Not bad for a phone picture

October 30th has never looked like this to me before.

Taken from the Hermosa Pier while watching Matt surf (he was floating just below the bottom edge of the picture).

Sleeppleez

Ughhhh. I have gotten myself into a horrible sleep routine. I've been staying up later and later each night and now I can't get to sleep. It's 1:30 AM! I am 30 years old and seven months pregnant, not a college student. I'm wide awake and ready to party. This is ridiculous.

Pregnancy insomnia, combined with the eat-small-meals-frequently pregnancy appetite, is a no-win. The later I stay up, the more likely it is that I will have to eat a snack (tonight's feature is a plain, dry piece of wheat bread!) so that my growling gut doesn't keep me awake. I never realize that I need a snack until AFTER I've brushed and flossed.

AND A late-night snack means that my fine fetal friend is likely to start dancing around in about 25 minutes. JUST AS I'M LYING DOWN TRYING TO SLEEP

Wahhhh...poor me. My problems are soooo huge. Pity me! If you are still reading this...I apologize. As I seem to have to do a lot on my blog these days. OK. Tomorrow I will be happy pregnant Lindsay again...I promise. On the bright side, I'm very grateful to be unemployed right now. Yay!

(Six months ago, my blog was about our adventures traveling Planet Earth; today, it's about my adventures in Planet Pregnant Stomach...my, how things have progressed.)

29.5 weeks

note the unfortunate and regrettable belly-button ring scar

Is this pregnancy getting boring for you? It's all I seem to really think about in depth these days. Just stop reading the blog, really.

Now I'm going to write about few things I've been meaning to mention but about which I don't seem to be able to muster up a whole blog post:

Goodbye, toes.

I didn't shave my legs for two weeks; I shaved them for the first time today and it was a whole lot harder to do than the last time I attempted it.

I really like non-alcoholic beer, but every time I drink one in public, I get horrible, toxic glares. Sigh.

I suddenly want to bake things...a lot. I've never been a baker. In the past month or so I've made cakes, cookies, biscuits. I was marveling about this to Matt. I thought it was some kind of maternal nesting thing. He pointed out that it's more likely the desire to eat bake things than the actual baking of them. He was so right.

I'm going to talk about breasts now. The sudden and rapid distention and reshaping of my breasts, due to pregnancy, has changed the way I think about breasts. I think what pregnancy has done to my breasts is nothing short of FABULOUS AND REMARKABLE and I am in complete denial that they will eventually deflate and I will mourn them. Tonight, Matt and I drove by a 50-something woman on rollerblades with enormous fake breasts popping out of her bikini top like big googly eyes. This particular style of fake boobs does not look like boobs to me. (If you have fake breasts - I'm sorry. I don't mean to insult. But this is my blog. Your boobs, my blog.) I'm sure some people have fake boobs that actually look natural - and those are the ones I don't notice. It's just that when I see some that are so obviously fake, they don't even look like boobs. They look like some kind of weird inflatable shirt. But hey...if the rollerblading lady is happy, that's all that matters. Except that I will blog about your weird shirt. I'm sorry, everyone. Is this mean? I don't like sounding mean.

I will leave you with this: Thirty years and some months ago, I was born at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis. The locals call it HCMC. In April, I discovered I was pregnant in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The guidebooks and some locals refer to it as: oh yes! HCMC.

IT MEANS SOMETHING

Addendum to my recent addendum...

We decided to interview the HMO doctor just to see what's up. I explained the situation to his office. They need to OK it with him first, since it's so late in my pregnancy. OK. We'll call you back.

20 minutes later, the doctor called me back personally to talk about his childbirth philosophy. So far so good. We meet with him next week. I have a good feeling.

Addendum to my last post...

...because I try to keep my complaining to a minimum, or at least to the confines of my home or phone conversations with close family and friends.

I would like to say that I am grateful to even have any health insurance at all...much less to have the options that I have.

I realize that I can't have everything. If I want the doctor of my choice, I will have to pay more for it. Life isn't fair. There are people with much bigger problems than mine.

It just feels weird to me...this management of childbirth. I don't fear childbirth. I fear unnecessary interventions made in the name of money and time management. I'm grateful to have the option of interventions that may save my baby's life or my own...and that's why I want to give birth in a hospital.

Insurance, my ass. This may be boring, but I am venting.

We may have to pay quite a bit out-of-pocket for our baby's birth.

I have a wonderful doctor that I love, and who is supportive of natural childbirth. The hospital we chose allows you to labor in any position and allows minimal fetal monitoring. We made these choices very very carefully. I want a natural childbirth. Matt and I had considered home birthing but ultimately decided that we felt more comfortable, for our first birth, in the hospital.

Our insurance changed when Matt started his job. We now have a Point-of-Service plan, in which you have an HMO option (everything is 100% covered, but you have to use the doctors that the HMO assigns for you) or a PPO option (we pay 20%). We thought this would work out great, but alas, we will have to pay quite a bit out-of-pocket if we go with our OB, who is on the PPO but not the HMO. Are you still with me? Snoring? Bored?

