Man, I thought today was going to be our “big appointment”…the one where our doctor does the last ultrasound to see where BBJ’s head is and to give us the never correct guesstimate on his size/weight.  Well, apparently I was wrong.  I was only semi-devastated.  I wanted to see him!  I guess they take 36 weeks quite literally because I am 35 Weeks and 5 Days.  Only two days shy.  Man oh man.   Next week, though…ITS ON. 

Our doctor says the pain I have been feeling in the apex of my legs and radiating down to my thighs is, in some ways, a good thing.  She says it means that my hips are widening in order to fit the baby’s head through them.   The flip side of the coin is that I have constant pain at the apex of my legs radiating down into my thighs.  She says this will not go away.  It’s okay, though…a labor of love?  Lars’ mom also dropped the bombshell on us that she may have been incorrect in recalling that Lars was a 7 pound baby—she knows that ONE of her kids was a 9 pound baby and she always thought it was Kristen.  But, going through some baby books lately has caused her to rethink this and she may have mistaken Kristen with Lars.  I mean, the potential for a 9 pound baby was not going to stop me from having kids (and maybe it’s a good thing that I didn’t know this until now)…but it has me thinking that maybe this kid needs to go on a diet.  Not likely with the amount of crap I’ve been eating lately. 

Talking about big babies did bring up the talk about big heads and how they fit through the birth canal.  Our doctor was like “well you and Lars both look like you have normal-sized heads so you don’t have to worry!”.    This was not the most reassuring statement in the world…but I will role with it.  Baby’s head is just as big as baby’s head is, and that’s that.

We are getting excited!!  My mom is coming out in about three weeks to endure the “waiting” process with me.  We will just hope for an on-time baby (although, truthfully, I am kind of over being pregnant).   Everything seems to be really falling into place so now all we have to do is meet this little guy. 

I realize I haven’t put up any photos lately.  Maybe I will muster the courage to do this later this week…we are going to a lake “Up North” but not too far “Up North” in case I go into labor and then we have to go “Down South”…but not too far “Down South” because Lars isn’t my cousin.  Amiright?  I’m just going to take a book, sunscreen, cheese and crackers, and enjoy the holiday weekend.   

Well–we’re done with all this learning stuff that happens before birth.  So now we just have doctors appointments and waiting (lots of waiting?) ahead of us.

The birthing class was engaging.  Our teacher was really into being a doula and kind of made me wish I had looked into something like that sooner.  However–I’m pretty confident in the doctors we have seen at UM and have always felt like we’re receiving great care–so I’m not too upset about not researching it beforehand.   She made is confront what our “line in the sand” was about the birth process after explaining what many of the procedures that often occur during labor are (ie–the types of drugs that they use; when c-sections happen; pros/cons of both, etc).  I just feel a lot less anxiety going into the process, now.  Even watching the video was not that bad!

Best part of the class was trying all the different labor positions and relaxation techniques while having a clothespin pinching you for “pain”.  We had to pinch a clothespin to a section of our body that actually HURT us and then try each position with our partner trying to console us.  I will tell you that Lars does a mean back-rub and he is very good at counting down the contraction.  Lars also told me he could cause me pain in other parts of my body in order to take my mind off the pain being caused by the birthing process.  This was his own suggestive relaxation technique–and not one suggested by the teacher.  I declined…as intrigued as I was by the idea of it.

We went on a walk around downtown Ann Arbor this afternoon afterwards.  I am zonked after a meager 2 miles.  Literally had to sit down multiple times with only the reward of YoGo Bliss to keep me going…mmmm tart frozen yogurt with fresh strawberries on a hot summer day.  It was/is beautiful outside today.   I love Michigan and Ann Arbor right now.

We went on our hospital birth tour yesterday.  Yup, we’re giving birth in a hospital, no doubt about it.  Lots of hospital gowns and pastel colorings–but, honestly, I don’t think I’ll care that much when its time.  Mostly I just hope I go through all the triage procedures okay–its confusing!  Park here, go to triage, check in here, maybe get admitted, re-park your car, give keys to the valet in case they need to move them, bring hard candy to suck on.  This last item is of crucial importance!  The tour actually both alleviated anxieties and raised new ones.  The new anxieties, for me, seem a little intangible–we saw a couple of newborns and they were just so small and little and adorable and OMG WE’RE HAVING A BABY!  That is pretty much what went through my head.   I think I almost cried.  It could have been the zero (0) hours of sleep obtained the night before.  Or the hormones.  Or just being totally overwhelmed by the timeline we’re on.

Tonight and tomorrow–birthing CLASS.  Lars is so looking forward to the birthing video.

I finished the book I feel as though I’ve been reading for the past 10 years of my life!  No seriously.  I think my mom got me this book for Christmas back when I was in high school or something.  Its strange how there are so many books I’ve tried and given up on and just given to friends if they’ve been interested or discarded–but something about this particular book made me take the copy I had been given all the way to Michigan where, I guess, I had some subconscious determination to read it and finish it.

And now I have.

And now I don’t have to feel guilty about not reading it–and it wasn’t even bad.

Isn’t it funny–those books you put off reading for so long because they seem so lame.  Then, when you start them, you think to yourself, “why on earth didn’t I read this earlier?”.

We had major epic Target fail last night.  Maybe it wasn’t as epic as the time when Lars tried to print off some of his photos from our travels and they wouldn’t release them because they thought we were infringing on copyright laws (they were just that good!)…but it was still an unpleasant experience which is few and far between at Target. 

