For now, what better reason to bust out the old blog and dust it off than to blog for free stuff?!?  I just entered a contest on one of my very favourite blogs, Baby Rabies.  (HEE-LARIOUS, if you’ve never read it!)  One Baby Rabies follower will win an AWESOME print from Modern Bird Studios.  I want one of these, y’all.  Check it out!  Custom made art from a photo you provide:

Cool, huh?

Annabelle’s Birth Story

I woke up on Thursday Sept. 10 and went about my normal routine at home – shower, get dressed, breakfast, work on emails a bit… in retrospect, I really didn’t feel 100% like myself.  Of course I had been on an emotional roller coaster for at least two weeks, being that I was as of Thursday 10 days past my due date.  My appointments with the doctor on Tuesday and Wednesday went pretty well and I had been in good spirits, in spite of the fact that I was staring an induction in the face, which was one of my biggest fears about labor and delivery.  The induction was scheduled for Sunday the 13th, so needless to say I was incredibly stressed out about going into labor on my own.  It didn’t seem like it was possible that would happen, since I had not made any real progress at all and had not even felt any signs of pre-labor.  But I was still maintaining some hope that Annabelle would decide to come on her own.

I had gotten an internal exam (my first real internal) at our 41 week checkup that Tuesday, and since that point I had been losing small amounts of my mucuous plug.  This was encouraging, but knowing that it could mean nothing, I tried not to be too hopeful or excited.  Then it started to taper off during the course of Thursday afternoon and I started to think that it really wasn’t a sign that things were moving.  I had an emotional breakdown and called Mr. K at work and asked if he could come home early, and since he was planning to start his paternity leave the following day, he agreed that after his last meeting in the early afternoon, he’d come home.  I was so relieved to have him home with me.  He was able to distract me from how depressed I was by suggesting we do some baking for the L & D nurses that Sunday and for goodies to eat when we came home from the hospital after the induction and delivery.  We went to the store to pick up some baking supplies and stopped at Blockbuster for a few movies, since it looked like we were going to be holed up at home over the weekend with not a lot to do except wait for Sunday’s scheduled  induction to roll around.  Walking  around the store and Blockbuster, I felt really tired and my belly just felt unusually heavy and uncomfortable.  I didn’t realize this meant that things were actually happening!  I think I was in denial.

While we baked, I had to go to the bathroom several times and discovered that the MP loss was picking up again.  We cooked and ate dinner, and I kept going to the bathroom every 15-20 min; I just kept having to pee a lot and I pooped at least twice.  I really felt like I was having some bad gas pains and slight constipation though obviously I was able to move my bowels!  At about 8:00pm I felt like there was a small pop in my abdomen, but it felt a little like a gas bubble moving so I decided to wait to see if any fluid started gushing before calling the doc.  I was getting a little excited now, but worried that if my water had indeed broken, that meant we were now on a timetable to get the baby out.  I really wanted to be able to labor at home a while and not be on a time-crunch once in the hospital.  Of course, right about then I started to feel little gushes of fluid and I knew at that point that this was it!  We were having a baby within 24 hours for sure!

I don’t remember at what point I decided I was actually having contractions, but it wasn’t long after my water broke that I realized the uncomfortable belly feeling was now coming and going at a somewhat regular pace.  We started timing them and they were anywhere from 12 to 15 min apart.  Mr. K started to pack the car with our hospital stuff, and I walked around saying, “Why are you rushing?  This could take hours.  I’m going to put on some more makeup and fix my hair; you should relax.”  I did freshen up, and then I started fussing with the camera since I hadn’t cleared the memory card yet and I wanted to take it with us.  I was in no rush to go anywhere, but Mr. K was getting antsy and felt like we needed to get going.  I kept telling him to chill out.  At about 9:15 or so the doctor who was filling in for Dr. Sebestyen called and told us that since my water had broken that we needed to go in to the hospital and get checked.  I sort of rolled my eyes, still thinking things were going to take a while (I was prepared for a 24-36 hour labor!).  But I did finish packing stuff up and agreed to get in the car ASAP.  All this time I was talking, walking, and breathing through the contractions (which I STILL wasn’t convinced were doing anything really effective).  I didn’t realize till we got in the car at about 9:45 pm that my contractions had gone from 12 min apart to 4-5 min apart in less than an hour.  It was riding in the car to the hospital where I started to think this might not be the 24 hour labor I had imagined!

