Lamaze Class...It's not just breathing

Josh and I attended our very first lamaze class. We have three more to attend, and they are only 4 hours long each!

It actually wasn't as bad as I had imagined it to be, and Josh agrees. We learned a lot about the stages of labor, and about when to go to the hospital and when to stick it out at home.

At the very end of the class, the Lamaze instructor taught the men a simple series of massages that can help to reduce stress in the mother, and boy did it feel good! I was so completely relaxed after that until we stepped outside into the freezing cold rain - that pretty much woke me up.

I'm getting excited and a bit nervous about the birthing process. I'm obviously concerned about the pain...I'm not planning on having any pain meds...And I'm also really concerned about the lack of control I might have with decisions that will need to be made in the hospital.

For example:

I don't want an episiotomy. Nor, do I want the birth rushed. I also want my baby right away, I don't want them to take him to clean him up and I definitely don't want them to give him a pacifier. I want to be able to breast feed right away. And most of all, I don't want to be in the hospital more than I absolutely need to be. Hospitals are for sick people, and I'm having a baby, I'm not sick.

Humans should be egg hatchers

This morning at about 4:30 am, when I woke up from a combination of having to go potty and having heartburn, I thought to myself "Boy it would be nice to have just laid an egg by now and be done with it?"

I think I even said that out loud, hoping to get a reaction from Josh...But he kept sleeping.

A colleague of mine recently sent an interesting article about childbirth that I found very informative.

Here is the link...But be forewarned, it is a long article:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/061009fa_fact

I look 40 and pregnant!

So today, I went on a studio crawl (where you visit various local artist's studios)with my friend Chelsea, and one of the artists (he was probably in is late 60's or early 70's) thought that I was Chelsea's mother!

I'm blaming it on a few factors:

1. Chelsea looks like she's still 18, she's cute and petite and dresses trendy.
2. The man was ancient, and I believe that the older you get, the harder it is to figure out how old younger people are. For example, I think that most college freshmen look like they are freshmen in high school.
3. I wasn't dressed cute, and I'm 7 1/2 months pregnant.
   

Here's me at 32 weeks. Notice that my clothes seem to be "comfy" clothes.

Blue

Isn't it weird to see the word "Blue" in the color green? This reminds me of the "brain testing" that I had to go through my freshman year of hockey. The personal trainers made each freshman go through a series of cognitive tests just so they could document the results. And then if you happened to get a head injury later on, they'd give you the same series of tests and compare the results to see how bad the damage was.

Luckily, I only had to take that test once. But I remember that one of the tests consisted of me having to read a very long paragraph that contained only the words "Blue","Red",and "Green". The words were randomized and each word was printed in a random color. So sometimes the word "Blue" would be in red ink, and other times it would be in blue or green ink.

For the second pass, I had to look at the words and not read the words but state the colors of the ink that the word was printed in.

Ah...those were the days.

Baby Update: I had a doctor's appointment today, and the registration lady said that my doctor was "detained" and asked if I'd rather wait until he was back or if I'd see the nurse practitioner. I understood "detained" to be that he was with another patient who was in labor, but Josh asked me "What does she mean by detained?"

After he asked, I realized how funny it sounds to just say that someone is detained. They could be in jail, they could be in a traffic jam, they could be a lot of things. It makes me wonder if the registration ladies all use that phrase, and if so, why? It seems much easier to say one of his patients is in labor and he's not here right now.

Well, anyway, our baby boy is fine...his heart rate was at 155 beats/min. They weighed me again, and I've gained 5 lbs since my last visit. I'm still in the healthy range of weight gain, so I'm happy about that. I get to go in for office visits every two weeks now, so that means that I'm getting close to the end. YAY!

I'll try to remember to post a new picture of my belly tonight when I get home from work.

A bad orange can ruin your day

Josh and I were talking about our favorite fruits today and this is what I said to Josh.

"This year, plums are my favorite...and probably oranges. Yah, I really like oranges...but only the good ones, because a bad orange can ruin your day."

