33 weeks

Pregnancy: 33 weeks 1 day
Total weight gain: 13kgs (28.66lbs)
Baby size (head to butt): 29cm (11.41in)
Baby weight: 1.9kgs (4.18lbs)

Boy am I getting bigger (even though I didn’t gain any weight…)! My belly button has pretty much popped all the way out (except for a little at the bottom, but I’m not entirely sure that will pop out), and I’ve had a few people tell me I look like I’ve swallowed a rather large basketball. I currently have one tiny stretch mark located on my belly between where my belly button ring went in, and where it came out. As I said before, that part of just can’t stretch anymore! Now my belly button looks a bit like a war zone. First you have the target freckle, next to that (but still on my actual belly button) are two reddish wrinkles (that before this week had never seen the light of day). Move a bit north and you come to stretched out belly ring exit hole, little purple stretch mark on top of that, then stretched out belly button entry hole at the top. Oh, and the holes are quite red from all the stretching. I hate to think what they will look like when my tummy goes back to normal size (I’m telling you Mom, I will get it back to normal size!).

People keep telling me that I “look tired.” Now I know they are trying to be sympathetic, but really, what they are saying is “you look a bit crap today.” They usually follow up the tired comment with “how long have you got to go?” Conversation according to me: “You look a bit crap today. Good thing you don’t have long to go, I can’t imagine how crap you would look by the end if you had a long time to go.” Thanks people. I much prefer the people that tell me I “look healthy.” I’ve had quite a few people say that as well. I think they are the people who have been pregnant themselves, or had a spouse that was pregnant, and know that a compliment is much better then telling me I look crap. Here is a little etiquette guide to use when talking/interacting with a pregnant woman:

1. NEVER tell us we look tired. In our mind that says we look a bit crap, bags under the eyes, droopy eyelids, and so forth. We know we are tired and look a bit crap, but we certainly don’t need you to tell us that.

2. Compliment us. Tell us we look healthy, that translates to “wow, you must be eating all the right things, exercising, and taking wonderful care of your baby. Good job!” Or, even better, tell us we are glowing. Even if we are not either of those things, it will still make our day (because involuntary grunting noises when we try to pick ourselves up off the couch or chair, and waddling like a duck don’t make us feel overly wonderful).

3. If we are carrying something, offer to help (we like the gesture and attention), but if we say no, don’t insist (and then take our bag while we are trying to fight for bag retention), that only makes us feel completely useless (and this after being told we look crap, I mean “tired” really doesn’t go over well in our minds). We are pregnant, not quadriplegic. It’s not like we are carrying a backpack full of bricks.

4. If the train or bus, etc. is full, offer us your seat. We get swollen uncomfortable feet, and really enjoy sitting down if we need to. Again, if we say no, don’t insist. Usually if we say no, we are not quite as pregnant as you might think, and enjoy standing up while we still can (we still like the initial gesture of offering though).

5. Don’t get annoyed or cranky with us when we forget things/forget to do things, etc. We have the “baby brain” and would forget our head if it wasn’t attached. We genuinely don’t mean to forget what you said/did/told us/what we were supposed to do, and we do feel bad for forgetting.

Once again, Aaron and I had an antenatal class on Thursday. We find these very informative, but sometimes they are rather frightening at the same time. Last week, they showed us an ancient torture device. Metal, large, a bit like gigantic salad servers. They could only be used for torture. But no, they were forceps! No thank you, do not come near me with those things or I will punch you in the nose! I don’t know if you’ve ever seen forceps, but as I said, LARGE, metal, a bit like a giant pair of salad tongs. Girls, think giant metal speculum from hell. Not only does the torture device actually have to go um… inside, but you also need an episiotomy for them to be able to make an exit with the baby. Episiotomy to me seems like torture also. They also passed around a vacuum (the pulling out baby kind, nothing like the household cleaning kind, don’t worry). This device was much more forgiving, and not bigger then the baby’s head, so no need for the dreaded episotomy. Luckily they say forceps are not used very much anymore.