We got to the hospital and went to triage, where the kind nurse got me all gowned up and checked me – I was about 2 cm and 80% effaced.  I felt a little disappointed I hadn’t progressed further already given that the contractions were so close together (still 4-5 min apart), but since it was the most action I’d ever had I was happy!  I was joking with her between contractions, and just easily relaxing and breathing through them as they came.  At this point they were intense enough that I couldn’t really talk during them, but I would not classify them as painful at all.  Again to the bathroom to poop, and after that the nurse took us to our L&D room.

As soon as we arrived in our room, things really picked up.  It was about 10:00 or 10:30.  I don’t know if we were still timing the contractions at this point, but I’m guessing they were around 3-4 min apart.  Not super close together yet, but most definitely picking up intensity.  I was starting to go into “laborland” where I could not talk during the contractins (which I now began to think of as “surges”) and had to really focus hard on moving around and breathing/relaxing.  The relaxing during the surges was HARD!  But I knew that I had no choice but to do it and allow my body to take over.  I didn’t want to fight it – I wanted to let my body do what it needed to do, so I somehow found a way to move and relax each surge.  The absolute best position I found was doing a deep ballet squat or plie next to the bed with my upper body laying on the bed or birthing ball, while rolling my hips or rotating them in a circle.  It helped tremendously.  The one problem I had was that I knew I needed to relax my pelvic floor (like when you use the bathroom), but in order to do my squat/hip rotating, I had to do kind of a standing pelvic tilt and pull my abdomen in, which tensed my buttocks a lot.  But it relieved so much of the pressure in my back!  I decided that though it felt really good to do that, it wasn’t going to get me anywhere and was possibly hindering progress, so I kept going to the bathroom to labor a bit on the toilet so I could feel a little more comfortable releasing my pelvic floor.  I needed to pee frequently and poop again anyway (this was the 4th poop session since dinner!), so the toilet did help.  I went back and forth from the squat next to the bed and the toilet for a long time.  At some point here they checked me and I was at about 4 or 5 cm, 90% effaced, and Annabelle was at a -1 station.  So, progress.   It was a while before they checked me again and I can’t remember at about what point it happened, but I somehow got to 6 cm in there somewhere. I asked the nurse a couple of times what my non-epidural options were for pain managment, but I knew in my hear that I wasn’t going to really ask for them.  I just kept thinking that it was going to end eventually and that I would live.  I have no idea where I got the strength to remind myself that it would be over soon and that I could do it.

At some point the doctor on call for Dr. Sebestyen came in, but again, I have no idea what time this was.  I was nervous about her since I had never met her before, and I wasn’t sure how close to Dr. Sebestyen she was in terms of her philosophy about med-free and low-intervention births.  I really wanted Dr. S to be the one that delivered me (or one of the midwives), but since she herself had her baby prematurely the week before, it wasn’t going to happen.  So I was terrified this doc wasn’t going to go to the lengths I know Dr. S would have to ensure that we got the birth that we wanted.  Anyway, Dr. Schmitz (the new doc) checked me and I had finally gotten to about 7.5 cm.  She said I could start “bearing down” a bit and hopefully that would help get me all the way.  She left, and I began to bear down with each contraction like I was going to take a poop.  I remember reading a lot of med free birth stories and everyone saying that transition and the urge to push came upon you as if you had to take the biggest crap of your life.  Well, in my case the whole labor felt like that!  I continually had a strong urge to at least bear down or push from that 7cm point on.  I am not sure how long I labored like that, using relaxation over the rest of my body while bearing down as hard as I could without actually pushing.  I do remember that at this point I was still on my side and I started to feel a lot of fluid gushing out.  I thought it was just amniotic fluid and whatever gunk normally comes out during labor.  With all the pooping I did all night, I don’t think I pooped on the table, though.  At some point around this time I must have been losing my focus during some of the contractions, and I remember whining that I couldn’t get comfortable at all, so the nurse suggested getting in the shower.  It didn’t sound good at all, but I was out of ideas, so I agreed.  I leaned over a birthing stool that was in the shower. Bad idea.  The pressure of the water pouring on my lower back was SO annoying.  After a few minutes I told her I wanted out, and they helped me dry off and get back into bed on my side.

