Several Updates.

I've been a lazy blogger, so this will be several updates all at once.

Update 1: 37 weeks pregnant? Yes. 37 weeks pregnant.

I had my 37 week appointment this past Saturday, and this was our home visit. Our midwife comes to our house for a few reasons. First and foremost, she has to be sure it's a safe dwelling for delivering a baby, which really means a roof over the head and reasonably clean. Darrick and I spent quite a bit of time over the past few weeks cleaning our house and getting ready to welcome a baby into it, and I'll openly admit I wanted it to look nice for her visit. No one wants their house to be a mess the first time someone sees it, right? Well...not always right. See, at our LAST appointment, Darrick asked MW why she does the home visit, and she told us the story of the ONE home she visited that was not suitable for a birth. Apparently, it involved 20 cats, 5 men and 1 woman, dirty underwear on the floor, and filth everywhere. Amazingly, hearing this story took some pressure off my need to have a perfectly clean home for her visit, as she assured me that as long as the bongs were stashed away out of site and the dog poop was relegated to ONE room, we'd be fine. :::phew:::

So anyhow, the other main reason our MW makes a home visit is to be sure she knows where we live. Picture going into labor at 3 a.m. and your midwife not being able to find your house. NOT something I want to have happen to me. She also wanted to check to be sure we had all the supplies we need (see previous post...and we do now, thanks to my mom who donated paper bags and old beach towels to 'The Cause'). Of course, the appointment included most of the standard appointment procedures as well (heartrate is in 150s, my belly measured at 36 weeks, baby is head down with back to my left in ideal positioning). I also pointed out my ankle swelling to her (apparently Andre dropped this past week, as it appeared on Thursday when I'd had NONE before) and she giggled at me. Her response was something to the effect of 'You call THAT swelling? That is NOT swelling!', but anyone who's familiar with the Barbie-like proportions of my ankles (too bad the REST of me did not follow suit) will realize that swelling to ME is different than it is to the rest of the civilized world. We talked a little about my labor fear (I won't go into too much detail, but let's just say when I read birth stories involving the word 'bulge' they make my skin crawl), as well as when in labor we need to contact her. All in all, a good if relatively uneventful appointment. I declined having a check done for progress (again, if you don't know what I am referring to, you should probably just consider yourself lucky) because I consider it a lose-lose prospect. I figure if I'm not dilating yet, I'll be sad that means these pains I've been having are for naught. And if I AM dilating, I'll spend from now till labor worrying when it's going to happen and if my water will break in public and and and and....

Our next appointment is this coming Saturday, assuming I make it that far. I'm feeling like baby will be here sometime after March 1st but before my expected due date of March 14th. Darrick is convinced Andre is making a timely arrival like his/her older sister did. I call that wishful thinking on his part, and I love him for his optimism.

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Update 2: Sausage?

I'm sort of embarassed to admit this, because I tend to shun fast food in general, and overall I'm a fairly healthy eater, assuming that when one says 'overall' one is allowing some leeway for excess desserts consumed in pregnancy.

That being said, Darrick has created this 'routine' of sorts on the weekend. He takes Luca to Mc Donald's, where they share a Sausage Egg McMuffin (well, and Darrick gets another just for him, but the point is Lu can't eat the whole thing, so their routine is sharing one). While I tried to appreciate the cute Daddy-Daughterness of this little weekend routine (and it really is their routine, because although I sometimes go with, they WILL go without me if I opt out), I knew we had created a monster when, a few weeks ago on our way to the zoo, we pulled into the McD's parking lot, and Luca's eyes lit up. Her little hand shot into the air, pointing at the golden arches, and she exclaimed, "SAUSAGE!!!".

Yeah.

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Update 3: Meh...it'll come later. I am suddenly bored with blogging for now.