*muttering*

There's been a lot of muttering going on recently. Mostly, it's curse words. And threats about spanking the baby with large wet noodles. And then some more cursing.

Remember that brief week and a half or so just past the first trimester when everything felt pretty good and the GI stuff went away? Or the couple of weeks I had at the beginning of the third trimester when I felt great? Yeah, me too. Fondly. The party is once again over.

Heartburn like you would not believe coupled with insane acid reflux. Antacids are helping but not solving this problem. My GI tract has slowed down again too so even though I'm starving there's literally no room to put food. So I'm constipated, followed by massive bouts of intestinal cramping and diarrhea. Awesome. It's like the first trimestser, only so much more uncomfortable because now there's a FREAKING HUMAN BEING in my abdomen. Not a cute little sea-monkey sized one either, but a freaking baby-sized human being with limbs that poke out at odd angles all the time.

I now have feet in my diaphragm and for those of you who think that might be a euphemism for something sexy-NO. Actual pointy little baby feet sticking into my muscle. So that when I forget about them and take a deep breath, I slam the muscle into tiny pointy feet and it HURTS.

A lot.

Add to this the wonder that is the baby attempting to screw his head into position several times a day against my pelvic floor and I'm just not a very happy camper these days. I know women who LOVE being pregnant. I'm not one of them. Four weeks of feeling great and enjoying pregnancy vs. 30 weeks of misery. It certainly has been what you could call an interesting experience and I'm sure it will be worth it when I have a baby to hold; but, oy with the discomfort and the ready for this to be done already!

Also, have I mentioned there's a FREAKING HUMAN BEING living in me? My body may have been designed with a rental unit built in but I'm really, really, really, REALLY ready to have it back to myself now.

Class 3

Class this week was neither terribly fun or funny. Sorry gang. We practiced variable breathing while in a squat position which had the effect of making me hyperventilate. The position meant that Edward's feet shoved against my diaphragm and caused it to begin spasming. And then my body reacted to all of this by deciding that we needed a good old-fashioned panic attack to go with everything else. I had to excuse myself from class and take a walk.

I'm supposed to be practicing squatting as I couldn't do it in class for any length of time. Trouble is, my knees don't do squatting. They haven't since I was a kid. I know if I practice holding this position my legs will get stronger, but I'm not sure I can stand the pain in my knees that practicing will cause.

Mostly I'm just glad that we have one more class left. Although this is the class where, instead of practicing two or three contractions, I believe she's left us an entire hour to "practice". Great. I continue to find this whole practice thing not very helpful. If she'll just let us choose the positions that are comfortable for us I can probably take a nap. One can only hope.

We have a definite date for the installation of our new floors! They should be starting February 9. This means that we now have a hard deadline for emptying the house. And that I have dates to call the spa with.

My poor cats are not handling the packing well at all. They are excessively displeased that all of their furniture keeps disappearing and that there are boxes everywhere. This has created cats that are unusally clingy and demanding. It's going to kind of a lousy couple of months for them. First, the house is emptying, then they're off to the kennel, and when they get home we'll be unpacking and assembling new furniture from Ikea (we're getting a day bed for guests and a series of shelves for the living room), and THEN, just when it seems like it's all over, a baby is going to descend upon the household. Since I know this is coming I'm a lot more patient with the cling than I normally would be. And it's nice to get to spend some time loving on them without a baby to worry about.

We've Gone Vertical

Well, within the last week or so the baby has re-oriented himself vertically. Up until this time he preferred to spend most of his time sideways.

Actually, he REALLY wanted to spend all of his time curled up on my pelvic floor like a little baby rabbit in a nest but that hasn't been physically possible in months. Not that this has kept him from making the attempt at least 15 times a day however. It turns out, you can't just push on the iliac crests to move them. Who knew?!

But anyway, we are mostly vertical all the time now and I'm finally joining the ranks of those who can't get a deep breath. (When I can breathe through my stuffy sinuses that is) And those whose stomachs are now moved involuntarily causing sudden nausea or reflux. Isn't that fun? And yesterday I tied my last pair of shoes for awhile. Thank goodness for elastic band tennis shoes that I can wear barefoot because putting on socks takes me almost as long as it does to find my phone and my house keys. At least I can still put on my socks. My husband has graciously offered to put on my socks and tie my shoes. And, Internet, I may actually take him up on it. Sigh. I've also given up taking the stairs and am using elevators. And when the teenage bagboy offers to help me out with my groceries I'm so grateful I could kiss him.

Getting things off of the ground has become an all new process as well. I thought it was uncomfortable to bend over while he was sideways-it actually causes pain now. If I need to pick something up I have kneel down for it. And then I have to crawl over to a piece of furniture sturdy enough to get myself back off the floor. (I quit being able to stand up easily even with assistance about two weeks ago.) So, if something ends up on the ground, I find myself staring at it and contemplating how badly I actually need/want it. Is this something I can go to another room and find without the effort of getting onto the floor? And once I'm on the ground I do that thing old people joke about where you look around to see if anything else needs doing while you're there. I used to think this joke was funny-ha-ha. Now I know it's laugh-because- otherwise-you'd-cry-funny.

