Doctor's appointment

Dr says that everything is normal. Nothing noteworthy to report. Tiny squee has rearranged so that its back is to the left. Seeing that for the entire rest of the pregnancy, it has been facing the other direction, that's sort of interesting... but not particularly noteworthy. Perhaps that's why sleeping didn't go so well last night - Tiny Squee was busy repositioning.

We went to Powell's today; they were having a 30% off Friends and Family sale. I got a bunch of books, including several cook-and-freeze cookbooks which I hope to use to make food for after Tiny Squee arrives. I also got some baby board books to add to our (rapidly growing) collection. Our baby will be very well read.

The glamorous side of pregnancy.

Today I peed my pants when I sneezed.

Baby shower!

Today was our Portland baby shower. It was awesome. 

My mother and I.

We had excellent food: there were 7 different types of tea with cucumber tea sandwiches and apple / boursin cheese on rye bread sandwiches. There was an fabulous veggie tray, cream puffs, berries, crackers and cheese, pomegranate seeds, and merengue cookies.

Mike and I went to Pastrygirl and got a cake. It was apple spice cake with salted caramel filling between the layers and vanilla buttercream frosting. It was awesome.

Tiny Squee cake!! If you look closely, there's a yellow squirrel on the left-hand block.

After people had a chance to eat, we opened presents. I must say that I have very generous friends and family.

These are from Leslie. She crocheted the hat and tiny booties in the front. Mike was *thrilled* that she gave me yarn.

These are from my mother. Tiny squee will have such warm and toasty toes. The bottles are the same brand as my breast pump, so hopefully they work well.

The stroller console is from Leslie, as is the crochet book in the front. Mike's Mom sent the stroller weather shield, which will be awesome for taking Tiny Squee out for walks when it's cold and drizzly. She also got us the baby monitors, which are underneath the squirrel puppet from Jessica.

Cameron got us this wool diaper cover, which is being modeled by my purple bear. I have to lanolize it so it's waterproof, then it's supposed to be used over cloth diapers just like a rubbery diaper cover. Wool diaper covers breathe, unlike synthetic ones. I'm eager to try this out, but I don't personally know anyone who's used them.

I'm going to include Ciara's tiny quilt here, even though she wasn't able to be at the shower. It's beautiful and I can't wait to cover up the tiny squee with it. I decided that the dog sort of looks dead in this picture, so I took a different one (below), but it doesn't show the quilt as well.

There are a couple of gifts that aren't pictured here because they are still in the mail. I'll post them when they arrive.

After we finished with presents, we played a few games. We filled-in-the-blanks on several nursery rhymes. Kim won that one; she didn't get any of the words wrong. My mother and I both missed one word (different words).

There was a funny a baby question game where everyone wrote a baby-related question on one side of a card, then the answer to their question on the back side of a different card. Some of the question / answer combos turned out pretty funny:
Do babies ever spit up? Vagina.
Are babies mammals? 21 inches is pretty common.
How long is the baby? Depends on what they ate.
Babies come out of what part of the body? Ear.
Where is a baby's belly button? Boobs!

We guessed the number of jelly beans contained in a glass jar. The winner got to take home the jar. Cameron won that one, but had already left by the time the winner was declared. Mike came in second, so I've been eating jelly beans all night.

We also played pin the sperm on the egg. My sperm is the one all the way up in the right ovary. Mike's got pretty close.

There was a sperm pile-up at one location. The happy egg is up in the corner of this picture.

 One of the activities that I had really wanted to do was to have people fold origami stars. I saw a really cool mobile made up of these stars on etsy, but it was pretty expensive. I had people write messages to the baby on their strips of paper, then we folded them into stars (which took a while, but which we got the hang of). I'm going to hang them all up on strings to make a mobile for over the crib.

Theatrical Squeeing About

We went and saw Beauty and the Beast (the musical) this afternoon. The tiny squee got VERY excited and was squirming and kicking all over the place. It was somewhat distracting. It is obviously Mike's baby.

