Thanksgiving

We're having our Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. It's a Sunday lunch; not very traditional, I know, but then again, it's not a tradition at all in GB, so I'm allowed to bend the rules. It occurred to me only this morning that that means not only lots of cooking needs to be done but cleaning too! Our rug in our living room is covered in paint and food stains; I just can't bear the thought of getting on my hands and knees and cleaning it. Maybe if I'm feeling energetic enough tonight, I'll have Scott put Fifi to bed, and I'll get out the carpet cleaner. It's one of those jobs that has to wait until kids are away due to the chemicals, so it's not really putting it off.

I also need to clean the bathroom (not a big job, I know, but not enjoyable either), the kitchen (the floors could do a real mop, but since my wonderful mother bought me a 'swiffer sweeper' type thing, that job can be cut in half as far as effort goes) and the living room. The 'dining table' which is more a craft table than anything else will need seriously cleaned off, which is harder than it sounds as I have NO place to put things like my sewing machine other than there. I've also been meaning to go through Fifi's toy box and move some toys upstairs to clean the toy corner for the Christmas tree, so I might as well do that today too.

And I need to clear out the staircase. It's loaded down with things that need to go upstairs but have no place once they get there.

On top of house chores, I need to go to the grocery store to get a few things, and Fifi has Cameron's 4th birthday party to attend this afternoon. My hope beyond hopes is that she will nap around 12 until time to go to the party, which will give me some optimal cleaning time for tomorrow's festivities.

I'm also debating whether to do lots of cooking today and reheat tomorrow or just skip church and do it all in the morning. I think that's the most likely, except for maybe the pumpkin pie (though actually I really LOVE hot pumpkin pie straight from the oven). Oh my, if Thanksgiving weren't my favourite holiday of the year, I'd just let it slide this time, but no. I love it too much. It is worth the effort.

Though I cheated (as always) on the turkey. Usually I buy a frozen cooked crown breast, but our guest list is small this year, as I let Scott make it this time, so a crown breast is too much (not to mention too expensive). So I just bought some turkey steaks, and I'll bake them. I've never made a real, full turkey, and I'm not too bothered about trying anytime soon.

Let me just ask - does my overuse of parenthetic remarks drive you crazy? I'm a parenthesis girl; I even speak in them.

Preparations, Preparations

I'm tired. Very tired. I know I should go to bed, but there are a gazillion (yes, a gazillion) things I need to do before little Spooce comes. In the immediate, it's things like laundry, dishes (though I've been keeping my dishes surprisingly up-to-date), hoovering (not so up-to-date) and a few other errand-type things, like mailing my mom's package and all my Christmas cards, grocery shopping and the last of my Christmas shopping. My idea for Scott's present didn't work out, so I've got to think up something new... Nothing will beat having gotten him that case of Mean Pig BBQ Hot Sauce, I tell you. (And I mean that. And Scott will vouch for that.) In the long term, it's stuff like clearing out Fifi's room, getting baby stuff all ready, putting in car seat, etc.

Boring stuff to talk about, I know.

I've got our Thanksgiving dinner planned for this Sunday, which I need to get organised for. Yes, I know that Thanksgiving is two weeks away, and I'm also well aware that there is no such thing as Thanksgiving in Scotland, but I'm having a dinner and I'm having it early and that's that. I am CRAVING me some stuffing with cranberry sauce and some pumpkin pie. Oh man, pumpkin pie. My mouth waters.

Ick, that means I definitely need to get the house tidied.

I'm also planning on decorating for Christmas next weekend. I might wait until after 'Thanksgiving'; it depends. Scott wants to wait until the 1st December, but um, I'm hoping to have a baby, like, the day after my conference. So the tree needs to be UP and beautifully decorated before then.

I love Christmas.

Anyway, back to that whole being tired thing. I should really just say stuff it to the laundry and go to bed. There's no room left on the clothes horse anyway for the things in the wash. I'll hang them up tomorrow when the other clothes might possibly be dry.

Night night.

UNICEF Baby Friendly Conference

No one else seems to find this nearly as exciting as I do, but I've gotten a ticket to attend the UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative Annual Conference! The Baby Friendly Initiative is (in short) a list of criteria a hospital must follow regarding breastfeeding and infant care in order to achieve 'Baby Friendly' status. I don't know if Baby Friendly is in the US, but it's in Europe, and it's meant to be very prestigious. However, in my opinion, it seems the status gets thrown about more in the UK than it does in other areas of Europe.

Anyway, I'm so, so excited about going! It's in two weeks time, which means I'll be 38 weeks pregnant, so now I'm really hoping I don't go before then. I'd really hate to miss this conference! The tickets were expensive, but luckily I didn't have to pay for them, as the Inverclyde Community Health Project (of the NHS) sponsored me and the three other Breastfeeding Network Trainee Supporters to go. We are all so thrilled!

