According to Babycentre, this week my squishy is about the size of a cantaloupe. (Also at the top of the weekly email it says that I have 42 days left which I find very amusing since I’m a big Douglas Adams fan). This week she probably weighs about 2,7kg or thereabouts and she’s working on fattening up a bit, practicing her lungs/under water breathing and developing her central nervous system.

We’re Braxton Hicks-ing it up every chance we get, which although not painful is surprisingly uncomfortable – I get what all the fuss about the breathing is all about now (you kind of forget to do it). The rolling around inside is also quite intense at the moment. I think she’s running out of space to do that in.

Except for the spell of bad weather we’re having which is keeping me out of the pool, whale season is well and truly upon us. I am HUGE! Also very uncomfortable, clumsy, unable to bend, slow and out of breath, full of aches and pains, have puffer feet, heartburn, stretch marks, (hopefully temporary) carpal tunnel syndrome in my left hand, constant thirst and wake up some nights at the weirdest hours because I am hungry! (I’m not even going to mention that I’m walking a groove into our passage floor up and downing to the loo for two!).

Is it any wonder than I’m feeling ever so slightly cranky and short fused? Nope? I didn’t think so. One major accomplishment this week – managing to tie my own shoes (I don’t want to talk about how long it took or how I managed to do it – let’s just say I move in mysterious ways, not elegant but definitely mysterious).

Nesting is coming along nicely. My mom is helping me out with that – A LOT. Thanks mom! I know squishy is not due for another 6 weeks, but if she hangs in there another week or so, we’ll be ready for her either way. When it’s all done I’ll take some photos and show you what we’ve been up to.

It looks like my brother is also getting into the whole thing now. He’s been fairly quiet about it up to recently, but this week he’s taken to cracking jokes about it a good sign I think. One of the things he said to me this week was, “Jy’s soos ‘n stukkende waterpas – maak nie saak hoe mens jou draai nie die bubble bly bo!” (You’re like a broken water-level, no matter which way we turn you the bubble stays on top!). I feel a bit like that really!

This week I managed to get squishy to kick for every member of my family. She’s been very selective who she does that for, but the trick is now to put my hand where she’s kicking (she doesn’t mind kicking for me – or even at me) then I have to switch my hand for whomever’s hand without changing the amount of pressure applied. The moment she notices different pressure and suspects a different hand she goes quiet. I’m happy that they all got a chance to feel her move at last.

The Go-bag is packed. Actually it’s now three bags really. One for me, one for squishy and one with toiletries in it. *shrug* I never said I travelled light, and besides…I get a private room at this hospital. Their whole maternity ward is made up of private rooms – I think I could pack another bag if I really wanted to. I have no idea when squishy will decide it’s time, I’m sort of hoping it won’t be before the 15th of December when our office shuts for a month anyway, because I’d really like to not go in labour there. Either that or that my doctor at some point tells me to stay home instead to protect everyone from my short or non-existent fuse and unpredictable weepies. Driving to the CBD every day and lugging my laptop around with me is becoming a real pain (actually just getting in and out of my car is becoming a real pain!). Oh well, we’ll see what happens (and when)?

Right…this update was brought to you at 04:00am since I woke up craving cheese and an apple at about 03:00am. For my next trick I will attempt to find a semi-comfortable position that doesn’t aggravate my heartburn or leg cramps and get some more sleep.

Hope you all have a super-fantastic week!   

There is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man. – Aristotle

Internal conflict : sometimes the toes you WANT to step on are connected somehow to the ass you HAVE to kiss. – Louisa

Real friends are those who when you’ve made a fool of yourself, don’t feel that you’ve done a permanent job. – Erwin T. Randall

I decided to pack my go bag this week. I don’t expect I’ll be using it for a couple of weeks, but if I do suddenly go into labour the last thing I want to do is scuttle around looking for my slippers or whatever.

The hospital was kind enough to include a list of guidelines on what you should consider packing. This has helped me somewhat but not completely – I know I never travel light, but either I am packing to much stuff or my suitcase is too small?! I think it must be the suitcase. Must be.

And I have to pack a bag for squishy too of course! Now there’s something I haven’t done before. Then these silly people just put something vague on their list like enough clothes for 3 nights and 4 days. What exactly does that mean?!

New(ish) mammas out there – please assist the novice here. How many outfits does a new baby wear in a day on average? And what would be the best kind of outfit to pack for a summer hospital stay?…should I take long/short sleeved ones, or both? And should I go for the one piece outfits or the ones with the separate pants and top bits?

Help…?

Ps! All this packing has not escaped the notice of my cat Tigger – she is not a happy camper at the moment. I can’t take two steps without her there to see if now is the moment I leave her behind. Poor baby…I wonder how she’s going to handle the addition of squishy to our household.

It’s been a hectically busy weekend and I feel it all over. Sheesh! I am exhausted.

Friday we went for our check-up of course and then thankfully the rest of the day we got to hang out and chill with Tammy in the pool. I may soon need a rope to hoist myself out of the pool, but it’s still a fabulous way to spend a Friday in whale season.