I find I'm looking forward to postpartum pain and discomfort just because it will be a new pain and discomfort. And then I can have the fun of comparing it to the pain and discomfort of pregnancy. See, it opens up an entirely new world of conversational possibilities! I pointed this out to my husband who looked vaguely ill and made an mmmhphphmm sort of noise. I chose to belive this means he's excited about this too.

We have finally chosen flooring for the house. Yes, the flooring that we have been planning to install since we bought the house five or six years ago is finally coming! Who knew that my husband just needed a deadline? We found a stranded bamboo floor that is just a solid chunk of stranded bamboo, instead of being layered like other engineered flooring products. The nice people at Simple Floors are installing it in early February. This means we're packing up the house. At least we can leave the kitchen stuff, the bathrooms, and the large furniture pieces in the house. We have to move out for approximately a week and a half though. To celebrate and as an incentive to keep packing, Jon is sending me to the spa for two days and nights. We dropped of a check on Sunday and are just waiting for them to finalize delivery and install dates. The cats are going to the kennel. The fish are staying in a bathroom or on the kitchen counter. The birds and guinea pigs are staying with some friends in Snohomish. Sadly, my rats are still without a temporary home. I'd really prefer not to leave them in the house so I told Jon he needed to ask his friends as mine have all declined to take them. I had never considered that some pets are hard to find sitters for. But rats are tricky evidently.

At any rate. It is now seventeen minutes past my five o'clock naptime so I'm going to join my cats in a brief snooze. I had grand plans of putting away some laundry before Jon got home but instead I wrote this blog post. We have our third of four birth classes tonight and I'm sure there'll be something funny about it tomorrow. So far, what I've really learned from these classes is that Jon and I should not be allowed to sit together. If we ever go to a couples' seminar this will be a valuable piece of information. However, since Jon hates group therapy I rank my chances of taking up smoking crack higher than ever using this intell. Ok, I've also learned that all of those years of intestinal cramping and IBS have prepared me for labor techniques. We have yet to go over anything non-medicinal that I haven't at some point tried. At least having had undiagnosed food allergies for over ten years may come in handy for something. I suppose no knowledge is ever really wasted. We have our tour of the hospital tonight and then I believe we're supposed to be practicing more contractions. I continue to see the good in getting into and out of some positions since movement is getting more complicated the farther along we go. But I fail to see how I am supposed to be preparing msyelf for the effort/discomfort/pain/pick your favorite word of a contraction by thinking about it and imaging what it will be like. And I'm a fairly imaginative person. Even Jon seems to understand this idea better than I do! Which is such a role-reversal that I'm surprised the world is still turning.

Abnormal Psyche?

In birth class on Monday we practiced contractions. For those of you who find this an odd statement (and believe me, I did), this means that the instructor would announce that a contraction was starting and take us through the timing and the breathing until she announced it was done. During this we were supposed to be picturing the baby during a contraction. In the depths of my inner mind I saw a large yellow Wellington boot shoving my baby out of my body. I'm not sure why a YELLOW Wellington or even how the boot got into my body in the first place but I'm fairly certain this does not bode well for my kid's chances of growing up even remotely "normal".

One of Those Days

I'm having one of those days when my marriage is so awesome, so perfect; that I wish all of my friends could be married to us too. This happens a lot more frequently than I'd ever admit. And one of the things I'm not looking foward to about having a baby is that I'm pretty sure it's going to implode a little. The marriage I mean, not the baby. Although if we do get an imploding baby that would certainly be noteworthy. I really believe that we'll be a stronger couple but I'm pretty sure first things are going to go a bit pear-shaped.

But yeah, today it's pretty much perfect and I wish you could all be a part of it. It's exhilirating to feel so confident of being loved and cherished. And knowing someone is there you can depend upon, no matter what else may happen. I continue to hope that I bring at least a bit of that into every friendship I have.

I ask you Internet, who wouldn't want to be married to this face?

"Misserable Being Must Find More Miserable Being"

Tonight we had our first birth class. And it's true, misery does love company. As soon as the women began sharing about our symptoms, I immediately felt better that other women were just as uncomfortable as I am!

We spent a lot of time talking about our perceptions of labor and the stages of birth.

And then we had a guided meditation. This is where it all began to go terribly wrong for Jon and I.

We were supposed to be picturing what our baby looked like and suddenly all I could see in my head was this cartoon monkey throwing food. If you've read the fourth volume of "Flight", it's the monkey from the camp spirit animal cartoon. I managed to suppress the giggling that time.

But then we were supposed to be thinking of all the things our baby could hear and I really, really needed to fart. But we're all lying there quietly and thinking of sounds and I was trying so hard not to let it slip. And that's when the outright snorting began. Which of course set Jon off.

So, there we were, both of us trying not to disturb anyone while laughing our asses off. And we mostly had it under control - until the end of class when she told us we were going to play-act labor for our fourth class (Jon whispers to me "Oh god, they're wearing their armor.")in order to practice the techniques we'd learned (and Jon whispers "Maybe we should run around outside and level up some more first.") If you haven't seen the online cartoon I'm referring to, you definitely should look it up.

But yeah, that's when we totally lost it. Thus cementing our standing as the ones unable to take class seriously...