All up in my stomach

This tiny squee has decided that the place to be is all up in my stomach. I didn't actually realize that my uterus extended quite so high into my abdominal cavity, but it must since the alternative is that the tiny squee is actually roaming free through my internal organs.

It's making dinner a challenging meal to eat. Typically, I can eat breakfast and lunch more or less normally. Then, while I'm digesting lunch for 8-10 hours, the tiny squee moves north and camps out in my stomach. Sometimes, it pokes its butt up and out, which gets to be quite uncomfortable. I poke at it until it moves back down.

As an interesting aside, I finally made it to a PMQG meeting. I don't think I've been there for at least 6 months. I definitely haven't been since I've looked pregnant. There were three other pregnant quilters at the meeting as well. One is due in May and two are due in July. I'm the least pregnant-looking. Of course, all the other ladies are having their second babies. It made me feel like I should sew something, so I headed to the fabric store this evening. Unfortunately, by the time I got there I was exhausted and there was a tiny squee all up in my stomach, so the motivation left me. Perhaps I'll sew something tomorrow.

Dr Visit

We went to see Dr Liz yesterday. We talked about insurance, which was not thrilling but pretty useful. I have maybe found an insurance that will cover her, but I need to call them and see what exactly they WILL cover. Otherwise, I'm going to go with Kaiser and just continue to go see her occasionally (she suggested this as an effective strategy).

The baby is growing perfectly. I am now measuring exactly where I should be for being 34 weeks pregnant (34 centimeters fundal height, which is basically how large the uterus has gotten). Baby's heartbeat sounded fine. Nothing unusual has occurred so far and we see her again in 2 weeks. I think after that, we move to once a week appointments. She seems totally unconcerned about early labor (I have no signs of it so far) and positive about the baby waiting until the end of the term to be born.

Hiccups

I think the baby is hiccuping. Every so often, I feel this very rhythmic gentle bumping, usually on my left side near the bottom of my tummy. It's probably about one bump per second and kind of feels like a heartbeat, except that the baby's heartbeat is much faster than this. It usually lasts a few minutes and then disappears.

Someone in my yoga class (which I haven't been to in forever, but am aiming to get to tonight) said she was feeling the baby hiccup, so that's my theory.

I think the baby was particularly active last night. It would explain the "having a baby" dream. I know it was active this morning after my alarm went off. There was some hiccuping, then some wiggling and kicking, then a huge movement that I felt on both sides.

Baby Arrival Dream

Last night, I had a dream that the baby came. I was walking in the park with my mother and several other people. All of a sudden, I felt the baby give a huge movement and then I felt something between my legs. I reached down, and there was an arm. I said something like "no, baby! It's too early, get back in there!" and tried to push it back up. That didn't work, and the baby slid all the way out. It was red and sort of wrinkly, but very cute. Then there was a fairly lengthy nursing sequence - I seem to be sort of focused on that part in all of my baby dreams.

Somehow, this fit into a separate dream bit where we (I'm not certain who exactly) were moving into a huge old mansion where a very wealthy old man lived with his two servants. He had an extensive library and was collecting old books because he was trying to identify the pattern on pieces of silverware. It was apparently his life's work. He had just acquired a new (old) book when we arrived, and he was very excited because he was sure this would be the one that would hold the key to the identity of the pattern. We looked around the house and then encountered him on the stairs. He was crying and saying "it wasn't in it... it wasn't in it..." His butler was crying too, apparently in sympathy for the unidentified silverware pattern.

Eating challenges

Eating has become more difficult. It depends where exactly the Tiny Squee is located at any given moment. It's large enough now that it takes up most of the available space. When it's down low, it's hard to walk and I have to pee every 15 minutes. When it's high, there's no room for my stomach. It likes to shift position just to make my life more challenging.

