The Bump Chronicles- week 35

I find it half amusing/ half annoying when several people demonstrate that they are masters of observation and state the obvious with comments like “that belly is getting bigger!” I usually smile and give a slightly sarcastic “I think it’s supposed to do that, I would worry if it was shrinking“.  I really don’t understand why people get so shocked at the bump doing what it is supposed to do.

And yes, I know that my belly has been getting bigger, I live with it 24/7, there is no way I could have missed that, I even wrote this list:

You know your baby belly is big when…

– you keep hitting it with doors, including car doors, fridge doors and cabinets, when you close or open them (ow!)
– you instinctively turn sideways to squeeze through a narrow space, only to end up more stuck
– you can use it as a table when your sitting down.
–  your maternity shirts don’t fit so well anymore
–  you knock things over with it!
– you have trouble getting in and out of a public bathroom stall…why do those doors have to swing in??
– It’s an act of congress to flip over in bed every night!
– when you have food stains in the same spot on all of your shirts
– when you drop something and debate on whether or not it’s worth it to pick it up
– you walk down the stairs and can’t see the steps below
– you bend over to tie your shoes and it sounds like you’re dying.
–  you can’t sit up straight to eat anymore, so you lean back and put the plate on your belly.
– you try to cuddle up to your hubby and kiss him and you’re still WAY too far away!
– you snap the elastic on several pre-pregnancy skirts that you were trying to wear
–  in the middle of the night you have to wake up to get momentum going in bed to flip to your other side.. then when you do and finally get comfortable again… you have to FRIGGIN PEE!!
–  you are eating and the food didn’t just fall ONTO the belly – it bounced OFF the belly and hurtled ACROSS the room at great speeds
–  you feel like a turtle on its back trying to get out of bed and your husband makes that your new nickname

On the evolution of the nesting instinct….

So at first I had no nesting urge, then it showed up in a weird way by making me want to throw away anything not baby related and go shopping for baby stuff. By now it has evolved into a must get everything baby washed, sorted and organized!

It sucks that we don’t have a washer at home or I would already be done…  that would have been a great way to satisfy the urge and deal with insomnia at the same time.  Sadly the nearest 24 hr laundromat is in Ft Pierce and hubby doesn’t care for that area during the day so he wouldn’t approve of his wife going there by herself at 2am.

The prefold cloth diapers have to be pre-washed 4-5 times to make them soft, quilted and absorbent and that would be an expensive and time consuming endeavor at the laundromat so I need to get started now if I want to be done before baby gets here.

I thought that the nesting urge would come with a surge of energy but it looks like the energy part called out sick. My brain is spinning with all it wants to do but my body is totally uncooperative, add to that the fact that we’ve had a very busy week with minimal rest and I have gotten very little accomplished.

Daddy Fox finds my nesting comments cute and amusing but has no idea to what extent it bugs me. Before I would be all “I still have a month to get it done” but now I’m feeling like I’m running out of time, like I have to HURRY! What if baby arrives next week?! I don’t have the cloth diapers ready! I don’t have a sling yet! aaahhhh! Yes, this has triggered insomnia and dreams on the topic once I do fall asleep.

On epic swelling…

Swelling has now become the most stubborn third trimester symptom. It started with me having to take my wedding band off because it didn’t fit anymore and by now it has evolved into permanent cankles and giant feet. I even had to enlist hubby’s help in removing my toe rings as they were starting to make indentations in my toes and it felt like blood circulation would soon be compromised.

This is the first time in approx 13 years that I don’t have anything shiny on my feet. The swelling has gotten so bad that I practically live in flip flops now, I can’t fit into most of my shoes anymore, not even my boots! And those that barely fit feel like medieval torture devices. I even ended up having to make an emergency shoe shopping run midweek to get elastic sneakers that I could wear to work.

I do pretty good on the drinking fluids part but I don’t have the luxury to put my feet up often. By now the swelling is such that even though it gets better after a night’s sleep, it doesn’t fully go away and I’m starting to forget what my feet used to look like.

On parenting…

People have commented on how they think that my parenting style is weird with the whole baby wearing, cloth diaper, elimination communication, etc.   it’s actually not as weird as you might think.  I have found myself identifying with the Attachment Parenting model and I have come across a lot of people that follow it as well both on the internet and locally, it is refreshing to see that I’m not the only crunchy mama in the Treasure Coast.  Obviously I’m adapting some of their principles to suit our lifestyle but it pretty much summarizes how I feel, you can see the 8 principles of attachment parenting here.

Even if I didn’t know of attachment parenting I would still wear baby, strollers have an useful place for certain scenarios but I don’t think that they should be the primary mode of baby transportation.  I find it funny that people complain about baby wearing being complicated when to me a stroller is more complicated!  I agree some slings are easier to learn than others but it’s a matter of finding what works best for you and after the initial learning curve it is easier, faster, a lot less bulky and a lot better than a baby stroller.

Another thing that some people complain about is why we have an Amazon registry, some don’t even consider it a registry and like to say that we’re not registered anywhere (wtf?).  Why would I be so “inconsiderate” and not register at Babies R Us or Target?  Various reasons, first an foremost because they simply do not sell most of the things that we need/want and I hate to be limited by a store’s inventory, I haven’t found a single store that remotely comes close to having every item that we would want.

Amazon offers an Universal Registry, meaning that we can add items from ANY online source, including handmade one of a kind items made by WAHMS, I wouldn’t be able to add Etsy items to a store registry.  Their prices are lower in general than Babies R Us and Target and most things come with free shipping if Amazon itself sells it.

We do have a handful of Babies R Us items in the registry to please those people, if you want to pick up something at the store, I can simply mark the item as purchased in the registry and Amazon doesn’t complain about it not being purchased from them (unlike Babies and Target).  So it’s not like anybody is tied to anything.

Today we went to the beach since it’s the first time we have a common day off in a while and due to the environmental sadness we decided to take advantage of something that we have been taking for granted while it’s still available to us.  It saddens me deeply that baby Fox may not have the opportunity to enjoy the ocean right where we live.

I don’t have a maternity bathing suit and wasn’t going to waste money on something I would use once so I dug up my old bathing suits, sadly because I don’t use them often enough I only found one matched bikini set in the my drawers.  This is from 2007 and 60 pounds ago so the bottom was tighter than it should have but it got the job done.

So I now present to you, the bump- bikini edition…

We had a good time while we were there but as the sun kept rising the heat started to get to me and I had to seek shady shelter but not before we went into the water and the waves massaged the bump.

While we were in the water daddy Fox yells out “holy $hit what is that?! watch out!”, by the sound of his voice I would have thought that there was a shark right behind me.  I turned around to see this big dark mass coming up right behind me under the water so I announced “it’s just a manatee!”.  The sea cow swam over to check us out, got pretty darn close stuck its nose out of the water, turned around and swam back the way it came.  Odd. I have encountered manatees before but only in rivers,  never before in the ocean.

That’s a story that we’ll be telling baby Fox about his/her first visit to the beach…

We also took an Infant CPR class courtesy of a friend who does that for a living.  I hope that I never have to use what I learn but must admit that it was simpler than I feared.