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!

Thirty-six weeks! I'm in my ninth month of pregnancy now, and strangers are not shy about commenting on how pregnant I am (which I have no problem with--I think it's kind of cool!). Surprisingly, I haven't had any unsolicited belly touching, except from a very friendly four-year-old girl at Chaos Cafe, who not only touched my belly, but also gave the baby a kiss. It was sweet :)

We just got back from a quick overnight trip to Hood River, to celebrate my 30th birthday. We drove up yesterday afternoon and had a very nice birthday dinner at Sophie's--tender gnocchi with morels, fava beans, and other spring vegetables. And for dessert, tapioca pudding. Yum! I'd definitely go back there next time we're in Hood River.

We stayed at the Columbia Gorge Hotel. I was especially impressed with the customer service and the awesome views (there's a waterfall right in their backyard!). Breakfast was tasty, though not as amazing as Sunset had led me to believe. The highlight was when the waiter poured honey onto our huckleberry scone from 4 feet above the table ("honey from the sky"), as a tribute to their backyard waterfall. I enjoy a little breakfast theater every now and then :)

After breakfast, we wandered around downtown Hood River. My favorite part was getting ice cream at Mike's and eating it while soaking up some sun in the Adirondack chairs outside their shop. The weather was very obliging! We had lunch at Full Sail Brewery, but we skipped their free tour and headed back toward Portland instead.

We took the Historic Columbia River Highway both there and back, which was one of my favorite parts of the trip. On the way home, we stopped to check out the Bridge of the Gods and the Bonneville Fish Hatchery (Herman the Sturgeon is large!), plus Horsetail Falls and Multnomah Falls. We also stopped at the Vista House at Crown Point and enjoyed some awesome views of the Columbia River.

Although Multnomah Falls was impressive, I actually liked Horsetail Falls better because there was hardly anybody there, and we were closer to the waterfall. My being nine months pregnant kind of limited how much exploring we could do, but we'd like to go back and do some hiking in the future. It's such a pretty area.

We've made some more good progress on the baby front this week:

• This past weekend, we made a trip out to Beaverton and bought a car seat at Segal's. Based on the recommendation in Baby Bargains, we got a Graco Snugride 35. They come in some cute patterns, but the only one Segal's had in stock was plain gray, and we didn't want to order one and go back to Beaverton to pick it up, so we just got the gray one. I have enough other patterned baby items that a neutral car seat is fine with me. As long as it keeps the baby safe, we'll be happy!

• Speaking of patterned items, I sewed two envelope-style pillow covers to use with the Poang and glider. I used Nano Iro Hana Yura fabric for the fronts and plain Kona cotton for the backs. They make me happy :)

  

• I also made two super easy newborn caps out of an old T-shirt of mine. Using my sewing machine with knit fabrics is kind of frustrating, but these were pretty forgiving. I embellished one of them by attaching a few extra strips of fabric to the front. I'm tempted to sew a bunch more with the other old shirts I have saved up, but I figured I'd wait and see if we actually use these two before making more.

  

• I also made reusable nursing pads this week. I looked at Etsy to get an idea of what size they should be and what types of fabrics people use. I ended up cutting 4.5-inch circles of fabric--1 bamboo velour circle and 2 bamboo fleece circles per pad (the velour goes next to the skin). If we'd had any old flannel blankets lying around, I could have used those instead. I stacked the circles on top of each other and then zig-zagged around the edges. Because the velour was stretchy and I used a normal sewing machine instead of a serger, this was not the prettiest sewing job, but I'm okay with that.

  

• I have my Group B strep test next week, so I've been eating pickles and sauerkraut for the past few weeks. Our hypnobirthing teacher told us that these foods may inhibit the growth of the strep bacteria, and I figured I might as well give it a try. People do weird things when they're pregnant, huh?

