clarification

"Cleopatra" is our daughter's IN UTERO name. We'll let you all know what her real name is after she arrives.

Okay, waiting isn't so bad...

Cleo is head-down and ready for launch. Which is great, I just didn't expect the countdown sequence to start at 35 weeks along. (She's supposed to wait until 40 weeks.)

Monday night I only slept about 4 hours. When I woke up, I had a crazy nosebleed. So I propped myself up with several pillows and tried to go back to sleep. I got up later and started getting ready for work. At about 8:10 a.m. my lower back started hurting. I really noticed it when I bent over to spit out my toothpaste and later when I picked up my purse on my way out the door. The ride with a coworker to the office was uncomfortable but not unbearable, but by the time I had been sitting at my desk for 30 minutes, I was in quite a bit of pain. I could barely stand up and shuffle around the office. Changing positions was really awful. I e-mailed my friend Elizabeth who had a nasty bout with back labor when she delivered her daughter. Liz was very reassuring with tips on how to manage the pain, but from her story, I was convinced that I wasn't having back labor because my pain was totally constant, and hers had come and gone with each contraction. By 10 a.m. I had finished my mandatory tasks for the day, and my boss drove me home. My coworkers could see how much pain I was in, and though I was willing to "tough it out" they weren't willing to let me try.

Once at home, I grabbed the phone and the laptop and headed for bed. Our extra firm mattress was just the ticket for awhile, but after too long in one position the pain was bad and moving to a new position was excruciating. I called our doula (professional labor assistant) Deanna, and she told me to drink water and call my OB/midwife practice. Drinking water was good in theory, but it made me have to pee every 15 minutes or less, and walking was getting more and more difficult. My legs almost gave out from under me more than once. The nurse at the practice scheduled an emergency appointment for 2:30 p.m. I called Deanna back to give her the update and told her I would call her again after the appointment. Andy picked me up at 2-ish and we headed back to Arcata for the appointment.

Side note: I also learned from the receptionist, just before talking to the nurse about my intense pain, that the OB/midwife practice is closing at the end of this month. Great news (sarcasm), since I'm officially supposed to deliver next month. I've heard several stories over the last day and a half about women who went into preterm labor, their doctor stopped it with drugs and then they didn't go back into labor at all, they had to be induced with drugs after they were 2 weeks past their due date. I really don't want that to happen since it would mean a greater chance of a cesarean delivery and I'd probably have the birth attended by a complete stranger, not the OB or midwives that I've gotten to know over the last 8.5 months.

At my appointment they did all the regular stuff plus a vaginal exam. (any woman's favorite thing ever!) Turns out I was 1 cm dilated and pretty darn effaced. (For those unfamiliar, that's the start of the birthing process.) Cleo's head is totally engaged and she thinks she's ready to go. They sent me over to the birthing center at the hospital for external fetal monitoring to see if I was having contractions because I wasn't feeling much except the constant back pain. After a while on the monitor, it showed that I was having contractions that were about a minute long, but not really spaced all that regularly. So, they decided to put me on some labor-stopping drug that's normally used for heart conditions. (I find it odd how certain drugs have more than one use... "yeah, we usually use it for hair loss, but it also reduces the need for hip replacements, too!") My back pain lessened as the night went on, and by 3 a.m. I was able to sleep. I'm convinced it wasn't back labor, but it was pregnancy related. Something about having a giant moving baby inside you can really throw things off.

I'm not going to work anymore, and I am supposed to see a chiropractor for my back. Hopefully, the chiro will fix my back before I really go into labor. Those contractions wouldn't have been so bad if they hadn't come at the same time as the back pain. However, i am grateful for the back pain. (Sounds crazy, but hear me out...) Without the back pain, I wouldn't have realized I was in labor until I was much further along, and in that case, I might have a baby in my arms right now. (Which wouldn't be terrible, but she needs to cook for at least two more weeks for a few different reasons.) Cleo is still moving around a lot, which can be uncomfortable at times, but it's also incredibly reassuring. She's tough and stubborn like her mommy, so I'm not really worried about her. :)

Today is a gorgeous Humboldt County day, and I've got the front doors open to let in the sun, breeze and flies. It would be nice to take a walk, but I'm not really allowed to... maybe I'll take a nap in the sunroom instead.

what we are up to: waiting.

Waiting for baby... Things are going well. We've been taking belly pictures throughout the pregnancy, and I've used Photoshop to show the growth. The above picture includes photos from weeks 6.5, 16, 25, 28.5, and 33. Cleo is very active, but there are times when I forget that I'm pregnant. I know that may sound silly since I'm so much bigger than my non-pregnant self, I don't get it either. I guess it's just when I'm lying down and totally relaxed... then I move and, oh yeah, everything is more awkward and achy than usual.

I had a check-up on Thursday and the midwife did a quick in-office ultrasound to determine Cleo's position. She had been lying from side to side for a couple of months, but a couple of weeks ago, I noticed a change. She had definitely rearranged herself to be up and down. So, the midwife first checked by poking around on the outside of my belly, but she felt hard and round near the top of my belly, and hard and round at the bottom. That's why the ultrasound was necessary - she needs to be head-down by this point, but we just couldn't tell for sure. I had a hunch that she was head down, and the midwife thought she might be butt-down. The ultrasound determined that she's beautifully head-down. Yay! I got to see the little fists that have been punching me for months, too. As far as I know, she's perfect. :)

And more waiting with the house... We're still waiting for any kind of word about the lot split. A few weeks ago we were told that the lot split should be complete in a few weeks. Yeah, well... We're also waiting for the final plans to be completed. You know, with all of the technical stuff put in there and the engineering stuff, too. We've decided to leave the printing studio off of the house for now because of the financial constraints, and also because I don't think I'll be ready to print again for several years. (Babies have a way of putting other things on hold.)

So yeah, we continue to twiddle our thumbs and wait.

holy cuteness!

This should answer any questions about why we want to have pygmy goats on our homestead...

some progress...

Saw Art today, and he said that the surveyors finally got out and surveyed the lot last week. It took them 3 months to come out and survey one acre, but only one day to send a bill.

Ugh.

We're going to see banks this coming week — hopefully they'll give us some real answers about how the loan process works. We've decided to cut the printing studio out of the plans for now; it looks like we're going to need to scale back the plans a bit in order to make building the house affordable.

Art also told us that now the county has decided to let us officially split the lot WITHOUT the road improvements. This seems to be 180 degrees from what they've been saying for the last 2 years. We still have to do the road improvements, but they're holding the building permits until the road improvements are made. This means that we should be able to put the road improvement costs ($17,000+) on our mortgage, but it may slow the initiation of the house building process.

Well, with the baby coming sooner than we realize, slowing down the house may not be a bad thing. A friend noted today that I seem really relaxed about things, and she thought it might be the pregnancy hormones. I think I'm just so tired of stressing out that I don't give a crap about a lot of things anymore.

backyard birdies

Well, we've moved. Not to the Blue Lake Bungalow, but we're slowly getting closer. We now are in a bigger, older, colder house in the big city, Eureka. These are just some of the birds that like the overgrown berry briars in the backyard. They really appreciate the seed we have been putting out at this time of year. They're kind of blurry, but there's a hummingbird there, and tons of goldfinches, house finches, pine siskins and miscellaneous sparrows.

happy new year and third trimester!