The doc came back in after a while and checked me again – I was 9.5 and moving quickly towards 10 cm!  She said I could start pushing to see what would happen, but that we were really going to have to watch Annabelle’s heart rate because the dips were starting to really concern them since I was losing so much blood.  The relief  and excitemet of being able to finally start pushing was combined with complete shock when she said that I was losing blood – I had no idea that the gushes I was feeling were actually me losing blood.  I was oddly not scared at all, though I think at the time I was just so focused on the fact that I’d made it all the way without drugs and the fact that I was really really close to seeing my daughter and the END to the insane surges that I didn’t realize how serious the situation was.   I did get the sense that though the doc and nurse were very calm, that they were really pretty concerned about me.

I pushed HARD through a couple sets of contractions with the doc’s directions.  By this point, I wasn’t really in pain at all - pushing wasn’t necessarily the “relief” that I’d heard it described as, but it was most definitely more comfortable than dealing with the huge surges.  Dr. Schmitz still didn’t like Annabelle’s heart rate and told me that if it didn’t improve with the next few contractions, we’d need to do a c-section and get Annabelle out.  She asked that I roll onto my back to push more, which I didn’t want to do at all since it closes up the birth canal, but she really thought it might help Annabelle’s heart rate.  It did improve things enough that she gave me a few more contractions to push.  We could see Annabelle’s head, and Mr. K said he could see that she had a bunch of hair!  I was amazed that she was so close to being out that I really was determined to push hard.  Through one of the sets of contractions Dr. Schmitz had her hand on my cervix and was pushing back, presumably to help get that last .5 cm out of the way and control the bleeding I guess. Worst pain of my life!!!!  I did NOT like having her push back on my cervix while I was working so hard to push out.  I just kept wishing she would stop, and I kept wishing would shut up with her pushing directions.   I didn’t want to push like she was telling me to, I wanted to push out for a longer period of time and then take a breath and start again, but she just telling me to push harder, and everytime she’d say that I wanted to yell back, “I AM PUSHING HARDER!!!”  I just didn’t want to do it on her timetable, I wanted to do what felt natural.  Unfortnately at this point the doc informed me that there was just too much blood, that the placenta had separated probably before the pushing started, and that there wasn’t time left to allow me to work at it any longer.  She told me to stop pushing, and that was sooooo uncomfortable.  She instructed the nurses to go get the prep kit for the c-section.  I remember weakly pleading “Nooooo!” but it was halfhearted – I knew that I had lost so much blood that I wouldn’t have energy left for much more anyway.  I couldn’t believe that I’d made it this far without pain managment aside from my relaxation, and even though what was about to happen to me was my absolute worst-case scenario, I knew it was the right decision in my heart, so I just started asking questions and mentally preparing myself.  My biggest worry at that point was having to sit still for the spinal during contractions, which were and had been for a while literally right on top of each other.