This is kind of random, but I wanted to make a note for posterity--a few days ago, we were looking for wire shelving (to help organize our office/guest room closet, now that we're moving stuff out of the nursery closet). Our search led us to Krueger's Supply, which we'd been told sometimes has used wire shelving. On the day we visited, they only had new shelving (which is kind of pricey), but they also had all sorts of other cool used industrial items, like old gym lockers and big ladders on wheels. It was just a fun place to explore. We didn't end up buying anything from them, which worked out well, because on the way home, we saw a set of used wire shelves in front of Lounge Lizard, so we got those instead. That's the second time that Lounge Lizard has had exactly the furniture that we were looking for. Yay for cool Portland stores!

I made polenta casserole this past week, in an effort to make a large amount of reasonably healthy food for dinners, so we'd have more time to devote to the other stuff we're working on. I think I kind of sabotaged the recipe, because I used the lame salsa that I canned last summer, and I threw in some extra beans and some spinach to make it healthier. Not surprisingly, it turned out pretty boring. It's probably worth a remake, following the recipe a little more closely (and maybe adding more cheese--that's always good!).

And in my continuing effort to make more room in the freezer, I baked individual rhubarb and sour cherry crumbles with oat-pecan topping, based on the recipe in Rustic Fruit Desserts. The rhubarb makes this crumble pretty tart--I think it would be perfect with a big scoop of ice cream on top. We didn't have any ice cream, so I added some milk to mine and ate it as a mid-morning snack, and that helped cut the tartness nicely.

Thirty-five weeks! As Patrick pointed out, the expiration date on his yogurt is now after our baby's due date. Not much longer now...

• Our pre-baby education continues. This weekend, we went to a breastfeeding class at Zenana. The class made it seem easy. I hope it will be! The good news is that if we have any problems, we can call the lactation consultants at Beyond Birth, and our hospital also provides lactation consulting after delivery. So we should have plenty of support if we need it. And although I am very committed to making breastfeeding work, I wanted to point out that all of the formula-fed babies we know are awesome, so if we need to use formula for some reason, it won't be the end of the world.

• We painted the nursery on Sunday, as planned. Yay! Patrick did a good portion of the work, especially on the ceiling, but I helped cut in the parts of the walls that I could reach.

  
  
  

  Like I said in my last post, we went with the YOLO Colorhouse paint in water.01 and leaf.04. We love the ceiling color. At first we thought the wall color was too bright, but we're getting used to it now. Besides, it's a child's room and it doesn't get a ton of light--it's allowed to be bright. We were really happy with the paint. It did have a little bit of painty smell to it, but not at all overwhelming, and it dissipated quickly. I'll post some better pictures once the nursery is a little more put together.

  

  Patrick set up the crib and moved our little corner bookcase into the room this morning, and we're going to work on painting the changing table/dresser this weekend. It'll be good to have that ready to go, so that we'll have someplace to put the clothes and diapers. I feel like we're getting somewhere now. That's a relief!

• We're also planning on making a trip to Beaverton this weekend to buy a car seat at Segal's. Probably a good thing to have before the baby comes, unless we want to walk home from the hospital. Well, I suppose we could take the bus, but I'm guessing I won't be in the mood :)

• My OB appointment on Tuesday went well. Everything is normal (the doctor proclaimed "great baby!" after listening to his heartbeat--always a nice thing to hear). Based on palpating my stomach, the doctor thinks the baby is head down. I'm not sure if my fiddling around with him actually made him turn head down, or if he just took care of it on his own, but that's good news. She'll do a more rigorous evaluation at our next appointment in two weeks, and if she can't tell for sure by palpating, she'll do an ultrasound. But for now, we're going to just hang out and assume that he's in the right position.

• In general, I'm feeling great, and I'm deriving much enjoyment from waddling around and having to get up in the middle of the night to pee. I don't know, I think I'm just happy to be having the full pregnant lady experience. It also helps to know that it'll only be this way for another month or so. If it were going to be like this for the next 20 years, I think I'd be a little cranky. Another nice thing about getting up in the middle of the night is that the baby usually wakes up, and then I get to lie in bed and be quiet and just enjoy feeling him move around. The only bad part is that sometimes my brain wakes up too, and then I spend an hour or so awake at 3am, thinking about all the things on my to-do list. Oh well!

