Heartburn...

Last night was not my best night. I had Triscuits and ice cream too close to bedtime, I think.

I ended up waking up at about 3:00 with killer heartburn. It was bad enough that I got out of bed and took some Tums, then ended up walking around for a half hour or so. Then I sat in my chair for a while (to keep upright) until I finally felt good enough to head back to bed.

On the plus side, this morning I had a dream that we got a bouncy castle for the Blessingway.

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.

Weird dream

Last night, I dreamt that I was at an event where someone was selling soda drinks in brightly colored cans. They were called something like K3 or K7 soda; I remember there being a K in the logo. After I bought the soda, I knew (in that weird way that you often just know things in dreams) that if I drank it, it would kill my baby. I also knew that if my baby died, there would be an investigation, the soda would be taken off the market, and this would save the lives of hundreds or thousands of other babies.

I woke up before I made a decision about whether to drink the soda or not.

Update - not much to report

The title pretty much says it all.

I'm slowly getting bigger. I still don't feel like I'm as big as other women who are pregnant the same amount I am, but I guess that's ok. Next doctor's appointment is on the 31st and I'm sure she'll say something if I'm growing way too slowly. On the one hand, it's nice because I'm definitely not as inconvenienced as I would be if I were huge. I can still put on my socks and wash my feet in the shower. On the other hand, I was sort of looking forward to actually looking pregnant while I am pregnant. It's vaguely disappointing to not be larger. I'm sure I'll get there, though.. and then wish I was smaller again.

Sleeping is still challenging. Last night was a tough one. My hips got sore and I woke up and rolled over a lot of times. Strangely, I only got up to pee once. Maybe my hips were distracting me because I drank a ton of water yesterday evening.

I feel like I'm drinking a lot more water than I'm peeing out. I'm thirsty a good portion of the time, so I've decided to just carry a water bottle with me around the house. I don't feel like any body parts are getting particularly swollen (ankles seem to be normal), so maybe this is one of those parts of the pregnancy where my blood volume just increases quite a bit.

I haven't been remembering any of my dreams specifically. I feel like I remember them sometimes when I wake up during the night, but then by the next time I've woken up I forget them. It just seems way to hard to write them down in the middle of the night so I might remember them in the morning.

Last night, I sorted through all my yarn and divided it into categories by yarn weight (thickness). I know I had things in mind for most of this yarn when I bought it... but wow. This is a lot of yarn. No more yarn purchases, probably until the tiny squee is in its mid teens. Today I'm hoping to go get some bins for yarn storage.

My father is coming up to visit tomorrow and we're going to go hunt for more bins for storage. My goal is to get some of the craft/baby room organized. Right now, it's relatively functional for me as a craft room, but there's no way that we could fit much in the way of baby stuff in there. I did get in and craft some baby items last week. I've made several waterproof pads that could be used as changing pads or on the floor under a naked baby. I think they're pretty cool and I'm planning on making more for gifts. They also use up a lot of fabric, which is a plus. I feel like it makes a dent in my fabric stash when I pull out and use up a large piece.

Third Trimester, here we come!

We've officially entered the 28th week of pregnancy, which starts out the third trimester. I feel like I got about 5 times more pregnant in the last couple of weeks.. hopefully it's due to baby and not due to fudge and cookies.

Baby has active days and less active days. I went to prenatal yoga on Saturday and Shana (the yoga instructor) told someone else that the less active days are probably when baby is turned around and kicking towards the back. Apparently you can't feel kicks towards the back. All the kicks I've felt have been either down or to my left side, so maybe baby alternates between that direction and facing backwards. I enjoy the yoga class. It's really nice to check in with other pregnant ladies. I met someone who is almost exactly the same amount pregnant as I am. She's due March 28th. She looks a lot more pregnant, but she's also 5 inches shorter.

Sleeping has definitely become more of a challenge and I seem to have entered another tired phase. I slept (or at least tried to sleep) for 11 hours last night. I start out on my left side with a pillow between my knees. At some point during the night (usually about 3am), I wake up, go to the bathroom, and switch to the other side because my hip is starting to hurt. After that, I wake up every hour or hour and a half to change positions. I can see why pregnant ladies sometimes move to the couch or to a reclining chair for the last bit of pregnancy - laying on my back is more comfortable for my hips than laying on my side, but it's uncomfortable to be flat on my back. I have to be propped up on a couple of pillows so that I'm laying on a slope.

