Late

Sadly this is NOT a birth announcement post. We have an induction date booked for early next week but obviously I hope we wont get that far. In the meantime…we wait. A lot. I’ve decided to act as if she’s coming on that day and if she comes before then it’ll just be a bonus. It’ll also be a bonus if my family stops calling me….”Oh, are you still pregnant?” Yes, yes I am. I’m also so cumbersome now that I knocked the dining room door right off its runners trying to reach the phone today so please stop calling!

A couple of people have sent lovely gifties for her which has been so appreciated. Karen sent a gorgeous rainbow themed package all the way from Australia. The Aussie postal service tortured me by delaying it but it was as worth the wait as I knew it would be coming from such a talented woman! A rainbow cardigan!! A cloth nappy with rainbow thread and 2 covers! (I want to sew everything with rainbow thread now!) A silky smooth wooden spoon and fork, an adorable appliqued onesie, 2 gorgeous felted items and even a book where one of the characters has our little girls name! I’m going to enjoy reading that to her. Thanks Karen, my rainbow girl will enjoy everything you sent as much as I do!

Jannelle sent her a beautiful little package with vintage clothes including a gorgeous smocked dress and…a hot pink kimono romper! I seriously can barely wait until she grows into it. Thanks Jannelle, she’s a lucky little girl already! (Excuse the crappy photo, I ran out of energy and light)

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Bootie mountain

I guarantee that title is going to get some odd google searches 😉 Technically it’s a bootie and hat mountain. My gran is obsessed with knitting hats and my mother is utterly and truly obsessed with booties. Whenever my gran sends something knitted there’s always a tiny hat in with it. The slightly annoying thing? Not one of them will still fit when winter gets here. And the booties? They are pretty, my mother does exquisite lacy stuff….but the only pair I ever asked her for have still not been finished. I am so excited about the love my family has for our munchkin before she has even arrived….but I can only cross my fingers that I am not that bad when my girl becomes a mother.

On the baby side of life….well there’s no baby yet. Perhaps this weekend? I am hoping hard and signs are good….but I’ve never met a baby that did what was convenient for anyone but itself. She’s dropped again (I didn’t think it was possible but yep you can get more uncomfortable that I already was), 4/5 engaged in the pelvis (5/5 means crowning), playing bouncy games on my leg and back nerves and kicking the crap out of me. Seriously, everyone says babies kick less violently as they run out of room. And for a while she did change from boom boom kicks to rolls and prods. But then things must have got really tight in there and she got mad. She kicks harder now than she ever has and I’ve let out more than a few yells of pain at the sudden appearance of a limb. I’m a little terrified to give birth now. Not from the pain, I will totally take the drugs if I need them. But the determined personality that she is already displaying has me petrified. What are we in for?

On the home stretch

I hit 36wks tomorrow – the day I hit 35wks I celebrated by making up the cradle all ready for the future occupant. I also made the annoying discovery that considering all my extensive preparation (shopping) I forgot to buy bassinette blankets. Whoops. Luckily it is summer and a couple of receiving blankets will do.

How is it that the tiniest resident in the house can take up so much space months before she even arrives? Look at the toys and books! My little girl is the first child/grandchild/niece-or-nephew/great-grandchild on both sides and sheesh is she being spoilt by the family!

And thats after I cleared out 2 boxes of toys and books from her room to donate! (Stuff I previously thrifted, not stuff people bought – just in case that came out sounding ungrateful!)

(I do hope to have some crafts on my craft blog soon, I have such a long list of things planned but this pregnancy carpal tunnel just kills me!)

Her first felt food

Last year my very favourite blogger (who is sickeningly talented) Karen and I did a little summer Christmas ornament swap and I made a felt strawberry, a VERY kiwi Christmas symbol. As a kid we always had stupid things like snowman ornaments on our Christmas tree and this year we had the hottest Christmas Day since the 1930s. (Talk about the wrong summer to be pregnant! Last summer was wet and miserable, this summer is so hot I’m nearly in tears some days!) So all those winter ornaments are just out of place. We’ll have our first Christmas tree next year for the baby’s sake and so I decided to make a few strawberry ornaments for it. Unfortunately I must have used a different circle template last year because it came out too small. But I decided that I’d turn it into her first felt food instead. I’m not really supposed to handstitch anything because of the carpal tunnel but it’s being so good at the moment and it’s so boring not being able to make anything that I risked the chance of pain and made a second one. Eventually there will be a whole plants worth of berries but there’s risk and then there’s being stupid so I’ll pace myself.