Here's how today's eating went:
Breakfast (7:30am) - bowl of cereal and a mocha.
Overfull until about 11:45, when suddenly I was starving. I ate an entire plate of Thai noodles.
Comfortable for about an hour, then went to extremely overfull and started to burp up Thai noodles.
Remained overfull until 6:30, when I was suddenly starving. I ate 2 pieces of bacon, 4 eggs and an english muffin.
Now, I desperately want cake.

Busy week.

This week felt really busy. I seem to have very much underestimated the amount of time that work was going to take this term. My plan was to sort of take it easy so I'd have some free time to get baby stuff done. The reality is that I don't feel like I've had much free time, except on the weekends. Grading has been a chore this past week, but I did finally get caught up so I don't feel quite so far behind. Of course, Friday's classes turned in a bunch of stuff that I have to grade this weekend. Also, there's the job application to finish writing essays for (7 essays? isn't that a little much for one job application?). The house is currently a disaster area because I haven't had the time or energy to get it organized. Baby stuff that I was organizing last weekend is still exploded all over the living room. And there are two activities for today that I wanted to attend, but sitting here this morning I just feel too tired. Maybe I'll just schedule a nap for today.

That last paragraph sounds like I'm complaining, which I'm really not. Pregnancy isn't entirely comfortable right now, but it could definitely be worse. Getting up off the couch or out of my rocking chair is definitely getting more challenging, but I feel pretty good most of the time. Too much activity (walking too fast, walking up stairs) makes me out of breath and my heart starts beating fast, but apparently that's completely normal. By the last trimester, blood volume has increased by 40-50%, but the number of red blood cells has only increased by 20%. That means that the heart has to pump harder to get the same amount of oxygen around the body. So my body is treating a flight of stairs as aerobic exercise.

The Tiny Squee is definitely getting larger. I can feel it move around a lot more now. I went to visit B last night and we were watching my belly bump around as tiny squee did flips. It spends most of its time with its back towards my right-hand side. Sometimes, it moves waaaay over in that direction so that side gets really hard (tiny squee back / butt / head). The other side gets squishy because it's just full of feet. It's not really too comfortable when it does that, so I usually poke it until it moves back more towards the center. Sometimes, it moves waaaay up and squishes my stomach. I can go from starving to over-full in a matter of seconds because of baby positioning. Other times, it moves waaay down and walking becomes challenging. I totally understand why pregnant ladies start walking with that weird waddle. It's uncomfortable to walk when there's something hard all smoshed down in your pelvis. It makes me walk with my legs out wider than I would normally. I feel sort of like a penguin.

I finally broke down and bought maternity underwear. I'm not sure why I didn't do this sooner. They weren't any more expensive than regular underwear, but they're extremely comfortable. I'm not sure why manufacturers seem to believe that women want narrow, tight elastic bands around their legs and middles. Lots of women's underwear are cheaply manufactured and uncomfortable for various reasons. I've always thought that men's underwear were a lot better made and better designed. Anyhow, these maternity underwear are pretty low-cut in front to accomodate my belly full of tiny squee. Instead of an elastic band around the top, they have a knit band that stretches. They're awesome. I'm going to get more of them and probably wear them after I'm done being pregnant, too.

While we were shopping for maternity underwear, I also bought a pair of maternity leggings, a grey pair of
yoga pants, and a fancy shiny top that I think I'll wear to my baby shower. I'm thinking that all of these will also work for after-baby. I'm not sure what I'm going to wear with the leggings, since I don't normally wear skirts, but I do own some leggings that I never wear because they're not comfortable (mostly because they have really tight elastic waistbands). I think I'll just wear maternity clothes forever.

I feel like we've gotten a lot of the stuff organized and are more-or-less prepared for a newborn as far as stuff goes. Things we do not need any more of:
-Newborn clothing
-Flannel receiving blankets
-Other blankets, unless they're really cool
-Diapers

Things I would still like to get:
-A ring sling (like this) and maybe a wrap carrier (like this)
-A crib
-Bottles so Mike and relatives can feed the baby
I should go update my amazon wishlist.