Arlo is eight weeks old and coming up on his 2-month birthday on Friday!

Within the last week, he has discovered his feet (which he finds especially interesting when they're inside his new stripey socks!). He is also paying more attention to toys and is starting to follow them with his eyes. It's so cool to see him grow and learn new things!

I forgot to mention in my last post that when my mom came to visit, she brought a sweet kitty doll that she'd made for Arlo. What makes it even cooler is that she sewed me a kitty using the same pattern when I was a baby.

This week, Arlo had his first visit from relatives on Patrick's side of the family--his Grandpa Rick, Sunie, and Great Aunt Lorraine. Arlo got lots of cuddles, and we got some relief from crying baby duty :) It's wonderful how excited everyone is to meet Arlo!

Susan was nice enough to share some of her marionberry haul with us last week, so I made jam with it! I used the recipe from the Ball Blue Book, and it turned out well. Many of the jams I've made haven't been very firm (I think I'm too wimpy and don't let them boil hard enough), but this one firmed up nicely--no added pectin needed. We enjoyed the extra jam that didn't make it into jars on some leftover shortcakes. Very nice!

We've got baby smiles! So great :)

Arlo has become alert for longer stretches of time in the last few weeks, which is so fun! There's still plenty of crying, but at least it's balanced out by longer periods of extreme adorableness.

Also, it may have been a fluke, but a couple nights this week, he went 6-7 hours between meals, instead of the standard 4 hours. I want more of that! Sleep is so wonderful.

Last weekend, while Patrick hung out with Arlo, I successfully made and canned the strawberry jam I mentioned in my last post. I used the Favorite Strawberry Jam recipe from The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving. Inspired by Alicia, I made some bread to go with the jam. I used the white batter bread recipe from Smitten Kitchen, but I wasn't that happy with it. It was too salty, as people mentioned in the comments, and it just wasn't all that interesting. At least it was easy to make!

I was excited to find pie cherries at the farmers' market twice in the last few weeks. I pitted and froze half of them and made the others into cobbler (recipe from Rustic Fruit Desserts, like last year). I also made the strawberry shortcake recipe from the same cookbook, and it turned out really nicely, even without whipped cream.

And rounding out our recent summer fruit adventures, I made a batch of blueberry frozen yogurt and turned half of it into popsicles (inspired by Orangette). Tasty!

All of this productivity was thanks to the magic of the sling! I take Arlo out of it when I'm working at the stove, of course, but otherwise I just wear him around the kitchen. I'm still not able to get him to sleep on his own during the day, but luckily I can get a pretty good amount accomplished while he's napping in the sling. As long as I'm moving, he's happy. I'm pretty tired at the end of each day from wearing him so much, but I'm sure it's nothing compared to how I'll feel when he's a toddler and I have to carry him and chase him around! I definitely appreciate Arlo's lack of mobility at this stage :)

In addition to baking with me, Arlo has accompanied us all over town lately. He took his first two bus trips (both on the 4-Division bus downtown) and slept through the whole thing. People on the bus and around town really like tiny babies! It's sweet :)

My trip downtown with Arlo on Monday was especially enjoyable--we went to the farmers' market in Pioneer Courthouse Square (pie cherries don't sell out as quickly there as they do at the Saturday market) and had lunch at the food carts at SW 10th and Alder. I started with yummy dumplings from the Dump Truck, followed by a grilled pear, gorgonzola, and brie sandwich from Valhalla (which, incidentally, is in the trailer that was once the Little Blue Waffle Wagon--I'm happy to be able to visit it in its new incarnation).

Speaking of good food downtown, we've been to the newly-opened Violetta twice in the course of other errands. I had a delicious hand-dipped corndog there, as well as yummy sweet potato fries and (on a separate occasion) beignets. I'll definitely be stopping by again when I'm downtown.

Arlo had a special visitor earlier this week--Nana! This was my mom's first Arlo visit (with many more to come!). We spent most of the time at home and walking around the neighborhood, but we did manage a dinner at Screen Door (always delicious!). I'm glad Arlo finally got to meet his Nana. We tried to take a nice cross-generational picture before she left, but Arlo wasn't having it. Maybe next time...

Finally, I was reminded this past week of the existence of this picture. It's the original Arthur Vinograd (Patrick's grandpa) astride a large pig. I like it :)

Seven week picture! Arlo didn't feel like staying propped up on the pillow this week--he kept bobbing his head around and slumping down as soon as I let go. A little neck strength is a dangerous thing :)

Longer post to come when I have a spare moment. Right now, it's past my bedtime!

Arlo is six weeks old and gaining some neck strength! The pillow is holding up his head in this picture, but when he's on his tummy, he can hold his head up at a 45 degree angle for almost 30 seconds. Impressive!

We took a couple family portraits this time, since it has been a month since the last ones. By the way, the dress I'm wearing is a nursing sundress from Milk. It's super comfy and functional. I like it!

We're not sure if we've gotten a real smile from Arlo yet, but in addition to the neck strength, he is making progress on being able to suck his thumb. He got it once a few days ago, but he hasn't been able to figure out how to do it again, much to his consternation. He's making a valiant effort, but he usually ends up cramming his fist in his mouth and then flailing his arms around and losing it pretty quickly. I'm sure he'll get it soon enough.

We went to the big farmers' market at PSU this weekend--our first time with Arlo. We were hoping to get some sour pie cherries, but they ran out before we got there. We did pick up some strawberries to make into jam though. Canning stuff is trickier now that we've got a baby who insists on being held all the time, but with Patrick's help, I'll get this jam into jars!

Patches has been so sweet with Arlo lately. She seems very protective of him. Most of the time, when he's crying, she'll come up to us and put her paw on our arm, meow, and look concerned. And last night, Arlo was crying, and Patches leaned over and licked his head, like he was a kitten! Awww...

However, we're definitely cautious about letting her be around him when we're in bed. Mostly she just likes to sniff his feet, but once we caught her poking him with her paw, like she was considering trying to sit on his lap, which is obviously not okay, since she weighs about the same as he does. I'll feel better letting them hang out together once he's bigger. Still, it's good to see that she's accepted him as a part of the family and is looking out for his well being, as best a kitty can do.

I like our family :)

Five weeks old! It's hard to believe that Arlo has been in our lives (outside the tummy) for only a little over a month. It has been quite the emotional roller coaster compared to our pre-baby lives, but it has all been worth it. We love this little guy so much!

I guess I last mentioned breastfeeding about two weeks ago. We've made a lot of good progress since then. After the lactation consultation on June 21, something just clicked, and Arlo started nursing pretty reliably (with the nipple shield). I started out with only a few attempts per day and then ramped up to nursing during all daytime feedings when Patrick went back to work (much easier than trying to pump while Arlo napped!). And then a few days ago, we added in some night nursing as well. At this point, we're down to only one bottle feeding per day, which we do in the middle of the night. I think we'll keep it for now, since it gives Patrick a chance to feed Arlo, and it's faster than breastfeeding, so we get a little more time to sleep.

We had a few tough feedings at first, where Arlo alternated between crying and sleeping for hours, and I eventually gave up and fed him with the bottle instead. But things are going smoothly now. The thing I'd like to work on next is making the feedings a little more efficient. I still haven't quite figured out when he's actually hungry versus just sticking his hands in his mouth for comfort, so sometimes I end up feeding him when he's not hungry. He'll nurse for a little while, but he falls asleep pretty quickly without having had a full meal. And then we end up sitting in the glider for two hours while he snoozes and wakes up every so often for a snack. I don't mind (more time to catch up on This American Life podcasts!), but it's not really a feasible approach for when I go back to work. But we still have a while before that happens, and I bet things will go more smoothly as we get more practice.

