Oof. I'm ready to retire from pregnancy. I'm 37 weeks along this week, so officially in baby-could-come-any-day territory. Hospital bags are packed. Bassinet is set up. Car seat will be installed tomorrow. Yesterday morning I would've been like, "Give me two more weeks. I'm not ready yet." But after a big bout of on-and-off painful contractions from 4:00 in the afternoon yesterday until 2:00 in the morning, I'm over it. Don't care if the nursery's ready. Don't care if the house is a mess. Don't care that there are only 2 meals ready in our freezer. If this is prodromal labor I'd rather not be stuck here for another month. I almost forgot about the up-all-night-in-agony phase at the end of my pregnancies. It is not the vibe.
I think my main issue yesterday was that I didn't drink enough water. I've noticed a direct correlation between how much water I don't drink and how many braxton hicks I have. My braxton hicks aren't usually painful, but these ones were rough. I've also had a resurgence of nausea this last week, so ya. I'm done.
Other things this week . . . we had ants in our ice box? It was a fun little throwback to our Grenada years when we had a pretty traumatic ant infestation. Because we lived through that, we were able to look at the little ants encased in all our ice cubes this week and just laugh. Hard to be really upset by it when they're only in our ice, not biting our flesh and infesting our toothbrushes, and we can look around at our nice air-conditioned house without a new crop of 3rd-world-country problems to tough through every day. We have no idea how the ants got there. I have never seen an ant anywhere in our house the whole time we've lived here. There weren't any in other parts of the fridge/freezer. None anywhere else in the kitchen. Only coming out in our ice tray. So strange. This lasted for a day or two and then they were all gone, no problems since.
This was I think two weeks ago, but I forgot to post about it. Jared got invited to attend a private James Taylor concert with his mom. His parents are friends with a couple in their ward who are a pretty elite level of wealthy. Like, private jet wealthy. They flew James Taylor in to put on a private concert on their property and invited a bunch of their friends. Jared's dad was out of the country on business so Jared got to go. Looked like a beautiful evening!
Another week, another long blog post! Normally I like to write my posts during Jack's quiet time around noon, but now that I'm at the point of near-weekly doctor visits, and I try to schedule them for Monday afternoons so Jared can come with me or at least watch Jack while I go, they're going up later in the evenings. I'm so grateful Jared's been able to come with me to most of my appointments though. His parents are in Europe this week (usually they watch Jack while we go to my appointments), so Jared and Jack hung out while I went solo today. It was a pretty short, routine visit, but Jared's presence was missed. He just has such a calming effect during doctor appointments? I feel more comfortable asking questions with him there to ask follow-up medical things, and he and my OB usually talk shop while I'm getting swabbed, or measured, or whatever. Takes the focus off me and I love that. I've been so much happier with my OB experience this time than I was with Jack, which is the only reason I feel ok about delivering at a hospital an hour from our house. There are closer hospitals, but this is the closest one with a NICU and where I wouldn't need to be life-flighted somewhere else if anything goes wrong. I've had too many close friends who have been in those situations to chance it.
Speaking of delivering at a hospital an hour from our house, mmmmm, not pumped for that. I've been learning about and preparing for childbirth quite a bit more this time than last time (my epidural didn't fully take last time and I wish I'd had some pain-management techniques up my sleeve), and I think I'd actually be feeling excited about the whole thing if it weren't for the fact that the hospital is an hour away and my last labor experience went pretty quick for a first birth (the pushing took 3 hours but the labor was pretty fast). I've been doing a lot of research about eating dates to promote a quicker, smoother delivery. There have been numerous reputable studies finding that consuming 6 dates a day starting at 36 weeks results in fewer inductions, quicker labor times, and less tearing. So I grabbed myself a Costco-sized bag of dates and was getting jazzed to start throwing them in all my smoothies, but now I'm like, "mmmm, maybe a drastically shortened labor time isn't the move when we live an hour from the hospital." Which stinks because in any other scenario, a shortened labor time would absolutely be the move. Dates or no dates, I'm making Jared pack a baby delivery kit in our car just for some peace of mind.
Alright, enough baby talk. We had a pretty chill week. I think the low-dose antidepressant my OB put me on 2 weeks ago actually is helping some. I'm still tired all the time but my overall mood is for sure improved. I've been trying to take more control over Jack's activities during the day. I can only play so much "dinosaurs" before I feel my soul start to die a little. Building/engineering and time in nature are much more up my alley. We've been making lots of coin drops with magnatiles on our back patio, and I've stumbled upon the absolute magic of daily river time. In Wyoming Jack LOVED to go on walks in the prairie with me multiple times every day. But now that we live in a neighborhood where time in nature requires a car ride to get there, he's gotten more and more resistant (as have I, honestly). This last week I kept at it and we spent a few afternoons at a quiet river beach right in Granite Falls. It's not very accessible during the winter/spring, and it gets crowded on the weekends, so I'd kind of written it off as a place to chill. But I'm finding that on weekday summer afternoons it's quiet and so lovely. The water is very shallow and slow, and if I bring a camp chair and a book I can relax while Jack builds dams and races "boats" for ages. It's like a bonus quiet time out in nature every day. Great for both of us. River time is here to stay, as long as possible.
