What did YOU do this weekend?

I didn't do much...

besides have a baby!!!

The whole story will be coming later, but for now, I'll just leave you with a thousand words:

Our cats are also guinea pigs

One of the fun parts of preparing for Baby D's arrival has been testing out all the baby products.












Apart from some slight shredding, I think the Moby Wrap is good to go.

Pregnancy Update

Yes, I'm still pregnant.

But things are looking up! I am not quite as swollen or puffy-feeling. In fact, I lost four pounds in one week-- all of it water retention! So that's good. My overall sense of well-being is quite fine.

Unfortunately, my blood pressure is still high. But my midwives assure me that everything else looks just peachy, and they have a really good gut feeling about how my pregnancy is going, so we're just going to keep a close eye on the blood pressure and proceed as normally as possible.

Except-- they put me on a diet that I HAAAAAAAAAATE. No sugar, no refined carbs, and there are even a few complex carbs I can't have, like corn and potatoes. I can't even have fruit. I have to eat 70-90 grams of protein every day (!!!) and take a bunch of supplements. For this carb-lovin', sweet-toothed gal, this has turned out to be my greatest pregnancy challenge of all. I know it's a really dumb thing to complain about- of all the interventions I could be going through, this is a breeze- but GOSH! I can only eat so many eggs and cheese sticks!!!

An artistic rendition of my past week.

I've been a little down about it for the past couple days (and certainly that much more eager to get that baby out!), but I'm determined to get out of this funk and try to figure out a way to creatively eat my protein. Do you have any good egg or meat recipes?

Complications

Complication is not a pleasant word to hear, and it is downright scary when you are pregnant-- and unfortunately, I'm experiencing a bit of one myself.

The past several weeks, my blood pressure has been high (around 140/100). Fortunately, other than having puffy ankles, everything else looks good. Unfortunately, high blood pressure can lead to preeclampsia. Also, my midwives had a client once, who like me, had high blood pressure, and as soon as she gave birth, her blood pressure skyrocketed, requiring immediate medical attention. So, naturally, my midwives are quite concerned, and at our appointment today, they told me that if my blood pressure doesn't go down soon, I will more than likely need to transfer care to a doctor and give birth in a hospital!

I don't feel particularly alarmed. And I'm not annoyed with pregnancy, or with Baby D. However, I am quite a bit crestfallen that my vision of a quiet home birth might not come to pass, and I'm also quite frustrated because I'm doing everything humanly possible to lower my blood pressure, and it doesn't seem to be working. Eating tons of protein? Check. Getting some physical activity? Check. Resting the rest of the time? Check, and double check. Laying off the cigarettes and booze? Well, still working on that one...

Totally kidding about that last one. Just seeing if you were paying attention!

So, I'll be keeping up my awesome lifestyle ways, and crossing my fingers when I go in for another appointment on Friday! Make sure that your comments aren't stressful! ;-)

Adventures in Hairdressing

One aspect of pregnancy that I was not prepared for was the number that it does on your hair. My mom says that her hair lost its curl when she got pregnant, so I always assumed that's just what would happen to me. Well, nine months later, I still have plenty of curl, but almost as soon as those blue lines showed up on the pregnancy test, my hair became extremely coarse and easily tangled into large rat's nests-- not such a great thing for nearly waist-length hair!

Having suffered several traumatic haircuts from hairstylists who have no clue how to cut curly hair, and also being a cheapskate, I procrastinated on getting a haircut for a very long time... until I read about Cool Mum's success with cutting her own hair. The heavens opened and angels sang, "Chop it offffffff.... chop it offffff....."

I figured, why spend money to get a bad haircut when I could get the exact same results at home?

So I bought a quality pair of hair shears for $14 (still less than the cost of a haircut) and took a deep breath! Following the advice of this post on cutting your own hair, I pulled it all back in a ponytail and started snipping away. About halfway through, I got nervous about getting an even cut, so I asked Adam to finish it. Poor guy! I don't know why I thought asking someone with absolutely no experience in women's hair was a good idea. When the ponytail was gone, and I turned around to face the mirror, the ending side was at least an inch shorter than the starting side. Whoops! But I actually really like the shorter length, so Adam is saved from sleeping on the couch. ;-)

The site I just mentioned says to make layers by pulling all the hair into a high ponytail and cutting some length off that, but since I part my hair on the side, it made for some funny-looking layers. So, I just pulled sections all around my part and shortened them to roughly the same length.

Overall, I'm pleased with the way it turned out. There are some litle goofy parts to my haircut, but the price was right!

I will never get those Myspace poses down. :-P

Here's a side-ish view!

I lost a good nine or so inches of hair!

Let me tell you, the absence of hair on my neck is feeling p-r-e-t-t-y good in this 100+ degree heat wave we've been having. And- the best part of all- there are no more tangles!!! I seriously did not care what my hair looked like, just as long as it would stop tangling! So I'm happy with it-- perhaps you could call it shear delight? ;-)

Thrity-Seven Weeks!

Today is a good day to be Baby D, because today s/he is officially full term!

(You can come out anytime now, little baby!)

Starting at eleven weeks gestation, we took one picture every week or so and put it on facebook to chronicle Baby D's growth. I'll spare you having to look at all twenty-five pictures, but I thought it'd be fun for you to to see how things went month-by-month!


So without further ado, let's start at Week 11, when I was able to stop throwing up long enough to pose for a photo-op:


And to think I actually thought I looked fat back then. Sigh. :-D

The next week, at three months:

Four months:

Nineteen weeks (almost 5 months). This was how I looked that Friday...

...And here I am on Monday, three days later. I POPPED!

Five months, with Adam.

Six months.

Seven months.

Eight months.

Nine months, taken last week!

...which brings us to today, at 37 weeks.

Why yes, I AM wearing my husband's shirt. Don't judge me until you've walked a mile in my maternity pants. Speaking of which, you may have noticed that I'm wearing the same pair of maternity jeans in the majority of these pictures. I totally scored them at Ross for 50 cents! It always makes me smile a little to put them on, because I have DEFINITELY gotten my money's worth out of them. Let's hear it for the clearance rack!

So there's your little slideshow for the day. Hope you enjoyed seeing it as much as I enjoyed putting it together!

My Sexist Deodorant

I can't help but giggle a little every morning, when I reach for my deodorant and see this picture on the front:

I can't quite decide what message this company is trying to send, but I've narrowed it down to a few disturbingly sexist possibilities.


A: UGH, men need help with EVERYTHING. They can't even apply their own deodorant! Take that, chauvinist pigs!


B: Applying deodorant is women's work! A little to the left, wench! I hope you've learned your lesson about submission!


C: Crystal Deodorant is the aluminum-free, hypoallergenic version of Axe. Just wear this stuff, and you will get the man or woman of your dreams! The obligatory shoutout for Axe, which is so egregiously horrendous in its advertising that it deserves its own post.



And If you look even further, there are other scary messages embedded in that picture:


D: A good time with your significant other involves a darkened room and sensual deodorant play. Oh dear, if this is true, then Adam and I have been doing things ALL WRONG.


E. You have options other than steroids. See that guy's muscles? He totally got those from using this deodorant. Of course, that might be because you apparently need to be flexing and posing in order to properly apply this product.



So that is what I have read into my deodorant label. My college English professor would be so proud! Personally, I use the deodorant for its deodorizing properties, as opposed to a man-attractant or a Women's Lib statement, but, you know, I'm weird like that. What do you think? Have I missed any other important subliminal deodorant messages?