Saturday I went to ExMi ‘s kid’s 2nd birthday party which was also fun. I see it’s customary to have more grown-ups than kids at these events? I can live with that. Thank goodness for all the dinosaur themed sugar on offer or I might have conked out on the lawn from the heat!

Sunday I went to a braai at Phillygirl ‘s house. Everyone brought something and I got to make potato salad.

Now let me tell you that me and potatoes have a bit of a history. I love eating potatoes, but cooking them isn’t really my strength to be honest. I am always in too much of a hurry and end up under-doing it somehow (even when I follow printed instructions!). So imagine my surprise when I go offline for a few hours and come back to find myself nominated to make potato salad – Eeeep!

Luckily for everyone involved I have a mother who can do everything. I asked her how she would do it with strict instructions to leave NOTHING out, even if she thought it was an obvious step, it wouldn’t be obvious to me. As an extra precaution I made her stab the taters after they were boiled to make sure they were cooked. In the end the epic potato salad came out great – I was so proud (and grateful! And so would you be if you’ve had to endure some of my previous undercooked potato dishes).

I might even try it again soon…

Even though I am so tired after all the running around and socialising of this past weekend, it was really great to see everyone again. Gimme a week to rest up and I’ll be ready for round two. 

If the world is cold, make it your business to build fires. – Horrace Traubel

Everybody wants to eat at the government’s table, but nobody wants to do the dishes. – Werner Finck

A friend hears the song of the heart and sings it when memory fails. – Martin Luther

According to Babycentre this week my squishy weighs about the same as a 4 pound (1,8kg) pineapple. Actually this is not true. We went for our 33 week check-up yesterday and squishy already weighs 2,4kg! The doctor said that his guestimate is at full term she should clock in at more or less 4kg. *gulp* This is a big baby.

I’m not sure if I have the hips to go natural on a 4kg baby, but my doctor said we’ll have a look either at 35 or 37 weeks to see. I am starting to strongly suspect she’s coming by sunroof if she’s over 3,5kg.

Anyhoo, my daughter didn’t feel like looking at the camera yesterday – which really frustrated my doctor but entertained me. He said that she’s looking healthy and that she’s got a very strong heart beat and he even showed me how she was practicing breathing! It was so cute. Also, he said that he could tell already she had a lot of hair.

This week more than any other has brought home to me how close we are to B-day already. I spoke to my friend’s wife, who recently had a little girl herself, and she wanted to know how far along we were. When I told her 33 weeks she said that I’d already made it further than she did – cause she had her baby at 32 weeks! It literally could happen any day now.

Here are some of the pics my doctor did manage to get of squishy this week.

I think the poor man believes that I have been sent to test his patience somehow. I am a very difficult customer patient. It’s not that I phone him every 5 minutes with some sort of panic attack or question, it’s just that every time I see him I tell him about another thing I don’t want him to do. I think it’s slowly dawning on him that unless I need to have a C-section he’s probably going to be a spectator at the event with little to no involvement. At the first visit I told him: NO induction. The next time I saw him: NO epidural and NO forceps or plungers. And yesterday: NO episiotomy. This is the first time he’s objected though – I haven’t even begun to be fully difficult yet.

I had to hand in my volumes of paperwork at the maternity ward yesterday. I did get a raised eyebrow from the nurses station for the BOLD scribbling over any form that asked about problems with anaesthetics: Makes me VERY aggressive, strap me down before I wake up if you value your life. Also since I didn’t see them put my stuff in a file of some sorts I told them that if they lost it I’d make them fill it out themselves next time because it really was a lot of paperwork. She seemed surprised by my “suggestion”. Either they never lose paperwork, or they’re not used to patients being full of shit more than a month before they actually check in already?

Now for a short unrelated rant:

It’s been my M.O. from day one of this pregnancy to focus on the positive instead of the potentially negative. partly because I am an eternal optimist and I am really enjoying the adventure and partly because I found that whenever I allowed myself to get negative I got really really sick. My baby as well as myself needs me to be positive – and that’s what I’m doing.

However, there have been certain aspects which from time to time has managed to derail my happy train of thoughts – even if only for a day or so at a time. Some relating to money and medical aid, some relating to TGC and his attitude through all of this, and some relating to my quest for a doctor who I could rely on. If I had to summarise the common denominator it would have to be uncertainty.

Anyway, that’s not what I’m about to rant about.

I am the very first unwed mother in my family (that I know of). As you can imagine, it doesn’t come with a badge or a certificate. Even so, these are not the days where being a single parent brings eternal shame on your entire bloodline and for the most part my whole extended family, and particularly my close family are excited and supportive. My parents for instance have been absolute angels and I couldn’t have come so far through this without their help and support.

Isolated members of my extended family however are not dealing with this very well. One member in particular is not only disappointed in me but genuinely seems angry about it, and another disapproves to the extent where she hasn’t spoken to me in months and whose only attempt at getting involved so far has been to try and sell a R200 baby item to my mom for R1000. Both these women have come up with some pretty fluffy excuses to not attend my baby shower.

