Full Term, Full Tank, and Rearing to Go

I was 37 weeks as of yesterday, which is officially full term. This means we're good to go at any time, even though the due date is officially 3 weeks away. I'm voting sooner rather than later, though I'm not presumptuous enough to think my vote carries any weight in the matter really. As the food source both of present and to be, however, could my thoughts perhaps be slightly considered in the decision making process?

I have turned the corner into pretty damn uncomfortable territory, and it really seems to me by the pokes and prods I am constantly receiving that the LFM ain't but so comfy in there either. There seems to be a discernible lack of room for the both of us, and of course he's little so he always wins out. I'm also getting contractions all the freaking time, most of which are benign but just uncomfortable as hell. Yesterday I got the added bonus of the feeling of mild menstrual cramps and slight back pain, but it went away, so don't get all excited that anything is happening. Nothing is happening but awkward discomfort. Lots and lots of it. And as for sleep? That's most definitely not happening.

For the record: I still love love pregnancy. I absolutely adore being pregnant. I think its a beautiful journey and I think I'll actually really miss it when he's out.

Not that I don't want him to make an appearance...soon. As in before family flies in from all corners of the globe, so that we get a little time to ourselves, just the three of us before being overwhelmed and inundated by foreign languages and filial obligations. I'm a definitely finding myself a little anxious about the postpartum period. As if standing at the gateway of both life and death while learning how to be a new mother and breastfeed were not emotionally and energetically taxing enough, I get to do all that, with crazy hormones, no sleep, and company! Yay! Sounds like fun, doesn't it? I've always been a huge people person, but I find that the closer I get to birth the more anxious I am about protecting my space; defending my den so to speak. None of this may end up being an issue at all, and how I will feel is one gigantic question mark at this point, but for right now its a definite fear I'm trying to work through. I'm sure it doesn't help that I've never met WB's parents before. It also doesn't help that my Spanish skills have sadly not progressed at all during the last 9 months and his mother doesn't speak any English. It also doesn't help that my own mother is dying. Gee, why do I feel like the china shop itself watching a bull approach? Hmmm, can't think of any valid reasons really...

Speaking of Mimi, this is why I have not written in decades. To be very brief about it all, she had been falling a lot and was very weak and we brought it up at a doctor's appointment. They immediately did a CT scan and found 6 new brain tumors...and when I say new, these cropped up since the last MRI done in October. Yeah, fuckin cancer moves fast. When my parents met with the doc upon first finding out, he was all gloom and doom and basically there was a question as to whether or not Mimi would even make it to see her grandson born.

As she now tells it, when the doctor said the magic word, hospice, she suddenly burst into action. That was what she needed to hear to get her ire up, collect her inner resources, and motivate the troops to fight. She had gamma knife radiation, which they're hopeful has killed off the new brain tumors, is now on new meds and walking with help of a walker, and will begin a new injection chemo around the 11th of Jan to help buy some time from the 50 million other non brain tumors throughout her body. Its not only her choice, but now her passion to continue fighting with every ounce of her being. Her new goal is not the birth, but 2 1/2 years from diagnosis, which will put her at next December. She's a pretty stubborn lady- she just may make it! On a very selfish note, I'm so relieved not to have to experience both new life and death at the exact same moment. While it is clearly a very definite reality that she is dying, I'm so thankful that its not simultaneous to birth. Grateful for both of us.

So now you see why I have been away for so long...it really wasn't that WB's snoring finally got the better of me. Life's challenges and grief did.

In the midst of all that, I had two amazing and beautiful baby showers thrown for me by two very wonderful friends, and got to have just a teeny tiny bit of light amidst what was otherwise a bit of a dark time. I desperately needed that, and I thank you from the bottom of my being, Coco and Muffinface. Thank you as well to all our wonderful friends who helped make us feel so loved and supported- this monkey couldn't be birthed into a more loving environment.

There was , sadly, one very horrible snafu wherein a friend felt very hurt and offended that WB and I did not get to talk with them enough and did not introduce them to other guests (disclaimer: we didn't introduce anyone to anyone else, and as we had been through the emotional ringer the previous week, which had been shared with said guest, we were understandably more than a little overwhelmed). The manner in which this friend chose to share their feelings was cruel rather than constructive (I had two witnesses to the events and conversation who can attest to that) and the friendship has definitely been irreparably damaged, to say the least. That was a very heartbreaking and supremely disappointing turn of events, but I don't even have the energy to deal with something like that amidst everything else that is going on. Its not a priority, nor should it be.

For the present moment (and I can only live in the moment right now), my priorities all revolve around birthing my baby. We've completed and organized everything we need and/or want for our home birth, I'm ruthlessly nesting (when not horrendously uncomfortable) and we're just excitedly waiting. So LFM, if you're listening, you can come anytime...Maman and Papa are ready and waiting with open arms!

Sleepless in Hippoland

The 3rd trimester insomnia/uncomfortableness is killing me here. I'm just getting over a horrible upper respiratory infection and a week of being a walking snot faucet and now I can't sleep. At all.

Also, did I ever happen to mention on this blog how WB got that particular moniker? It stands for Wild Boar...which is exactly what he sounds like when he sleeps. Seriously. I am not exaggerating at all. The first time he ever spent the night and slept (evidently he stayed up all not a few times, knowing just how terrifying the first exposure could be), I woke up in the middle of the night convinced there was some sort of wild animal in my bed. While that can be a good thing in the waking hours, when you're trying to sleep through that sound in your ear (night after night) it can try even the calmest and most patient of nerves.

I am all the way across our huge floor through apartment and he is in the bedroom behind a closed door and I hear him loud and clear right now. And even 1000 feet away (I totally made up that number, I have no idea how far it is, just far enough that any normal person's snoring would not be audible) its incredibly annoying. No, really. Trust me. I'm cringing as I type this.

Every night I wear the highest decibel blocking earplugs I can find in the drugstore and he wears a nasal snore strip and one of 3 things inevitably happens at some point in the night:
1. I ruthlessly kick him out of bed and force him to sleep on the very uncomfortable couch. When he carries the next child, he can kick me out of bed.
2. I scream out desperately at the top of my lungs "WB! PULEEZE STOP! JUST STOP! HAVE MERCY ON MY POOR MISERABLE SLEEP DEPRIVED SOUL!"
3. I try and smother him with a pillow.

This nightly cacophonous racket, compounded with an already difficult period sleep wise does not bode well for our little family. Either I will end up a Benadryl addict shivering and alone in an alley somewhere sniffling for my fix and crying that "I just need a little sleep man, just a little!" or the first ever adenoid removal surgery performed in a bedroom just might take place. I'm gazing longingly at the kitchen knives right now.



[Great! Guess who just decided that now would be a perfect time to start to use my abdomen for boxing training? If you need to find me, I'll still be here....awake and miserable all night folks. That's right! 24 hours a day of guaranteed fun!]