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By rebecca, August 25, 2011 3:23 pm

I think I’m approaching a place — if not quite of zen-like serenity — of at least calm acceptance and lessening anxiety. [Oh god, there are not one, but two flies in this office. They keep landing on my hands as I type and buzzing around my face and I cannot manage to swat them. Om.] Partially, this is because I’m 35 weeks tomorrow which is really the home stretch, so I had bloody-well start accepting things.

Part of it is because we have managed to clear out and paint the third bedroom and located most of our newborn apparatuses (apparati?). I’ve also been relieved of the bulk of my paid work which kind of sucks because there goes the bulk of my income. But it’s also kind of a relief because I no longer have to worry about working ahead and figuring out how to cram a newborn into my already hectic WAHM schedule. This means I’ll have most of September to seriously clean, organize, nest and otherwise get ready for baby. (It also means I’ll be posting more here and including more PR and sponsored posts — heads up! — and writing more elsewhere too, eventually.)

I think part of it is also that I’ve been feeling better. There are still aches and pains, but the alarming, mobility-robbing pains I was having in my pelvis throughout the second half of my second trimester are much less severe. This could just be because I’ve been trying to do less and have learned what will cause a flare up and what helps with one. Who knows? Or maybe knowing that the birth is around the corner means I’m less concerned about coping with achy ligaments and trick hips for a just few more weeks.

I’ve even taken the time to sit quietly at night and feel the baby moving and squirming and kicking me in the ribs. (Either that or punching me; we’re not a hundred per cent sure if this babe’s head down yet.) I’m trying to relish these last weeks and days of being pregnant, looking down in awe at how my body has accommodated a growing baby and more than a few extra pounds of maternal fat stores. I’m anticipating what it will be like to hold a newborn baby once again and enjoying watching the older kids get more and more excited as the due date nears. This will likely be the last time I get to do this, so it’s nice to be able to live in the moment.

35 weeks. We're all just pretending now that my shirt meets my pants, okay?

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By rebecca, June 23, 2011 12:24 am

I’ve got a checklist a mile long to get through in the next three months. I have to reach for a paper bag just typing that. I’m having a baby in three months and I don’t even know where my Moby Wrap is or my breast pump or any of the baby clothes. And what about a snowsuit? Won’t it need a snowsuit?!

Still, through the power of obsessive fretting, I have managed to cross a couple biggies off my list lately.

Number 1, the car seat. Yes, my dear friends, I figured out how to squeeze three car seats across. Behold:

I especially love how when I shared this picture on Facebook all the mothers of three were astounded. My husband, on the other hand, doesn’t quite seem to understand the feat of engineering involved. Engineering and hours of internet research on which brands of car seats would fit best. From left to right you have the original Britax Marathon that we bought for Colum and Irene now uses — it’s huge. Then there’s a Sunshine Kids Radian, the slimmest car seat on the market, and a Chicco Keyfit, among the skinniest infant bucket seats. It’s a tight squeeze and replacing the Marathon with another Radian or a booster seat was my contingency plan if this didn’t fit. I may try putting the bucket seat in the middle so I can recline the driver’s seat a tad more, but I’m afraid it will be too snug to snap the bucket seat in and out of the base easily. Whatever, it’s done!

Number 2, air conditioning. Do you remember last summer? Do you? Because I do. I remember day after day, week after week, of unbearable heat. There was just no break. You can usually count on a couple weeks worth of serious heat wave in a Toronto July, but last year it was the whole month and August, too. The main floor of my house was a warm and sticky mess and I mostly just flopped around barely able to function. The second floor was like the furnace of hell. We put our one portable air conditioner in the kid’s bedroom and ran it overnight and sprawled out ourselves before a multitude of fans. Never again, I said. Never again. That brings us to this summer, during which I will be enjoying the third trimester of my third pregnancy, and we still had no a/c! Until yesterday. Cue the angels singing, please.

Now I only have to get Colum to the dentist and the doctor, get Ed to get his driver’s license so that I am not the only chauffeur this family has, clean out all the junk in the basement “office” (including a fridge and a stove), move all the actual office stuff from the unfinished third bedroom upstairs, finish the bloody room and figure out what baby gear I have and where it is. Why do they not put GPS’s on Moby Wraps?!

Oh, and I have to do all of this while taking care of my other two kids (remember them?) full time and doubling the number of work hours I put in from home so that I might get ahead enough to actually take a couple of months off when this bambino arrives.

And I get to be very pregnant while I do it.  That means that on top of being tired and slow, I will also be completely irrational and you will likely find me on my hands and knees meticulously cleaning under the stove instead. Because of course.

Comments (2)

By rebecca, May 27, 2011 2:31 pm

Today was Pizza Day at Colum’s school. I love Pizza Day with all my heart because it means I don’t have to make him lunch at 11:15am since he’ll eat when he gets to school.

So my plan was to walk Colum to the bus stop and then continue into the Junction to pick up pizza slices from Vesuvios for Irene and I. How could this plan possibly fail me?

Well, as we were walking together and pushing the empty stroller, I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my abdomen. It must be gas, I thought, but boy did it hurt. It also seemed to have triggered a Braxton Hicks contraction and I felt my entire midsection tighten up. I had to stop walking until it passed. We then continued around the corner when it happened again: a sharp stabbing accompanied by a tightening sensation. This time I actually knelt on the sidewalk while waiting for it to pass. Irene knelt down beside me.

This couldn’t be a contraction, could it? Nah. I’m only 22 weeks along. The baby’s not even viable yet. I always go into labour at 39.5 weeks, everybody knows that. Even if it does turn out to be something, I thought, the midwives and doctors will be able to stop it. Sure. There’s no reason to panic . . . unless I have to go on bed rest! Who would take care of the kids then? We would be so utterly and completely screwed.

I pulled myself together and tried to continue walking again when I felt a familiar urge. “Irene, get in the stroller because we need to go home right away. Mommy needs to poo.”

Ahem. So yeah, everything’s fine. No contractions, no labour, no bed rest. Just some killer gas pains/bowel movement and ill-timed Braxton Hicks.

But, alas, no pizza for me.