Everything moved quickly but seemingly in slow motion at the same time from here on out.  They wheeled me to the OR and I glanced at the clock above me – it was after 6am!  I had NO idea that all that time had gone by.  It didn’t seem possible that I had labored almost 12 hours nonstop already.  When they started preping the spinal,  I was having MAJOR contractions that hurt a lot, and I begged them to wait for it to end before sticking me.  I was sitting on the edge of the bed rocking back and forth sideways like a weeble wobble, and one of the nurses said, “Wow, I’ve never seen anyone do that during a contraction!”  Finally the anesthesiologist said that she really had to do the spinal right then because we needed to get going.  Somehow, thank goodness, my body just knew it had to stop contracting so that I could sit still.  The local was administered and wasn’t bad at all; barely felt like ant bites.  Then when she placed the spinal I don’t remember any sensation of it at all other than a slight tiny pop sensation, but it was not painful in the least.  All of a sudden my feet and legs started to get warm, and I remember saying, “Oh, that feels so good!” because I guess I was cold.  I was definitely trembling, but I thought it was mostly due to my muscles working so hard.  THEN the numb feeling set in.  That sucked – I hate the feeling of not being able to move my limbs, and it kind of freaked me out and I started to panic a little.  But I just reminded myself that it was normal and everything was working right, and I breathed and relaxed through the sensation.  It was a long time before they let Mr. K back into the room; I think they had already started making the incision.  I didn’t like that they weren’t telling me what was going on and how things were moving along, but once Keith got back in the room I relaxed a little more and started asking unrelated questions of the doc and chit-chatting about I don’t know what.  Finally the doc said “We’re about to pull her out so you’re going to feel some pressure.  You are not going to hear her cry right away because we are going to keep her quiet until we can suction her out.  There is meconium in the fluid and we need to make sure she doesn’t breathe it in.”  Again, I wasn’t freaked out by this and knew that she would be okay.  It wasn’t very long before I did hear her cry, so I felt 100% better then!  They cleaned her up and placed her on my chest for about 45 seconds, and then she started to cough and sneeze a little so they said they needed to go ahead and take her to the nursery.  Mr. K went with her while they finished sewing me up, which seemed to take FOREVER.  Finally they wheeled me to recovery where they then left me completely alone and freaking out for about an hour; WAY too long in my opinion.  I was pretty out of it so I was having trouble articulating that I wanted someone there with me.  I didn’t know if my mom and dad (who were in the waiting room with some friends and with Elyse, our birth photographer) had even been told that I’d had a c-section.  Finally I asked them to find my mom, and eventually she came in and sat with me.  Meantime I was feeling really nauseous from all the anesthesia, so I asked the nurse to give me something in the IV.  She gave me a dose of Zofran, then a while later another dose when the first didn’t work.  The second didn’t work either, and I asked for a barf bag and something stronger.  I believe she gave me a dose of phenegren, which looped me out even more than I was already.  When they FINALLY wheeled me off to our post partum room, it was more than I could take and they had to stop in the halls a few times while I puked up the completely empty contents of my stomach.  (I had had every intention of eating during labor, but things moved SO FAST there wasn’t time at all!  I wished now that I had forced something down.)  My poor parents, some friends, and Elyse had to witness my violent upchucking.  It wasn’t fun at all.  But I finally got to see my baby girl!  Unfortunately I continued to be sick throughout the rest of Friday and most of Saturday, so they had to keep giving me drugs to help cope, but the drugs really looped me out and I felt like I wasn’t really able to enjoy my baby to the fullest for a little while.  But I was so glad she was here and that she was perfect and healthy!  Everyone said how beautiful she is, and everyone is crazy about her long hair!  She got my brown hair, but it has beautiful blonde highlights in it – pretty much the haircolor Mommy has to pay big bucks for!

So that’s the story of the birth of the Amazing Annabelle!  And now for a few pictures….

And yet, still pregnant.  I guess she’s just not ready yet.

40 weeks 3 days

So here I am, waiting to get the call that I can go to the hospital and meet Baby Camy, and I find myself pondering.  I realized that this may very well be the last post I make while pregnant.  That’s a surreal and very sobering thought.  Or, I could be pregnant for another two weeks and some days – and that’s an even more sobering thought.  OR, I could go into labor right.this.second, and that’s an even more surreal feeling.  I’m sort of floating around in a strange bubble now, just waiting for that BAM! moment to happen and for me to go into labor.  It’s sort of unnerving, actually, this whole not knowing what’s going to happen or when.  I can’t just sit around waiting for it, but I can’t go on about my business and plan my day, week, and life like normal.  It’s torture.  And I can’t imagine how much more unnerving this would be if I actually knew how much progress I’ve made.  Talk about putting the pressure on…

The end does not feel like it is in sight.  It still feels like I’m just hanging out, pregnant, and that ohhhh, someday I’ll have a baby.  There is absolutely no sense of an impending event at all.  Is this normal?  Shouldn’t I be like, “OMG GET THIS KID OUT OF ME!!!” or “OMG, I am thisclose to my due date!!” or “Wow, I could have this kid tomorrow!! Or Today!!”  While I know these things cognitively, there really isn’t a sense of connection to reality for me.  It’s weird.  But this is possibly a lesson in mental peace for me.  I really don’t feel all that anxious to get things moving.  I guess I know deep down that the longest I could possibly be pregnant at this point is another 18 or 19 days, maximum.  That’s not that long.  And something keeps telling me (veeerrry quietly) that I’m not going to go 14 days past my due date.  I’m holding out hope that September 5th is the day.  That just seems….right.  And I’m relatively content to wait until then. 

