Well, there's always this method...

Found this online tonight:

The Pilgrims, for their part, would stand women whose babies were late against a pole, strap them to it, and pound the pole up and down against the ground -- apparently hoping to shake the baby loose.

Yikes.

Update

No baby - but it's starting to seem like less of a big deal. Silly as it is, I think the main thing that was getting me down about it was the fact that I wouldn't be able to have my own doctor anymore, but now that I've adjusted to that, I'm doing much better and actually enjoying my time off again.

I've kind of mentally shifted to assuming that the baby isn't coming until sometime next week, which makes it more possible to enjoy the time off this week. Hey, one more week to nap and putter around the house and read isn't such a bad thing, especially given that I'll probably not do any of those things again for at least the next several months.

And what am I reading while awaiting my little arrival? H.P. Lovecraft, of all things. I've exhausted all of my unread books, and have started plundering Brett's office for new material. What I had been hunting for was his book on the Black Dahlia murders, but was unable to find that, and instead came across a trove of Lovecraft, who I've never read. I'm working through many of the short stories now, and finding them horrific and fascinating repositories of a) incredible, matter-of-fact racism and b) fish obsession. Not particularly scary to me, but nonetheless interesting. Maybe not the best stuff to innoculate my little girl in, in her final days in the womb, but what the heck. Having just finished one collection, though, I'm not feeling very inclined to read the rest. I'll have to go find something else now.

Brett's astonished every time I run out of unread books. We're so different in our book-buying - I buy things and then read them, and he buys things and then stores them for some indeterminate future in which he might be drawn to them. Probably if I dug around, I could come up with a dozen or so books I haven't actually read out of my six or so big shelves, but that would be it. Brett's library, much bigger than mine, is probably half unread so far. But it does present possibilities for book shopping at home.

The quilt is still unfinished - I'm trying to get the layers put together but that involves crawling around on the floor putting in a million safety pins, and that's surprisingly difficult right now. I'm doing a little bit at a time and hoping to get it done before labor hits, since the layers are all taped to the floor of the baby's room and can't stay there once she arrives. My friend Robin tells me there are easier ways to do this, something using rails, but alas I'm not aware of how that works yet. I think today or tomorrow I should be able to finish the pins and get it up off the ground.

Also got my belly picture proofs back and they're really cool! I'm very happy I did this! As my friend Erica said, I'll be glad to have taken these when I'm older and thinking back on what this all felt like.

Progress report - zip, zero, zilch

No baby, no change from last week. The doctor, upon examining us this morning, called her "stubborn." But there's nothing to be done until at least Friday if she doesn't show up on her own before then - that afternoon they'll do the first stress test to make sure she's okay for the weekend, then repeat this every few days until it's time to induce (which would be sometime the following week). The latest birthdate they'd allow is September 9th.

The sad part is that if she's not born tomorrow there's pretty much no chance we'll get to have the baby with my doctor, who I like so much, since that's her last day on call for a couple weeks. I was pretty bummed about that. But who knows. Maybe she'll get moving this afternoon and we'll go into labor tonight.

Mom and Dad can't remember if I was early or late when I was born; that piece of data is actually the best indicator of what will happen with me. I suspect I was late. Anyway, this is all a good reminder that you are completely NOT in control when it comes to a baby. A good preparation for the next 18 years.

I'm hormonal and weepy. This waiting is fun. "Do you want a donut?" a rather desperate sounding Brett asked on the way home from the doctor, and then proceeded to take us to Top Pot donuts downtown (best donuts in Seattle.) What a nice guy.

On the plus side, it's cold and rainy today! Sounds like a weird plus, but I've been finding the unrelenting sun and hot weather oppressive the last few days and am much more comfortable with this. Both of my cats are hanging out on the bed with me right now because it's yucky outside. I love it - I'm ready for fall.

Plus number two, I may get time to finish my quilt. I got the bindings on yesterday and am all ready to put the layers together, but I pulled a lovely manuever and actually fell off my wheeled office/sewing chair yesterday afternoon when I was last working on it, hurt my back a bit, and ended up spending most of the rest of the day in bed. I'm fine though, just a little sore. I'll get back to working on it today.

Due date

It's my due date.

I'm going to be pregnant forever.

Me, 39 weeks

New quilt top

I probably won't finish this before the baby comes, but here's a new quilt top I just got pieced together.


Close up of the fabric:

Practice

We spent some time yesterday practicing swaddling on the stuffed animals we've both had since childhood. Josh the elephant was about perfect newborn size, so we ended up leaving him wrapped up for a few hours.

