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2004-10-18 - 11.10am��previous entry��next entry
37 weeks, 3 days - getting things done, and a couple of photos!
Thank you for all the lovely comments on my birth plan!! :) And for all the �Happy Full Term� messages � I get so excited whenever I�m reminded that I�m ready to have Arthur any time now!
I was going to do a 37 week belly pic but now we�re at the half-week mark already, so I think I�ll wait for Friday to do a 38 week one. But Neil took two pictures of me a couple of days ago, so I�ll post them here since I look pregnant (really?!) so they are relevant to this diary! They aren�t belly pictures though. The first one is of me eating (a common event, hehe!) and after I ate, I sat back on the sofa and Arthur pushed his butt in the air and his feet out of my side. When he does that I always put one hand on his little bum and the other hand on his feet, and feel them pushing against me. I talk to him and generally go all mushy when he does this! Anyway, Neil took a picture of me doing this :) So here they are:
Wow, those purple trousers look soooo huge on my belly, hehe! I wish I could get a photo for you that�s nice and clear of Arthur pushing bits of himself out of my belly � then you could see his feet/bum before he�s even born! :) That box disappearing out of the shot on the bottom left corner of the eating picture is the homebirth pack that the midwife left!! Oooh it�s so exciting!!
We are really making progress on getting the place ready for Arthur now. And on Saturday, Neil�s brother came to visit. We never see him so it was nice. NOT so nice was the first thing he said when he saw me as he walked through the door � �Hello Fatty!� Mmmm, nice compliment! I am not that bothered though, because he�s one of those guys who doesn�t really know how to �do� affection, so he gives stiff-as-a-board hugs as though they are an uncomfortable formality, and uses (bad) humour to acknowledge something like an exciting pregnant bump! Which I think is far more of a shame for him than anyone else, so I don�t let weird comments bother me. Neil was like that too once � all his family are to some extent, they didn�t seem to do affection very much which is sad. But yeah I coaxed the softie out of Neil over many years (!!), and my family are very affectionate and huggy and open with loving compliments so he has changed completely through being around us all since we started going out. But anyway, I digress! It was really nice to see Ian (Neil�s brother). Another uncle for Arthur to meet! Arthur will have two uncles and two aunts by blood (I have one brother and Neil has a brother and two sisters). And one of Neil�s sisters is married so that�s another uncle, and my brother has a fianc�e so that�s another auntie! My brain boggles at all his relatives � my family is full of only-children for generations, except my mother who has one sister. So I have one aunt and her husband is my only uncle. And they have only one child so I only have one cousin! Arthur will have bazillions of aunts and uncles and cousins in comparison, which I think is lovely, since I never got to experience that myself. He is the first in the next generation in both sides of the family, and recently Granny showed me the family tree again, and I was surprised and proud to realise that Arthur is going to be the first baby born in a new generation across hundreds of people over dozens of branches in my entire family tree!!! As I was in my generation :) So he�s a pretty special baby boy! He starts a new page in a very big and old book.
Ian kept staring at my bump while he was here, and saying, �Wow!� at odd moments, etc! I think I look more pregnant than I feel sometimes, and I forget how other people don�t get to see the bump gradually growing like I do. So a huge bump all of a sudden must be quite a sight to those who have only ever seen me without one! Arthur started pushing his feet around and sticking his bottom out, so I bared my belly and Ian got to feel Arthur�s little feet pushing at him. Neil was so sweet. Ian is his big brother, and Neil was so excited to see him, and I could tell how proud he was to show off his baby boy, even before he�s born! He kept saying, �See that bit there?! That�s his bottom! And feel his feet, can you feel his feet?!� It was so sweet :) He kept describing things that Arthur does and the way he moves about. He really wanted Ian to hear all about it, which was lovely. Ian was amazed at being able to feel a baby in my belly. It really is amazing. I guess I am used to it, but I do still find it incredible. I know I will miss that when he�s born. Oh and another totally cute thing Neil did was when he ran upstairs and came back down with a huge armful of cloth nappies to show Ian!! He brought newborn Kissaluvs, a couple of Cuddlebuns that I made, and a few of the nicest Tots replicas and a couple of wraps. I just sat there, I didn�t have to say anything � Neil was so excited about the nappies and wanted to show them to Ian and explain how to use them. It was soooo lovely to see him that excited about my nappies! He seemed really proud to point out that I made some of them :) Ian kept saying how he couldn�t believe his brother was suddenly the expert on nappies! Hehe! Neil is great though � he never needed convincing about cloth, he has always hated disposables and he loved the idea of cloth from the start :)
Saturday night Neil woke up with a migraine at 3.30am so I had to get up and sleep on the sofa the rest of the night. He tends to moan and groan and throw up so I prefer to be somewhere else if that happens! Poor Neil. He didn�t get sick though. He took painkillers and I got him a bowl and a cold washcloth for his head, and left him to it. There�s never anything more I can do for him when he gets these headaches, which is frustrating. He usually just needs to be left alone in quiet and darkness. Anyway but I was totally freaked out about whether he might throw up or not, so I couldn�t sleep a wink downstairs on the sofa. I crept up to check on him at 6.30am and he was asleep so I managed to doze off somewhere around 7am. He woke me up at 9am, and I was really disappointed to discover I was too wiped out to even think about going to church :( I had been soooo looking forward to church, especially since I didn�t go the Sunday before either. I wanted to ask if anyone has the things we need for our homebirth list as well. But Sue is going to put a notice in the church newsletter for next Sunday, asking if anyone has an angle-poise lamp or portable heater we can borrow, and also asking people to turn out their old towels and sheets for our homebirth!! :) That�s so cool. I hope we�ll find what we need that way. I should think we will, because a lot of people have old towels and sheets and there are 100 or so people at our church.
