Signs That I Am 38+ Weeks Pregnant

• I begin every phone call with "I'm not in labor,"...
• And the person on the other end expresses disappointment.
• I disregard the importance of anything I can't see past my belly.
• I consider anything on the calendar past this weekend to be optional at best.
• Three hours of sleep at a stretch leaves me feeling quite refreshed and rejuvenated...relatively speaking.
• My one-year-old daughter already responds appropriately to requests such as "Put it away," and "Pick it up, give to momma."
• A successful day includes nobody going hungry or soiled...for very long.
• Labor would be preferable to the effort and pain involved in rolling over in bed.

There are other things I'm forgetting, I'm sure, but these are some that come to mind at the moment.

In other news, our neighbors are apparently moving out, and the banging noises during naptime and after bedtime doesn't make me cranky at all.

Pretzel Pandemonium (or, Rachael Ray has absolutely nothing to worry about)

Today I googled, "Can I bake waxed paper?"

The answer is, "No, you moron, what is wrong with you?"

So I was making homemade pretzels today, solely because I had half a block of Velveeta in the fridge that was just begging to have yummy snacks dredged in its molten remains. I started enthusiastically, mixed up the yeast, sugar, salt, flour - all obviously before reading more carefully that these would have to rise, and then be rolled, boiled, and then finally baked. Legit pretzels take some work, yo. By the time I realized how involved the process would be, I was already in it to win it, so I pressed on. My dough was just about finished rising beautifully over a pan of hot water (new tip from my mom to accelerate rising!) when Mikayla woke up from her nap. No problem, she loves playing in the kitchen!

Unfortunately, as I started into the rolling/boiling/baking part of the game, my freshly-awake, full-of-kisses Mikayla was clearly struggling with the concept of allowing Momma to do anything other than hold her baby girl. The general atmosphere in the kitchen was chaotic, what with Mikayla crying and shaking the spices, and the water boiling on the stove, and me frantically rolling pretzels before the water all boiled away. I had the baking sheets all prepped with what was SUPPOSED to be lightly oiled parchment paper. Since I was out of parchment paper, I used waxed paper for this step, making a mental note to remove the waxed paper before popping the sheets into my 450 degree oven.

Ha. Ha ha. That last paragraph full of excuses might just make me feel ever so slightly better about what comes next. Because I really did think through every pretzel-related decision today.

I was feeling So. Good. about the beautiful pretzels, boiled for precisely 30 seconds each, brushed with egg yolk and lightly salted. Mikayla was reaching the end of her little rope so I popped the pretzels into the oven and scooped her up. Eight (out of twelve) minutes later I wondered what the funny smell was...kind of smoky, not quite like fresh pretzels...OH NO THE WAXED PAPER I FORGOT THE PRETZELS ARE GOING TO CATCH ON FIRE WHAT SHOULD I DO!

Enter Google. Just to make sure because, you know, smelling smoke is not at all confirmatory of a BAD IDEA.

Thankfully, as I transferred the pretzels onto fresh wax-free baking sheets, the bottom layer just peeled completely off instead of having waxed paper fused onto the bottom of each pretzel...

The end result? Well obviously I had to quality-control those suckers as soon as they were cool enough to touch. Auntie Anne, eat your heart out. (They came out SO much better than that one time when I totally forgot an ingredient.) I might not be on my way to having my own cooking show, but what I lack in culinary elegance, I more than make up for in carb-full deliciousness. Plus, if it had all gone smoothly, you wouldn't have had this neat opportunity to laugh at me.

And now that I am 31 weeks pregnant, and home alone on a Friday night while my hunny baconates (works. brings home the bacon. duh.), it would be naive of you to believe I did not just melt down a hunk of that sweet Velveeta goodness and chow down on the biggest homemade soft pretzel available to me. And the remaining seven are in grave danger...their salvation lies in the fact that I already told Joel that I made pretzels, so he will wonder tomorrow if they are all gone...

In other news, I look like this at 30.5 weeks prego (taken Sunday, January 15):

Come March 21, Mikayla will wonder what happened to that handy seat that holds her up when Momma carries her.

Next post: big firsts from Mikayla!!

The Flip Switched

This is the story of a transformation that defies all logic and understanding. An answer to prayer, if ever there were one.

The back story is that this pregnancy has been a little rough for me. I have felt sicker more often (I actually lost rather than gained weight in the first trimester, though I am now back to pre-pregnancy weight), and the fatigue has just been killer. Some of this is due to the fact that I'm now starting my days at 7:00 a.m. whether I feel ready to or not...although thinking back, I was working full time through my first trimester with Mikayla so I was certainly getting up early then as well. So maybe this pregnancy really is worse.

ANYWAY.

All this to say I have been slacking horribly on things like laundry, dishes, menu planning, paperwork at work. Anything that has not been mandatory for paycheck or basic survival has gone out the window for at least the past month. Our frequent travels have not helped me stay up to speed on any of this, either.