Later in the class, they showed us another birth video (again from the 80s). This time the woman had an active birth, on the ground on all fours. The head came out during a contraction, but what I didn’t realise until then (I suppose I didn’t really think about it) is that the head then just kinda sits there, for what seemed like hours waiting for the next contraction. I found that bit quite disturbing. The baby still had it’s eyes closed, wasn’t breathing or moving yet, it looked a bit dead, and just sitting there, hanging out of the mom. There was blood tinged mucus coming out of the baby’s nose, which they told us was being expelled from it’s lungs by the pressure of fitting through the birth canal. This is a good thing, otherwise the baby couldn’t breathe upon full exit due to it’s lungs being filled with the amniotic fluid it’s been “breathing” in. Of course it might have been even more disturbing if the baby was looking around, and/or crying. On the next contraction, out popped all of baby, it started crying/moving/breathing, and all was well. We were also told that sometimes the mother, amongst all that pushing, does a bit of a poo. Now that’s all well and good (well, extremely embarrassing, and probably horrifying for her husband to watch), but as I said, the head comes out and then sits there. If you did do a poo with all that pushing, depending on your position (remember, laying down on the bed is not the optimal position for giving birth), you could be pooing on your baby’s head. Maybe the midwives catch it, I’m not sure, but hopefully I won’t be a pooer as I’d like our baby to come out poo free.

I realised the other day that Mushi hiccups a lot. I don’t know if he just started doing it, or if I just hadn’t noticed when he was head up, but I feel it at least once per day now. Since he is in the correct position (head down and facing my spine), his cute little hiccups seem to reverberate through my intestines. I suppose that makes since as the little head is right next to my innards. Sometimes, I know he has his head turned to the side (usually when I’m laying in bed) because the hiccup reverberation is felt on my side, rather then my insides. FYI, hiccuping is normal for babies in utero, and once they are born.

I’ve started packing my hospital bag. I don’t think the baby will come early, but you never know, and I like to be organised. I have all the important bits in there, muesli bars, fruit cups, gatorade, and hard candy. Apparently you can get a bit hungry while you are in 1st stage. Plus your “support person” will need some sustenance. I should probably start packing all the other stuff I will need as well (clothes, etc.). The hospital has a no budgie smugglers (speedos) or underwear policy for men, so I will also need to pack Aaron a pair of boardies (for assisting me in the bath and shower). He is also not allowed to be naked. The midwives see enough nudity in the women, they don’t need it in the men too (or maybe they would be too distracted if there were naked men running around). Aaron doesn’t really like to parade around naked, nor does he own any budgie smugglers , so I think we will be fine (although the guy in the 80s birthing video was wearing budgie smugglers. Maybe he is the reason for said policy?).

Yay, a nice lady who lives in the building I work in just told me that I look good, and pregnancy suits me. In your face all those who tell me I “look tired!”

31 weeks

Pregnancy: 31 weeks 2 days (only 9 weeks to go!!)
Total weight gain: 12kg (26.45lbs ARGH!)
Baby size (head to butt): 27.5cm (10.82in)
Baby weight: 1.5kg (3.3lbs)

So I finally found the scales after moving, and put new batteries in it (it’s one of those swish ones with BMI, water percentage, etc. as well as weight…), only to find that I now weigh (gasp) SIXTY KILOGRAMS!!!! My scale hardly ever sees 50kg, let alone 60. I’ve been reading Up The Duff, a week by week pregnancy diary by a very funny Australian woman. She had gained 17kgs by week 31, so I don’t feel quite so bad. I’m not quite sure where all that extra weight has gone though. I can still fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans. Well, I put them on, zip them half way up, and then use the belly belt to fasten them. After halfway up you get to belly country, so obviously they are not going to fit over my baby belly. Point being, my butt has not expanded very much, it still fits into my jeans. I haven’t purchased any maternity clothing what so ever (I just buy my normal Aus size 8 shirts, but get styles that are quite long and cover my half zipped pants). My belly is not super huge, my arms aren’t flabby, my face isn’t fat. So where did all that weight go? The midwife even said there is hardly any fat on my stomach at all, so it is really easy to hear Mushi’s heartbeat. She had to turn her monitor thing down because it was coming in so loudly. She also said he/she is thriving in there, is the right size, and luckily, has been a very good baby and turned so he/she is no longer breech. Good baby.

One day last week I arrived at work, then about 10 minutes later my nose started gushing (well that’s an exaggeration, but it was dripping) blood. I sat at my little concierge desk with a kleenex hanging out of my nose with blood on it, still greeting people as they went by. I’m sure I looked very professional. My nose bled for about 10-15 minutes, but that whole time, not one person noticed (or they did, but didn’t want to say anything). This proves my theory that they don’t actually say hi because they want to, but because they feel they have to. Some don’t even look over when they say hi back to me. At least they are being somewhat polite. Maybe they just didn’t want to say anything because they were on their way to work and didn’t want to be late.

