Yep, still pregnant. We are now officially a week late – not that long in the scheme of parenting, but I assure you it feels plenty long is the scheme if being large, uncomfortable and counting down the days. My relaxed attitude is disappearing quickly and a whiny, cranky, teary attitude is replacing it. For the most part I’m able to stay fairly positive and upbeat, but I have my moments. Yesterday I felt bad before I went to bed, didn’t sleep well and when I woke up and realized I was still pregnant I started to cry. No one has ever said pregnancy hormones make a woman rational – I’m not quite sure why I was surprised I was still pregnant, but I certainly was not happy about it. The upside to pregnancy mood swings is that they pass quickly and within half an hour I was up, eating muffins and talking about how cute it will be to see J with the baby. That’s one of the things that gets me through my frustrating times – picturing J with the baby. He’s sooooooo excited and can’t hardly wait to finally have the baby here and, in his words, “get to DO something.” He’s been a champ in the ‘supporting actor’ role (e.i. supporting me) but he’s very excited to finally graduate to ‘lead actor’ and get some of his own part. When I think about how much he is going to love this kid, and how sweet it is going to be watching him hold it and fall in love with it, I get teary (in a good way) and it gives me a light at the end of the tunnel. In the mean time he’s been taking very good care of me and hasn’t been to freaked out by his emotional wife. I think he knows it’s the hormones not me (at least that’s what we all hope 🙂
41 Weeks
I’ve been trying to keep busy lately. Yesterday Aunt Pat, Uncle Dave and Cousin Rylee were in town and we went berry picking on Sauvie Island near Portland. I’ve recently discovered Sauvie Island and I love it. It’s a little agricultural island out in the Columbia River NW of Portland and they are famed for their berries in the summer and their corn mazes in the fall. I admit that after a summer spent picking blueberries when I was 15, berry picking for fun has limited appeal for me. But we all went out to Kruger’s Farm, ate lunch and loaded up 2 large flats of boysenberries (or maybe they were blackberries), raspberries and blueberries. We had 7 pickers total, so I only had to contribute 2 pints and could stop once I got tired. It was just a lovely day to walk around a farm, enjoy the sun and so something fun. I’m not sure we’ll always pick our own berries (since, y’know, we can buy them in the stores without the effort) but it was a fun family outing. Besides, it kept my mind off the fact that I’m still pregnant.
To use our beautiful berries, we turned out a freezer jam assembly line in my parents kitchen. We got 43 jars made of boysenberry and raspberry freezer jam – plenty for the 3 families to have enough for the year. I’ve always been a little bit afraid of jam-making – I have memories of watching my parents make jam and jelly and there being lots of towels, spilled fruit, hot jars, and general commotion and swearing. It all seemed to be to much work for a few jars of something you could buy at the store. However, freezer jam is my kind of jam and we had all of it made and in jars in under 2 hours. Of course by the end of the night I was pretty tired, so we came home and I crashed. I’m not sure what I have on the agenda today – I have some blueberries in the fridge that I’m considering putting into muffins. I think we’ll take it easier today, since it occurred to me yesterday while I was walking across the fields in the sun that I should probably be fairly rested before I go into labor.
Oh yes, as far as predictions into the labor front, my midwife appt. last Thursday went well. Without going into the specific details (there are some things about my cervix that I don’t want to post online) I’ll just say that my body is getting ready and the midwife thought that it was possible I’d have the baby this weekend and very likely I’d have it early next week. I have a fetal stress test scheduled tomorrow (Monday) and an appointment scheduled on Thursday. The midwife’s exact words were “we’ll probably see you on Monday, but we won’t see you on Thursday.” The baby has also dropped very low, so I’m hopeful that between the kid seeming to know the way out and my body having some idea about how to let the kid out we will finally meet the little bugger.