So on Sunday we both went back to bed and slept till noon to catch up on the sleep we�d missed. Neil had a fuzzy headache most of Sunday, but he still did quite a few things. I was worried that he was overdoing it though � he always needs to rest up for 24 hours after his bad headaches, otherwise they can come back again. I think it�s tension � he is such a physically tense person, and I noticed he was wound up like a tightly coiled spring most of Saturday because he was nervously excited about his brother�s visit.
Anyway, between us we did lots yesterday. And the cleaner came!!! Yay!!!! She was great!! I never had a cleaner before and I felt strangely bashful about asking her to clean things, even though that�s what she was there for and we were paying her to do it! It just felt weird to say, �You, girl! Clean the toilet!!� and so on � not that I said it like that, hehe! I hate ordering people to do horrible jobs, although yeah I know that�s not quite what I was doing and she was there for that reason. Anyway she cleaned the kitchen like NEVER before!! And the oven. And washed the floors, and vacuumed the house, and dusted EVERYTHING, like even things I never considered dusting before, hehe! She cleaned the bathroom and the windows and the mirrors. We piled every item from the bedroom floors and surfaces onto the beds so she could clean the floors and surfaces thoroughly, and there were tons of things all over the place before she arrived, so the piles on the beds were ENORMOUS!! There�s still a pile on the spare bed that�s um, about 5ft high in places!!! We are so untidy and cluttered. *sigh* Anyway, you should have seen her face when she saw the beds! She asked if we wanted her to tidy the things off the beds, poor thing!! I quickly reassured her that she didn�t need to go near the stuff on the beds. She looked quite relieved! :) She tidied a lot of stuff in the living room though, and we hadn�t even asked her to, which was great. Anyway she cleaned for 3 hours, and it was worth every penny. The house looks lovely and smells of cleaning stuff, and the kitchen and bathroom actually look hygienic!
At the moment there is an electrician downstairs fitting a fluorescent light in the kitchen. The old one looked so scummy and hasn�t worked since before we moved in here, so the nesting instinct finally pushed me to get something done about it! I really hope he�s going to be finished soon because I only have enough money to pay him for one hour�s work � eek.
Yesterday we ordered the birth pool!!! Yay! And my TENS machine arrived on Saturday!! All of Arthur�s nappies and wraps are now washed, dried and folded ready for use on his changing station. I need to reorganise the station though. It doesn�t look user-friendly enough to me yet. I also got all the stuff ready for his first bath!! I can�t believe we�re getting so close to his arrival that we�re actually preparing stuff to give him a bath! I have to wash his new baby flannels though. They are so cute, like little mini facecloths! :) I started cutting out the fabric for a cover for his changing mat too. And I fitted snaps and aplix to 5 nappies and wraps that were finished except for fastenings. Neil put some things in the loft yesterday, and I threw out a ton of sweaters and shirts and dresses for charity. I feel fresher and clearer the more things I sort through to get ready for Arthur. My clothes aren�t that relevant to Arthur�s arrival, but it�s like I�m in some weird nesting mode and the WHOLE nest has to be cleaned and sorted for me to feel relaxed! So every little thing I get done makes me feel better. I cleared out the shoes and stored them more efficiently so there aren�t pairs of shoes tripping us up all over the house now! We cleaned out a huge cupboard and stored a big box of Arthur�s 0-3 month baby clothes in there, and some other stuff that�s been hanging around in the way. I need to pack up a load of maternity clothes to go in the loft now, and sort through a ton of things on the bed. Then I can set up the Moses basket in our bedroom and put the bedding on it (can�t wait to do that!!). We have some huge bin liners full of rubbish from our big clearouts!! So we�re doing well. We moved the computer upstairs again which was lonnnng overdue. Um� what else? Just lots of little bits and pieces really. Oh I cleared the drawers in my bedside table, because they were overflowing with junk and I want them filled with useful things like maternity pads, nipple cream, and lip balm! Without having to rifle through a ton of junk to find them. That turned into a huge sort-and-clear session, and I got too tired to finish it so I have that to do today.