Fortune cookie

Last night's fortune cookie fortune said:

"A happy event will occur shortly."

Standoff at Chez Zalkan

Brett and I have a guy who comes in and does the heavy cleaning every two weeks - cleans the floors, cleans the bathrooms, etc. Lately we've also been asking him to strip the bed and remake it, because it's just one of those tasks we never get around to often enough.

Today, he showed up at eight, as usual, and I left the house around nine to go run errands. As I left, I noted that Cassie was curled up fast asleep on my side of the bed and Phoenix was wandering around as if he were about to join her.

Got home to this note from the cleaner guy:

"... A funny thing happened on the way to making the bed. Phoenix and the little brown one let me make about half of the bed, but their hissing and swatting (and overall failure to get off the bed) forced me to defer to their feline wishes. The pillows are recased but the sheets are only 60% on the bed. I blame them."

Heh. :) I can imagine Phoenix doing this, no problem. But shy retiring little Cassie? They must've enjoyed themselves, ganging up on the hapless housecleaner dude like this. They both looked strangely pleased with themselves when I got home...

Fashion model

I'm late posting my no-baby-today post because I went and had pictures taken today of my stomach, at ERain Studios in nearby Ballard. I was worried when I made the appointment that I'd go into labor the night before or something, but Sofia cooperated and we got through a two hour shoot with no incidents.

I hadn't really planned on doing this until last week, when I was visiting the store next to the studio and saw some of their gorgeous work on the walls, and suddenly decided that I'd really like a picture as a momento of the pregnancy and what it felt like. So I called at the last possible second and there was one cancellation for this week, and viola! We got in.

Much as a I usually don't like to be photographed, this session was a lot of fun - partly because the focus of maternity pictures isn't really on me, it's on the baby. Most of the time I had my eyes closed and didn't have to worry about facing the camera and trying to get a smile on my face that didn't look dorky.

I'll post something when the proofs come in next week.

Doctor visit, no baby

Saw the doctor this morning. In spite of feeling kind of weird all day yesterday, no baby arrived. :) The doctor confirmed that she's dropped a bunch more and saw a little bit of progress but not much in overall readiness. She still thinks it will be sometime early next week.

That's it for now...

Still no baby

That's all. Stay tuned.

There's a big baby pool running at work. Most popular date chosen so far is September 1st. I've chosen this coming Sunday, which is the day before her due date. Because really, if she's anything like me she wouldn't dream of being late - she'd arrive just a little bit early, in case there's anything that needs to be organized or arranged. :)

Tomatoes

I haven't posted my usual paean to tomatoes this year, aside from the post I made about planting them back in May. But I really should be bragging about them now, because my tomato crop is my only success this year; the entire rest of my yard has withered under a huge onslaught of lack of energy for watering. My strategy of putting all the tomatoes on the porch or on the front walk, though, paid off - I can't get out of the house without seeing them, and I've faithfully watered them each and every morning. And we've been eating fresh ripe tomatoes for almost a month now.

The silver first were first, as usual - I love these plants. Huge, heavy, blood red tomatoes on a tiny little plant about the size of a small boxwood. Very tasty, no end rot, and the first to ripen every year. This one is looking a little past its prime by now while the other varieties are still just ramping up:


A few shots of the others that are doing well...

Seattle's Best, which I've never grown before, is a gorgeous variety - big, perfectly round tomatoes, completely rot or blemish free, and just an easy, trouble-free plant. If they taste as good as they look, I'll be growing these every year from now on. We're a day or two away from tasting the first of these - meanwhile here's a lovely closeup of one of the fruits:


The green zebra has been great too, and we've eaten one of them. We'll be harvesting these in a few days' time - definitely on the repeater list for next year:


The great whites have been prolific but haven't really ripened yet:


And these are from the mystery variety, the one I lost the tags for. Definitely not purple calabash, as I'd suspected, since they're quite red when they ripen. Gorgeous plant, just covered in fruit, but so far every single ripened fruit has been covered in end rot. I've thrown away about nine. Hoping this knocks off soon so I can eat some of these. I'll probably never know what type it was.


Black krim - also a late ripener:


Aside from that, the Tiny Tims were a big disappointment - bad tasting and stricken by some kind of plague, the Sun Golds are lovely as always and providing tons of fruit, and the Stupice has been okay. It did produce, but it's been a scraggly plant with only a few fruits on it. I think I put it in too small of a pot, which didn't help. Super Fantastic is doing fine but won't have anything ripe for a few more weeks; it's also struggling a bit with end rot on the early fruit, which I hope clears up.