And so without further adieu, I give you the very last pregnant picture.  I am 39 weeks and 2 days give or take.  It doesn’t get much bigger than this.  Enjoy!!

I hate medical stuff.  Always have.  As a kid, whenever I felt sick or injured myself, I was always terrified of  having to face the possibility of stitches or casts or medicine-taking or anything of that sort.  I have a SEVERE aversion to needles in particular.  Whether that stems from just a physical incapability of handling pain or a really bad blood-draw experience as a young teen, I don’t know.  What I DO know is that when it came to the thought of childbirth, I have always felt that there couldn’t be a pain bad enough to make me actually desireto have a huge needle inserted in my spine.  NO THANK YOU.  I also knew myself well enough to know that I am incredibly uncomfortable when I am not able to move my body, so the idea of having an epidural and being stuck on my back in a hospital bed  seemed like a fate worse than death to me. So when we decided to have a baby, I knew that there was no way in hell that I was going to do this whole childbirth thing unless I could figure out a way to make it through without a bunch of medical implements poked into me.  But I also knew that it must be a painful experience, because if it wasn’t, then millions and millions of women wouldn’t be willingly signing up for epidurals upon entering the hospital, and no one would ever talk about how much they wanted to kiss their anesthesiologist after the epi was placed.  Yeah – given that information, I concluded that childbirth must really be a big damn deal.  Problem is, I also felt like I had a very low pain tolerance.  I really thought I was stuck between a rock and a hard place – either deal with the worst most painful experience of my life, or figure out a way to be okay with the idea that a gigantic needle was going to be poked into my spine.

So in true Katie fashion, I started looking for a way out of this whole mess.  First, I started researching childbirth in general, what happens during, how people get through it, what possible interventions occur, and so on.  I learned everything I could about what a normal childbirth experience looks like (and by “normal” I mean a birth that occurs without major emergency or complication).  I also learned about what happens when things go wrong during birth, why people have episiotomies, what types of situations necessitate a c-section, and why IVs are administered.   I talked to everyone I could think of who might be able to offer some insight.  I read and listened to birth stories.  I sought out like-minded people that had gone “all-natural” and asked how they did it.  I interviewed no less than 5 OBGYNs to find one that would be supportive of someone wanting to deliver without medical intervention or drugs.  I read, read, read, and read some more, and quizzed every doctor within a 20 mile radius about statistics and the specifics of each and every birth intervention that could possibly occur.  You know that student that sits up at the front of the class and questions the validity of everything the professor says?  The one that has obviously read just as much on the subject as the instructor has, probably more, and refuses to take anything anyone tells her at face value?  The one that has to research everything to the nth degree before forming an opinion or accepting another person’s assessment of a situation?  That was me.  Whenever a doctor said something like, “Oh, epidurals don’t increase the chances of c-sections”  I’d immediately respond, “Really?  On what do you base that assessment?  Because I have read XYZ study and so-and-so’s book and according to the articles published on that study….”  And so on.  (Sadly, I was like this in college, too.  No wonder people were always rolling their eyes when I raised my hand in class…) Anyway, bottom line here is I just refused to accept that childbirth, one of the most natural and normal events in a woman’s life, had to be treated like an illness that required drugs, anesthesia, and surgery. 

And so, enter the childbirth technique known as Hypnobirthing.  I must admit, I was skeptical at first.  I mean, the name leads you to think that your spouse is going to be dangling a stopwatch in front of  your face until you’re completely hypnotized, and that you’re in some kind of trance for hours until lo and behold, your child is born.  Having also read Dr. Bradley’s book (The Bradley Method of Husband Coached Childbirth), I was a little bit leery that Hypnobirthing was going to be an even granola-crunchier version and that we were going to have to do things like chant in tongues or eat our placenta or something.  But I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it’s actually a pretty sane and logical approach to childbirth.  The gist of it is that your body is built to have a baby, and if you allow nature to take its course (pending any major medical drama), then childbirth can be a relatively pain-free, calm, and peaceful experience. 