Fast forward (or rewind or whatever) to this past Tuesday when for some reason, I looked around and realized...HOLY BANANAS, there is so much to do and so little time to do it! I was anticipating flying to New Hampshire for a wedding weekend, not to mention working the equivalent of several full days this week, and wondering how in the world the clothes are going to get clean and the notes are going to get written and the groceries are going to get boughten. The icing on the cake was Mikayla choosing to just, you know, be NEEDY all day. Not cranky, per se, but she certainly didn't want momma doing anything that didn't involve kisses and giggles and food (ok, mainly food).

No wait, the ACTUAL icing on the cake was that I'm freaking pregnant and, as I told Joel recently, I am tired IN MY LIFE. It all came together in a perfect storm of hormones and overwhelmedness and holy bananas I might need to cancel work today and just find a cave to cry in. (Mikayla is into bananas right now.)

My solution? Make a list! And create a calendar! I spent my last half hour before work (I couldn't come up with a satisfactory way to say to clients, "I can't see you today because I am freaking out".) on Google calendars actually scheduling all my household chores (daily, weekly, and bi-weekly with repeating occurrences, but no alarms because seriously. That's just ridiculous.)(Unlike putting your chores on the calendar, that is normal.) I then calendared the projects that I need to finish in the near future. These included catching up outpatient notes, catching up inpatient notes, organizing baby clothes, moving the guest bed into the attic, and cleaning out our hallway to make room for a bassinet.

And by "near future" I mean "the next six months" but it all FELT urgent, I promise. And I now have plans to have all this accomplished in the next ten days. Mostly in the next four days, but I decided to relax the guest bed thing because I'll probably need Joel's help and I don't want him to think I'm crazy. Like the time when I was pregnant and made him help me rearrange the nursery AGAIN because I thought it would work better. This is very, very similar to that, actually.

So, here I sit on Thursday with my outpatient notes all caught up, inpatient notes in a very good place, laundry almost finished, litter tidied (yes that's a bi-weekly chore now; Joel is the scooper but I am the tidier), office filing from the last month finished, and all phone calls returned. And tomorrow I am scheduled to dust, vacuumm, sweep, mop, and grocery shop. And I am excited about it.

I told Joel that I don't even recognize myself today. And then I realized...you know what today is?

SECOND. BLESSED. TRIMESTER.

Yesterday I officially hit 13 weeks. It's like a switch flipped and I AM BACK, BABY. Or at least I have really good intentions; I will let you know how tomorrow goes!

So first trimester went out with a bang (much as it entered, which I will detail for you in that post I promised about Mikayla's Very Interrupted Nap), but second trimester has arrived in all its glory. Thank you, dear heavenly Father, for this great mercy. Please could I stay in the second trimester all the way until delivery?

SDG!

On Being Pregnant Forever

An actual conversation, copied and pasted from Gmail chat:

me: Laura's in the hospital working on having her baby, so that'll be two down from our birth class. I almost cried when I read it (though I think she was due before me) because I am now certain that I will be pregnant forever

Joel: Honey, you won't be.

We're still a week away from the due date!

Your pelvis will open, and the baby will descend, like millions of babies before him/her (quote from birth class).

me: yeah yeah....

It feels like my pelvis IS open and the baby IS descending, and will remain halfway down for the rest of my LIFE.
But I have to acknowledge that you are probably right.

Joel: Probably.

I mean, I could be wrong, and you could be pregnant forever, and we could be in the guinness book of world records, and then you could give birth in 50 years, and we could name him or her Benjamin Button.

In all seriousness, major congratulations to both Angie and Laura, ladies from our birth class who have welcomed or are welcoming their little girls! I hope to join you in the ranks of motherhood someday...

A Journey of Self-Discovery

The past eight months have been incredibly enlightening. In the interest of documenting this pregnancy in all of its wonderfully surprising glory, I thought I would share a few things I have learned so far. In no particular order, of course.

1. No, there is no limit to the depths of my laziness nor the heights of my procrastination.
2. I do, in fact, have it in me to kill a cat using nothing but the items in my nightstand. Particularly cats who believe that my stomach is a pommel horse, and/or that 6:50 a.m. is time for breakfast. No felinicide has occurred as yet, but preventative Xanax might be in order if I weren't, you know, pregnant. Hey wait, maybe if I give the Xanax to the cat...

3. Pregnancy is slightly move involved, and significantly less glamorous, than looking adorable and "all belly" in frilly empire-waist attire.

[example of non-realistic pregnancy:]

4. One pregnant consulting psychology resident can halt all productivity on an entire nursing home wing as nurses and aides play "Top That Pregnancy Story" and place bets on baby gender. And yet nobody offered said pregnant resident a comfy wheelchair in which to make patient rounds.

5. Our bathroom can go a surprisingly long time between cleanings without growing anything funky. That I know of. And no, I have no interest in quantifying the meaning of "surprisingly long time".

6. It is infinitely better practice to wash a few dishes as you need them, than to spend twenty to thirty minutes overheating and having Braxton-Hicks contractions at the sink. Not to mention ending up with a huge water spot on your shirt because your belly simply knows no bounds when it comes to wet countertops.