That's about all I've got for this week! Baby continues to do acrobatics all day and night. She's currently hiccuping the evening away. Jack is now *knock on wood* night trained and hasn't needed pull-ups or had an accident all week. The timing is *chef's kiss.* I was really pulling for him to be out of pull-ups before baby arrives and we find ourselves neck-deep in diapers again. He's been capable for a while but just needed to decide on his own that he wanted to be done, and I think we're there. Half of it was probably him coming to the realization that it's easier not to have to change from undies to pull-ups during bedtime. We love a lazy efficient king. I feel like we've also finally closed a 4-year-long chapter of Jack's varying sleep issues *knock on wood* just in time for a whole new slew of newborn sleep fun. Anytime we've traveled with Jack and stayed in the same room as him, he's woken up crying multiple times every night. After a bit more digging we tried having him drink less in the evenings and empty his bladder before bed every night. It seems to have done the trick! When we shared a room with him in Utah last month he did great. No night crying since. Such a simple fix that solved two problems at once (night potty training and night crying). Now we r experts, give us another baby! (I'm terrified of babies but we've got this!!)
I've discovered the official source of my impossible pregnancy exhaustion and it is (drumroll plz): my firstborn child!
Yay.
Why am I not surprised? Better question: Why am I a little bit surprised?
I got my blood results back from last week's draw, and even though my HCT/HCG/RBC are still on the low end, they're back within the acceptable range to no longer be considered anemia. Yay iron supplementation. However, I honestly don't feel any less tired than I did before. I started to think maybe it was a touch of depression? The only time I've been truly, clinically depressed was when we lived in Grenada, and getting on an antidepressant for a few months helped a ton.
I haven't been feeling numb like I did then so much though--mostly just incredibly tired and grouchy, and a little sad at times. Jared encouraged me to do an SSRQ at my last OB visit, and my doctor did end up putting me on the same antidepressant that worked for me in Grenada. I haven't noticed much difference though, and I kind of don't think depression is what's going on here. Honestly my current mental state is probably a combo of being pregnant and skewed expectations for Jared's work schedule. It's really common to finish up nearly a decade of medical school and residency training and then when you finally get to start your DWT (done with training) life have thoughts of, "Wait--we did all that for this?" Someone actually wrote a book called exactly that, about this concept. Don't get me wrong--we are both very happy with Jared's career choice. He is fulfilled in his work, and the people he works with every day, patients and staff alike, are lovely. And I can be a stay-at-home-mom as long as I want to, which in this economy?! So grateful.
I think the issue is that I've spent the last several years expecting Jared's schedule in his post-training family medicine career to look more-or-less like my own dad's schedule when I was growing up. After all, family medicine is known for being a "family friendly" specialty. I pictured family breakfasts together and 5:30 family dinners. But I'm realizing that's not what Jared's career is, and it's not what it's going to be, so I'm working to shift those expectations so I don't feel bitter about it. Family physicians have to do quite a bit of patient prep/research before their clinic hours even begin, and in addition to working through his lunch catching up on admin stuff, Jared usually has a few hours of notes to complete after his clinic day is "over." That means more often than not, he leaves for work before we wake up, and he doesn't get home for dinner until close to 7:00 many evenings. It's a lot of hours for him to work, and for me to be carrying the brunt of the parenting load throughout the day, but I'm up for it as long as I know and can accept that this is just what it's going to look like. And I'm sure my angst will improve when I'm not pregnant anymore too. At least we've got weekends and holidays together, and a free afternoon after 1:00 on Mondays! Could definitely be worse.
But back to my child-induced exhaustion. I've said this before but for the past few months nothing has been able to pull me out of the tired fog. Not a decent night's sleep, not caffeine, not even 3 (accidental) naps a day. So when Jared's family invited us on some fun all-day adventures over the weekend, I decided to send Jared and Jack without me and use that time to prep for baby coming next month, since I'm unable to accomplish pretty much anything these days between my exhaustion and Jack being home all the time. I fully expected to need a fat nap in the middle of my day off, but I didn't get tired once that day! Just energized and happy and productive. But then the next day with Jack home, back to exhausted. So today I did an experiment. Jack does an hour of quiet time every day. Mostly I end up resting or falling asleep during that time lately. But today, even though I was sooooo tired and just wanted to stay laying down when quiet time came around, I decided to go downstairs, away from The Jack, and see if the tired would go away while I drafted this blog post. And it immediately did! As soon as I was downstairs in my own space, boom, energy back. So anywayyyyyy we r ready for preschool over here lol. But also terrified of newborn sleepless nights. Might be a whiiiiiile before my energy really returns. We might need a LOT of sports camps in future summers for me to make it through these child-rearing years. Also good chance I'll get myself a part-time job outside the home a few years down the line. The future is bright.