Not a lot to report on the food front, since I've been distracted by baby projects and haven't done much meal planning. But I did make a second double batch of lasagna for eating and freezing yesterday. This one was vegetarian, with spinach, mushrooms, and asparagus. No picture, since it looks pretty much identical to the lasagna picture I posted last week. I used the same recipe as last week, but I omitted the meat, added 20oz frozen spinach to the sauce toward the end (this is for a double batch), and then added about 1.5c of roasted mushrooms and asparagus on top of each sauce layer (roasting 1lb sliced mushrooms and 1 bunch asparagus gave me the right amount of vegetables). Good stuff!

And then in an attempt to clear more space in our freezer to make room for all the lasagna bricks, I used a bunch of the pitted sour cherries that I'd been hoarding since last summer to make a cobbler (same recipe that I used in July). I thawed the cherries for about an hour before putting them into the cobbler, and it turned out just fine. I'm looking forward to this July, when we can buy more (though I don't know about the logistics of pitting cherries while holding a 1-month old. Sounds messy).

We are now well stocked with burp cloths and hooded towels. I know it's not necessary to have nicely bound burp cloths, but I think they'll make me look forward to cleaning up baby spit-up a little more :) It also saved us a little money compared to buying from Etsy or high-end baby websites (the hooded towels came out to about $16 each, and the burp cloths about $3 each).

Making the burp cloths and towels was also a great lesson in applying binding and making mitered corners (I'm not a quilter, so this was all new territory for me). I started out following the hooded towel directions in Simple Sewing for Baby (a very cute book!), where you make bias tape, sandwich the item to be bound in the middle of the folded tape, and sew everything together, but that ended up looking a little messy, and I had troubles getting the corners right. So I went hunting online and found Amy's excellent no swearing bias tape method video. After a little trial and error, I settled on a pretty easy approach to binding both the towels and burp cloths. They don't look perfect, but the baby won't care :)

Here's what I did (and by the way, I'm a pretty amateur sewer, so it's definitely possible that there's an easier and/or tidier way to accomplish this):

Simple Bound Burp Cloth Tutorial

Supplies:

• 1 cloth diaper prefold (I used the infant size with dark green edges, available at my local baby store)

• 1/4 yd fabric (or less--you need enough fabric to give a ~2"x55" strip--the exact length depends on the size of the diaper you're binding). I used Amy Butler's seeds fabric from her Belle line. You could use a package of 1/2-inch-wide bias tape instead, to make things even easier

Directions:

1. Prewash the diaper and fabric. I washed the diapers three times in hot water, to make them more absorbent, but I'm not sure how crucial that is for burp cloths.

2. Cut your fabric into strips that are 1 7/8" wide. Because there aren't any curves to bind, you don't need to cut the strips diagonally; just cut straight across the fabric. Sew your strips together at the short ends (right sides together, 1/4" seam allowance) to give one long strip of binding, and press seams flat with an iron.

3. Fold the binding in half lengthwise and press.

   

   Unfold, then fold one side in until it almost touches the center crease, and press again.

   

   Now you've got a long fabric strip with two creases in it (one 1/4 of the width in, and one 1/2 of the width in), and you're ready to start sewing.

   

4. Start sewing your fabric strip onto the diaper, right side facing down. Align the non-creased side of the strip with the edge of the diaper, and use a seam allowance between 1/4" and 3/8" (I used 1/4" for the serged sides of the diaper and 3/8" for the less bulky non-serged sides). No need to pin; just eyeball it. Fold over about half an inch at the start of the strip, in order to make the overlap between the beginning and end of the strip nice and tidy.

   

   When you get to your first corner, stop about 1/4" from the end, backstitch, and clip threads.

