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.

Hunger and flip-flopping

The tiny squee continues to make me hungry five (or 10) times a day. I'm trying to ration its supply of sweets and convince it that squash and apples are just as tasty. I'm not sure that it's working. I just really want sweet things. Or salty with lots of fat (Cheetos, anyone?).

There's tons of activity going on in my midsection, too. Baby seems to be testing out a variety of different positions. For several days there was a lot of banging on the bottom parts. I think baby was jumping up and down on my cervix to see if it was closed securely (it was). Then, the poking and prodding shifted over to my left side. This morning, baby seems to be laying on its back and poking its toes upwards. It's totally unpredictable and still a slightly disconcerting sensation.

I'm trying to make it through the end of this term with my regular clothing before switching into maternity tops full-time. Maybe I'd feel differently if it was summer and I was wearing thinner tops, but most of my sweaters are stretchy enough to still fit. I think I may have overestimated the amount of maternity clothes I would actually need. I should have held off on buying stuff until I actually didn't fit into my other clothes. I don't feel like I'm really big enough to wear most of what I've gotten without looking kind of silly. I need to sort through what I have and see what I'll actually wear. During winter break, I may end up trying to sell (or take to Goodwill) some of the stuff I really won't ever wear.

More (the last!) diapers.

One glaring hole in my (somewhat oversized) collection of cloth diapers was diapers for the first few months. I've already decided that I don't want to use the all-in-one diapers when the baby is really tiny. I think they're just way too huge and my mom felt like they restricted my niece's movement when she was little (she learned to turn herself over right after they switched to disposables). I have both BumGenius 3.0 and Fuzzibunz one-size diapers, but I don't want to use them until the baby is big enough to move inside them.

My latest Craigslist purchase is a bunch of little cloth diapers, all of which I got for $200:
5 newborn Kushies (all in one) - these are really cute. (new: $10)
3 newborn Bummis wraps (new: about $12)
5 small Bummis wraps (new: about $12)
1 small Litewrap wrap (new: about $6)
6 Thirstys wraps (new: about $11)
12 small Kissaluvs contour cloth diapers (possibly $7)
8 medium Kissaluvs contour cloth diapers (also about $7)
3 size 0 Kissaluvs fitted diapers (about $12)
2 size 2 Kissaluvs fitted diapers (about $12)
2 Snappis for the Kissaluvs (about $5)
2 G Diapers (about $15)
TOTAL if bought new: about $458 - I got the prices off of amazon. They're approximate because for some items, I'm not sure if I got the exact right item.

The lady who was selling the diapers also let me go through her maternity clothes. I got a bag of new tops (probably 8 or so) and a swimsuit for $20. Then, I stopped by Other Mother's consignment shop (I'd seen ads for it on Craigslist) and picked up three pairs of pants I can wear to work, a red Christmasy sweater, and a cute baby outfit with a raccoon on it all for $30. I had needed more work pants since I really only have one pair and it's hard to make it through a whole week with only one pair of pants. I'm pleased and will run several loads of laundry tomorrow.

I'll have to go through and catalog what diapers I have and how much I (think) I spent on them. I'm trying to keep a total now so that I'll be able to see how much this whole diapering endeavor costs. I'm curious to compare it to disposable diapers.

This better not become a habit

I also didn't sleep well last night. I had an awful headache for several hours before finally giving up and getting in bed. My stomach was also upset, but whatever, I'm used to that part. The first several times I woke up to pee, I still had a headache. Totally unfair. Finally, I woke up at what I believe to be about 3am. I didn't ever check the clock because I didn't really want to know. I was wide awake and couldn't fall back asleep for probably an hour. I considered getting up and doing something, but decided against it because then I would never have gotten back to sleep.

I spend an amazing amount of time thinking about being pregnant. It's almost a constant thing. I think about the things I need to do before the baby shows up, I contemplate working the rest of this term and how next term will go, I read all sorts of things online and out of books I've checked out of the library. I would conservatively say that 85% of my waking hours involve some sort of thought about being pregnant. I didn't realize that it would become an all-encompassing thing quite this early.

In other news, Mike and I went to a consignment sale at the Expo center on Saturday. It was apparently exhausting because I had to come home and nap for several hours. I didn't find a maternity coat, which was what I had specifically been looking for, but I did find a lovely soft sweater and another pair of maternity pants. They're brown, extremely comfortable, and fit rather like MC Hammer pants. Stop... Baby time.

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.

Maternity Clothes

This is that awkward stage where I'm not really big enough to wear maternity clothes without them being baggy and silly looking, but I'm too big to wear real pants. It's not that my pants don't fit anymore, it's that having anything pushing on my tummy is extremely uncomfortable. Before, "suck it in" might have been a strategy that worked. Now, elastic waistbands rule the day. I'm even wearing dresses, which I almost never do, because they don't restrict my tummy. Who'd have thought that a person who's only the size of a fig would need so much room?

My maternity clothing plan has been to look at Goodwill and on Craigslist. I went to Goodwill last week and found one pair of nice looking black pants. I wore them out already, actually. They have a very stretchy waistband, but not that big elastic pouch thing that is on a lot of maternity pants. Maternity pants, unlike regular pants, come in S, M, L, XL, rather than numbered sizes. I wasn't sure where I fell on the continuum. After I tried on a few pairs of pants at Goodwill to determine my size, I started to look Craigslist.

Last night, I picked up an awesome deal. A garbage bag full of clothes for $40. Turns out the people have 5 kids and are moving. I'm guessing that they're way done having kids and that the mom didn't want to have to deal with the clothes now that they're moving. Total score for me.

There's several pairs of jeans, some shorts (which I probably won't wear since I'll be mostly pregnant in the winter), a pair of leggings and a skirt. There's also a whole laundry basket full of tops: some tshirts, some nicer shirts. I'm pretty well set as far as clothes go. I'm going out shopping with my mother today. The only thing I think I really need are black pants that I can wear to work... although I'll probably get to the point where I'm wearing jeans and comfy tops.

The only downside is that they seem to be *full* of detergent residue. I'm running the first load through the wash and at the end of the first cycle, I could see suds coming out during the final spin. I ran them through again with no additional detergent (I'm still using my homemade laundry detergent, which doesn't usually produce much in the way of suds) and they're still sudsing on the second go-round. It's going to be a pain to wash all of these things two or three times, but I don't want to chance allergic reactions to the laundry detergent. They'll probably be softer once I get them actually rinsed out, too.