In other news, my friends Sarah and Lorna are throwing me a baby shower tomorrow. I don't know if many people will be there, as the invitations were sent out kind of last minute, but it should be fun. I made an angel food cake for the occasion, but it kinda turned out... wrong. It's a hard cake to make from scratch, I tell you! It's getting those egg whites at just the right peaks and then folding in the flour/sugar mixture... I didn't want to over-mix, so I ended up under-mixing and half of the flour/sugar mixture ended up at the bottom of the bundt pan (which is the top of cake) and baked very densely. So the bottom of the cake is fluffy and light, while the top is dense and moist. Eek. Tastes okay but not perfect.

That's all for now.


ETA: Click here and here to read about the conference.

Could I Be Any More of a Disaster?

The good news is, baby is still safely inside my womb.

The bad news is, I'm on crutches.

Yesterday morning getting ready to take Scott to work, I slipped outside in the mud and fell into the splits. Luckily, I caught myself on the car before going all the way down, but I pulled all the muscles in my pelvis. I thought the pain would subside, but it only grew worse and worse as the moments passed by. I ended up having to cancel my baby signing class last minute and get taken into the hospital (what's with me and these hospitals??) By the time we reached the hospital, I could no longer walk properly, so I had to be wheeled about in a wheelchair - very embarrassing. I was taken up to the maternity ward, and the baby was checked first. She is fine. Then I was seen by a physiotherapist who was surprised by how 'bad off' I was. She brought me crutches and a support band and a support belt and taught me how to move without further injuring myself. She showed me how to use the crutches, how to get in and out of bed and off of chairs, etc. She gave me the strongest support belt they had, which looked like a very unattractive girdle. They wheeled me back down and my wonderful mother-in-law, who drove me there, drove me back to her house, where I am now on some sort of 'bed rest'. I basically damaged my symphysis pubis something-or-other, which some of you who have been pregnant before will be able to sympathise with.

I'm staying now at my in-laws' house for a few days to ensure I rest. If I were at home, it would be impossible not to do chores. There are so many things that need done there! There's the laundry, the hoovering, the dishes... So Scott's dad has Fifi for the day, and I'm stuck here, trying to keep myself entertained. I watched Gordon Brown's press conference (what a boring man), and now I'm watching the Armistice Day festivities in France. Can you believe there are still 3 living British veterans of WW1? They are something like 108, 110 and 111.

I suppose some more good news is that today I feel much more mobile than I was yesterday. The support belt, crutches, rest and pelvic excercises seem to have really helped already. I can now shuffle around the house without the crutches, though if I were to leave the house (which I'm not allowed), I'd still need them. But the pain is much less than it was yesterday, so that is a very, very good thing.

The house phone here is ringing... what does one do when someone else's house phone rings? It stopped. Good. Sorry, whoever you were.

Take It Back

I take it all back. I don't want a premature baby. Please, baby, wait three more weeks at least.

Midwife concerned about descended head. Now so am I.

Baby Baby

Ugh. Last night I started to feel like the baby was a little lower, but this morning I'm sure of it. Either that, or there's a baseball rammed down into my pelvis. Perhaps I'm just impatient and so I'm creating close-to-birth symptoms, I don't know. But I feel truly waddle-y. This pregnancy is so strange compared to my last one. With Fifi, it was like my body knew not it wasn't meant to go into labour with her, so I never had contractions or any kind of pre-labour symptoms until 5 days prior to my scheduled section when it decided it was time to get her out - then it all happened at once, though slowly enough for us to react accordingly and safely. Does that make sense?

This time, it's like my body's been in preparation for months. I started getting Braxton-Hicks contractions somewhere around the 20th week, and I've had them ever since. I had that round of real contractions a week ago. I'm sure the baby is descending now. I'm willing to bet these things will continue to compound until they culminate into full-blown labour. I guess the baby really ought to wait it out another three weeks, but I can't imagine waiting even that long. It's five weeks until my due date. I think I will pull out my brains if I go longer than that. I need to get this baby OUT.

I also need to stop walking while holding my lower pelvis. I look like a toddler on the way to the toilet. I just feel like I've got to hold this baby in. It is so all up in my personal space.

Here's me, at 35 weeks (yesterday):



This is me at 35 weeks +1 (today):



It's possibly the fact that I'm wearing jeans in one picture and pajama bottoms in the other that skews the reality of the placing of my belly, but my bump totally looks lower today than it did last night. Even if it is a false comparison, it fuels the illusion that my baby will come soon, and that's an illusion I need to hold onto to ensure my sanity for the next few weeks.



See?


ETA: Okay, even though Scott tells me this is entirely unscientific, I took a more accurate shot, of me in the same jeans and belt as yesterday. Just really wanted to prove this to myself. I'm a crazy person.