   

5. To make your mitered corner, fold the strip away from the diaper to make a 45-degree angle, then fold back over itself, parallel with the next edge that you're going to sew.

   
   
   

6. Holding the folded corner down, pop the diaper back into the machine, and sew along the next edge, backstitching at the start. Repeat this mitering step at each corner that you come to.

   

   When you get back to the start of your strip, cut off any excess fabric, leaving enough for about an inch of overlap with the start. Fold the end of the strip over by about half an inch, sew over it, and backstitch.

   

   Here's what it will look like when you're done sewing around:

   

7. Turn the diaper over, and fold the fabric border over to the other side.

   

8. Fold the binding along the first crease (1/4 of the way in) and then along the second crease, and pin to the diaper all the way around, making sure that the binding edge overlaps the seam you just sewed (hard to see here because I used white thread) by at least a little bit. That way, when you turn the diaper back over and stitch along the seam, you'll catch the binding on this side too. You may have to adjust the depth of the fold to get it to cover the seam.

   

   When you get to the corners, tuck in the excess fabric to make a mitered corner (my corners on this side of the diaper tended not to be perfectly mitered, but they looked nice on the other side).

   

   Here's the fully pinned diaper:

   

9. Turn the diaper back over, and stitch in the ditch (stitch along the seam you've already sewn) all the way around, backstitching at the beginning and end.

   

10. Remove pins, and you're done! Here's the side I stitched:

    

    And the other side, with the binding edges caught in the seam that was just sewn:

    

The cool thing is that you can apply this same approach to making hooded towels--they're just like extra big burp cloths with a triangle attached at one corner.

Simple Bound Hooded Towel

Supplies:

• 1 yd terry cloth or one bath towel and one hand towel (I used some super cushy bamboo terry cloth that I got for 35% off at Fabric Depot--woo!)

• 1/2 yd fabric (this is a little more than you'll need, but 1/3 yd wasn't quite enough for me. Plus, buying 1/2 yd will leave you with enough extra fabric to bind one burp cloth, conveniently enough)

Directions:

1. Prewash your fabrics. Cut a 30"x30" square and an 11"x11"x16" triangle from the terry cloth. Make a fabric strip as described for the burp cloth, but make it 3 3/4" wide and at least 140" long.

2. Apply binding to the long (16") side of the triangle as described above for the burp cloth, but use a 7/8" seam allowance instead of the 1/4-3/8" allowance.

3. Stitch the two shorter (unbound) sides of the triangle onto one corner of the big terry cloth square using a 1/2" seam allowance (this is to hold it in place while you're binding the towel--you could also just pin it).

4. Apply binding along all four sides of the square, again using a 7/8" seam allowance. Done!

Thirty-four weeks! We are definitely shifting into baby panic mode at this point, working hard to get everything ready before he shows up. We're making progress, which is satisfying.

• Regarding baby position, I haven't tried breech inversion or moxibustion yet, but I did try a little belly massage (item number 7) last night, and it definitely did something. I could feel the baby moving after about a minute of massage, and he's been in a different position than usual all day. However, I'm not sure if he turned head down, or if he's sideways now (is that even possible at this point?). Before, he pretty much exclusively hung out on the right side of my belly, and now he's filling out the left and right sides. I'm worried that maybe he was in the right position before, and I made him move to the wrong position. It's frustrating not knowing what's going on in there. Our next doctor's appointment is on Tuesday, so hopefully she'll be able to tell if he's head down. The good news is that he's still kicking regularly, so I don't think changing position distressed him at all. Phew!

• I noticed today that I have a couple stretch marks. It's possible that they were there before, but I'm wondering if last night's sudden change in baby position caused them. That'll teach me to mess with my belly! It's kind of a bummer but not a huge deal--I'm not a midriff-bearing type of person anyway. Plus I've been so lucky to have an easy pregnancy in many other respects; I can't expect to avoid all of the unpleasant side effects!