7. Nesting is a very real, and very powerful, phenomenon, my friends.

8. The thought of scooping ice cream can, in fact, make a pregnant woman cry; as can a fire engine parked along a little-used back alley. Shoot, I defy you to name something that can't make a pregnant woman cry.

9. Internal organs apparently take up very little room, when it comes right down to it.

10. If I can't see it or reach it, it probably doesn't need to be cleaned/put away/groomed. And if it gets bad enough, that's what my husband is for. Speaking of which, it's been awhile since I was last able to paint my toenails...

11. There exists a very complex algorithm for determining the behavior of pregnant women. Said algorithm involves such factors as hormone levels, bladder capacity, hunger severity, duration of most recent sleep episode, and quality of current hair day - and no, you cannot figure it out.

12. When a pregnant woman does not answer your phone call, there is probably a very good reason involving (non-)memory of phone location, lack of speed and agility, and possibly the annoying frequency of bathroom visits.

13. Being pregnant must be a lot like getting old, in the sense that social mores and tact become far less important than getting one's point across and alleviating one's biological drives (hunger, need for bathroom, fatigue, etc.).

14. Baby clothes are laced with crack - have you noticed that it is impossible to buy just one outfit or onesie? I plan to take full advantage of this fact after the birth of our baby, since not knowing the baby's gender makes it difficult to really accumulate many clothes. Grandmas, unite!

15. God is far more gracious to me than I deserve. From granting us this pregnancy, to sustaining us through it, He has made this journey more than anything a lesson in His faithfulness. In spite of being called to suffer through tiny gnomes in soccer cleats tap-dancing on my throat (sans medication, of course), and a mischievous baby chewing on my sciatic nerve, I wouldn't change a minute of this sanctifying experience. And I pray that God does, in fact, ultimately use it to my sanctification and to His glory. We are still working on the former, I'm afraid...


I'm sure I am missing many important lessons I have learned. Perhaps I'll post another installment a few weeks down the road. Or maybe all of my three readers who have been (or are) pregnant can share comments with surprising things you have learned along the way!

SDG

Preggo Brain Strikes Again! (And again...)

As I sit here licking the spoon after my recent foray into brownie-making, I simply must share with you the latest in a long series of pregnant-brain anecdotes. Truly, I am grateful to have something on which to blame these impressive lapses in intellect.

It started innocently enough, as I was gathering ingredients for brownies for tomorrow's chuch picnic. Vegetable oil, check. Brownie mix, check (don't judge, I'm making the crock pot beans from scratch!). Eggs....oh no! The bottom right refrigerator shelf is empty! My mental process went something like this: How can we be completely out of eggs? Surely Joel wouldn't have used the last of them knowing I had to make brownies today? I don't want to buy more, since we are getting a dozen tomorrow from our farm-fresh supplier (read: Laurie Troxell, fantastic friend!). Dang it! What am I going to do?

I went so far as to Google egg substitutions.

Having found an acceptable alternative, I went to the fridge for the applesauce and then to the mixing bowl....next to which I found a carton full of eleven eggs. Words cannot describe the gratitude I felt for being alone at that moment.

It kind of reminded me of that time (last night) when I wanted to mix up more cinnamon-sugar for some toast (at 11:30 p.m.) and went all over the apartment looking for my laptop to Google the right proportions of cinnamon to sugar (ever the perfectionist). I found Joel using a laptop in the bedroom and asked whether it was his or mine, to which he replied that my laptop was in the kitchen.

Yeah. You'll never guess where I found it. Right next to the sugar canister I had abandoned in order to find my laptop.

Dang it, I forgot to set the timer for the brownies! Gotta run!

(The fact that I have a doctorate is so ironic right now. What do you mean, you don't want me responsible for diagnosing and treating your mental health concerns?)

So is it a puppy or a baby?

Joel and I were talking online today, as we are wont to do when we have a few minutes of down time, and I said that I wondered if people at work were starting to suspect that I'm pregnant. I feel - no, I know - that I'm much more hungry and sleepy much more frequently than usual. The observant onlooker would wonder what was going on and might put 2 and 2 together.

Also, and possibly more obviously....things are becoming much more round. I told Joel today that I feel fatter, and he told me that I look beautiful. Darling, that may be true, but facts are facts. When the pants don't button and maternity capris are a Godsend, we must acknowledge reality. So he said that yes, perhaps I am developing a small pooch.

And then I got really confused because I thought I was developing a small human. But it would explain why I feel - wait for it - sicker than a dog.

Thank you, I'll be here for nine months. Apparently the pregnancy hormones not only drain the energy and queasify the stomach, they also hone the wit.

Positive Proof

I just came across a pregnancy week-by-week cartoon gallery, and this was the entry for week 5. I know we're past that fun time of neurosis-inducing uncertainty, but it's still funny and...no, I never did anything like this, ever.
[HT: http://pregnancy.baby-gaga.com/cartoons/cartoon5]