We didn't end up doing craniosacral therapy, since Arlo caught on nicely all on his own. I appreciate everybody's input about it though. Interestingly, when I asked our pediatrician for her opinion, she encouraged us to give it a try, though she warned us that there was no guarantee that it would work. She said she had worked closely with a lactation consultant in the past, and she had seen good results when people used CST. I wasn't expecting that!

I am so grateful that Arlo has gotten the hang of breastfeeding. It's so sweet to spend this quiet, relaxed time with him. I love seeing his sleepy milk face and mussed hair when I pick him up to burp him, and feeling his little warm hand wrapped around my finger while he's lying on my lap. It's so special to me.

One of the things I'd like to work on in the next few weeks is getting Arlo to nap on his own, so I can get more done around the house. Right now, he does the majority of his daytime sleeping either in my lap after nursing, or in bed with me while I nap too (such a luxury!). I certainly don't object to either of those approaches, but it would probably be good to teach him to sleep on his own, so I can get more done in the future. So far, our sling has proven helpful in getting him to sleep while freeing up my hands. It's pretty impressive how quickly he conks out once he's in it. Last Wednesday, using the power of the sling, I was able to walk to the grocery store, buy a few things, and make brownies to celebrate his one-month birthday, all while he slept soundly. The only problem is that my back starts hurting pretty quickly when I carry him in the sling. I'm hoping that this will be less of a problem as my abdominal muscles continue to heal from the C-section (only one more week of official C-section recovery left! I'm feeling really good, which is so wonderful after those rocky early weeks).

We've gotten to spend some time with friends this week, which is so nice. We went out for ice cream with Susan and Pearl on Saturday, and then last night, we went to St. Johns to visit Star and Grant at their new place. Everybody got some quality baby time, and then we walked to the St. Johns Bridge to see some fireworks. Arlo wasn't bothered by the sound; he slept through the whole thing. Thank you, Sleepy Wrap!

Based on the baby books, we're due for our first real baby smile sometime this month. We're looking forward to that :)

Arlo is four weeks old! We celebrated with a cinnamon roll at Grand Central Bakery and a trip to Mink for a new summer dress for mama. Hey, he can choose the birthday destinations when he can talk :)

Arlo has gone on some fun neighborhood adventures this week. He went to his first farmers' market on Wednesday (the People's Co-op summer street party, no less!). The same night, he went out to dinner for the first time, at SubRosa, one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants. The owner, MaryAnn, is so sweet. She greeted us at the door, told us how cute Arlo was, and then gave us a free piece of cake to celebrate his birthday. I love that we have such a great family-friendly restaurant nearby!

Arlo went on his first picnic tonight, but we had to cut it short, because a big dog was wandering around the park without any owner, and it was very interested in us because I had a take-out container full of spareribs (as it turns out, they weren't very good; I should have shared them with the dog). He seemed like a nice dog, but having him hanging around our baby made me nervous, so we packed up and went home. Oh well! There will be time for a picnic another day.

Here are a couple pictures of Arlo in a Baby Surprise Jacket and booties that Tree made for him. I love the yarn color (it's Malabrigo), and the buttons make it extra special, because I had a hand-knit sweater with Peter Rabbit buttons on it when I was little. What a sweet present!

Patrick's first two days at work went well. He's working from home for now, but I've only had to ask for his help a couple times so far. Even thought it's pretty tiring taking care of Arlo on my own during the day, it's also satisfying. Patrick was doing a lot of the diapering and feeding the first few weeks while I recovered from my C-section, so it's nice to know that I'm capable of taking care of Arlo too. It makes me feel like a real mom!

We had another lactation consultation yesterday, this time with Adrienne at Beyond Birth. In the past, Arlo has done a pretty good job of nursing in the presence of a lactation consultant, but we haven't been able to do as well when we're on our own. But he had a good feed following the appointment yesterday, and another today, which is encouraging.

This doesn't mean all our breastfeeding problems are solved. Right now, he's only able to nurse with a nipple shield, which is a hassle, and he tends to fall asleep before he's gotten enough milk (and then wakes up half an hour later, hungry again). But it's definitely a step in the right direction. The hope is that if we can get him to consistently breastfeed with the shield, we can eventually wean him off of it.

Although Arlo seems to be slowly picking up on breastfeeding on his own, Adrienne also strongly recommended that we take him for a few sessions of craniosacral therapy. In addition to Arlo's residual tongue-tie issues (high palate and needing to learn how to use his tongue properly), she noted that he has somewhat asymmetrical facial features (one of his ears sticks out more than the other, one of his eyes opens bigger, and his jaw is asymmetrical), because his head was in a funny position during labor and was jammed repeatedly against my cervix (sorry, baby!). Sometimes I can see what she's talking about, but other times, I think his features looks pretty symmetrical (and super cute!). She thinks that craniosacral therapy would help correct all of this and make it easier for him to latch on and nurse longer without getting tired. She also thinks that it might help with his gas/digestion problems (something involving the Vagus nerve--I wasn't clear on this). The other lactation consultant we saw was also a big proponent of craniosacral therapy, and our doula has had clients who have had good results with it. We've also heard success stories from a couple of Portland moms. It sounds good, but we're still not sold.

We have been hesitant to try craniosacral therapy, because it doesn't sound like legitimate medicine. We're not worried about it hurting Arlo, since it's very gentle; we just don't want to spend money on something that won't have any effect. Even though it smacks of flim-flammery, I'm inclined to try it, in case it could actually do some good. Patrick is more reluctant, which is understandable. I think we're going to call our pediatrician and see what she thinks.

At yesterday's lactation appointment, we found out that Arlo weighs 10lb, 4oz, which means that he gained 22oz over the past 10 days. Typically, a baby would only be expected to gain 10oz over that time period! It's possible that his weight gain was overestimated because of differences between the scales, but I think we can be pretty confident that he's not wasting away :) On the other hand, we don't want to be giving him milk when he's not hungry, so we're going to try to be more mindful of when we give him a bottle versus a finger to suck on. There's no shortage of things to worry about when it comes to babies, huh?

Patrick goes back to work on Thursday. I am so glad he was able to use vacation time to take a full month off. Trying to take care of Arlo by myself while I was dealing with my C-section pain would have been awful. Luckily, I'm feeling almost back to normal now (we've been taking daily walks, and I'm up to half a mile!), so I should be able to handle taking care of him on my own during the day. Feeding him will be kind of time-consuming, since I'll need to give him a bottle and then pump while he naps, but hopefully we'll keep making breastfeeding progress, so eventually we can cut out the pumping. And any extra work to feed him is totally worth it. We love this little guy. We're so glad he's a part of our family!

Arlo didn't feel like waking up for his orange chair photo this week, which is fair, since he took an exciting trip to Little T for father's day lunch earlier in the day. He stayed asleep in the sling all through lunch and only woke up when we got home. What a good baby!

Here's a bonus picture of Arlo and Patrick, in observation of Father's Day. Arlo's lucky to have such a good dad!

It seems like it's time for a baby update, but there's not a whole lot to report. The big news of the week is that Arlo's umbilical cord stump fell off on Thursday! Now he can take baths in the baby tub. I think he'll like that better than the washcloth baths he's been getting so far.

Not to jinx myself, but I think I'm finally getting over my C-section recovery pains. The referred pain and breathing stuff resolved last weekend, and my incision pain is finally going away. It's about time--sitting in bed all day was getting really old (thankfully, we had a few visits from friends to break up the monotony). The nice thing about it was that it only hurt when I was standing up (especially going up stairs and leaning over), but it was pretty inconvenient to be stuck in bed for a week. I'm so grateful for Patrick--he has been working super hard to cover for me this past week.

