Preparation

Sorry I haven't been posting here much. I will probably do one later this week, because on Wednesday I'll be 32 weeks -2 months left, that's a milestone I think.

I just had to add this, which isn't original, I read in on this blog this morning... but it is what it is...

When a prisoner of war is forced to go without sleep for consecutive days at the hands of his captors it's called torture.

When a woman or a man is forced to go without sleep for consecutive months at the hands of their infant it's called parenthood.

Something to look forward to.

10 weeks left and some furniture

Well, 10 weeks left. And really, it could be sooner (or later) and I'm not quite sure how 'ready' we are. In our class this week our instructor asked us to start getting our bags packed... just to make sure we have everything when the time comes. Seem's a bit premature to me, but we'll do it. This whole thing is becoming quite real now.

Here's what babycenter has to say about the progress...

Your baby's about 15.7 inches long now, and she weighs almost 3 pounds. A pint and a half of amniotic fluid surrounds her, but that volume will decrease as she gets bigger and takes up more room in your uterus. Her eyesight continues to develop, though it's not very keen; even after she's born, she'll keep her eyes closed for a good part of the day. When she does open them, she'll respond to changes in light but will have 20/400 vision — which means she can only make out objects a few inches from her face.

In other news... we got the rest of our furniture a while ago. The only big thing left is a comfy rocking chair, which we'll probably try to get at the end of the month or sometime next month. Also, we hung the framed children's books around the room.

A new toy... for Justin

Justin and I went and registered at Babies R Us. I didn't really want to, but given the fact that we don't know what gender that baby is, I was persuaded by many friends to register for some basics.

When we signed up, the lady told us that if we put 100 items or more on the registry, they'd enter us in for a free drawing of stuff. We were lucky to get 25 items on the list. (I went back online and added a few more since then).

We did find this while we were there...

If you're smiling right now and thinking that this is an item for suckers and it can't possibly work, you're only partially right. It takes a fair amount of imagination to actually hear anything that sounds like a heartbeat. But... the microphone is pretty cool. We hooked it up to the computer and pumped some music into my stomach via small speakers and the baby went crazy. Either the baby really likes music, or it was pretty upset I was disturbing it with Mozart when he or she was trying to sleep.

Oh baby

I haven't done the weekly update from babycenter for a while, so I thought I'd add that today.

This week, your baby weighs almost 2 pounds (like a head of cauliflower) and is about 14 1/2 inches long with her legs extended. She's sleeping and waking at regular intervals, opening and closing her eyes, and perhaps even sucking her fingers. With more brain tissue developing, your baby's brain is very active now. While her lungs are still immature, they would be capable of functioning — with a lot of medical help — if she were to be born now. Chalk up any tiny rhythmic movements you may be feeling to a case of baby hiccups, which may be common from now on. Each episode usually lasts only a few moments, and they don't bother her, so just relax and enjoy the tickle.

In other news... the baby is moving ALOT! I'm feeling more and more when I'm up and doing something, as opposed to only feeling movements when I'm sitting and relaxing. Justin's getting better at 'catching' the baby move at night, and now you can see it move under my clothes when I'm resting. It's providing me with some distraction during meetings at work. The rest of the baby furniture hasn't arrived yet, so we'll hopefully get that soon and finish setting up the nursery.

Doctors and Patience

I had my monthly doctor's appointment on Thursday (which will now be occurring by-monthly now).

Two things... one, is that my glucose test came back normal (no gestational diabetes).

The other is I was reminded how much I really like my doctor. For those of you who I talk to, you probably already know this. She is (1) and she, (2) a mother, (3) has excellent bed-side manner, and (4) an 'everything' doctor. I've been seeing her just myself for almost 4 years, she'll deliver our baby, and be our pediatrician. I'm sure there are reasons why it might be nice to have 3 different doctors for all of those things, but I'm enjoying having someone know me (and my family) so well.

We had a LIST of things to go over with her, information that has come up during our Bradley classes, and I was worried about asking too many questions during one appointment. However, it didn't seem to phase her when, between Justin and I, we asked her about: fetal heart rate monitoring, IV's in the delivery room, episiotomy, breast feeding on the delivery table, how long to wait to cut the umbilical cord, circumcision, how long we have to stay after the delivery, exams leading up to birth, my diet, asking for nurses who 'enjoy' working with unmedicated births... I think that was it. There were probably more.

Good news... she passed with flying colors and didn't seem upset at all that we were taking more of her time than usual. I guess now that we're going every other week I could have spread out my questions, but my guess I'll continue to have more.