I don’t know how far I can go in believing this whole thing is going to be painless, but the things I’ve learned in class I know will help me in many aspects of life, not just childbirth.  Mostly we spend a lot of time practicing relaxation techniques – the idea here being that if you consciously relax all other parts of your body, then you are allowing all your energy and focus to be on the parts of your body doing the actual laboring and pushing, i.e. your uterus.  Deep relaxation can keep you from being afraid or panicking, which would only make labor pains worse.  The other element to the relaxation is  that it allows you to fully rest in between contractions (called “surges” in Hypnobirthing), which means that you can hopefully maintain your stamina for a lot longer than someone who is constantly keyed up during their contractions as well as in between them.  Basically, the more relaxed and restful you can be, the easier the labor is to handle and the more efficient your body can do the work of opening and allowing baby to move through the birth path. 

So picture this:  you’re in labor, you’re relaxed and happy and moving around, working with your body as it does it’s thing.  You don’t need to go to the hospital right away because you’re still able to manage things relatively well, since you are resting every chance you get.  Once you do get to the hospital, you don’t need an IV because you’ve been hydrating yourself and snacking on light, nutritious things like bananas and soup broth.  You don’t need pitocin or any drug augmentation of labor because you’re allowing your body to do its job by not fighting the surges and working and moving around to let gravity work with your body.  You don’t need an epidural or pain medication because you are allowing your body to slowly build up to the more intense stages of labor instead of going from 0-60 in 3.2 seconds as you would have if you’d had pitocin.  You trust that your body knows what it’s doing, and you don’t fight it.  It’s a beautiful thing.  Of course, this is all assuming you have no major complications and that both mom and baby are holding steady with good heart rates and plenty of oxygen.  Should complications arise, the Hypnobirthing approach is to assess the situation with the practitioner and figure out the path of least resistance.  For example, if labor “slows down” and the doctor wants to start pitocin, a Hypnobirthing family would first ask, “Is Mom okay?  Is Baby okay?” and if the answer to both those questions is yes, then the next question is “What happens if we do nothing; or what happens if we wait 30 minutes/1 hour, etc.?”  In many situations it is likely that if given an hour and a chance to try some natural labor augmentation, change position, or use an alternative to whatever intervention is being suggested, the laboring mother will progress just fine.  Not always, but it is worth a try!  I am extremely comfortable with and very relieved by this approach to labor.  I don’t want to force my body to do something it’s not ready to do, and if I’m handling labor well, not dehydrated or exhausted (remember I’ve been eating and drinking all that time!), and the baby is doing well,  there should be no reason to “move things along” or “get things going” with unnecessary interventions.  Luckily, I have found a doctor and an OB practice that fully supports Hypnobirthing and is very reluctant to intervene in situations where there is little medical necessity.  They are the only practice in Austin that employs full time Certified Nurse Midwives, and the only practice in Austin where the midwives have hospital privileges and can deliver patients at the hospital.  I’ve heard stories from other patients about my doctor and her midwives literally lying on the floor underneath a squatting mother delivering her baby!  Amazing!  And so encouraging and comforting to know that I’m in the hands of people who want me to have the most comfortable, gentle, and easy birth possible.

So there you have it.  My Hippie Hypnobirthing Manifesto.  If you didn’t already think I was crazy, you probably do now.  But I’m okay with that.

http://lisawoodsphotography.com/blog/?p=150

http://lisawoodsphotography.com/blog/?p=148

Um, I love you Lisa.  A lot.

Enjoy, all!