I had received a giftcard for the surprise baby shower that my co-workers threw for me last Wednesday (woo!) so was all set to use it with reckless abandon on things like nursing camis and bras…frivolous things like that.  Anyway–I made my way around the store and finally made it up to the checkstand.  First of all, there is a woman in front of me who is insane.  I’m not quite sure how to describe her insanity but I mostly dub anyone who wears army fatigue pants to Target “insane”.  She was very concerned and argumentative over the price of a basketball she was buying.  I was in no hurry so I just waited behind her, spacing out and eavesdropping on her insane-ness.  THEN, I went up to the counter to make my purchase and told the dude at the register “I have a gift card.  When do you need it?”.  He says he needs it at the end of the transaction–so I go ahead and swipe my credit card knowing I will have to pay the difference and the kid who’s checking me out sees me do this.  Then, when all purchases are accounted for, a receipt pops up and I am like “wah–what about my giftcard”.  The checker says “oh well, since you swiped your credit card it charged everything to that.  So, you still have money on your giftcard”.  He is obviously not wanting to change the transaction at all.  I wonder if its worth fighting with him and glance at the line behind me.  There’s only two people and one of them is trying to be very discreet about the ECONOMY SIZE BOX OF CONDOMS HE IS BUYING (Magnum).  It seemed so poetic that I was buying all this baby crap and about to go all target gangsta white trash on someone and here is a guy trying to prevent a girl from getting pregnant behind me.  Oh well.  I just decided it wasn’t worth it after all and that I would be back–but it doesn’t mean I was not pissed!  I just hide my anger and usually just stomp and yell at Lars when I get home.

The icing on the cake was getting out to my car and seeing that someone had parked their Target shopping cart right behind my Honda.  Jerks :(  I was so tired by then that moving the cart over to the stall where they normally go took all my energy.  Seriously, its pretty tiring right now.  I just want to take epic naps but I epically fail at that, too. 

Oh well.  Keeping it real in Ann Arbor.

Because he is my baby, BBJ has a very refined sense of taste. I have noticed I can almost always make him go nutty with a few select ingredients:

• Jolly Ranchers
• Gatorade

Even other things with sugar don’t do the trick–he just must really love the “sweet” and the “fruity”. That is kind of how I like to describe myself, though, so hopefully this bodes well for our parent-child relationship, despite the our HORRIBLE astrological chemistry between Leo & Capricorn.

In other news, am I a bad parent if I just want BBJ to hold off on his arrival until AFTER the release of the new Harry Potter film?  Initially I thought it was going to be opening the week I give birth and I was like “hrmmm that’s cutting it close”…but now I see it is coming out mid-July so that gives me hope.  Now I just have to get Lars to go see another Harry Potter movie with me…which may be harder than y’all think.

Its 4:22am and there is a dance party of one in my womb.

…also some weekends are harder than others. I have noticed a very significant drop in my level of want to do pretty much ANYTHING on the weekends. I can muster myself up to get through the work-week but the weekends are like crash-fests. For instance, I got up early on Saturday to finish some chores and had planned on doing more, but instead took a shower, that then turned into a bath, that then turned into me putting back on my pajamas and crawling into bed and listening to the rain. It was Lars (Lars!) who had to get me up. Sad, but true.

Also, I have been pretty even keel this entire pregnancy as far as mood swings go. I’ve not been terribly irritable or illogical (no more than USUAL, I should say)…but today at the end of the day I just could not get over a hump of feeling just very very sad. It was sunny outside. I had a nice day. I just was so sad and it was a very lonely feeling not to be able to pinpoint it or do something to fix it. Maybe its just this sense of impending change that, if I let myself think about it too much, will become way too overwhelming and stressful.

Here is one thing I can tell you that enrages me. People ask you trick questions about your pregnancy. Like, they want you to answer incorrectly so that they can give you the “right” answer. Lars and I try to answer in a way that is like “well, we’re going to try this and see how it works and we’ll just change if we need to” etc etc…but even that doesn’t seem to be a good enough answer. I feel like some people want you to fail…maybe I get so mad about it because I’m insecure enough as it is since it will be so incredibly new and foreign…but still! Yeah, remember when I said I wasn’t irritable…maybe just now I’m realizing I am.

Also I burp loudly and often and Lars tells me I can control the volume and frequency but really I cannot!

Today, Lars and I watched the Happiest Baby on the Block video and afterwards we practiced a couple of the techniques.  For instance–we swaddled the remote control.

I also wanted to test out the third  of the five esses;  swinging.  I put both of my hands on Lars’ skull and I tried swinging it from side to side.  This didn’t work to calm him down–in fact, I think I pissed him off!  So then Lars decided to show me how it was done since in the video, Dr. Karp says that husbands are often very good at the five techniques to instigate the calming reflex.  He gently shook my head in his hands and I fell right asleep.  Now if only I had a banket big enough to swaddle me.

My credit card statement from our trip to San Diego last week reads like my own personal all-you-can-eat buffet in heaven.

• Jamba Juice
• Rubio’s
• Fred’s Mexican Cafe
• Leucadia Pizzeria
• Rubio’s
• Pannikin
• Rubio’s

For those of you moving away from San Diego…I hope you are getting your fill of all the delicacies (like Rubio’s) that your little city by the sea has to offer.