My daddy is recording me a CD of him playing jazz on the piano! I asked him if he would, because that�s always been the most relaxing music I can listen to, as I associate it with him playing to relax when I was young, and he would play in the evenings while my brother and I had our baths or stories before bed. So it has always relaxed me deeply whenever I hear him play those tunes. I figured that�s the best thing I could listen to during labour, so I asked him to record me some, and he said yes!! :) Yay! They will be here in just under 2 weeks now!! Yikes! My due date is 18 days away � can you believe it?!!
Yay, the electrician�s finished and I had enough money (yay!), and the kitchen looks clean and bright now with the new light! He is coming back in a week or so to fit a switch to it though. If I�m not busy giving birth at the time of course!
Arthur has been very active the last 24 hours. He was pretty quiet on Saturday, more so than normal. But Sunday was a busy busy day for my little boy! He has found my ribs :( Yesterday he kicked me in the ribs twice. I am soooo blessed that this hasn�t happened until now � thank you Lord for my long torso and low baby, hehe! I am really grateful for that because so many people have trouble with rib/feet issues in the 3rd trimester and I haven�t had that at all. It is extremely uncomfortable! At 5.30am today I was having a dream and all of a sudden in my dream, something hit me hard in the ribs and woke me with a jerk! I was so sleepy, I was just about aware that my face was screwed up into a weird grimace, and I couldn�t figure out why I was making that face, until I came round a bit more and realised that Arthur had his foot pressed firmly on my bottom rib! He must have kicked it out there which woke me up, and then pushed it back and left it there. I had to use my fingers to push his little foot off my rib! And then I couldn�t sleep again. I did lie in bed till 8am but I couldn�t sleep so I got up and took a bath instead. I�m getting tired now though, so maybe I�ll take a nap today. He was THE most squiggly squirmy boy all the time I was lying awake! I had to hold my belly sometimes, he was so pushy and shovey! He has absolutely no room left at ALL now, and sometimes it seems like he�s annoyed by his lack of space. He wriggles and writhes and tries his normal stretching movements, and if he seems particularly annoyed by the lack of space, his attempts at stretching his limbs turn into hard and fast jabs like he�s just soooo annoyed that he�s decided to kick the heck out of the thing that�s restricting him!! Usually he only does slow stretches or the odd little jab, but he can punch like a boxer if he seems annoyed by not being able to stretch! I am just guessing on that front though. I can�t think why else he seems so agitated sometimes as he�s trying to move. He had hiccups four times yesterday, and once while I was lying awake this morning :)
Another thing I am noticing is that he jumps at sudden loud noises. On Thursday evening I was in the kitchen talking with Neil, and he was getting some baking foil out for making our dinner. You know how foil comes on those rolls and you roll out the amount you need and then tear it? And it makes a huge slashy metallic noise, almost like a bang if you rip it fast? Well Neil did that, and almost instantly Arthur�s whole body jolted really hard against me! Poor little boy! And then Friday when I went shopping in town, I went in my car to the back door of Argos to pick up the bedguard, as it felt too heavy for me to carry back to the car, and while I was waiting for them to bring me my order, there was this lorry unloading some crates, and this guy chucked a huge empty crate down onto the concrete from the back of the lorry. It made the most enormous crash. I saw it coming so the sound didn�t make me jump, but poor Arthur nearly leapt right through my belly! He didn�t seem distressed afterwards, but I hated the idea that he was alarmed by a sound he couldn�t see coming, so I felt all protective and rubbed my belly for a while, telling him it was okay and sympathising with him (�WASN�T that a loud noise Arthur?!�), etc. Apart from not liking it when he gets alarmed by loud noises, it�s sooo nice to feel him responding to �my� world, to the outside world, separate to me. He�s a real separate person with his own reactions to things already, and that�s so amazing. I love my little boy :)
Okay I have waffled enough, and I have tons to do today. It�s cool and autumnal, and I love that. It�s gonna rain from tomorrow for the rest of the week (which I also love), but today is blue sky and crispy air and multi-coloured leaves on the trees. I just love it when summer is over, because I�m always so sick of the heat and humidity by the end of summer! When I went shopping on Friday I realised I could see my breath on the air, and I always love that first day of the year where I can see my breath. I could see it again when we stood at the front door to wave Ian off on Saturday afternoon, and I�ll bet I could see it if I went outside today. I just have such a lovely weird energy at the moment. The weather helps a lot though. I just want to stand on a rooftop and puff my chest out with the beautiful crisp autumn air and shout aloud with joy that I am alive and it�s nearly time for my first baby to be born! I feel wonderful at the moment. I get tired, but I am loving this weird, sort of �primal� energy. It�s definitely a nesting thing. I wonder when Arthur�s birthday will be?
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