That’s right – we officially have 9 weeks left before we meet Annabelle.  I can hardly believe it.  I think about the time remaining ALL the time, and some days it seems like still so far away, and other days it seems like it’ll be here before we know it.  I mean, it seems like just last week we were finding out Annabelle is a girl, yet that was 11 weeks ago.  We have sooooo much left to do and I really hope 9 weeks is enough!  I keep reminding myself that they really need very little aside from a safe place to sleep, a clean diaper,  a boob, and a parent to love on them for the first few weeks.  Everything else pretty much is just the trappings of our consumerist society that leads us to believe that your child needs 18 types of strollers and 40 different places to sleep.  Really as long as they are safe, warm, dry, fed, and loved, you’re all good.  I think we can handle that!  So Annabelle, if you want to come early (but not too early….sayyy, right at 37 weeks?) that’d be okay with Mom and Dad.

One thing I am NOT ready for is to give up my birthing class.  Some of you know that we decided to take a class that teaches the  natural childbirthing method known as Hypnobirthing.  In spite of its misleading name, the class does not teach you how to give birth while hypnotized – rather it teaches various forms of visualization and deep relaxation to help your body do the work of labor effectively and less painfully.  I’ll talk more about Hypnobirthing in another post, since I’ve had lots of questions about it lately.  Anyway, we recently finished our 5 week course, and I really feel like I need more guided practice with the relaxation techniques, so the instructors welcomed us to come back to the next round of classes at any time!  I’m super happy about this.  I’m just not ready to check this off my list yet, and I want to be as practiced and focused as possible when it comes time for labor and delivery.  I feel like the more prepared I am, the more likely it will be that I get the birth experience I want.  So, back to class I go!

As for actual pregnancy, I really feel like not much has happened at all up until now, and now things seem to be moving at a more accellerated pace.  Five weeks ago I still could pass easily as just fat and not pregnant.  Now, there is no mistaking that I have a baby bump.  On the other hand, people keep exclaiming how tiny I am to be 31 weeks pregnant!  I mean, I’m not a large person anyway, but this baby is carrying so far back that I don’t look as far along as I am I guess.  At a wedding last weekend, one of the bridesmaids was 21 weeks along, and her bump was as big if not a tiny bit bigger than mine!  I’m kind of proud that I’m not huge yet – but in a way it’s kind of worrying!  It gives me this irrational fear that Annabelle isn’t growing right – but I know that’s not really true because at each OB appoinment my fundal height measures perfectly on track, and she kicks the bejezus out of me all. the. time. so I know she’s strong and healthy.

Other changes are occuring.  I can no longer get up off the floor by myself.  I can no longer slouch in my chair or bend over very far.  I can’t touch the floor (unless I squat, which in and of itself is not an easy feat), and I no longer remember what it’s like to NOT be pregnant.  I also have started to have trouble sleeping in just the last week or so.  It’s difficult to change positions at night (which unfortunately I have to do frequently so I don’t get too sore laying in one position or another), and I’ve started waking up when Annabelle sinks to one side of my abdomen and lays on a rib or other internal organ.  The biggest problem has been with my digestive system.  I already have IBS, and having a baby sitting on various parts of my bowels at any given time is NOT helping their disfunction.  So as a result, I wake up at least once a night with gas pains or just pressure on my bowels that makes changing position painful but necessary.  A few times I’ve even had pain so bad that I’ve almost made Mr. K take me to the hospital – but the OB assures me it is just gas pressure.  I am terrified every time it happens, and I hope it doesn’t happen too many more times over the next 9 weeks!  I hope things go back to a bit more normalcy in my abdomen once she’s out!

The one thing I truly can be thankful for and proud of is the fact that I have not swollen at all yet!!!  Even the midwife at my last appointment was surprised.  When she pulled out the footrest on the exam table and I held out my legs, she said, “My goodness!  It’s June in Texas and it’s 104 degrees outside, and YOU still have ANKLES!!”  It. was. awesome.  I can even still wear my rings most of the time, although I do admit they are getting a bit tight.  That only really happens when I’ve been out in the heat, though, which I think would happen to anyone.  I can still most definitely wear all my shoes, however some of my cuter shoes with heels are not comfortable anymore just due to the extra 35 lbs I’m toting around.  Luckily I’m home most of the day so I stick to flip flops, and luckily I thought ahead to buy some cute leather Bernardo flip flops earlier this spring, so I can wear those with my sundresses and such when I go out.