Whelp, that was long. Thanks for sticking with me through that therapy sesh. Hmm, other updates:
-Baby A is using me as a punching bag. Also a kicking bag. Kicking and punching. At the same time. All the time. My doctor's like, "Try to count 6-8 movements in an hour each day." And I'm like, "I just counted 10 movements during that sentence." We very well might have a Baby Jack 2.0 about to grace our presence. I am bracing myself and preparing myself and pumping myself up and excited and horrified! Dear everyone, please stop telling me you're praying for this baby to be the opposite of Jack. It's probably not gonna happen. Also Jack is the GOAT. The bee's knees. A rough little infant but the smartest, kindest, most charismatic and exuberant manchild. We love that exhausting little butt.
-Baby also has hiccups. All. The. Time. Like probably 10 different times a day. My OB is not concerned, but I'm going to continue to bring it up in every appointment because I just am.
-We finished wallpapering the nursery! It looks great! But I probably won't take any pictures until the room is finished, mostly because I just don't have it in me right now. We also found a changing table I love at Goodwill. It is actually an old hutch. But it's the right height, has drawers underneath and shelving storage up above, and just trust me on this one! It does smell very old and thrifted, so I'm gonna shove it full of odor-removing charcoal bags and let you know how it goes. Could be a disaster but in our budget I had the choice of a new (not thrifted) dresser OR a new (not thrifted) rocking chair, and I'll be taking the rocking chair, please and thank you.
-Jared and Jack went rock hunting on Friday, and then floated the lazy Stillaguamish River near our house on Saturday with Jared's parents and brother. Sounds like it was lots of fun and I'm excited to join them for the float next year. (It was a 4-hour float and I'm 8 months pregnant so I was pumped to sit it out and be the drop-off/pick-up service this year.)
-I found my DREAM home on Zillow in Woodland Hills, Utah, and I somehow convinced my parents to go to the open house and film a tour for me haha. I mean, our contract's not up for 2 more years here so it's not like we're looking to buy a home, but golly if I didn't pretend like maybe we could! It's kind of funny because the house is basically a rustic cabin in the woods, but the previous owners did up the inside REAL cute, and the property and wrap-around covered decks give me the butterflies. Hooray for Zillow hobbies. I know I'm not the only one who checks Zillow daily just for kicks. Right? Riiiight?
That's all. I'm delirious. Merry 9:00 to all, and to all a good night!
I'm going to do my best to eek out a blog post while it's still Monday. Temperatures have been in the high 90s here all week. It's feeling a lot like a sticky Georgia summer, but man am I grateful for these temperatures because I feel 1,000,000% justified in our air conditioning splurge this spring. Probably the best home purchase we ever have and ever will make. That said, I'm glad we'll be cooling off a bit this next week. I love when me and Jack can spend a few hours in the backyard to break a day up. He's old enough that occasionally when we're back there he'll get so engrossed in play that I can *gasp* read a book! It's a good life.
Today was nuts, in the best way. We spent last night at Jared's parents' home, celebrating his Dad's birthday and Jack picking up a new passion for bocce ball. We didn't get home until late and then Jack, of course, woke up extra early this morning with growing pains. I'm in that stage of pregnancy where I'm waking up several times each night with intense back pains, unable to ever find a comfortable position. Add on anemia and we're off to a zombie-like start to a Monday. Jared's clinic is filled with the sweetest ladies on the planet, and they threw a baby shower for us and for Jared's MA, who is due the week before us, during their lunch hour today. Jack and I met Jared at his clinic at noon and they put on the best potluck lunch on the back lawn while we opened presents. It was *very* nice to have Jack and Jared open the gifts while I kept a list of who gifted us what (made sense to have Jared open the gifts since nobody at his office really knows me). I was touched at how generous everyone was and loved getting to meet Jared's work family. One of the office ladies even hand-crocheted blankets for both of the babies being celebrated. So sweet. I wish I'd thought to snap a picture!
After the baby shower we dropped Jack off at his Grandma's and rushed to my 32-week appointment. Although my doctor is almost an hour from our house it's worked out pretty well since we've been able to schedule most appointments for Monday afternoons when Jared doesn't have work, and we can drop Jack off on the way and make a date of it. It was a pretty short appointment, but I did have to get a blood draw at the end so they could see if the iron supplement has improved the anemia situation. I'm still unreasonably exhausted most of the time so we'll see what the results are. After the appointment we split a caramel ribbon milkshake from Salt and Straw (jk I drank all of it--turns out Jared isn't a caramel guy) and then hit up Costco on our way back to Jack and a few rounds of bocce ball. And now I am sooo looking forward to crawling into bed! Ok here are some Jack pics:
^^Bocce Ball Boi, and experimenting with different methods to slide down our stair, this one involved wearing Dad's shorts and shoving a pillow in them for padding.