I’m okay with that. If they’ don’t want to be there they should stay away. I don’t even mind that they are obviously upset about me being pregnant. It doesn’t keep me up at night (or even interrupt my afternoon naps for that matter) that they judge me because of this.

BUT…(And this is an important but) they really should know that I will not stand for them being anything but charming, friendly and welcoming to my daughter when she arrives. If they even so much as frown at her they will be burning a bridge with me that there will be no repairing of later. If they shun my baby in any way, they will become as good as dead to me.

And when I close a door, believe me, it stays shut.

End of rant. Thanks, I feel much better now.  

…but not recklessly?

I am quite happy that THIS is not my job. This man has no concept or regard to his personal safety – sheesh! (He’s painting that roof with a broom by the way). I wonder how he plans on doing the bottom bits?

I hope he doesn’t fall off there – and if he does I hope he sues the pants off whomever told him to get up there like that in the first place.

Yesterday I got to go on a field trip for work. My manager wants to have the department picnic at the zoo first week in December and asked me to go check it out for her.

Can I just say well done to Johannesburg Zoo for your awesomely helpful staff. No less than 5 (the only 5 I spoke to) went above and beyond trying to help and accommodate me in whatever I asked them – this kind of attitude doesn’t come by itself, so I assume you’ve put some effort into training them this way. I am extremely impressed. It’s rare these days to see this anywhere, so really, well done!

I’m very glad I decided to take my umbrella with. About 200m waddle into it the heavens opened up like in the days of Noah and even though I was somewhat drenched I missed out on most of it, especially the hale stones bit which i was very grateful for! When the thunder and lightning started shortly after that I reconsidered walking around with a lightning rod (umbrella) and made my way over to the reptile house quick as I could.

The Zoo itself looks pretty good too. There were three school tours there yesterday and I think the odd candy wrapper could easily be attributed to that. (Btw, have you seen what happens to three school tours when it starts raining and haling and there’s nowhere to go? Chaos I tell you, mad screaming, scattering, running chaos! I felt very sorry for the two teachers trying to heard the youngens to the buses by themselves).

I didn’t stay very long either – I only wanted to see if it would work for a picnic, and it will as long as it doesn’t rain. There really is nowhere to go if it rains except the reptile house.

On my way out I spotted this funny scene. These goats don’t have a roof to hide under when it rains, and one decided that he couldn’t see why the food has to stay dry on its own. Those are not his feet sticking out of the bottom, there’s another bokkie behind the feed he’s sitting in! Clever goat.

Even though I got more or less soaked, it was a fun way to spend a Monday. Beats filing hands down.

I am in pain. It’s making me a little bit nuts to be honest. The silver lining is that at least it’s better than yesterday. Last night I had back and stomach pains that made it difficult to walk or get up by myself, and today at least the back pain is gone and the stomach pain is at roughly half the level it was last night.

Unpleasant.

Let’s hope it’s not serious, and whatever it is settles down so I can sleep properly tonight.

Hope your week’s off to a better start than mine?

According to Babycentre my squishy is about the size of a Jicama this week (another root/fruit that we don’t get here!) and should be more or less 16.7 inches long (42.4cm). I am SURE my baby will be a lot cuter than a Jicama.

They say that she’ll be picking up about a third of her birth weight in the next 7 weeks at the rate of about half a pound a week (226,7g). Well there you go…it’s time for the big swell to commence? Brace yourselves, we don’t know how big this is going to get.

They also say that this week she has fingernails and toenails and either hair or a respectable form of peach fuzz. If this baby is anything like her mother she’ll be born with a full head of proper hair, no fuzz to speak of – but we’ll see what happens.

According to the weekly email update I get, some of the symptoms I should or could be experiencing this week include shortness of breath (check), heartburn (CHECK) and back pain (nope – and thank you for that!). I will say that I am constantly uncomfortable though and that I get funny cramps in my legs and potbelly – which I assume is either squishy squishing my nerves or some sort of braxton hicks? It’s not exactly fun, but I suppose it’s part of the process? Also I am sleeping more than I have ever slept in my life! It’s really hard work growing another human!

If I had to use one word to summarise how I feel now I’d have to go with clumsy. I can’t explain why but it’s actually easier for me to get out of the bath than out of bed. I dropped my house keys (through the security gate) one morning this week as I was leaving home for work – and I wanted to weep! Getting them back so i could unlock the door entailed putting everything I had with me down and crawling on my hands and knees to reach them and then pulling myself up again afterwards. Sounds easier and more elegant than it actually was!

Other than that I feel just peachy.

I’m spending a lot of time navel gazing…and not the depressed kind either, actual navel gazing. It’s fascinating to see her rolling around and stretching under my skin.

I’ll be honest: some days I am sooo excited to meet her and some days I am quite frankly terrified. But mostly I am excited. Good thing too – since there are now 8 weeks or less of this pregnancy left to get used to the idea of being someone’s mom.