As it turns out, it wasn't even my incision that was hurting--it was the area to the right and slightly above my incision (it was hard to tell for sure, since I couldn't actually see the incision for a while, thanks to my postpartum belly). I spent much of last week worrying that the pain meant that I'd torn open some internal sutures or something, and the triage nurse at my doctor's office wasn't able to provide much assurance--she just told me to take it easy and not lift heavy things and call back if I had a fever or swelling at the incision site. Luckily, I had my two-week check up with my doctor on Thursday, and she assured me that this kind of pain is normal. She said they don't know what causes it, but she thinks it's the knot they use to tie off the sutures in the fascia. She had me increase my ibuprofen dose back to what I was on in the hospital, and the pain is pretty much gone at this point. Phew! I can still only be on my feet for about 15 minutes before I get tired out, but that's a lot better than where I was at a week ago. I should be back to baking cookies and walking around the neighborhood in no time. I can't wait!

The pictures below are pretty representative of how we spent the past week--me propped up in bed, and Patrick in the Poang feeding Arlo (and running around changing diapers, doing laundry, washing dishes, and getting food for me when Arlo wasn't eating). Patches is still wary of Arlo and doesn't seem to know what to make of him, but she seems to be getting used to him. She has been hanging out in our bedroom more in the last few days, which is nice. We missed our kitty!

Here's a cute picture of Arlo that Patrick took the other day. That kid makes all sorts of great faces, especially when he's asleep.

Unfortunately, we've been seeing a lot of Arlo's crying face lately.

Within the past week or so, he has started crying and fussing a lot. It seems to be related to gas and general digestive discomfort. Poor guy :( Our pediatrician assured us that this is normal, and it will go away eventually. Since it's possible it could also be related to food sensitivity, I've been trying to avoid dairy for the past few days, to see if it makes a difference. No luck so far. On the bright side, if it's not a dairy sensitivity, that means I can go back to having regular milk on my cereal and enjoying the occasional Burgerville milkshake! But we'll give it a few more days to be sure.

Happy two-week birthday, Arlo!

In addition to the orange chair photo, we took a family portrait in the backyard, which was kind of tough, since our camera seems to only have a 2-second timer option. Patrick had to rush over to get in the picture in time (or not, as in the second picture, which we also kind of like). We've ordered a remote control for the camera, so this problem should be rectified shortly.

And here are two bonus pictures of Arlo sleeping. He's very good at it :)

Oh my, it is an absolutely beautiful day outside. It would be a perfect day for taking a walk to get frozen yogurt, but my C-section incision has been acting up for the past day, so I'm staying in bed with Arlo to make sure I don't aggravate it any further. Patrick is in our back yard doing some much needed yard work. Smelling the fresh air through the window and hearing the push mower going back and forth is almost as good as being out in the sun :) Plus there's an ice cream sandwich waiting for me in the freezer, thanks to Patrick!

Arlo went to the pediatrician again yesterday to get his jaundice and weight rechecked, and he's doing great on both counts--he's within an ounce of his birth weight. Good job, little man! Our next appointment isn't until his 2-month birthday. We're allowed to raise this baby for the next 6 weeks without any doctor supervision? Huh...

Arlo is napping all curled up next to me right now. What a sweet baby he is :)

Not much new to report around here. Arlo is still wonderful and adorable, and we're still having breastfeeding issues. Our lactation consultant came over yesterday afternoon, and we spent two hours trying different nursing positions and techniques, and none of them worked. Arlo cried, and I cried, and it was no fun at all.

It did have a positive outcome though, since it made me realize that I have been stressing out too much about making breastfeeding work. Sure, it would be nice if everything clicked and we could do away with the pumping and finger-feeding, but I need to spend more time enjoying our baby while he's still brand new and less time worrying about how exactly he gets fed.

So we're going to cut back on the number of breastfeeding attempts to only one or two each day instead of doing them with every feeding. We already cut out the nighttime attempts last week, which gained us an extra hour and a half of sleep (yay!). We'll continue with the pumping and a combination of finger-feeding and bottle-feeding (with a special bottle designed to get him to use the proper mouth shape for nursing). It takes a lot of time, but it's working for us right now.

One nice recent development is that Arlo has started waking up for feedings on his own. This is helpful, since it's much easier to feed an alert baby than to wake up a sleeping baby and try to keep him awake through the whole feeding. This is also a sign that his jaundice is going away. Woohoo!

My referred pain is almost entirely gone, which is great. The only lingering effect is that I can't breathe too deeply or else my diaphragm hurts. That means that laughing hurts, but I laugh anyway. I can't help it--Patrick is funny. I also have this weird involuntary breathing thing where every so often I'll inhale sharply. I guess I'm breathing more shallowly than usual, so my body needs to add in some gasps to get enough oxygen.

It has been raining pretty relentlessly here, but it was nice a few days ago, and we took Arlo to the park for the first time (this was also his first non-medical outing). Patrick carried him in the sling, and we sat under an oak tree and watched the big kids play on the playground. I'm looking forward to Arlo being big enough to play there too :)

Have I mentioned lately that Patrick is awesome? He is doing such a great job of taking care of us. I'm so lucky to be raising this baby with him.

And here are a couple bonus pictures from today. I love those little argyle socks and chubby thighs :)

Hey, it's Arlo's one week birthday today! We celebrated by feeding him breakfast in bed. Okay, so it wasn't that special, since he takes all his meals in bed :)

Inspired by Susan, I'm hoping to take his picture every week in our orange chair--kind of a continuation of the belly pictures. Here's the week one picture, as well as an outtake that makes me laugh :)

All three members of our family bathed today, which is a first since Arlo was born. So far, Patrick has been giving Arlo little washcloth sponge baths next to the kitchen sink, but at some point Arlo will be graduating to a baby tub. Arlo does not enjoy the majority of the bath, but he does seem to like having his hair shampooed and rinsed off under the faucet (contrary to what the picture below might suggest).

And two more pictures, just because I can't get enough of this little guy :)

Our visit to the pediatrician yesterday went well. She agreed that Arlo was somewhat tongue-tied and that a frenotomy could help him with nursing. Our totally awesome lactation consultant managed to get us an appointment that same day with an ear, nose, and throat doctor. The ENT agreed with everybody else (rating the tongue tie as a 6 on a scale of super tight frenulum = 10 to Gene Simmons = 1), though he told us we should temper our hopes that a frenotomy would solve all our nursing problems, as it is not just the tongue tie that could be contributing to them. The portion of Arlo's tongue that is mobile is relatively short, and he has a high palate (caused by the tight frenulum limiting tongue movement in utero), both of which can hinder good latching and nursing. His palate may reshape over time, but not right away.

Anyway, Arlo had the frenotomy, which involved a few quick clips of the frenulum under his tongue with a sharp pair of scissors. He cried very briefly, and there was a tiny bit of blood, but he was back to normal almost instantly. I took this picture with our phone while the ENT was examining his mouth; it makes it look scarier than it actually was.

Arlo's tongue definitely has more mobility now, which is great. By doing this now, we may have prevented future speech impediments and other unpleasantness (like not being able to lick an ice cream cone--how sad!). Melissa visited us again yesterday after the frenotomy, and it seemed like Arlo's interest in nursing might have improved a little, but most of our feedings since then haven't been as good. Arlo either falls asleep right away or acts like we're torturing him every time a breast gets near his mouth. I hope I'm not teaching him to hate boobs for the rest of his life!