Last week Aaron and I put a night aside to set up our “wall of awesome.” We now have a very large shelving unit that takes up most of one wall in our living room. And this large shelving unit is filled to the brim with (wait for it…) BOARD GAMES! That’s right, we have so many, that we can make a wall of awesome. I meant to take a photo of our wall of awesome, to put on here, but then I didn’t. I will do it today, so check back tomorrow for photos. We are waiting for 3 more board games to arrive in the post. 2 are on pre order though, so they may take a while.

Saturday we had an all day early parenting workshop. How to swaddle, bathe, soothe, etc. your baby. It was very helpful. There were all of these infant sized dolls to practise things with. Mostly though people would put them in funny positions (mexican wave, headstand, etc) while no one was looking. The knitted boob also made an appearance when we learned about breastfeeding positions. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard of a pattern to knit a boob. There was one very brave man there. His wife is very very pregnant, due in a couple of weeks and didn’t come to the class because she couldn’t sit in the chairs all day. This brave man however, came on his own. I would find it hard to come on my own, and I’m the primary carer, the milk factory, the giver of birth. I can’t imagine coming on my own if I were a man. Hats off to you brave man.

I told you a while back about my unfortunate belly button freckle that makes my belly button look like a target. Well now it looks like someone has tried to hit the target with something only to miss, and hit twice just above it. It seems the entry and exit for my belly button ring (which I took out long ago as it was starting to look ridiculous) have both stretched as much as they can, and are not turning red as they don’t want to stretch any more. The holes also didn’t used to be that far above my actual belly button, but I suppose under pressure, they decided to head north for a better chance of survival. Lucky I didn’t put any laundry this morning, it’s now started raining. Sorry, that was a random thought. I almost put some in this morning.

I’ve noticed that people around here don’t seem to know how to drive. Yesterday when I was walking to the bus stop after work, I was crossing the street at the pedestrian crossing part of a roundabout. I was nearly to the refuge (in the middle of the road), only one leg still in the road, when a taxi came flying around the corner and honked at me. I looked before crossing, and there was no one coming. So excuse me Mr. Crazy Taxi Man, how dare I be crossing the road at a pedestrian crossing. I just can’t believe he honked at me, like I was doing something wrong. Back to driving school for you Crazy Taxi Man! This morning, on my way to work, I had another incident at the very same roundabout. I had crossed the first part of the road, and was walking in the refuge in the middle, scanning for cars coming as I was walking. There was a car coming from my left, but he had his right blinker on, so I continued to cross. This crazy driver, with his right blinker still on, continued to go straight, and had to slow right down while I was crossing the road. Hmmm…Last time I checked, you don’t put your blinker on when going straight through a roundabout. Maybe the rules have changed since last week??

Lately when I try to go to sleep, Mushi decides it’s time to practise his Tae Kwon Do skills on my insides. Not even a minute after I lie down, it’s practise time. Makes it very difficult to go to sleep, not to mention hard on my insides. For a little baby, Mushi sure is strong! The only problem with Mushi turning out of breech is the kicking. He used to kick the lower part of my belly, and towards the outside (I think he was posterior too), but now, he kicks my ribs, and all the other innards around that are smushed up around that area. He is very active too. They say if you don’t feel your baby move 10 times in a day to go get checked out. I feel Mushi moving probably a hundred times per day.

28 weeks

Pregnancy: 28 weeks 1 Day
Total weight gain: 9 Kilos (but the bump and baby are bigger. Maybe the ass has gotten smaller??)
Baby size: 25cm 9.84in (head to butt)
Baby weight: 1 Kilo (2.2lbs)

Since being pregnant, I have seen the inside of my belly button for the very first time. Before pregnancy, my belly button was just a slit (which I covered with a piercing because I didn’t like it). Now though, the inside is about to become the outside. For a short while, I had a normal belly button, open, but with the inside nicely inside. Currently my belly button looks like something that should be used for target practise. There’s the normal outside of the belly button, making the first ring of the target, but then comes the bullseye – I have quite a large freckle right in the middle of the inside of my belly button (which is nearly the outside now, making it look like a bullseye). So as if having a temporary outie isn’t bad enough, my temporary outie looks like it’s looking at you. I might have already told you about my crazy freckle, and if so, I apologise…I have the baby brain.

