to look forward to being a bit more agile and fast again, not to mention meeting this new person - that's getting to be a more real idea these days.

Swimming in Racism

I've been reading the coverage and commentary about the Philadelphia Valley Swim Club's absurd, racist ejection of a bunch of children, largely African-American and Latino, from their facility. I think MyBrownBaby presents a good summary of what happened.

This is horrendous and I'm appalled and embarrassed that this is still going on. However, a part of me, the part of me that tries to calm down the neurotic mom-to-be every time I hear about another (cute white) girl kidnapped on CNN, is glad this makes the news. Careful now: not glad this happened, but glad it makes the news.

Because it wouldn't have been news prior to the civil rights movement. That was business as usual in those days.

Because what makes the news is the unusual: the kidnappings, the egregious blatant racism, the plane or train crash.

What doesn't make the news is sad and easy for privileged white people to forget about about: the grinding, ongoing, everyday, garden variety racism, the disappearances of non-white children, the deaths of our service members (many if not most non-white) in Iraq and Afghanistan, the hundreds dead every day in car accidents in this country.

We forget what's not in front of us, and the world appears a lot scarier when viewed through the lens of CNN (and the rest of the mass media of course, it's not just CNN).

We're not good at estimating risk, and I think it's partly because what we see on the news is so persuasive and alarming. What I expect people of colour understand very clearly though is that racism is still alive and well in North America - though I wasn't expecting it to manifest so blatantly in this day and age.

I'm glad Lenore Skenazy is doing her Free Range Kids thing, to remind us about what's really scary out there, and what's totally blown out of proportion. I'm always interested in the reality check. Any recommendations on places to get reality checks on life as a non-white person in North America? I'm reading...

Needles

Photo Credit: Dirty Bunny

I used to detest having blood drawn. By detest, I mean I had gotten to the point where I would insist on having not just a chair but an exam table or bed to lie down on before they'd get to jab my arm. I needed to look away and think about something else to get through it. Vaccines I didn't enjoy but they weren't a big deal like taking blood out was.

Let me tell you that the blood test I had for dengue fever a few years ago was horrible: they needed three or four vials of blood and I was pale and sweating and miserable. Though I suspect the nurse taking the blood felt pretty bad about it too. Or she was a good actor. At any rate, having blood drawn makes me very queasy.

My DH, on the other hand, enjoys watching blood being taken from his own or another person's arm. He also likes violent movies and foods I wouldn't normally eat (fried lung anyone?). When he was in the recovery room after some minor surgery last year, they invited me in to see him, and I think he sneezed a bit of blood. I helpfully almost fainted. They asked me to wait outside where I felt totally useless.

I noticed a change with the first blood test after getting pregnant: I was only... six or eight weeks along at that point, and pretty darn sure I was pregnant, so I was chatting away (reclining on the exam table, expecting to feel faint) with the nurse about how I was to be cat sitting over the holidays and would like to be tested for immunity to toxoplasmosis while they were doing the pregnancy test. I felt a bit off, but generally fine. I couldn't believe it when she said she was done and I insisted on waiting there for a few minutes so I wouldn't be on my feet when I started to feel like passing out.

It never happened.

Since then, I've had a multitude of blood tests, to test all kinds of things (hemoglobin, HIV antibodies, drugs - that might have been a urine test actually, blood sugar, etc). On the last one, I still looked away while he poked my arm, but then watched as he drew the blood out. No faint feeling at all.

I can't explain why the change has occured. I haven't had so many blood tests as to desensitize me, I don't think. I feel older or more mature or something, but I don't think that's it either.

Other than ending up with a baby - a baby! - I think this might be the coolest side effect of pregnancy ever. I'm not sure I'm going to start watching the violent movies with DH however.

Anyone else get over their fear of needles? Any good pregnancy side effects to share?

Pregnancy Brain

True story: I went into the bedroom this evening to get some lip balm before sitting down to listen to my Hypnobabies recording, and thought I should take my calcium tablet now. Both lip balm and calcium tablets are on the same bureau in the bedroom.

I applied the lip balm, put it down, and tried to remember what the other thing was that I was going to do. Couldn't. Walked back into the living room to find my iPod, then remembered the calcium.

Pregnancy brain: it's real. I don't know what I'd do without my BlackBerry. Any good pregnancy brain stories out there?

PS: taking calcium at night as a recent blood test showed me to be a tad anemic, and I read somewhere that taking calcium and iron at the same time is bad, as they bond together and your body can't absorb them. And that magnesium, which is included in my calcium tablet, is good to take before bed to help you sleep. And I can use all the help I can get sleeping right now. Between needing to go to the loo every hour or two, and the sweaty-ness, and not being able to get into a comfortable position, I'm not sure if I'm sleeping or waking more.

Late Pregnancy Symptoms - Some Weird, Some Less So

I think I just like using the word weird.

At any rate, I'm now 36 weeks pregnant - crikey, that went by fast! What's changed since the last post on dealing with the funny pregnancy symptoms? Very little.

Both the "typically first trimester" symptoms of morning sickness and metallic taste in my mouth have receeded but not completely gone away.

One new one is that my hair or my scalp I suppose, is really oily all of a sudden. I normally wash my hair twice a week and the stretch from Wednesday to Sunday is really getting questionable. I'm not sure if I were 36 weeks pregnant in the winter, that this would be such a problem, but it's hot here and I don't think all the sweating is helping. I do think the rate at which my hair falls out may have slowed - or it may only appear to have slowed, since I got it cut in Barbados and it looks like less in the tub hair trap... Yum!