So, we've got some little mouth exercises to do with him to try and teach him how to use his tongue correctly, and we also just need to be patient and give it time. It's pretty discouraging to have your baby reject the breast pretty much every 2 hours, round the clock. Oh well, at least he's healthy and getting plenty of breast milk from pumping + finger-feeding. It would just be nice if we could cut out the middle man!

Oh, so it turns out the shoulder and diaphragm pain I've been experiencing is referred pain from the C-section. No fun! But it seems to be getting a little better. It's worst when I get up in the morning, but once I've moved around a little bit, it gets less noticeable.

I know, I'm not making it sound very fun to have a baby, huh? But there's also all the awesome stuff, like sitting in bed admiring our son for hours on end. He's so great :) I know, I know--I need to post more baby pictures! Maybe tomorrow...

I had three goals for today: (1) take a shower, (2) reset the thermostat so our house isn't freezing at night (too cold for babies whose hats won't stay on), (3) meet with a lactation consultant about resolving our breastfeeding issues. I accomplished them all!

The meeting with the lactation consultant (Melissa from Luna Lactation) was really helpful, especially since she was able to come to our house and spend a generous 2.5 hours with us. Her assessment is that Arlo is moderately tongue-tied, which explains both his trouble latching on and the speed with which he gets tired and gives up on nursing. A simple in-office procedure should fix this and will hopefully solve our problems. We have our first visit with our pediatrician tomorrow, so we're going to discuss this with her and see what she thinks. We don't want to be too cavalier in having a procedure done on our brand new baby, but if this could fix the problem and help Arlo breastfeed easily, it's best to do it as soon as possible. In the meantime, Melissa showed me some tricks to use while nursing to get Arlo to stay on longer, and they're working so far. It sure would be nice to get the breastfeeding going smoothly so we could do away with the pumping and finger-feeding. It would give us a little more time to sleep, which would be oh so nice!

Although my C-section incision is healing well and hardly hurts at this point, I was hit with crazy muscle fatigue and soreness in my shoulders and diaphragm yesterday and today. Our theory is that it's from all the breathing and bearing down I did during labor, and it just took a little while for my body to register it, since I was on painkillers for the first few days in the hospital, combined with the new baby adrenaline. The soreness has limited my ability to accomplish much other than sitting on the couch, but this is probably a good thing, as I should be taking it easy right now.

Being at home is good, though we're still figuring out what we're doing and trying to get enough sleep. But boy, do we adore our little baby. We just can't get enough of him. I guess that's how these things work :) Here are some new pictures (there are more on Patrick's Flickr stream if you click through).

(To any pregnant women out there--especially those of you doing hypnobirthing--you might want to wait until after you've given birth to read this. My situation turned out not to be what is considered normal in the hypnobirthing curriculum, since I had back labor and a baby with a giant noggin. I wasn't able to have a serene, relaxed labor and delivery, but I'm sure you can! I'm still glad that we took our hypnobirthing classes (and that our instructor, Kristen, was our back-up doula), and I was definitely able to use the visualizations and relaxation techniques successfully in early labor)

So, my labor story! When we last left off, I was closing in on 48 hours of up and down at-home labor after my water broke, and I had gotten some acupuncture to see if that would help get things going. It actually did work, temporarily. Starting around 8pm Friday, my contractions got stronger and closer together, and this lasted until about 5am the next morning (Gracie came over again to sit with me during the night so Patrick could sleep--so, so glad that we hired her! She was such an amazing resource and source of support during this whole experience). Unfortunately, things slowed down again once we'd gotten up for the morning on Saturday, so it was off to the hospital for a little help.

Before going to the hospital, Patrick and I spent some time tidying up the house (cleaning up the blankets and pillows strewn around from all the different baby-turning exercises I'd been doing) and buying some last-minute groceries at New Seasons (more coconut water!--I went through a bunch of that stuff during early and advanced labor). It was nice to get out into the real world for a little bit after being in my own little labor bubble for a couple days.

We checked in at the hospital around 1:30pm on Saturday, and Gracie met us there soon after. I had thought there might be some discussion with a doctor about what to do next, but it turns out the only option as far as they were concerned was Pitocin, and so they hooked me up to an IV around 2pm, beginning with a pretty mild dose. My hope was that since I'd already had some pretty intense contractions in the past few days, I'd be able to handle Pitocin pretty well and wouldn't need an epidural. At first, things were fine, and the contractions were much gentler than some of mine had been at home. We raided the maternity ward kitchen and ate orange popsicles and chocolate pudding and played Bananagrams with Gracie, stopping so I could breathe through surges. Hey, labor's not so bad after all!

Time passed, and they slowly increased my Pitocin dose. Contractions got increasingly intense and frequent and not at all fun.

I don't remember things all that clearly, but I spent the whole night laboring, with tons of support from Patrick, Gracie, and the night nurse, Stefanie, and later on from Anna, the nurse/midwife from my doctor's practice (my doctor wasn't on call that night, but I think Anna was a perfect fit for our situation). I feel so lucky that they were there with me. Patrick was my rock--he was there by my side almost the entire time, reminding me to breathe and doing everything he could to make things better for me. When the contractions had gotten too intense, I gave up on what we'd learned in hypnobirthing and just did whatever Gracie told me to--lots of breathing and deep guttural vocalizations (instead of the whimpering and crying that came naturally). It was really intense and awful, but I also felt really powerful. I'm actually glad that I got to experience it, even though I certainly wouldn't want to do it again.

Since my water was broken, they only checked my dilation a couple times, and I asked that they not tell me how far along I was. I now know that I stayed 8 cm dilated from about 10pm onward, with no forward progress. Later on, the midwife and nurse thought that my cervix had finished dilating, based on physical signs and the urge to bear down, so they had me bearing down for a while toward the end--mostly in a squatting position, supported by Patrick. As far as I remember, I spent very little time laboring in the hospital bed, since the contractions were much worse when I was lying down. With each contraction, I really thought I would be done, and I kept feeling for the baby's head, but it was never there. Around 5:30am, the doctor checked my dilation again and found out that I was still only 8 cm dilated. We now know that the baby was positioned crookedly, preventing him from coming straight down onto the cervix, and so it couldn't finish dilating (and, bonus, he was sunny side up despite all our efforts in the preceding days to turn him, which accounted for the extra painful contractions).

So, after realizing that I still wasn't fully dilated after 8 hours, Anna had me lie down, and everybody gathered around me, and she told me that I wasn't fully dilated and we needed to try something else. Her suggestion was to do an epidural so that she could manually turn the baby so that his head could drop down. If this worked, I would hopefully finish dilating quickly, and then we could finish delivering the baby, still vaginally. If it didn't work, a C-section would be our only choice.

I remember feeling so relieved to hear her suggest an epidural and/or C-section, and I gladly agreed to whatever she wanted to do. I had so strongly wanted to have the birth I'd been envisioning, but I was so exhausted and in pain and totally ready not to be in labor anymore that anything sounded good at that point. I'd spent over 80 hours in labor--I think I gave the natural birth thing a decent shot, you know? :)

So around 6am, I got my epidural, and they turned off the hated Pitocin drip, and after a few more contractions, I was blissfully numb and free of pain. Oh my gosh, I was so happy and relieved at that point. After the epidural kicked in, Anna did her best to reposition the baby, and then we waited for about 30 minutes to see if my cervix had finished dilating. Unfortunately (or fortunately--whatever), it stayed at 8 cm, and it was C-section time! Everybody looked kind of sad and apologetic, but I tried to make it clear that they shouldn't feel bad--I was so ready to be done. And, as it turns out, the baby's head was 14 and 3/4 inches around, which my doctor told me this morning would never have fit through my pelvis. So it's a good thing we had the option of doing a C-section; otherwise Arlo and I wouldn't be in such good shape right now (it's actually pretty amazing that he hung in there with strong vitals through all the labor craziness. What a champ!).