We had a midwife appointment today (she’s jammed right down in the pelvis and has ‘dropped’ which is a good sign for an early birth and also horrendously uncomfortable) and the midwife referred me for a scan to check on the wriggler because I’ve had decreased movements and have been stressing about it. Everything is fine and the scan tech called her feisty which sounds like a good sign! She’s on the small side but has plenty of time to grow and is at least not going to be a 10lber! I think the lack of movement is because she’s facing the placenta a lot now and kicking that. The funny thing though…I wanted to confirm she isn’t actually a he (since it was so hard to get a decent look at 19wks) but she had her legs politely crossed…and yet if you turn your head to the right I’d swear she’s picking her freaking nose! Tell me that’s not what it looks like:

It does look like it, right? She’s going to be a handful, I can just tell!

Growing

Thank you ladies so much for the raspberry leaf tea feedback. It sounds like it would be worth a try at least – and if it DOES turn out to shorten the pushing stage and dramatically shorten the bleeding then that would be AWESOME but if not….well what else have I got to do these days? Sitting around drinking tea is what I should be doing these days. Nesting has returned with a vengeance however and I often find myself battling low energy to do crazy things that heavily pregnant women clearly shouldn’t do.

Want a fright? Here’s the bump yesterday at 33w5d. Not hard to see why I’ve been having pelvic pain with that load I’m carrying! I’m hoping that tshirt will last the next 6 weeks but now I see it’s under a bit of strain! She’s hanging down looooow!

Fingers crossed Dave will take me fabric shopping this weekend. I intend to spend Christmas sewing! Sitting! Drinking bad tasting tea! NOT mowing the lawn in 28 degree (83F) heat while large and sore (told you nesting is trying to kill me)! Have a great Christmas!

Waiting

Worlds crappest blog title. Waiting. But waiting I am. Unfortunately I am still a few days short of 34wks so I’ve still got an awful lot of  waiting to do. I now know why pregnant women (particularly first timers) abandon their blogs for months at a time. First time pregnancy is nothing short of eyeopening. And if I don’t want to be living these symptoms then you certainly don’t want to be reading about them.

Thanks to pelvic pain I have barely left the house in a month and only when Dave has been able to drive me anywhere. Yesterday he very kindly took a detour on the way to a customers house to pick me up and drop me at the local shops for a whole hour of freedom. Yep, I’ve lost my marbles if I’m excited about spending time at the shops this close to Christmas in this humidity. I was even desperate enough to risk a trip to the local op shop – in 34wks I have been maybe 3 times because the woman who works there began to really creep me out and cross boundaries. It was worth it though, I got a wooden train set which will be perfect for transporting her wooden animals around the house – or for mama to trip over.

Someone asked for a baby update so I’ll try and keep it brief (and tasteful) – she’s 3/5 engaged now, I’m in considerable and ever changing pain, whining constantly and currently melting in the summer heat – the humidity this summer is not the norm for us. Tending towards all over fatness as I do I am surprised by how…frontal the bump is. I’ll shock you with a photo asap. The midwife is guessing she’ll be 7.5lb but jeez if this is the pressure, pain and discomfort caused by a 7.5lber then what must those poor women who have 10+lb babies go through? I’m pretty sure I felt each of her little fingers through my skin the other day, so surreal. The discomfort seems to be cyclical – several very rough days followed by one or two crappy but normal days. You’d think being built not unlike a Russian peasant I’d fly through pregnancy with nary a complaint. And I’ve developed a whopping surge in my usually minor lactose intolerance which means looking for non-dairy alternatives.

(Also does anyone have any experience taking raspberry leaf tea? Recommended or a waste of time?)

Preparing

I originally planned to wash all the baby clothes (and bibs…and blankets…and cloths…and nappies and god only knows how many other things that babies seem to ‘need’) from Christmas onwards since she isn’t due til the first days of February. But then I got too sore to walk in the summer heat…and well I got bored. It’s not much but hey, at least it’s keeping me off the couch and away from the DVDs just a little bit longer. And it’s such a simple pleasure but I do love looking at the colour hanging on the line. I guess babies add colour to your life in many different ways.

I had my first fortnightly visit to the midwife this morning and she confirmed my suspicion that the wriggler has dropped. Yay! And not only that but she’s head down and engaging 2/5 in the pelvis already. It certainly explains the hilarious waddle I developed on Saturday and the alarming feeling like a head is practically poking out between my legs. Anyway due to her excessive love of being upright for the whole pregnancy I had a fairly real concern that she’d be breech and that a c-section would be the order of the day. My mother said she’d come and stay for 2 weeks if that happened and I would be grateful for the help if I needed it but I’d also rather birth a 10lber through my nostril than have that need to happen so having her head engage as far as it has is VERY welcome news indeed! Clever girl!