• I think we have a name picked out--or at least we know what we'd call him if we had to choose right now. It's actually the only name our lists had in common back when we started narrowing them down a few months ago. I'd still like to sit down and go through our options to make sure this is our top choice, but it's nice to have something ready to go if needed!

• The cloth diapers have arrived, and I'm halfway through pre-washing them. We've also assembled a pretty good collection of diaper covers (thanks, Annie!). It'll feel good to have that all squared away. We're almost there.

• I've been doing lots of sewing this week, working on hooded bath towels and burp cloths (there are more important things I could be doing, but these are more fun!). More on that once I'm done. Patches has decided that she loves sitting on the burp cloths, even when they're full of pins. She keeps hunkering down on them and refusing to move. It's slowing me down, but she sure is cute!

  

• Patrick has been hard at work too (so hard at work that he hurt his back a little, but hopefully he'll recover soon). He did a little touch-up plaster work that the plaster guys overlooked, and now he has started painting all of our plastered-over areas. The hole in our stairwell is back to looking normal!

  

  We're planning on painting the nursery on Sunday, assuming his back doesn't get worse. I'm excited to see how it looks in the new colors we chose. Here's a before picture from today.

  

It may sound like I'm stressed out (and I guess I am, a little), but I'm also really enjoying being pregnant and getting ready for the baby. I'm happy :)

If we weren't in the middle of frenzied baby preparations, I'd totally drive up to Washington for this lilac festival. I've been smelling every lilac we come across in our neighborhood, but going to a whole garden full of them sounds wonderful! Maybe next year...

As planned, we made lasagna this week, for freezing and eating. I made a double batch of simple lasagna with hearty tomato-meat sauce, distributed it between two 9x9 pans and one 8x8 pan, froze the former and baked the latter. Mmm, lasagna! I know it's weird, but I feel much more ready to have this baby now that we have two solid bricks of lasagna in our freezer. Sustenance! I'm hoping to add two bricks of veggie lasagna to our stockpile next week.

I also made (but didn't freeze) a batch of pasta and bean soup. The soup was easy to make, tasty, and filling.

And since we have a bunch of fruit in our freezer from last summer, which needs to be cleared out to make room for post-baby meals, I baked a batch of Jordan Marsh blueberry muffins (recipe from How to Bake). I added the zest from a Meyer lemon and 1/8t lemon oil for fun. They turned out very nicely.

We had a great weekend! Tree came up for a visit, and we lucked out and had really beautiful weather. On Saturday, we walked up to Jam for breakfast, then walked down Hawthorne, stopping at Cool Cottons, Crossroads Music, the Waffle Window (mmm, chocolate-dipped sugar waffle), Mink, and Pix on our way home. I love our neighborhood :) And luckily the baby let me walk all that way without settling onto any of my internal organs, unlike last time. Thanks, baby!

On Sunday, we had breakfast at Broder and visited the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden. It was pretty crowded because the weather was so nice, but we still enjoyed it and got to see lots of flowers and waterfowl.

(Patrick took almost all of the pictures in this entry, by the way)

And then we spent the beautiful sunny afternoon at a baby shower held in our honor, organized by Susan, Lee, and Star. It was a co-ed baby shower--no games, just snacks and some crafty activities. It was perfect. We're so lucky to have made good friends in Portland :)

There were plenty of tasty snacks, and Susan made cheesecake-marbled brownies (sooo good!) and adorable vegetarian pigs in blankets. I brought along a rhubarb buckle with ginger crumb (recipe from Rustic Fruit Desserts), this time made with thawed frozen rhubarb instead of fresh. Tasty!

We sat in the sun and talked and ate and enjoyed some guitar music, courtesy of Grant. I even played a little soccer with Pearl, though the game didn't last very long (she was a way better kicker than me).