C-section prep went quickly, and soon I was wheeled into a bright operating room, and they brought Patrick in wearing scrubs, and Arlo came out into the world at 7:08am, caterwauling and red. I was so exhausted at that point that I had a hard time keeping my eyes open, but I managed to stay awake and see my new baby before they carried him over to the warming table. Patrick went with him and got in some father-son bonding time, they put me back together, and we headed back to our room for recovery.

Totally not the quiet natural birth followed by skin-to-skin bonding that I'd envisioned, but we still got our awesome baby out of it, and I don't think he'll become a serial killer because he didn't get to do the breast crawl first thing out of the womb :) (and there was about a half hour of quality boob time after we got back to our room)

So that's the story! We've spent the last few days at the hospital, recovering, and we're heading home tomorrow morning. I had some nausea following the C-section, but I was able to start drinking juice Sunday night, and I graduated to an awesome vanilla Tillamook milkshake Monday morning. I'm back on solid foods at this point, and I'm feeling pretty good, though I'm still hobbling everywhere--not surprising since I'm recovering from abdominal surgery. I've been so impressed by the kindness of everybody here, especially the nurses--such sweet, nurturing people. And Patrick has proven to be a totally awesome dad, taking care of diaper changes and swaddling and whatever else has been needed. I knew he'd do a great job :)

We've had some stress yesterday and today because Arlo has been having some breastfeeding issues (mostly just falling asleep after a couple sucks instead of keeping at it) and has been losing weight. We've had a few people mention that we didn't want him hitting the 10% weight loss threshold, though nobody said what would happen if he did. We had an awesome lactation consultant come visit us this afternoon, and she laid out exactly what would happen and what we should do to fix it, which is good, because she did a little off-the-records weighing, and it turns out Arlo had just hit the 10% weight loss mark. Anyway, the solution is to supplement breastfeeding with finger-fed formula for about the next 24 hours until my milk comes in, and then we should be back on track. I feel so much better now that we have a plan for getting his weight back up. What a relief. I'm all for taking the natural approach to birth and childrearing when possible, but this whole experience has definitely taught me that science and medicine can come in handy too. It sure is good to have them available when you need them.

We're heading home tomorrow morning, so I'm expecting things to be quiet around here for a little while as we get used to being at home (and not having food available whenever we want it). Also there's that impending crazy hormone time coming up any day now, so it would probably be good for me to stay offline as much as possible during that time. I'll be back when things return to some semblance of normalcy :)

Introducing Arthur Stanley Vinograd!

Baby Arlo was born Sunday, May 30 at 7:08 am, weighing in at 8 pounds, 15 ounces, and measuring 22.5 inches long. Everybody is doing great; I ended up having a C-section (more on that later), so we're at the hospital for a few more days while I recuperate. I'll come back and tell you more once we've had some time to get to know this little guy!

Here's a little more about his name, since I always like reading about how people chose their baby's name. (I wrote this about a week ago, so I could just copy and paste it when it was time for the big announcement!)

We ended up giving the baby a double-grandpa name--Arthur is from Patrick's grandpa, and Stanley is from mine. I love that we ended up using family names, but we didn't choose the names just because of that (although it would have been much easier if we'd just limited ourselves to different combinations of grandpa names from the start!). Arthur was the only name that was on both of our lists, and Patrick came up with Stanley on his own before remembering that it was my grandpa's name. When we were out at dinner a few months ago, Patrick suggested Stanley as a middle name for Arthur, and I really liked the combination.

As a bonus, naming the baby Arthur also lets me use Arlo (one of the other top names from my list) as a nickname. It's not a traditional nickname for Arthur, but I think it's close enough that it's not too much of a stretch. Hopefully once we get to know the baby better, it will become obvious whether he's an Arlo or an Arthur or something else entirely!

As far as the last name goes, we went the standard route and gave the baby Patrick's last name (I kept my name when we got married). Pre-baby, I'd suggested combining our last names to come up with a new family name, but that idea never really took off, which is fine with me. I think people are used to moms and kids having different last names at this point.

No baby yet! Although my contractions were nice and close together right after my water broke on Wednesday, they slowed down to about one every 20 minutes that night, and they've been up and down since then. They'll speed up when we go out on a walk, but then they taper off again when I lie down. They have gotten more intense, so that's a step in the right direction. We've been hanging out at home, trying all sorts of things to get labor going in earnest, with the help of our doula. I've been having pain in my back during contractions (probably exacerbated by the fact that contractions are more intense after the water has broken), so we think the baby might be sunny side up, so we've also been doing exercises to help him flip.

Not to scare any pregnant ladies out there reading this, but the last two days have been pretty exhausting. Neither of us has gotten a ton of sleep. Whenever I lie down, I'm woken up every half hour by a contraction, which isn't much fun (but hey, at least I'm getting a little sleep!). Patrick has been so great and supportive, and Gracie has done an awesome job of suggesting things we can try and coming over when Patrick needs a break. She took care of me from 1-5am last night so Patrick could get some much-needed sleep. I'm so glad we ended up getting a doula!

We spent most of yesterday trying all sorts of things in order to get labor going, and we were pretty tired and disappointed by the end of the day. Today has been better. We took an early morning walk around the block with Patches (she likes following us when we go on walks), and we've just generally been less focused on how frequent my contractions are and more focused on enjoying each other's company. It has been nice :)

We ended up going to the hospital at noon today so they could check the baby's vital signs, since my water has been broken for almost 48 hours now. There are varying opinions regarding how long a baby should stay in the uterus once the water has broken, and we were kind of worried that the hospital wouldn't let us go once they admitted us. The doctor on call definitely would have preferred to keep us there, but we ended up with an awesome nurse who respected our wishes and let us leave after the tests showed that the baby was doing fine. However, because the risk of infection (to me or the baby) increases the longer we wait, we're planning on going back to the hospital tomorrow if labor hasn't progressed. If that happens, I'll probably end up being given Pitocin to get contractions going, which I'd rather not do, but I've made my peace with the fact that this labor might not go just as I'd imagined. Hey, at least we tried! As long as the baby and I both come out of it healthy, I'll be happy.

After our quickie hospital visit today, Patrick and I went to an acupuncturist that Gracie recommended (Seastar Community Acupuncture), to see if that might do the trick in moving labor along. This was our first time getting acupuncture, and I was really happy with the experience. The practitioner at Seastar is also a midwife, so she's very familiar with treating pregnant women, and she even stayed open late so that I could be treated today. Patrick got a little acupuncture done too, while he was there. After she inserted the needles, we got to nap in recliners for an hour an a half while the needles worked their magic. Yay for napping! My contractions haven't increased in frequency yet, but the practitioner said that it normally doesn't happen right away. And either way, I'm glad we tried it.

So yeah, we're hoping that things will get underway on their own tonight, and if not, we're planning on heading to the hospital tomorrow to let modern medicine help things along. Either way, we should be meeting our baby sometime this weekend. We can't wait :)

(Due warning--this post involves mention of bodily fluids!)