The other week I went to put something in the microwave, and something caught my eye, making me let out an involuntary little scream (I am a girl, what can I say). On closer inspection, I could see the offending movement was none other then a cockroach, the first one we have seen inside our apartment (oops, I lie, it was the second). This one though, was very unusual. This one is residing in between the outside glass and the don’t-let-the-microwaves-through mesh in our microwave. Now for the bigger issue here: How did said cockroach get there? The mesh is far too small for even a baby cockroach to get through, or an egg for that matter (they are about the size of sunflower seeds with the shell on). There is no opening between the glass and the mesh, nothing is out of place. He musn’t be able to get out either because he still lives there. That is right, we have had a cockroach living in our microwave for about 2 weeks now. We can’t get it out, he can’t get himself out. I still get a fright every time I go to put something in the microwave. It’s just not natural to have something living in there (and with the baby brain, I always forget about it until I go to put something in there and see him crawling around out of the corner of my eye). Needless to say, we are not taking the microwave with us to the new unit. We will get a new one (and hope a cockroach doesn’t magically appear).

The other day some brand new tenants arrived to live in one of the apartments where I work. They were fresh off the plane from Japan, and don’t speak a word of english. About an hour after they arrived, they came down to the concierge desk (where I work) and tried to tell me something. They kept saying garage, and making a some sort of hand movement that was like opening a door. Of course I had no idea what they were on about, so finally they got their real estate agent Yuka (who speaks beautiful English and Japanese) on the phone to translate. Yuka told me that they had accidentally thrown away one of their passports and thrown the garbage bag down the garbage chute. We had a brand new manager who was in his second day on the job, so he got a nice initiation picking through all the trash in the garbage room with me, searching for the passport. He did finally find a bag containing some Japanese garbage (it had Japanese writing on it), but no passport. I came out and told the upset Japanese tenants (via Yuka), who then insisted that there was not one, but 2 bags of rubbish (how you make 2 bags of rubbish in one hour I do not know). This time new boss had a look on his own. After about 30 mins of searching, he did not find anything. Wouldn’t you know it, later that day the tenants came down with big smiles and held up the passport for me to see. They had never thrown them away after all, but put them in a drawer in their apartment (next time maybe look through apartment before getting people to dig through rubbish??). Speaking of them, they just walked by and smiled and waved at me and said sorry (I’m at work). Aww they are cute (they are quite elderly).

On Thursday night, Aaron and I started our very first antenatal class, Birth and Beyond, at the hospital. As per every antenatal class that has ever existed in movies, we were shown a video of an actual birth. I must say though, it didn’t look quite as bad as I suspected. We also had to do an exercise about what will change when the baby arrives. The girls were to make one poster of things, and the boys another. It was quite funny to see the difference in the poster. The boys’ poster had things like: less time for fishing, more toy magazines laying around (which to them was a good thing as they like toys). Ours was more like: Less time as a couple (bad thing), gives you a sense of purpose. Aaron told me that one of the guys said “less time for titty bars.” Then another said “or maybe more time.” Then another concluded “ok, maybe the same amount of time for titty bars.” Luckily, I’m pretty sure they were joking. We, on the other hand, were discussing how our babies all liked to wake us up at 3 or 3:30 in the morning to have a party in the uterus.

Aaron and I went to Trish and Grandma’s house on Friday night (and so did The Jess and Shane) for a nice family Easter dinner. I would highly recommend staying out of the kitchen while Trish and Grandma are doing any sort of food preparation involving knives. They are both animated hand talkers, and they seem to forget they have a knife in their hands when talking. Grandma came to within 2 inches of The Jess’ ear. I thought she was going to be the new Chopper Reid. We always laugh (and are a bit scared) when we see them with knives. If only we brought the video camera. They don’t mean to be funny, but goodness me, they are hilarious. I’m just surprised there has never been an accident. I suppose that is because we all keep on our toes when we know they have a knife….

When I was little, my mom (I mean the Easter bunny) used to hide chocolate eggs around the house on Easter morning for my brother and I to find. I always thought that was quite fun (and um…still do), so this year, I hid some chocolates for Aaron to find on Easter morning. All was well until he only had one left, the first one (of 8) that I hid. I couldn’t for the life of me remember where I hid that egg (and I had only hidden them about 10 minutes before). So, Aaron and I both searched. We still hadn’t found it some time later and gave up, figuring we would find it. I did eventually find it. I was squatting next to Aaron’s desk getting something out of his backpack when I saw it staring at me from on top the CD filer thing under Aaron’s desk. That is the baby brain for you. You just forget everything!