productiondiva

Good. Getting harder and harder to make it through 9 hours. Most days I wind up going home early when I finish the real work and get to the busy work. I walk up and down the stairs a lot, which tires me out quicker as this kid seems to make itself extra low and heavy right when I need to go upstairs. I am hoping to keep working until mid September, so keep your fingers crossed.

Busy. GoWings is losing his first asst. at the end of next week so he will be going back to working 6 days a week until mid November. We are happy for his asst, but it definitely makes life here more stressful. We have LeTigre's visit to look forward to at the end of the month, which makes me . For her, I would even muck out my guest room and put clean sheets on the bed!

I finished my hypnobirthing class. I LOVED it! I learned so much and really enjoy self hypnosis. So far I have used to when I had a migraine and when I was having a particularly bad bout of morning sickness to great effect. I am super excited about natural childbirth and having the chance to try out everything I learned.

My baby shower is this weekend. I can't wait to see my family and friends... it will be the first time since I got pregnant that I have seen most of my family and a lot of friends, so it will be fun to show off my rapidly growing belly. Here's what it is looking like these days: (sorry if it shows huge on your screen, SG hates pictures in blogs today)

And to be able to celebrate this little life with my family and friends is something I have been looking forward to for months! I've been doing great with not buying things for the baby until after my shower. But the anal retentive school teacher in me is aching to make lists of things we have, things we need, things we want, things that would be nice to have. Lists, lists and lists. And then take them lists shopping! I did cave in and buy more diapers this last week, because they were on sale and I got one free. So we are about halfway there with the diapers now. We are using a mixture of these and these to start with. SG's very own Twwly has an awesome blog about cloth diapers here if you are interested.

I've been working my ass off on sticking to the diabetic diet. The hardest part has been giving up milk at night and cereal in the morning. Both those things convert to pure sugar in your body and make your blood sugar rise so they are off limits. So when I am home in the middle of the day, thats one of the first things I grab for a snack. My sugars have been good. A teeny bit over the goals, but totally still in the gray zone. I've been walking daily, for at least 30 minutes. Most days I get 30-60 minutes of walking and 30 minutes of yoga. I've lost 5 more lbs in 2 weeks, which is almost 1/2 the weight I had gained so far but the baby is growing and I am not showing any signs of ketones, which would indicate my body is burning fat for fuel and that is not good for the baby. So for the time being, no talk of drugs or insulin. But being plus size to begin with, I feel the weight and threat of those things every time I go for an appt with the diabetic clinic. It actually has been the hardest part for me to deal with- the mental side. Having to catalog every single thing that goes into my mouth, checking sugars 4 times a day, getting weighed once a week... I feel like a kid at fat camp. To be honest, it has been hard to not get obsessive about it. But I want to strike a good healthy balance between listening to what they have to say, and still maintaining my sanity. I'm not so worried about me, my sugar levels are far below anywhere that could be considered diabetic, but the label of gestational; diabetes and/or the need for insulin adds a whole level of complications to an already labeled "high risk" pregnancy. And since my goal is for as natural a birth as possible with the fewest interventions for me and the baby, avoiding insulin is high on my list of things to do between now and the end. Which is rapidly drawing near...

Sadly, while I have a super chill OB who I LOVE to death, I am already fighting an uphill battle when it comes to my due date. The initial due date based on my period and when we conceived (we know for sure when it happened) is October 10. The initial u/s put my due date at October 19. Since then, it has been anywhere in between on u/s. So we already knew it would be easier to just have a birth month in mind, rather than a due date. But since I am a fat girl, and they are obsessing over my gray zone sugar levels, I have already gotten the whole "Well, of course we won't let you go past your due date" talk. More than once. And at my last two appts, the doctor and midwife have both asked about my size and my partners size when we were born and if we were early or late. We were both 9 lbs and both over 2 weeks "late". So of course they respond with "well, we definitely will be trying to jump start things early". I spoke out about my desire for a natural birth and not wanting to induce. It is being "strongly recommended" that I induce somewhere between 37-39 weeks. Because I am a fluffy and in the gray zone for glucose intolerance and the medical community tends to look down on those two things and go "of course that means you will have a GIANT baby that will never fit through your pelvis or vagina and therefore we need to start a horrible snowball of interventions that make your chances for a c-section shoot through the roof. Hey thanks. Don't suppose it means anything that the ultrasound measurements can be off by as much as 2 lbs and are often inaccurate. (by the doctors own admission!) They are going to do another ultrasound at the end of the month/beginning of Sept to narrow that down. And
"of course we just suggest our best course of action but it is always your choice". Yeah, like when a doctor says "this is what you need for the health of your baby", you feel like you have a choice. They are willing to working with me though and are definitely supportive of natural, homebirth methods for jump starting labor, so that is a plus. So needless to say, we are hoping to fall into the category of early labors, once I hit that full term mark. So it is entirely possible this kid could come sometime in Sept as well. /soapbox rant

We are working on names. We have 1 for a boy and 1 for a girl, although I would like to have 2 for each just in case it pops out and we go "huh, you look nothing like a..." Suggestions are welcome. Don't be sad if we hate it though.

People are starting to guess about the gender. Who wants to start a betting pool???? (My brothers have one going already I think and I don't doubt there will be one on the date and time of birth as well as size and length. Boys will bet on anything!)