Things just got exciting--my water broke! We were finishing up dinner at Bread and Ink about an hour and a half ago when I felt a couple small gushes. I told Patrick I thought my water might have broken, and I got up to go to the bathroom, and the magnitude of gushing suddenly increased a lot. I sat down really quickly (which luckily stopped the flow pretty well) and confirmed that yes, my water had definitely broken. He went and got some towels from the waiter and paid our bill (and hopefully left a big tip!). Luckily, my pants absorbed pretty much everything, so I didn't leave a puddle in my seat. Hopefully there wasn't too much cleanup to deal with. Still, I don't know if we'll be going back there anytime soon :)

Patrick pulled the car around, and I got up and walked out of the restaurant as quickly as I could, with amniotic fluid continuing to flow down my legs. I saw one lady looking at me curiously, but I think I made it out of there mostly unnoticed. It's crazy how much liquid came out of me! And it keeps coming every time I stand up (I'm typing this from our couch, sitting on top of layers of garbage bags and beach towels). My uterus means business!

Since my water broke, I've been having pretty regular contractions, which are stronger than the ones I'd been having previously, but they're still pretty far apart and not too intense, so we're staying home for now. We're in touch with our doula (we had our meeting with both doulas this morning, so luckily that's taken care of!), so she'll help us decide when to head to the hospital. She said that 80% of women go into full-on labor within 24 hours of their water breaking, so I'm guessing that this baby will be here pretty soon. So exciting!

So it seems like some combination of membrane stripping and foot massage did the trick, or else the baby just decided he was ready to show up! Hopefully you'll be seeing some squishy-faced newborn pictures here within the next few days (or just lots of posts about how I'm tired of sitting on garbage bags all day long). Here we go!

With that pesky cloth wipe project finished, I had time to sew two changing pad covers yesterday. I followed this basic approach, but I modified the dimensions and added some shaping to accommodate the contours of the pads. I made two covers--one for the nursery (in fabric from Denyse Schmidt's Hope Valley line) and one for our downstairs diaper changing area. I used the scraps from the first cover to add some interest to the gray cover.

If you look closely, you can see the gray cover is already covered in cat hair. Patches loves these changing pads--she thinks they're cat beds. I can see the appeal. I figure it's not a huge deal if she likes sleeping in them, since we won't be leaving the baby unattended on the changing pad. As long as Patches stays out of the co-sleeper and crib, I'm happy.

Here are just a couple more pictures showing how I made the covers, in case it's helpful to anybody. My basic approach was to cut out a big rectangle based on the dimensions of the pad (large enough to cover the top and sides, plus a few more inches for the bottom and elastic casing). My fabric wasn't quite wide enough, so I sewed strips of gray fabric on both sides to fix that. I then centered my rectangle (right side down) over the pad and pinned it so that it fit snugly over the top and sides. Then I sewed along the pinned lines.

After that, I trimmed and pressed my seams, sewed the casing around the bottom and inserted the elastic, and added two large button holes for the safety straps to go through (am I really supposed to strap in the baby at every diaper change? That seems like quite a production). Done! We also have old towels in reserve for covering the changing pads when the covers are in the laundry, since I assume they will get dirty on a regular basis.

We had our weekly checkup this morning. The doctor confirmed that the baby has dropped--when she was doing the pelvic exam, she was able to touch his head through my cervix. Crazy! She also stripped my membranes while she was in there, and she said I might start having contractions tonight. Or not. I'm also going to get a pedicure and foot massage this afternoon, so that could help things along. I don't know; I'd be fine having the baby come now, but I'm kind of enjoying maternity leave. I wouldn't mind a few more days of lazing around before the big event :)

Thirty-eight (and a half) weeks! Sorry to keep you in suspense by being quiet for so long. The baby is still in the belly, though he did drop last night when I was getting ready for bed. I felt some brief soreness along my sides and more pressure on my bladder, and then I realized that my stomach had totally changed shape and size, just like that! It definitely feels smaller and lower now. I guess the baby noticed that there was a whole other area he could stretch out into. Pregnancy is so cool!

For reference, the top picture is my weekly belly picture from Thursday, and the next one is how I look today. My hair is also shorter, but that is unrelated to pregnancy :) I guess the change in belly position isn't that obvious in the pictures, but it definitely feels different!

What else...

• I went to the monthly diaper-free baby meeting at Milagros last week, just to check it out pre-baby. Apparently Portland has one of the most active diaper-free baby chapters in the country. Everybody was nice, but I'm not sure if I'll go back regularly. It was kind of discouraging--it seemed like everybody was having problems communicating with their babies. I guess that isn't so surprising. Anyway, it's great that there is a support group available if we do end up trying elimination communication.

• Our doula preparations are almost finalized. I was excited to find out that Gracie was able to get our hypnobirthing teacher, Kristen, to be our back-up doula, which is perfect. What an awesome birth team! We were supposed to meet with both of them this morning to discuss exactly what we're looking for and our expectations for the birth, but Gracie got called away for somebody else's birth at the last minute (the hazards of being a doula!), so we're going to try to reschedule for Wednesday. And if the baby decides to come before then, so be it! He's been very obliging so far. I suggested to him that he might enjoy being born tomorrow, since May 25 is a numerically pleasing birthday, but we'll see what he wants to do. May 27 would also be nice--it's the Golden Gate Bridge's birthday!

• Thanks to lots of hard work on Patrick's part, our house is almost back to normal after all that electrical and plumbing work. Patrick has put up almost all of our new lighting fixtures, and all but a few of the newly plastered spots are painted. I had actually gotten pretty used to the makeshift lighting and patched up walls, but it's nice to have things looking more normal.

  We're actually having three of our windows replaced starting today, which is kind of a crazy thing to be doing at this point. We've had the new windows ready to go for a while, but the contractor didn't want to start installing them until the weather was nicer. They were supposed to start last Monday, but it rained all week (which, although this is Portland, is kind of weird for late May), so they're getting a late start. Two of the three windows should be super easy, and I'm guessing they'll finish those today. The third one (our stairwell window) might get complicated, because it looks like some of the wood around it is rotten, and it's not clear how extensive the damage is. However, the contractor is fully aware of our baby situation, so if it looks like the stairwell work will take more than a day or two do finish, he'll leave it alone and come back later this summer to take care of it. It should be fine. We won't be bringing the baby home to a house with missing windows and stompy contractors :)

• We're still putting the final touches on the nursery, but it's almost ready. Patrick replaced the light fixture with a ceiling fan (it's so cool that he's handy with things like that), and I cleaned out the nursery closet, which was really satisfying. We sold/donated a bunch of clothes and shoes, and then the rest of the closet contents got redistributed to other rooms in the house. The baby's closet is pretty empty now, but I'm sure we'll gradually fill it as he gets bigger and collects more stuff :) We definitely need to get some shelves or another dresser to go in there, but that can wait for a while.

  
  
  

  We also finished the Roman blind for the nursery. It was definitely a joint effort. As with our bedroom shade, I followed the excellent instructions on Terrell Designs. I used Carolyn Gavin's Wild Thyme tulip fabric for the shade. The only thing left to do is to get a cleat for the wall so we can secure the cord out of the baby's reach.

  
  
  

• In other crafty news, I finished sewing about 4 dozen cloth wipes to use as part of our cloth diapering setup. For each wipe, I cut two 5x8 rectangles (one bamboo fleece, one cotton terry), stitched them wrong sides together with a 1/4-inch seam allowance, and turned and topstitched. I did a pretty half-assed job on these, given their intended purpose. It's not like they need perfect corners or anything--they'll be covered in poop soon enough!

  
  
  

  I had originally planned to just zig-zag the rectangles together, which would have been faster, but I liked the sturdiness and maneuverability of the turned and topstitched wipes better. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have bothered making my own wipes when there are so many other more enjoyable projects I could have been working on. These were pretty tedious to make, and they only saved me a small amount of money (my wipes were about 50 cents apiece, versus about 80 cents each for comparable wipes on Green Mountain Diapers). Oh well!