Susan, Lee, and Star had amassed all the supplies needed for us to decorate baby clothes with appliques and freezer paper stencils. It was fun seeing what everybody came up with, and we went home with all sorts of sweet hand-decorated baby goods. What a good idea for a shower.

Chicken suit by me; meta bib by Pearl, Susan, and Andrew; tree onesie by Susan:

Chick by Elif, blue T-shirt and banjo bib by Lee, camping onesie by Patrick:

Owl onesie by Tree, leafy bib by Star, shorts by Lee:

Now I want to applique and freezer paper stencil everything we own!

Thirty-three weeks! Can you tell I was tired when I took this picture? I'm not too tired in general; this was just during a post-lunch slump. I took a quick walk in the sunshine a little later (with frequent stops to smell all the lilacs in bloom), which helped a lot.

• Our checkup on Tuesday was reassuring. My doctor seemed relieved that my placenta had moved (I am too!), and she didn't seem too concerned about our big breech baby. She said there's a good chance that he'll flip on his own (though she gave the go-ahead to try a breech tilt, so I think I'll do that if we can find a wide board to use). She'll check the baby's position when we get closer to the due date, and if he still hasn't turned, she said there are a few things we can do, including moxibustion. I was surprised that she mentioned moxibustion--when I read about it online, I was skeptical, but she said it's effective.

  Regarding the baby being larger than expected, she reminded us that ultrasound size estimates can be off by as much as 20% (though that could mean that he's actually 6 lb--but that's unlikely, since my fundus measurement is pretty normal). She didn't say anything about inducing early labor because of his size, which was a relief. She said that I'll have the chance to labor normally, and if he's too big for me to push out on my own (or technically, breathe out, since hypnobirthing doesn't typically involve pushing), she might have to resort to using vacuum or forceps to get him out. That doesn't sound so great, but it's better than having a stuck baby. Anyway, there's not much point in worrying about what could happen at this point.

  I had expected that she might order another ultrasound in a few weeks to check the baby's size again, but she said it's unlikely that we'll do another ultrasound, unless she's not able to determine his position by palpating my tummy. So I guess we'll just wait until he's out to find out if that ultrasound was right.

  Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention about the ultrasound--it showed that the baby has some hair already. I had no idea ultrasounds could see hair! That's pretty cool.

• Still not much progress on the nursery. The plasterers finished up on Tuesday (they were supposed to finish last week, but the main guy got appendicitis, which is an excellent excuse for postponing work!). This weekend, I went to Ecohaus and bought paint for the nursery. We ended up going with the Yolo Colorhouse paint in water.01 and leaf.04, as planned. I'm excited to see how it looks in the room! I'm hoping we'll be able to get the painting done next week, and then we can start moving the furniture in, which will help make the room feel more put together.

  Our painting project is complicated by the fact that we also need to do touch-up painting in nearly every other room of the house, because of all the plumbing and electrical work we had done. The previous owner left behind cans of paint for a lot of the rooms, but there were a couple missing, so I had fun this past weekend doing some detective work to figure out which colors they used in the living room, dining room, and stairwell. I bought the necessary paint from Miller Paint on Grand, and I was really impressed by how nice everybody was. One of the employees even carried my paint to my car for me, even though I was parked 6 blocks away. I kept telling him not to worry about it, but he insisted. On the walk to the car, we chatted about crocheting hats (it's a little side project that he started when he broke his collarbone snowboarding). It was nice!

• We've been weighing diaper options for a while now, and we finally made some decisions this week. We're still planning on trying Elimination Communication, but I'm sure we'll still need diapers (if only as backup for when we go out). So the most sensible solution seems to be using cloth diaper prefolds with diaper covers, since the prefolds are also useful for EC. So that's the plan. I ordered newborn and small prefolds from Green Mountain Diapers to get us started, and I'm working on buying some used diaper covers (Ebay, Craigslist, and our local consignment stores seem like the best sources for these). That should get us through 5-6 months, at which point we can re-assess the situation and decide if this approach works for us.