The disrupted sleep is making it easier to remember my dreams, so there have been a lot of those. Last night, I had a dream that I took the baby swimming. The baby had just recently been born, and this was going to be one of our first outings. Baby was the size of probably a 6 month old, which occurred to me in the dream. There was a whole saga involving lockers and where to put the baby while I changed and swim diapers. We were going swimming with Jess and several other friends who had babies. Jess's baby could swim like a fish because she had a pool in her backyard. In this dream, the baby was a girl.

I also had a dream that we took the chinchillas outside for a walk at my mother's house and we lost one of them. In the dream, we had three (we only have two in reality) and we lost the one that doesn't actually exist. We searched around the neighborhood looking for it. At one point, we asked a neighbor who was out raking his leaves if he'd seen the chinchilla. We told him it looked sort of like a squirrel.

Baby Dream

Last night, I dreamed that I went into labor. Labor was very short and my mother ended up delivering the baby on a bed. The bed had white sheets and I was concerned that they would get dirty. I was also concerned that I wouldn't get to teach winter term at all.

The baby was very small (what with not being due till the end of March), but active. It was very important that he eat as much as possible, so the end of the dream focused on nursing the baby. The baby was definitely a boy.

Dreams

Mike commented to me that I hadn't posted any dreams recently. It's not that I haven't had them, it's just that I haven't gotten around to posting them. Also, there haven't been any that were particularly interesting.

For example, last night I dreamed in great detail about this lentil dish that I wanted to eat in the dream. There were many different items that got added to the lentils and I had to go around to various locations to try to find them. I never did manage to find the black beans.

Squirrel dream

I'd meant to post about this dream yesterday when I had it, but I never got around to it. Mike and I, as well as some other undefined people, were at an event. It was outside on a large grassy lawn. Someone remembered that they were giving away free beer. They had Budweiser, Sam Adams and one other kind, so we needed to hurry so we wouldn't be stuck drinking Budweiser. We started sliding across the lawn on our stomachs, which everyone else was doing so it was obviously the generally accepted travel method. We turned a corner and started down a hill, picking up speed. There were jumps that we went over (mostly logs and bumps in the grass). Near the logs and in the taller grass there were bunches of ground squirrels, looking very much like this California Ground Squirrel (I actually identified them as such in the dream).

Trouble sleeping again

It seems like the biggest part of being pregnant involves sleep: either too much or too little. Last night was a too little night.

The first part of the night wasn't too bad. I had a dream about being in Japan with Lacey in her weird open-courtyard apartment. It was completely pouring down rain.

Then, I woke up. My hips were really sore, to the point where I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep. My left side, where I normally sleep, was really sore from having been slept on all night. When I turned onto my right side, that side started hurting along with my left hip. Laying on my back, which is how I used to escape from the hip pain, has become pretty uncomfortable. When I'd finally find a more-or-less comfortable position, the tiny squee would start flopping about. Apparently baby was disgruntled about me tossing and turning.

I went for a really good walk yesterday with my pregnant lady friend. We walked up and all around Mt Tabor. We walked and chatted for about 2 hours. I didn't feel too sore yesterday, but maybe it hit me in the hips last night.

I headed to prenatal yoga this morning. I was hoping it would help with the hip pain. What with the walk and the yoga, my legs are a little stiff and sore this evening. The yoga was really nice, though. Very relaxing. The tiny squee started bopping about as we were relaxing at the end.

One of my favorite parts of yoga is looking at what all the other pregnant ladies look like. There's a big range between least pregnant and most pregnant. Most people seem to be in week 30+, but one woman was only 14 weeks today. I don't look very pregnant at all compared to the majority. I didn't really look that pregnant compared to the other two ladies who were 24-ish weeks. It will be nice to check in with Dr Liz next week and make sure baby is measuring the appropriate size.

Diaper Obsession

I seem to have developed an obsession with cloth diapers. I've dreamed about them for the last two nights. Not even interesting dreams, just dreamed about ordering them on amazon. What sizes should I get? What types? What colors? Do I want to use prefolds or all-in-ones or hybrids? I've become an expert on a topic that I won't have any use for until 5 months from now. I've bought hundreds of dollars worth of diapers off of Craigslist (over a long period of time, but still) and I'm still looking for more. I have several patterns to sew my own and I've put additional hundreds of dollars into supplies to make diapers with. I'm making modifications to the patterns based on absolutely no experience with actually putting these things onto a baby.

I guess it's good to have a hobby.

First baby gender dream!

Last night, I dreamed I had the baby and it was a boy. After he was born, I held him up to my breast in case he was hungry (it's a lot of work being born). He glommed right onto my nipple, but I knew he wasn't attached the right way, so we pulled him off and tried again. After several attempts, he got attached right and started nursing.

There was nothing definitively gender-specific about this dream except that I knew he was a boy. I think this dream was brought about by the discussion we had with the Dr yesterday about gender dreams.