I've been having some fun in the kitchen now that I'm on maternity leave!

• We made a big batch of meatballs in tomato sauce from How to Eat and froze 8 servings. This was our first time trying this recipe, and it's not mind-blowing, but it's perfectly good. I might try the Cook's Illustrated recipe next time.

  

  I've realized that many of our frozen meals involve meat and tomato sauce (in keeping with that, we're slated to add a batch of chili and corn muffins to the freezer within the next few days). I would have liked to have frozen more vegetarian dishes, but I guess it'll be good to have plenty of protein and iron in our postpartum meals. I'd definitely like to get back to eating less meat once things settle down though.

• In my ongoing quest to make more room in the freezer, I've been doing a bunch of baking (I've pretty much fallen off the no-sugar wagon, though I'm still trying to limit myself somewhat). I used up the last of our frozen rhubarb in a strawberry rhubarb double crisp (recipe from Baking). It's nice, but I think I might leave out the crystallized ginger next time. It was a bit too bitey for me when combined with the rhubarb.

  

• And the egg-white-centric baking has continued in full force (I had 28 frozen egg whites to use up!). I made a simple egg white cake, doctored up with 2c frozen blueberries and about 1/4 tsp lemon oil. I felt sure I'd ruined it, since it lost a bunch of volume when I folded in the flour, but it turned out just fine--nice and moist. This is a great recipe for using up extra egg whites without much effort. I might try adding almond extract and chocolate chunks instead of lemon and blueberry next time.

  

• I also made a second batch of chocolate-dipped coconut macaroons, this time using my Auntie Nance's recipe. These were easier to make than the first recipe I tried, and I liked the texture of this batch better. Thanks, Auntie Nance!

  

• And finally, I made a hazelnut brown butter cake with ganache, which was more fiddly than the egg white cake, but very tasty. I don't think I browned the butter quite enough, but it was still good. The ganache definitely makes the cake special.

  
  
  

In addition to doing plenty of baby preparation, we've also been trying to enjoy some relaxing time with just the two of us while we can. We went to the movies, and we've gone out to a couple of nice dinners. Last Thursday, we went to the Farm Cafe for the first time. I don't know what took us so long--we've heard great things about it from our friends. It was a great meal and just a nice place to hang out. As a bonus, the menu is almost entirely vegetarian (with a few fish dishes thrown in). I had the beet carpaccio with goat cheese, the asparagus ravioli, and the oatmeal pie for dessert. Yum! I'd love to go back there when it's a little warmer so we can enjoy our meal on their patio.

I've been scoping out all of our favorite neighborhood restaurants with an eye to baby-friendliness lately. Most of them seem pretty kid-friendly (plus my boss assures me that you can take a tiny baby with you anywhere and just take him outside if he starts to make trouble). I'm glad we'll still be able to get our breakfast boards and Danish butter crowns at Broder after the baby comes without anybody giving us the stink eye!

Hello! Not quite time yet for a belly picture this week, but I figured I might want to do more frequent posts now, since the baby could come at any time, and I'm sure I won't feel like writing a post about this stuff after he's here. So here's what's been going on...

Patrick has been working super hard on baby stuff and general house preparation. On Sunday, he assembled a new FLOR rug for our dining room, so the baby will have someplace soft to hang out downstairs. He made the border by cutting tiles into fourths, which did not seem to be the easiest task (there was some swearing involved). But I think it turned out great! Patches loves it (and loves scratching it). Good thing it was relatively affordable, so it's okay if baby and kitty trash it.

Patrick also installed our car seat this weekend, which is still weirding me out. Every time we go to get in the car, I'm a little confused, because why would we have a car seat in our car--we have no child! I'm sure I'll get used to it soon.

Maternity leave has been great so far, and pretty productive. I initially considered continuing to wake up at 6:30 every morning, to keep some sort of structure in my day, but Patrick convinced me to sleep in while I still can. So I am! It feels very luxurious.

Patrick has moved into our home office now that I'm on leave (he's able to work from home, though he also has the option of working at his company's office downtown). We spent this weekend organizing the office closet, which serves as storage for our bathroom stuff (the only storage in our bathroom is a small medicine cabinet and a couple shelves), office stuff, and my craft supplies. It's so satisfying to have everything organized and on shelves in the closet, rather than having piles of boxes and quilt batting strewn about.

I'm still working on stocking the freezer. I made a batch of chicken and rice, as well as some healthy but unexciting peanut and raisin cookies for when I'm nursing. I'm hoping to also have time to make a couple exciting desserts to freeze. To that end (and to use up some of the many frozen egg whites left over from my ice cream making adventures), I made a batch of coconut chocolate macaroons. Not as good as my Auntie Nance's coconut macaroons (a little too dry in the middle), but they're passable.

Our last-minute doula search worked out really well, and we hired an awesome doula yesterday. Her name is Gracie, and I'm really excited to have her helping us out. Not only is she experienced and reassuring, but she also just seems like a nice person. Plus check out her beautiful handmade business card (she dabbles in paper crafting).

The only catch is that because we hired her so late, she already has plans to be out of town this weekend, so if the baby comes then, she'll have to send a back-up doula. We're scheduled to have a pre-birth preparation meeting with both Gracie and the back-up doula next Monday, so I'm hoping we can make it that long without going into labor. But if not, I'm sure things will work out just fine.

It just so happens that Gracie also facilitates the new parents group at our neighborhood New Seasons, which meets every Tuesday morning. She encouraged me to come to this week's meeting, so that it would be less intimidating to go once the baby is here. I stopped in at the meeting this morning (and brought some macaroons for good measure), and I'm really glad I went. First of all, it's tucked away in the middle of the staff-only area at the store, so I would have been intimidated if I'd had to make that trek when I was all post-partum-y and vulnerable. And also it was just really nice to hang out with a couple moms and new babies and hear what they're dealing with and get lots of good advice on newborn care (like bathing your baby in a roasting pan if you don't have a baby tub. I like it! I wonder if we can incorporate our chicken baster too, somehow). I also got to witness a poopy diaper blowout in person, which was quite impressive. Anyway, I'm definitely planning on going back after the baby's born. One of the things I'd been worrying about in the back of my mind was how to meet other new moms once the baby comes, and this seems like a great opportunity to do that!

We had our weekly checkup today. My group B strep results came back negative, so I guess all the pickles and sauerkraut worked. Yay! We also had our large baby ultrasound, which confirmed that he is kind of large (7lb 11oz, 71st percentile), but not scarily so. My doctor still seems hopeful that the baby will come sooner rather than later, but there was no talk of inducing or anything. So I'll just hang out and let him show up when he's ready. If we make it beyond Monday's doula meeting with no signs of labor, I'll ramp up my efforts a little and start eating spicy food and getting reckless foot and ankle massages and stuff (I do want to try and get a pedicure before he's born, so that I can feel like my feet are pretty, even if I'm not feeling so hot about the rest of my post-birth body).

I'm one centimeter dilated this week, and apparently the baby's head hasn't quite engaged with my cervix yet (once it does, it should speed dilation). The ultrasound confirmed that he's definitely head down, which is great. The tech kept expressing wonder at how "full of baby" I am--apparently he's really crammed in there. She was surprised that I don't have heartburn, since my uterus is as far up as it can go. I guess I'm lucky!