My New Favourite Blog

I know the title to the post I'm linking to is 'This Made Me Laugh 'Til I Cried', but seriously, this made me laugh 'til I cried. And I just kept laughing and crying. Most recent page here but read the older posts too. Can't. Stop. Laughing. (Or crying.)

It's making my bump hurt I've laughed so much.

Why Oh Why....

... don't we have an Old Navy?

My To-Dos

The list of things to do before the baby arrives doesn't seem to get any shorter, no matter how many things I cross off. Because for every one thing I cross off, I add two more. Right now I'm trying to pack my hospital bag, but for some reason, even though a list has been made, I'm making very slow progress. I think it's the idea of having to pack things like breast pads and big comfy knickers that just seems too unrealistic. Even though I think I have just about everything I need lying somewhere around the house, the effort of putting it all in one place seems very difficult. I think I'm also pretty uninspired about what bag to put them in. Dumb as it sounds, I really want a new, pretty overnight bag! All I have is a big ugly black one, and a little red one that matches my luggage. Boring. I saw some cute pink polka-dotted ones in the mall yesterday, and even though they were only £8 (a bargain), I couldn't bring myself to spend the money. After all, it's not like I NEED a new bag...

I did, however, buy a new nightdress (£3 - go Primark!) which unbuttons down the front for wearing in the hospital post-partum and two pairs of big, thick knee-high socks (£2 for the pair) to wear instead of slippers (I hate slippers). I probably only need to buy one or two things now, but seriously, it seems so hard.

I also have a gazillion things to do around the house. I've been doing lots of laundry, but even with the sunshine, my washing doesn't get very dry in the freezing cold air outside. And there's only so much room on my clothes horse indoors. And I don't like to run the tumble dryer very often because a) it costs money b) it wastes electricity and c) it doesn't work very well unless it's all small, cottony items like socks and undies.

Then there are all the things to wrap up with TinyTalk and my Christmas cards. My only card order this year - seeing as I didn't advertise AT ALL - was for my mom, and those are done, so that's a relief, but I still need to sell a lot of my assorted ones. And I've got to get next term's signing classes organised before Monday preferably so I can start the pre-booking process. And let's not even talk about taxes which don't need to be filed until 30 January, but I really ought to finish them before December, so I don't have to do taxes with a newborn baby attached to my booby.

And of course, Thanksgiving is coming up, and I'm celebrating it early to keep the stress level low, but that means I've got two weeks to organise that. And Christmas is mostly finished (cards all written out and presents almost all wrapped), but there are still a few odds and ends left to get, like extended family gifts and one thing for Scott that I have yet to order. And the decorating! Scott wants to wait until 1 December, but I really don't! I want to December to be the month of quiet, relaxed bliss while I await the arrival of my second daughter. Anyone want to keep Fifi for the month to make that dream a reality?

Anyway, instead of blogging, perhaps I should be working on some of those To-Dos. I just gotta find my list. First item on the To-Do agenda: Find To-Do List.

Trick Or Treat

So on Halloween night, Spooce McFarlane decided to play a little Halloween Trick or Treat. Around 3.30pm, I started having real contractions while snoozing on the couch with Fifi. The first two weren't too bad; they were very different from my usual Braxton-Hicks, but not terribly uncomfortable. Then came the third one - wowzers. I had to grab Scott's attention (not easy) and get him to take Fifi away, so I could stand up. I stood up, but immediately had to lean over a chair to get through. I breathed my way through it, and it finally eased off. When I stood back up, I felt (possibly TMI upcoming) a tiny release of fluid and an 'opening' sensation. It was then I realised that this was a lot more like labour is described than my BH contractions had been. I decided to get in a bath to slow/stop the contractions. I couldn't stop thinking about that opening feeling, though, so I called my midwife. She thought it all sounded too much like premature labour and advised I call the hospital. I was reluctant, so I decided to wait it out. However, two contractions later, I agreed to call. Of course, they wanted me to come in.

I texted a few people asking for prayer (I was only just 34 weeks), and Scott and I headed to the hospital. Poor Fifi could sense something was wrong and was actually not cool with going to Gran's house for a change.

The prayers must've worked, though, because by the time I got to hospital, all the contractions had stopped. I only had one while I was there, and it was really mild. They sent me back home.

We were really relieved not to have had an early baby (or a Halloween baby at that), but we were both really quite calm about the whole thing. I felt very confident that if this was it, then that's just how it goes and I was gonna go with it. Again, I think that was due to prayers... and possibly my HypnoBirthing affirmations practice. *wink* We thought it was funny that she went 'trick or treating' with us. It turned out to be a trick, but a little baby would've been a treat!

Still, very glad she's still in there and cooking. She's still just a bit too wee to enter the big, oxygeny world. Give us another, oh, 4 weeks, and then I'll be VERY happy to see you. (Come on 38 week baby, please no 42 week one.)