My heartburn has only gotten worse. I've also talked to enough moms who took way more than 4 Tums/Rolaids per day and ended up with healthy babies that I've stopped worrying about it on the few days that I have taken 4 before lunch... I've also finally been told that I can take one proton pump inhibitor, Xantac. Argh. I should really complain more. I think I just haven't wanted to be the whiner so I haven't bitched and moaned about the heartburn enough to be told this earlier.

Still no stretch marks. A few funny little purple veins on the belly, that might be baby varicose veins, but they don't bulge or hurt so I'm not going to worry about them. The skin on my belly sometimes looks a bit red so I keep moisturizing and it seems fine.

Potential TMI alert on paragraph below!

Speaking of varicose veins, after my bout of intestinal distress back in March, I grew myself some really nice varicose veins of the bum, aka hemorrhoids. Yuck! Unfortunately they've never gone away. Apparently as well as coming along with the constipation and whatnot, their presence is also often attributed to the weight of the baby and her accoutrement on the intestines. After the first couple weeks, they no longer itched and burned, which is alright. However, now with the size of my belly combined with these buggers, it's sometimes hard to reach to clean effectively after a BM. Hoping that makes sense without being excessively graphic?

TMI alert off.

Ooh, one new pregnancy symptom: I'm really irritable. So irritable. I get now why women take time off work before the baby comes. It's not to get the house ready or rest. It's because if you don't, something might fly out of your cranky potty mouth that could get you fired. I'm trying to keep a lid on it. Fortunately I love my job and work with great, competent people, so there's not too much of a reason to lose my grip at work. Poor DH though. He gets all my crazy, rather unfiltered.

Finally, I go back and forth on this mini-series of pregnancy symptoms / side effects / manifestions. I don't like calling them symptoms as I don't think I'm sick, nor side effects because it's not a drug... though I could make an argument for bottling and selling some of the hormones. Manifestations I only just came up with and it sounds a little woo woo out there.

34 weeks pregnant belly photo

IMG_0163
Originally uploaded by xxcaro

DH was kind enough to snap this last week but it's taken me this long to get my round tuit up and running to post the darn thing. Can you believe it? Ah well. I thought when I finished school, I'd have all this free time to relax, and blog, and read, and study the hypnobabies course. And I find myself flopping on the sofa when I get home from work and vegematating with my feet up.

And nesting. There's definitely some nesting going on: washing all the clothes and blankies we've been given, organizing space for it all, cleaning the apartment a little, etc.

The Worried Pregnant Tourist in Barbados

I wasn’t sure what to expect from my most recent trip to Barbados. We’d selected it as our destination because we used to live there, and figured it would be both relaxing, and handy to have existing relationships with doctors, should I need one.

My midwife gave me a complete copy of all of my medical records since I started seeing her practice, to bring my OBGYN in Barbados up to date, should I need to see her. I bought travelers’ medical insurance for the first time in my life, though after paying for it, I read the longish list of exclusions and found that maternity care and childbirth are excluded. Rats.

I worried about staying regular and whether I’d be able to find prune juice at the grocery store there, so I bought some bags of dried prunes and apricots to be on the safe side.

A colleague got me worried about sunburn, saying pregnant ladies are more susceptible to sunburn than normal, so I bought some children’s SPF 50 sun block – opted for the children’s type, hoping it would have fewer weird chemicals. This is in addition to the lovely natural sun block product I’d purchased at Lush, which they say is approximately SPF 15.

I remembered our hotel room from last year where we were on the third floor with no elevator, and figured that would be hopeless, or rather, I would be hopeless trying to climb two flights of stairs right now. I called the hotel a month before we arrived and requested a room on the ground or second floor.

I have read that mosquitoes are particularly drawn to pregnant ladies, so I worried about contracting dengue fever again (you can get it up to four times) and considered buying insect repellent, but didn’t find any citronella based products before I left. I don’t use DEET based stuff under normal circumstances, and really don’t want to while pregnant.

In the last days before departure and the first few days of the trip, I got myself completely worked up and convinced that I was going to go into labour while in Barbados. Happily, that turned out to be wrong and I’m still quite pregnant.

Here are my lessons learned for traveling to the Caribbean while pregnant:

• It doesn’t matter how much your traveling companion loves to have the window seat, you really need to get an aisle seat. This is not just for you to be able to get up and down to the bathroom frequently, but also for some shoulder and arm rest space: on one of the longer flights, I was stuck between my husband and a larger guy. I thought my back was going to go into spasm, I was so uncomfortable.
  
• They sell prune juice in the large grocery stores, just not the little touristy ones.
  
• The guy selling papayas out of the back of a van is also your friend: ask him for a large, very ripe one and make a basic little fruit salad with lime and brown sugar in the hotel. It will keep for days in the fridge and help with the digestion.
  
• Mosquitoes still prefer my husband (poor guy!) to me. I don’t think I got bitten once.
  
• The SPF 50 was pretty effective, but so was the stuff from Lush. I wore a hat and stayed out of the sun from 11 am to 3 pm and only got a bit singed – mostly got brown. Someone to whom I’m married doesn’t think he needs sun block or a hat, and he’s peeling now. And a lot browner than me.
  
• People are nice to pregnant ladies everywhere I go. Except those that aren’t, but they’re outnumbered. I got the best customer service I have ever received in Barbados on this trip. Even the cashiers at Big B’s grocery store were sweet to me, and that’s a minor miracle.
  
• Gobsmacked is kind of a wacky thing to say when explaining your reaction to hearing that someone is pregnant, but in a funny, irreverent way that I like.
  

So that’s what I learned on vacation in Barbados. I spent loads of time listening to the Hypnobabies recordings... or in some deep state of hypnosis where I snored, and listened to them at any rate... We had a lovely time, visited with many old friends, enjoyed perfect weather and hope to be back again soon!

UPDATE: forgot to link to the photos on Flickr. All better now.