34 Weeks into Pregnancy and Totally Not Ready

The count down begins! Six weeks to go. If I'm a little late, it is possible that my baby will be born on Labor Day. As a pun-loving person, this excites me. Here are some pictures of the progress. I look pretty beat up in both of them, but I know you'll forgive me.  This first picture is my attempt at smiling for the camera.

And here's a good one of the belly, but I look totally miserable and slightly confused.

Some of my friends from work threw me a lovely baby shower (that's where the balloon is from). It was great and I got to see so many friends from far away. It was touching.  I look a little more myself here with Damian. Although I wish I had the sleek look of Princess Kate. How does she manage to not look like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man?

So the baby is coming soon, and we are not ready in the least. I have maybe a quarter of our hospital bag packed and a million things on my to do list. There's a bunch of shopping that needs to be done to pick up things we will need in that first month, but my paycheck is already spent, so that's not going to happen for another two weeks. There's a lot of deep cleaning and organizing that I want to do that just hasn't happened. It's really time to get busy getting some of this stuff done. The problem is that I'm a whale, a tired whale, and I'm participating in Camp Nanowrimo and writing like a fiend with many of my spare minutes. I just hope that I get that burst of energy that comes with nesting early.

In other news, I hit a life milestone today! I went for a visit with the social worker at the doctor's office I go to. It was a routine visit to check on mental health and to tell me about resources in the community for women with babies, and she said I seemed to be a very well adjusted individual! After years of battling depression, anxiety, and body image issues, this was the best thing I'd heard all week, although in all honesty, I also consider myself to be pretty well adjusted. 

Thirty Two Weeks Pregnant

It is official. I am in my 8th month of pregnancy. It is getting difficult to remember a time when I wasn't pregnant. What was that like? Remember corned beef? Remember sleeping on your stomach? Le Sigh. Here's me last week (31 weeks). 

I wouldn't say I'm a miserable pregnant woman, but I am by no means the happy, tons of energy, feeling fantastic, don't want to tear peoples' heads off and eat their brains pregnant woman. There are a litany of complaints like not being able to walk up the stairs to my apartment without getting winded, not being able to stand on my feet a work without pain, the fact that this baby might actually be a radiator because I am HOT, my carpal tunnel acting up. I want to eat all the time, and it goes on, but right now there are two things tied for the "worst of it" title.

1. My left hip is killing me. It doesn't hurt all the time, but if I'm sitting for twenty minutes, and I get up, I can barely walk. It doesn't want to move and it hurts to put weight on it. 
2. And secondly, Drake is getting to be very active at night. I'm not sure, but I think he's kicking my bladder, and pretending he's the ball from Pong  at the same time. Some times it's just uncomfortable, and sometimes it's even cool to feel him, but then there's the times when it down right hurts! Why you beating your mama up Drake? It seriously feels like there are two babies in there!

Also this might be TMI, but hey, I'm a prego woman, I don't know the meaning of TMI. My body is not my own. Today I sneezed and peed my pants a little. It is as if my body has decided to give up the good fight and have given the last thing I had control of over to pregnancy - my bladder control.

A funny thing happens when your pregnant though, or at least it is happening for me. There's a (huge) part of my brain that says "Pregnancy sucks,"  and I'm fully aware of this and in agreement with this part of my brain, but then there are these tricky emotions, I would assume they're caused my hormones. They are the "ooey gooey' hormones that make me feel all this mushy mom feelings, trying to trick me into believing that pregnancy doesn't suck. But I will fight the good fight! I will not give in. 

• Well maybe a little because there are some cool things about being pregnant. Let's list them.
• People are really nice to you (this might be a survival instinct)
• You don't have to carry any of the heavy groceries
• You can sit down at work more and have an excuse
• You can ask for back rubs all the time guilt free because it's partially his fault that it hurts
• You can rest your hand on your belly-shelf without feeling like a hippo
• Midnight snacks are encouraged
• You can be lazy all day, and it's okay because your exhausted

In short, the pampering is nice and you feel pretty special and people are all happy for you, but the fact is that you NEED the pampering because you feel like you've been run over by a truck.

My opinion on these matters is a little bias. I didn't have the best beginning to my pregnancy and just last month I had to go for blood work for both gestational diabetes and preeclampsia, both of which my doctors thought I might have due to some other tests, but turns out I don't. So, it's been a little stressful even though things are, in fact, going smoothly. I've gained only about 10 pounds or so from my prepregnancy weight (16 if you start it from the weight I lost with being sick at the beginning of my pregnancy). It certainly feels like I've gained more than that.

Anyway, baby will be here soon! We haven't packed our hospital bag and we don't have half the stuff we need, but either way he'll be here soon. Ready or not!