Josh laughed at this, and I said, "No really, you take all that time and effort to peel the orange and your hands get all orangy and icky and then it turns out to be bad orange. So you have icky hands and you've wasted your time for an orange that is either icky tasting or the texture is wrong."

Here are my favorite pics from the weekend:

Mom and Winnie and I were watching Dad and Josh cut down a small group of trees in our back yard. Copper was out and about on her leash watching too.

After a hard day's play, both Copper and Winnie were all tuckered out.

My new template

I used a template designed by www.zootdesigns.com, and then I modified the pictures and the colors.

I'm just kind of getting the hang of this, and I'm not too happy with this design. But I'm learning as I go.

I'll post another belly pic soon!

No Snickers bar?

What kind of vending machine doesn't have a snickers bar in it? All I wanted was a snickers bar. I was going to wash it down with a nice half pint of really cold skim milk.

Oh well...now, I'll just starve until lunch.

We've picked a name

Okay, well, we've picked two names really. Our little baby boy will be named one of two names. We're not going to share the names that we've picked, but I am going to share with you all how very happy and relieved I am that we've actually narrowed it down to two names.

For a while, I thought I'd have a son with the moniker "baby boy." Can you imagine a football anouncer saying "That was Baby Boy for the tackle!" It just doesn't sound right.

And no...we are not going to force the kid to play football. We just feel that with his father's past involvement in football, and the fact that his mommy was an athlete as well, there may be a good chance that he decides to go out for football some day.

If he's short like me, maybe he'll be a running back, but if he's built like his father, maybe he'll be a linesman.

In other baby news, a date has been set for the baby shower, my best friend and mom are throwing me a shower on Oct. 14th, which happens to be my oldest nephew's birthday.

So my mom, my sister-in-law and my two nephews will be spending that weekend with us.

And in other news:

• This weekend, my mom and dad are coming to visit....We're going out to eat at Red Lobster, and Mom and I will go shopping, and Dad and Josh will visit the new two story-with a ferris wheel inside-sporting goods store that we have here in town.
• Mom and Dad just celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary
• My older brother and his wife just celebrated their 7th anniversary
• Josh will be handing in his thesis for final review today, and then in about two weeks, he'll defend it. I am so excited for him to be done with school!!!
• In one more week, I get to update my blog background with Halloween decorations!

Do I look like Holly Hunter?

According to MyHeritage.com, I do.

I uploaded a photo to the software, after I had to register for free of course, and then it scanned my face, and then it told me that the celebrity that I looked like most was Holly Hunter.

Do you see a resemblance?

Steal a cat...Get a reward?

For a while now, Josh and I have been sharing Wilbur with our neighbor lady. She's fallen in love with Wilbur, and starting Oct. 14th, she'll keep Wilbur at her house for the entire winter.

On Monday, Josh and I noticed that we hadn't seen Wilbur in a while, so we called our neighbor lady to ask if she had him at her place. She said she had let him outside over the weekend and hadn't seen him since. When there wasn't a Wilbur sighting in a few days, we became worried.

My neighbor lady placed an ad in the Lost & Found section of our local newspaper. On Thursday, she and her boyfriend put together some flyers with pictures of Wilbur that I had e-mailed her.

She got a call on Friday from a lady saying she had our cat. She did in fact have Wilbur. It turns out that this woman "rescues" cats all the time. She has 10 cats at her house, and when her son, who was walking home at 3 am Sunday morning, encountered Wilbur on the street, he felt that Wilbur needed to be "Rescued." Even though Wilbur had a colar and tags, this kid felt that he needed to take this cat home to his mom.

So to make a long story shorter, the lady dropped Wilbur off at my neighbor lady's house on Friday night, and my neighbor lady gave her a $15 reward.

So, if you would like to make extra cash, pick up a cat from the street, and wait for some one to put an ad in the paper that matches the description of the cat you picked up, and then drop the cat off, and get your money.