Actual baby dream!

Last night, I dreamed that I had an actual human baby. He (it was a boy) showed up early and was teeny-tiny, but was healthy and wiggling. My mom and dad were there and we were putting tiny little diapers on him.

Then the dream morphed into "reality" where I hadn't had the baby yet. I was complaining that I would have to do something else for Christmas cards because I wouldn't have baby pictures yet, so we decided to do a photo shoot at Halloween. We hung a couple of pumpkins from a tree and then put stuffed animals in a shopping cart and parked it under the pumpkins. Because nothing says "Merry Christmas" like pumpkins and a shopping cart of stuffed animals. Mike's mom was there helping me position the shopping cart. Then, she climbed the tree.

Falling Behind in my Blogging

I was attempting to make it on here every day, but obviously I haven't met that goal during the past week. Quick updates:

One day I lost half a pound, the next day I gained four. I'm not quite sure what my body is up to. Today I look pretty pregnant, but that could be the quarter pound of jelly bellys I ate an hour ago. I think I need to stop eating out so much.

I had a bad dream that I was quite a bit more pregnant and had my hand on my belly, feeling the baby move. Then, the baby bit my hand and wouldn't let go.

We went on baby's first trip to the coast. The weather was fabulous in Cannon Beach and we walked a long ways down the beach. We started north of Haystack rock, walked past it, walked past a park, then walked past a set of two haystack rocks. By that time, the tide was going out and we had some good tidepooling. We brought Rags with us because he enjoys snuffing about on the beach, even though he hates water. He did not appreciate tidepooling because it involved going out where the waves were. Even worse, it involved going where the waves split around large rocks and then came after him from both directions at once. He had to climb up on the barnacle and mussel covered rocks a couple of times to escape from certain doom. Finally, he went and sat far enough up the beach that the waves couldn't get him. He did keep a close eye on us to make sure that we weren't going to be killed or washed out to sea. By the end of the walk back, Rags and I were pretty tired. My feet were getting sore (one of them hurts quite a bit today). I also got sunburned various places: arms, cheeks, back of neck, back of calves, tops of feet. We randomly encountered friends and had an excellent dinner. I had steak, Mike had mac and cheese (which sadly came with peppers in it, so I couldn't eat any).

Our "what size is baby this week" website says that baby is currently the size of a peach, but will be the size of a lemon next week. I'm not sure that the writers of the website have ever seen either a peach OR a lemon. We decided that it's a small peach this week, and next week it will be a large peach.

Studies show that stretch marks are mostly genetic and no matter what you rub on your growing body parts, you're likely to get stretch marks if your mother had them and not get them if she didn't. I have coconut oil to rub on, but it makes me feel greasy and I stick to my pajamas. In the defense of coconut oil, lotion did the same thing.

Also not my best night's sleep

I guess I'm practicing for after the baby gets here. I did eat out both of those nights, so maybe there's some sort of correlation.

Last night, I dreamed that we were out on a hike. We saw a mama bear and her baby, which was exciting. Then, this large brown bear ran down the hill towards us. We were scared and just about to run away when it became evident that all he wanted was to get over the top of the mountain. Turns out there were TONS of people on the trail up the mountain and the bear wasn't able to go by himself because either (it was unclear) he would scare the people or the people would scare him. I began leading the bear up the mountain, which involved basically walking between the bear and the people. When I was between the bear and the people, they couldn't see each other.

There was another whole part to this dream that I remembered this morning, but have since forgotten.

In other news, the baby is the size of a plum.

Not my best night's sleep

It was a good night for dreams, though. It seemed like I had one really, really long dream that just continued through the whole night. I kept waking up (bathroom, drink, too hot/cold), so I remember quite a bit of it. It was a very convoluted dream, though so I'm not sure I'll be able to describe most of it.

We were playing Eucre (spelling? it's a card game. This is how it was spelled in my head in the dream). I've never played this game and have no idea how one would play this game except that I'm positive it's not played how we were playing it. We dealt out cards, then someone took two or three cards and used them to ask questions. The questions were about something that had happened, which I think involved a girl and something she had done. If you couldn't figure out whether the girl was lying about what happened or not, your turn was over.

There was a part where I was teaching back in Baltimore. The building wasn't anything like the school where I taught, but I know that's where I was. My teacher friends from Baltimore were there. We were having some interaction with an old student of mine whose father had become wealthy (I believe he had become a rap star). The father was then pissed that his kid had failed high school, although he couldn't have cared less when I was actually teaching him, so he brought his lawyer to convince us that the kid should have passed. Not wanting to have this confrontation, I stepped out the front door to the school...