Now I just need to find someone to water them while we're at the hospital, because a lot of these will keep producing through early October.

Nursery pictures, 2

A few more recent pictures of the nursery, for my sister and sister-in-law.

First, the outside of her door, coming into her room:



My friend Robin made us this quilt:


The Sleep Sheep - makes heartbeat sounds and hooks on to the crib:


My big find last weekend was a set of green curtains printed with elephants, which just goes along great with the general animal theme of the room, as well as the purple and green color scheme:


Close up of the elephants:


Looking back out the doorway - more of the alphabet cards I've now put up around the room:


And Sofie's bookcase, now packed to the gills with reading material and toys:

Three pictures of Phoenix

Phoenix, demonstrating that the comma is his favorite piece of punctuation:

Fast asleep:


Waking up:


Will you stop taking pictures of me already?

No baby yet

I'm officially due a week from today. A month from yesterday, we'll have been married three years. Three days from now, it'll be four years since our first date. Wow, have things changed a lot in a short time.

"You're such a guy," Brett tells me, because I never know when this particular anniversary (the first date one) is coming up. So this time I'm determined to remember it. In my defense, it's not always crystal clear to me which encounter actually WAS our first date. The start of our relationship was sort of murky - lots of baseballs games that weren't really dates but kind of were, a dinner he cooked me at his house that felt like a date but maybe wasn't, etc. So it's not my fault that I get a little confused.

August 24th, though, seems to have been the real marker, the actual occasion on which Brett declared his feelings to me on top of a mountain under a full moon. Pretty romantic, actually.

***

Brett's newest game is to declare everything the start of labor, any physical complaint I make. Yesterday I was having a weird stabby pain in my abdomen - really more a matter of Sofia finding a new and interesting place to put her foot rather than anything rhythmic like a contraction, but it did put a crimp in my day. (Today, the foot has moved on to a new location, thankfully.)

"Ow! She's stabbing me!" I cried at one point.

"Ah, a lot of people's labor starts like that," he says.

Yea huh. Later, I'm bemoaning that my toe - the one I broke in Hawaii last year on a big giant rock -- still hurts, and am flexing it experimentally, hoping for a sympathy footrub.

"Ah, a lot of people's labor starts that way," he intones solemnly.

This continues all night. And it's actually pretty funny, which I take as another sign that I'm not in labor or prelabor or anything - I've still got a sense of humor. :)

Voice of god

We read somewhere recently that Sofia can hear my voice really well but can probably only hear Brett's over the internal sounds of my body if he leans over and speaks into her stomach in a Very Loud Voice. (Low pitched noises travel through all the in between layers less well than higher sounds, apparently.) This means her chances of knowing my voice when she's born are almost 100%, but it's fairly unlikely that she'll immediately recognize Brett's voice.

Since then, he's been trying to remedy this by leaning over and shouting messages into my stomach at night in a deep, loud voice we've taken to calling The Voice of God.

"Sofie," he booms, "this is God. Stop kicking your mother."

Poor kid. :)

Not an early baby

Saw the doctor this morning - and Sofia has executed an impressive turn and positioned herself on completely the opposite side of my body from where she was hanging out for the last few weeks. She's now crammed pretty much all to the right of my belly button, facing towards the left, allowing her to poke and prod me in all kinds of new places. I'm not surprised to hear this because I was well aware of it when she turned two nights ago - that was a massive and surprising event, let me tell you. At this stage it's not especially easy for a baby to move that much.

That's all the news though. Absolutely nothing else is happening. No progress. No signs of impending labor.

"I think we'll be seeing you at your appointment next week," the doctor said. "Not an early baby, this one."

Oh well. That's actually fine with me, although I'd prefer her not to be two weeks late either. But having another week of time to relax and get things organized would be fine.

Cuteness

I stopped at the drugstore on the way home to buy haircolor, and was standing there feeling disheveled, my hands propped up behind my back in classic pregnant lady pose while I tried to figure out what color my hair should be (for some reason I never remember what kind I bought the time before, so every trip is a new adventure) - when a total stranger walked by, smiled at me, and then backed up several steps and said, "Oh, you're so cute! Look at you!" It was funny, and of course I found her irresistably charming, since she was so intent on complimenting me.