We also learned from the ultrasound tech that our baby is very hairy and has giant man hands. Patrick wants to know if I'm carrying a Sasquatch love child. Also, the baby is still a boy (this tech used the euphemism "apple and stem" for genitalia, but I prefer "frank and beans"). Still no profile shots. This baby has been very shy during ultrasounds. But we'll get to see him in person soon enough. That'll be awesome :)

Thirty-seven weeks! The baby is at term now, so he should be able to function just fine whenever he's born. It's reassuring to have gotten to this point. It also suddenly feels like the baby might arrive at any time now. We went to Ikea last Friday, and afterwards I had a series of contractions that were about 12 minutes apart (luckily they stopped after I went to bed), and I think it kind of opened our eyes to the fact that even though the baby's not due for another 3 weeks, he might not wait that long to show up. Even though there are a lot of things on my pre-baby to-do list that haven't been done yet, I'm feeling strangely at peace with that. I think we're prepared enough. This makes it hard to motivate myself to keep working on my to-do list though, especially since a lot of my nesting energy seems to have gone away lately. Oh well, I had a good run there for a while.

My one big crafty venture of the past week kind of ended in disappointment. The plan was to stencil the baby's dresser like the one in Lena Corwin's Printing by Hand. I already had the stencil templates cut out as part of a rain barrel project that has been neglected ever since we found out I was pregnant, so that saved us a little time.

We spent about a week working on the dresser--Patrick sanded the lime green paint off of it and applied two coats of light gray paint, and then I cut the stencils out of contact paper and applied them to the drawer fronts and the dresser face, and then Patrick added two coats of the dark gray paint. Unfortunately, when I peeled off the contact paper, the paint peeled off in a few places on two of the drawers, and it didn't seem that well adhered on the other two drawers.

If it had just been the light gray paint that peeled, maybe it could have been fixed with some touch-up painting, but the dark gray was pretty poorly adhered too--when Patrick took a putty knife to it, it came right off. The only solution was to sand/scrape the paint off and start over again, which is what Patrick has been doing for the past few nights. If we had more time, we'd try stenciling again (well, I would--I think Patrick's pretty burned out on this project, plus there's no guarantee that it'll work if we try again), but at this point we just want a place to store the baby's clothes and change his diapers, so Patrick's just going to sand the dresser and paint it with a coat of the dark gray--no cool pattern. Oh well!

We're not exactly sure what went wrong. The people at Benjamin Moore seemed pretty confident that Aura paint (which is expensive--geez!) would be good for using on furniture. Maybe it's because we used four coats. Or maybe the drawers weren't sanded enough beforehand? The weird thing is that when the paint peeled off, it took off the remaining green paint too, right down to the wood. It was actually a very effective paint removal approach, even though that's not what we were going for.

That's the only crafty news to share, but we have made other progress on the baby list. I washed all of the baby clothes and bedding, and I shored up our collection of baby socks and diaper covers at Piccolina, so we should be all set on those fronts (well, I have a feeling we'll lose our six pairs of baby socks pretty quickly, but at least we'll have enough for a few weeks, and maybe babies don't need socks in the summer).

We're about halfway done packing a hospital bag (just need to pick up some coconut water and Gatorade for me* and some snacks for Patrick and round up a few other things), and we've finally started looking for a doula. We're starting the doula search so late in the game that I'm mentally prepared to have the baby without one, but I figured it was still worth a try. A lot of the doulas that have been recommended to us aren't taking clients right now, but we've found one who looks promising, and we'll be meeting with her on Saturday. Let's hope the baby stays put until then!

(*Speaking of refreshing beverages, we had some yummy watermelon agua fresca at the farmers' market yesterday, and I've decided that I totally need some of that when I'm in labor! Patrick told me that he'll go to the farmers' market and fill a thermos with it if I happen to go into labor on a Wednesday afternoon. Otherwise, perhaps a quick detour to Por Que No might be in order before we head to the hospital)

Not much to report in the way of cooking, but Patrick made a good dinner earlier this week--kung pao tofu with honey-roasted peanuts and asparagus. The pictures I took of it weren't pretty enough to share, but it was tasty and relatively easy to make. The tofu preparation (marinating followed by baking) gave it a nice texture. Honey-roasted peanuts and asparagus sound like a weird combination, but it tasted good! Definitely worth making again.

Apart from that, we've been eating out a lot lately, just because we've been too distracted to sit down and do any meal planning. I was telling Patrick that any money we've saved on buying baby things secondhand has probably been spent on having other people feed us for the past few weeks. At least we're supporting our neighborhood restaurants!

We went to our last baby-related class this past weekend. This one was held at Zenana (almost all of our classes have been there, and we've liked them all), and it was about newborn care--soothing, feeding, bathing, etc. Although we've read a few books on the subject, it was really helpful to spend an afternoon practicing skills like swaddling and diapering with a doll and having an expert there giving us pointers. It helped us feel more confident and prepared. Patrick's got swaddling down cold, let me tell you! I'm still a little nervous about bathing (especially since our bathroom doesn't have any counters, so there's no obvious place to set the baby down), but I'm sure we'll figure it out.

We spent some time in class learning about the changes I'll be going through in the first few weeks post-partum. It doesn't sound super fun, especially days 3-5, when apparently my hormones will go crazy and I'll freak out and yell at Patrick for no good reason. It sounds like we should try to avoid having visitors around that time, since apparently new moms have a tendency to be super sensitive and take things the wrong way, and then hold a grudge for the rest of their lives. Yikes!

We had another checkup on Tuesday (switching to weekly visits now!). The baby is doing well, and a 2-second ultrasound confirmed that he's head-down (yay!). Our doctor did the ultrasound so quickly that Patrick missed it--she just put the transducer on my belly, said "head!", turned off the screen, and wheeled the cart out of the room (apparently she had stolen it from another doctor and had to give it right back). As it turns out, we'll get a more thorough ultrasound next week, because the baby is still measuring big (my fundal height measurement put us at 40 weeks instead of 36.8, although that could be because he hasn't dropped yet), and she wants to know just how big a baby we're dealing with. Knowing his size won't affect how we proceed--barring any surprises, I'll have a chance to get him out the old-fashioned way, and if that doesn't work, the doctor will help us out. But here's hoping that he decides to show up a little early, so he's not too big! Things are getting a little tight in there these days.

I had my group B strep test at this appointment, as well as my first weekly cervical check. I'm not dilated at all, which is good to know. I had some spotting after the strep culture, which kind of freaked me out, but my call to the doctor's office was returned pretty quickly, and they reassured me that it was a normal side effect of the procedure. Sure enough, it went away by the next morning, and everything seems fine. Phew! I suppose I could have just searched online and gotten the same answer, but I try to keep my distance from pregnancy forums. I don't find them particularly reassuring.

Tomorrow is my last day of work before I go on maternity leave. Being a consultant is nice, because my hours are flexible (I've been cutting back on them slowly, which is how I've had time for all the crafty baby-related activities in the past few months), and I'm not limited to a certain length of maternity leave. As long as my boss and I agree on how much time I'm going to be gone, it's all good. The current plan is that I'll take about 3 months off, and then we'll check in and see how things are going. I'm sure that time will go by really quickly.

Although it could be as long as 5 more weeks before the baby comes, it's hard to believe he'll really stay in there that much longer. It just feels like we're getting close to the end now. I'm getting slower, and I'm having Braxton-Hicks contractions more often, and it feels like the baby has appendages crammed into places that he shouldn't be able to access from the uterus. This just doesn't seem sustainable for another month :) I'm not complaining; I'm still enjoying myself, and I'm generally feeling good (my feet and ankles are only just starting to swell, so hopefully that won't get too bad). I'm up for another month of gestation if that's how the baby wants to do it!