If you have had a baby, and you are reading this, and you feel comfortable, please comment and share with me what you paid out-of-pocket for your birth. I'd also love to know what the total cost was (what insurance covered, what you paid), and what kind of birth experience you had. I'm just curious.

I don't want to change doctors. It's extremely hard to find a doctor who sees value in natural childbirth. It's even harder to find that when you are randomly being assigned an OB by your HMO.

Baby Pavelka is going to learn to fill out job applications as soon as he can read.

Holidays

I've been thinking a lot about the holidays lately. Neither Matt nor I are particularly religious (Matt much less so than me), but we both love Christmas and spending that time with family.

As a first-year emergency medicine intern, Matt's year is comprised basically of 4-week long rotations throughout the hospital (ER, Peds ER, ICU's, OB, Anesthesia, Ortho, etc). He will be on one of his busiest rotations in December - an ICU rotation with Q3 call, which means his schedule will involve a 30-hour overnight hospital shift every THIRD day. The non-call days will be 12 hours or more. Think: Monday 7-7, Tuesday 7-7, Wednesday 7am - noon on Thursday, Friday 7-7, Saturday off (maybe?), Sunday 7am - noon on Monday, repeat, repeat, repeat repeat repeat. When he does get to be home, he'll probably be sleeping. I think he gets four days off that month.

On the home front, I'll be nine months pregnant and unable to travel. My parents are visiting in early December to help me finish setting up the baby's room and to entertain me while Matt works or sleeps. But it's likely that on Christmas eve and day, he will be working and I'll be by myself!

I consider myself so incredibly lucky to have a family that I love so much. I LOVE family Christmases. And the fact that I adore my in-laws and LOVE their Christmas traditions as well? I am infinitely blessed. So in the spirit of being thankful, and not pessimistic, I am determined not to mope about our Christmas situation. I will make this Christmas special for Matt and I. I'm going to get us a tree! And decorate. I'm going to stuff stockings and wrap presents and cook a big holiday dinner, even if we have to eat it in the middle of the night and go straight to bed because he has to get up for work in the morning. Because this is our last christmas before we are three, and I want to enjoy and treasure our alone time before it changes for good.

And because I love him so much. And I love to see his face on Christmas when he opens his presents.

Christmas 2008



Christmas 2009

Thunderstorms. Thumbsucking.

Isn't it wonderful when you get something nice in the mail? Even just ONE thing? Today I got THREE very exciting packages in the mail!
1) A pack n play! from my fabulous brother- and sister-in-law;
2) my first CSA delivery! from Farm Fresh to You - I got apples, spinach, carrots, lettuce, kale, GB's, and some incredible tomatoes - I spent the morning washing veggies and putting some into the crock pot; and
3) some makeup from Meow Cosmetics, which is really good makeup for very pale girls like me.

THEN, we got a brief thunderstorm!!! What a wonderful day.

I was also thinking about thumb sucking today. My friend E just had baby #3 and announced today that he is her first thumb sucker.

I was a thumb sucker. My mom got me to stop when I was 3 or so. I had been begging her to paint my fingernails, but she refused because of the thumbsucking. Finally, she relented, but said that I had to stop sucking my thumb if I had painted nails. She came into my room in the middle of the night to check on me and found me with my little thumbs tucked tight inside my hands so I wouldn't suck them. You can't bring this story up in front of my mom or she starts to weep. To this day I have a habit of squeezing my thumbs between my fingers when I'm stressed or excited.

I'm starting to become familiar with this little dude's habits. It's hard not to wonder who's in there and what he does to occupy his time. I know that when he presses hard towards my front, and I respond by pressing back with my hand, he will often kick my hand or push away in response. Response. It seems far-fetched to think of him "responding" to me - but that's what it is, so.

Fela gently informs me that there isn't much lap left on my lap:

A back in my belly

This guy moves. A lot. He's busy in his little room. Here and there I've felt what seemed like a foot poking extra hard into my side, or a hand pushing into my diaphragm. Tonight, though, I felt something new and incredible. There was a hard spot on the left side of my belly...it felt not unlike indigestion, a bloated stomach, etc. I wasn't thinking too much about it. I was absentmindedly running my hand along it, and suddenly realized it was his back. It was hard and so small and such a perfect little back-shaped lump. As I was stroking it, it disappeared...like he'd had enough of me. Just like that, just a second, and then he's gone swimming again...how wonderful. I feel like I'm starting to know him.

I get a haircut

Until this baby is born, this blog is still all about me.

26.

Week 26 technically starts tomorrow, but "tomorrow" technically starts 1 hour and 19 minutes from now, so here we are, 26 weeks large, my face shape slightly distorted (thanks, Photobooth). There are two of us in this photo and one of us is having a dance party (hint: it's not me).