... and was suddenly on a cruise ship. The seas were really rough because the ship was going way up and down each time it hit a wave. It wasn't stormy, though and we were all having a good time riding it like a roller coaster. One of my friends from high school, who I haven't seen in years, was there and was going to go up to the front where they steer the ship because she needed more practice using a compass.

During all the parts of the dream, I was pregnant. I spent a good portion of the dream debating whether I should tell the people I saw that I was pregnant. I don't think I actually told any of them.

Rivers and floods

Last night's dream started out with us camping with Chelsea and Justin. Justin was going fishing and I wanted to go to, so I got a pole and carried it around for a while looking for something to use as bait. I didn't find anything. Justin offered to try again the next day, but my dad was going to come and pick me up and we were going off somewhere. He picked me up and took me to my Mom's house, which had an extra shower in the bathroom that drained into a hole in the floor. I took a shower.

Then I was driving back to the campground (I think). The road went over a bridge and the river was getting high. At some point, I decided to turn around and go back home instead of to the campground, but when I got back to the bridge, it was entirely flooded out. There were huge brown rapids over the top of where the bridge used to be.

According to the internet, "To see a raging or an overflowing river in your dream signifies that your life is feeling out of control. You are feeling emotionally unsettled. Alternatively, this dream means you are ready to confront life's challenges and life's twists and turns."


I don't feel like my life is out of control, but I'm slightly worried about the doctor's appointment this morning. More on that when I get home.


Also, "To dream that you are fishing indicates that you are confronting and bringing your repressed emotions to the surface."

If you're trying to fish, but can't find any bait, does that mean that you're attempting to confront repressed emotions, but aren't doing well at it?

It's a good thing I don't believe dreams can be interpreted literally like this.

Dreams

Last night, I had a dream that we (I'm not sure who exactly "we" was comprised of) were eating at Pok Pok. This is a real restaurant in Portland, but I've never eaten there. And I'm pretty sure that it's nothing like it was in the dream. First of all, in real life they serve Thai food, but in the dream it was a Polynesian restaurant. It had a walk-up counter where they also served the food from. It was a lot like a food cart, actually. We went up to order and the lady asked if we were ready. We said no, that we needed a little more time. She then ignored us and took a bunch of other people's orders even though we came back up to the counter and tried to look ready to order. Finally, I announced that we were ready and we ordered.

I had another dream that seemed to be mostly about picking up things in a yard. Rags had run off, so we went to find him and found him in the middle of the lawn in the yard of a house we then moved into (right then). If you looked out the back window of the house, there were all these weird sort of modern art installations in the ground. Little caves had been dug out and then plastic masks and heads were placed around the caves. There was also other stuff around the caves as decoration. A guy (possibly a neighbor who was helping us move) announced that they had been done by the neighborhood children. They were pretty disturbing to look at, really, so we moved to the front yard. There was all sorts of stuff around the yard, including clothes. We went around picking it all up, with the neighbor guy and my dad (who had suddenly shown up) helping.

In other news, it's my second day of wearing maternity pants. I have a pair of capris (from Craigslist) and a pair of jeans (from Kohl's, courtesy of my mother) that fit. Most of the others won't fit until I'm quite a bit bigger. I'm not sure if that's how they're designed or if it's because the lady who owned them before stretched them out while she was pregnant. The capris have a short panel with a wide piece of elastic across the front only. The jeans have a really high, stretchy elastic band thingie that goes all the way around the pants. I'm wearing the jeans today, but the elastic panel keeps falling down. I'm also going to need a longer t-shirt to keep the panel from showing when I leave the house. On the plus side, maternity pants are really comfortable. I think I will wear them forever.

School dreams

One of my least favorite categories of dream is teaching dreams. I mean, if I have to work while I'm awake, shouldn't I get to do something more entertaining while I sleep? Totally unfair.

I had a "first day of class" dream. These almost always take place in lab. I think because there's a lot more opportunity for something to go wrong. I'd forgotten to tell the students how to get their lab manuals, so no one had brought one. I was trying to find enough lab manuals for everyone, but it wasn't working out.

Dog dreams

Last night's dream started with a large dog. My mother had found him and he was quite wild. She had brought him to my wedding and we were debating where to put him. We decided (after much debate and trying the dog in different locations) that he could be left in the car during the ceremony.

The dream then moved on to getting ready for the wedding. B was there helping me do my hair and makeup. Todd was also there and she helped him with his as well. Then we were playing on the underside of a bridge.

Fruit dreams

Last night, I dreamed that we had stopped at a fruit stand. We bought apricots and plums. The apricots were fabulous.