And so, I’ll close with a few recent pictures.  The first set was taken about 4 weeks ago (at 26 weeks 5 days) by my wonderful and talented friend Elyse of Constance Elyse Photography.  The last is the obligatory headless self-portrait, taken about a week ago at 30 weeks on the dot.  Enjoy!

• Drinking enough water
• Getting enough calcium
• Not gaining more than 25 lbs (we’re at 30 and counting, folks, with 12 weeks go go)
• Walking/excercising most days of the week
• Talking to the baby
• Maintaining the “cute preggo” look (consistently mani/pedi’ed, coiffed, and sufficiently made-up)
• Staying awake. For anything.
• Avoiding the “I’m pregnant therefore you have to kiss my ass” attitude

Things in this pregnancy at which I have succeeded:

• Sleeping (this is perhaps my single most important accomplishment this entire pregnancy)
• Remaining relatively calm
• Learning to love ice cream
• Never asking my husband to leave the house at 2am for pickles
• Reading just about everything I can related to labor and birth
• Eating
• Thinking about eating
• Talking about eating
• Thinking about talking about eating
• Pretty much anything related to eating
• Not missing wine *too* much
• Building a solid home foundation for my kiddo
• Appreciating my husband
• Feeling grateful for my wonderful friends
• Remembering to savor each day, because I’ll only be pregnant with my first child once

Oh, good.  My successes outweigh my failures!  Off to munch another chocolate rice cake.

So I mentioned last time that I had gotten this wild hair up my rear and decided to sew my own baby bedding.  (NO, the crying and begging and whining for custom made baby bedding from Etsy.com did not have even the slightest effect on Mr. K.)  Anyway, I’m happy to say that it’s actually looking pretty darn great!!  So far Mom and I have gotten through about 2/3 of the quilt and most of the crib skirt.  We’ll be using an existing bumper that I bought with another really crappy and cheap set, and just recovering it.  I’m STOKED!!  And even better, Mom and I have not killed each other yet (although I’ve come close.  Love you Mom!)  Here are some pics so far (sorry for the poor picture quality; I am too lazy to Lightroom them):

Crib, with bedskirt sewn together and in place!  Yes, the wall color really truly is that icky.  Can’t wait to paint!!!

Just a small pic of the crib at a different angle, so you can see the “dip” in the front railing.

Dresser, obviously.

Aaannnd, this last one above is a horrendous pic of the quilt.  The color in this photo is all wrong, but again, I’m too lazy to edit.  The border is much more of a lavender purple with tiny white dots as opposed to a bright periwinkle, which is what it looks like to me here.  The quilt is taking forever.  First we had to cut all the pieces from the pattern, which we ended up doing slightly incorrectly because we didn’t realize the cuts had to be precise.  So the corners of the different fabric on one corner don’t line up exactly, and the whole thing is not the exact dimensions of the pattern, but it’ll be fine and you can’t tell unless you look REALLY closely at the where the edges don’t line up precicely.  The part I’m working on now is embroidering the flowers on the corners, which Mom cut from the cute floral fabric in the middle, obviously.  We felt like the purple dot fabric needed a little something extra.  I’m currently going around the edges of the flowers with an embroidery stitch to attach each flower.  The last steps will be attaching the batting and the back panel, and then at the very end I’m going to do dark purple french knots straight through the whole shebang in the center of the flowers and tie them off on the back side of the quilt, so it gives it that sort of “quilted” look and secures the batting in place between the front and back.  Yes, I realize that I am maybe kind of a little bit insane.

I’m going to start the bumper today!!  We’re making progress!

As for the walls, I have a few ideas.  First, I wanted to do beadboard like this, but not so high and in white:

Then I saw something like this wainscotting and fell in love too:

Or this – I love the shelf above the wainscotting:

Then I saw this, and decided this would be about 1000 times easier:

So we’ll probably just be doing something like the above, but in purple/green to match the quilt, obviously.  However, priority #1 at the moment is getting the downstairs of our house painted (livingroom, dining, kitchen, and master bedroom).  Once we get on that, we can easily paint the baby’s room ourselves in a weekend or two, I think.    I hope.