I was wearing my green maternity dress, which does tend to make people laugh, I think because I just look so pathetically large in it. Probably that's what caught her attention.

We ended up talking for almost ten minutes. People are so nice when you're pregnant, I told her. Yeah, she said, and after you have the baby, even though they sometimes cross the line with too much advice, it's still cool because it's like you're suddenly a member of this big huge club of mommies.

Made me feel good...

Done with work!

Today was my last real day of work - I have a few things I'll do from home, mostly check email, and one day next week when I have to go in for a while and deliver performance reviews, but today marked the last day I have to drag myself through the big commute in the morning, sit at my desk being productive for nine or ten hours, and then drag myself home through another hour-long commute. That I don't have to do again until December. Hallelujah! I have accomplished everything anyone could reasonably expect me to accomplish, I have 11 days until my due date, and I'm FREE! FREE! FREE!

Now watch, with my luck, baby Sofia will be born tonight or tomorrow, and I won't get even a single day of lolling around at home resting and watching Oprah. Just my luck. :)

It was a pretty easy day, too, given how obsessively I've been working the last few days to wrap things up. I've been calling it work nesting - this frenzied attempt to get all sorts of things done and leave things in really good shape. I haven't nested much at home yet, but I've certainly been doing it at the office. But not today -- I had a couple of easy meetings, took a lunch break to read the paper, cleaned my office, gave away my plants to people who might actually water them more often than I do, posted some documents my directs and my boss might need on sharepoint sites, and that was it!

I left at 4:45, guaranteeing the worst possible traffic on the road, but I just didn't care. Because I was FREE! FREE! FREE!

Showers

Well, I'm much better today. I must've sounded scary in the blog entry last night, because my husband actually called me from work when he read it.

How to explain? I'm just fine. Writing things down is how I process and deal with them, and a blog where you only post the "Yay! Everything's wonderful!" stages seems kind of pointless. But, as Brett pointed out, you've got family members reading this too. Perhaps I get a tad too confessional on here sometimes.

Anyways, we're good, and we're both a little anxious, and we're both very much looking forward to meeting our daughter, and there's nothing going on with me that hasn't been covered in numerous movies and sitcoms where the about-to-give-birth lady suddenly holds up the bathing suit she used to fit into and never will again and cries. :)

***

Among the other things I've failed to blog about lately was the excellent shower that our friends Paul and Lynn held for us last weekend! They had a book-and-toy shower for us at their house in Beacon Hill, with about twenty or thirty people. We had such a fantastic time, and got some amazing books. Among the funniest was this one: SkippyJon Jones. All the adults were reading about the adventures of SkippyJon Jones, the siamese cat who thinks he's a chihuahua, and laughing until they cried. Brett and I are actually looking forward to reading this one out loud five hundred times in a row, complete with funny voices. We already recite pieces of it to each other. "My ears ees to big for my head! My head ees to big for my body!"

Other popular books: Harry the Dirty Dog, the nutshell library Maurice Sendak, a beautiful art book about the Pike Place Market, many many wonderful board books, a couple of puffy chew-on-me books, and a pamphlet entitled "Why Mommy is a Democrat."

Sofia now has an amazing library and a great selection of toys, including a beautiful black and white crib mobile from Paul and Lynn that's supposed to be so stimulating that you should only use it in small doses. How cool is that?

We can't wait to get her into her room. We'll probably be reading to her before she's even fully conscious, over-eager parents that we'll undoubtedly be.

Tonight's moment of panic

I should be blogging more frequently, but my brain has ground to a halt, the last vestiges of sleeping at night have cruelly evaporated in an endless round of sore body parts and trips to the bathroom, punctuated by the worst heartburn known to man, and what energy I have has been sucked away by even my paltry three days at work a week. Fortunately, this week is the last of that. I work just a few hours tomorrow, then all day Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday, and then I'm mostly done, barring one short trip in next week to give reviews, early in the week that I‘m due.

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD, NEXT WEEK IS THE WEEK I'M DUE TO HAVE A BABY.

Now I really am hyperventilating. Or is it just the baby making it hard to breathe again? Who can tell?

Yes, I've moved from eight and a half months of utter, almost eerie calm to being completely flipping freaked out.

I can't seem to make simple decisions anymore; I've been utterly beflummoxed all day about what on earth I'm going to do about the fact that the stroller we bought came without three important pieces that keep the wheels from falling off and appears, overall, to be a piece of crap. But the carseat, which seems just fine and is all nicely installed in my car, fits into the stroller. So do we go buy a replacement piece of crap from the same company so we have the ease of clicking the baby seat in and out of it? Or do I buy a good (read more expensive) stroller and actually move the baby physically, without her protective exoskeleton, and not worry about whether this wakes her up or not? And why does this feel so hard?

