One Month

Baby Girl 2 will be here one month from now, one way or another. If all goes as planned, we will have showed up at the hospital by 530 am and would have met the baby by around 8. Seems so nice and clean that way. Wake up, get ready, show up, have baby. Of course, the big question is—will we make it there? July 12 is 38 weeks and Amelia arrived at 36w2d. That would put us more likely around June 28-30. Eep. We are essentially hoping (beyond hope) to make it to the 12th and preparing ourselves for arrival in a couple weeks. In effect, the next two weeks are packed! Probably the busiest weeks of summer for us—because we haven’t planned anything after 36 weeks. There is at least something and mostly multiple somethings going on every day until the 26th and then . . . nothing.

And I have to confess that I keep reminding myself that making it to the scheduled section would be a million times easier than going into labor (seriously. so. much. easier.), but I’ve definitely got the any-day-now look, puffiness, waddle, discomfort, and temperament about me. One more month seems impossibly far away.

Sausage fingers. I can’t bear to take a pic of my feet. I can just tell you that when I take my flip-flops off, the indent of the straps remains behind.

And in the end, the most important thing that I have to remember is that ultimately, I can’t control how the next few weeks will roll out. I can set the 12th up as a goal of sorts, but it’s out of my hands whether we get there. I shall continue searching the sky for shooting stars in the meantime. And if I was a betting woman, well, I’d be a little more . . . skeptical.  My symptoms right now scream (BABY WILL BE HERE SOON!) or at least make me wonder how it’ll be possible to longer than a couple more weeks. Namely, I really worrying about my back. What started as little spasms a couple times a day have begun earlier in the day and recurred far more often. Besides that, it just aches in general and punishes me if I’m on my feet for too long. If it’s not my back, it’s my crotch killing me the most. Yeah, have you ever had your crotch POP?! Well I have. Every time I roll over in bed or try to get up. Turns out the pubic bone actually has a joint! Who KNEW?! But it does and it loosens up as you near birth—and for some women—it loosens too much and causes pain. ((Raising hand!)) Not to mention that every time I stand up, the baby just plops onto this loose crotch joint and make it feel like it’s about to snap. SNAP. You know, it actually feels like there’s a human sitting on my pubic bone. . . but wait. . . And the worst part? I don’t need that stupid joint to loosen at all! See, my baby is going to get ripped out of my abdomen, so not need for the loose crotch thing, thanks! Forget about the pressure this all causes on my bladder. . . Then the worst symptoms are the tiny ones that plague me all day. Like the heat that radiates my hands and feet ALL. DAY. LONG. Imagine your feet and hands 20 degrees hotter than the rest of your body. Makes sleeping a pleasure. Lastly, my belly is big. As in OUT there. It’s like I’ve grown an entire patio right off my front. Everyone thinks this is so great (“Lucky!” they say), but my babies tend to straight out front. And since they don’t lie up and down like they should, I think that makes this even more apparent. In any case, my poor belly has a perpetual bruise across the equator from my running into things or just scraping the corners of drawers, counters, etc. For example, washing dishes is almost impossible at this point. Bending over the sink to reach the dishes is not working out. And forget bending over. Amelia saw me struggling to put my underwear on the other day and ran over to help. She held one side up so I could sling my foot into the hole to pull them up! ha. She’s so sweet, I swear.

Alright. Sorry for the rant. I wanted to list my symptoms only for posterity. It’s hard to imagine, but I will someday forget about all these annoyances and therefore erase my own struggle. Although I don’t plan on forgetting the crotch-breaking thing.

If we end up with some ‘extra’ time into July, we will definitely be grateful. The Baby’s room won’t be together in two weeks. It just won’t, although I am hoping that by the end of this week, it will be much more livable than it is now. There have been delays because 1) the room is awkward and tiny and 2) there was a paint debacle that required the room be painted and then um, repainted. So that set us back a little time. Now we just have some last-minute projects to pull together. I wish we could do a grand reveal of the whole thing, but it will likely be a work in progress for a while after Baby is here. Largely because we want to do so much of it ourselves. Almost her entire room will be handmade. :)

Besides all things baby, we actually had a really busy weekend and a couple weeks ahead planned for Amelia. Here are some pics from the last couple days.

 

Thanks Babe for including my belly in this shot! :0