I'll tell you why - because I wanted to get all this kind of stuff done before I was, oh, fourteen days or so from giving birth, because I knew I'd be unable to deal with it now.

Friends were telling me on Friday that bringing the baby home from the hospital feels something like when you travel abroad and step out into a foreign culture for the first time - all the sounds and colors and experiences washing around you and you don't speak the language and don't know what any of it means. I liked that image, because that feeling is one of my favorite things in the world and the main reason that I've traveled so much myself in the last eight years. I can almost grok what they mean about a new baby feeling that way too - the first year of marriage felt a little bit like that, I think, and that was part of what was so great about it. I would imagine the baby experience will up the amplitude of that sensation by a factor of a few hundred.

I like this analogy and am clinging to it, in the moments of fear. I can do that. I thrive on that stuff. I know it will be great, and amazing, and that I’ll never regret it.

It's just that... in the last week or two, I've become myopic. I've sort of lost the ability to imagine what comes next, what life is going to be like two or three weeks from now. I thought I was ready but now I feel like maybe I should've played on the swings a few more times or had a few more moments of relative irresponsibility behind me. Been a kid a bit longer than the 36 years I've already had. I know this is just panic, and that it’ll be wonderful, but it’s ending. It’s over.

We didn’t go out to breakfast this weekend; will we ever do that again as just us? Will we miss it if we don’t? My free time feels so precious and weighted now that I can hardly stand to spend it. Some part of my head is counting down. Seventeen more days to be a couple without kids. Fifteen more days to read books and take naps at will. Thirteen more days to have quiet conversations with your husband whenever you feel like it.

Tick, tick, tick.

Family pictures

A picture of us and my parents from the block party last night:



People spent the whole night telling me that I was either huge or nowhere near big enough to be almost nine months, and speculating on my birth date with my husband, who enjoys this temporary pass into the world of women's conversation.

Me and Dad:



The three of us:

I am an evil overlord

Last night I pulled a new one in my ongoing adventures in talking in my sleep.

I rolled over at some point in the early morning and said something incomprehensible to Brett about giving such and such a person a tip about blah. Nothing new there. But when he woke up in a start and said, "What?? What did you say?" I switched into evil mode.

"Oh nothing, sorry," I mumbled, imitating my usual I-just-woke-up-too-and-realized-I'm-talking-in-my-sleep voice.

But actually, I was faking it. I wasn't awake. I was still asleep, trying to lull him into a false sense of security. And I was plotting.

"Wah ha ha," I cackled to myself. "JUST as I planned. I wanted you to hear that. JUST as I planned."

What my evil plan was that began with revealing just that one tidbit of information, I can't remember. But apparently I delivered on part one of my plan just fine.

Egggggg-cellent.

Dreamland

Last night I had a very vivid dream that consisted of nothing more than me slowly and with great enjoyment eating a grilled ham and cheese sandwich.

If that isn't the ultimate pregnant lady dream, I don't know what is.

Update

Several good things happened today!

First, we started the day with a doctor's appointment - the first we've had in two or three weeks. While there, we found out that a) she's moved down, which is good, and maybe means I'll be able to breathe soon, and b) the doctor thinks I need to work a little less. Two days at home a week instead of the one I'd planned. Not getting enough rest, and showing some stress.

Hallelujah! I can't say I minded that restriction very much - being at work the last two weeks has been hard and is getting harder every day. This week I worked two 11 hour days at the start of the week, then just wanted to die every day since; last night I fell asleep in the car about five minutes after Brett picked me up. But I'm almost caught up on projects now, and I think I can afford to take it easier the next two weeks. The new plan is that I'll sleep in until 11 on Mondays, then go to work, and stay home all day on Fridays. So things are slowing down!

Second, my boss had a huge lunch for me at work today, with what must have been thirty or forty people, great barbecue, and (oh heaven) a big chocolate cake. I thought it was just a lunch but it turned out to be a shower, where we got the most amazing stash of toys! Look at all of this:



Wow! I'm so overwhelmed by everyone's generosity. We were blown away. I love the people I'm working with.

I came home after and had a lot of fun sorting the stash into piles -- toys she can play with right away, toys for when she's older, books, etc.

Now, I think we need a toy chest.