  I had a little freakout last night--fueled by diaper overwhelm and staying up too late--and spent some time crying before bed. I just got stressed out about everything left on our to-do list and the dwindling amount of time before the baby comes. Probably pretty standard stuff. Patrick was a champ at comforting me, and he assured me that we'll get everything done in time (or at least all the important stuff--there are a lot of things on my to-do list that aren't really necessary). I think I've been pretty even-keeled throughout this pregnancy, without many crazy pregnant lady outbursts, so I guess I'm allowed a couple.

• Oh, and a pregnancy side effect that I wanted to make note of for posterity--my left sock no longer fits properly--the heel is always in the wrong place! I wear knee socks pretty much every day, and they all have the same problem. Based on what I read, I expected that my shoes might stop fitting, but my socks? Weird. (Also, my shoes still fit so far--yay!)

As far as food goes, tonight and last night we had pasta with slow-simmered leeks, prosciutto, and mozzarella for dinner. Not bad, though I'm not sure we'll make it again. I do like fresh mozzarella though!

We've also embarked on a food freezing campaign in preparation for baby time. Our general approach has been to make something, eat half of it, and freeze the other half. Here's what we've stashed away this week:

1. Split pea and ham soup (from America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, because I was too lazy to find my mom's recipe) and multigrain waffles (based on the Cook's Illustrated multigrain pancake recipe, but with the amount of butter doubled). The soup was good, but I like my mom's recipe better. We've made the waffles in the past, and I continue to be a fan--the nubbly texture and slight sweetness are great! Plus we can pretend they're healthy, because of the grains. I think I'll make another batch of these to shore up our freezer stash. Having homemade waffles in the freezer makes me happy.

2. Lentil-chestnut soup and savory barley muffins with thyme and romano (from Whole Grains Every Day). This is one of my favorite easy soups--we should have doubled the recipe so we'd have more to freeze. The muffins are okay; I didn't like them as much as I did the first time I made them.

Maybe next week we'll make and freeze something that isn't soup--like lasagna!

A while back, I bought a cute fabric headband at Union Rose (you can see it here and here). I love it, because it keeps my hair out of my face but doesn't give me a headache like normal headbands. Today I used the headband as a pattern and made myself four more. I'm hoping they'll help me look more pulled together after the baby comes and I haven't washed my hair for days.

It's a really easy sewing project, so I thought I'd share the steps with you (and if you find my instructions confusing, there are plenty of other tutorials online--for instance, this one and this one).

1. You need a 10" piece of elastic (I used pretty fold-over elastic from Bolt) and enough fabric to give two 3.25" x 12.5" pieces. Cut two blunt-ended ovals, each measuring about 12.5 inches long, 3.25 inches wide in the middle, and 1.25 inches wide at the ends. I traced my existing headband and added 1/4" seam allowances to get my pattern.

2. Fold over and iron 1/4 inch of fabric on one end of each oval, and then sandwich the ovals right sides together with the elastic in between. One end of the elastic should be even with the non-ironed ends of the ovals, and the other end of the elastic should be floating freely somewhere in the middle of the fabric sandwich.

3. Pin together and stitch around (using 1/4 inch seam allowances), leaving the ironed-down edges open. I pinned the loose end of the elastic to the middle of the fabric so that it wouldn't accidentally get caught in the seams.

4. Remove pins and turn right side out. Flatten, pin around the edges, and iron.

5. Tuck the loose end of the elastic into the open end of the headband by about 1/2 inch, and pin in place.

6. Topstitch all the way around (I did this by moving my needle to the right and using the edge of my presser foot as a guide). Backstitch over the pinned elastic to make sure it's well secured.

Voila--you have a headband!

So the ultrasound this morning was interesting. We learned three things:

• My placenta has moved higher, and it's not blocking the cervix anymore. Yay!

• The baby is currently in a frank breech position (hey, that's a good name for a boy!). His butt is facing downward, and his legs are up by his head. That doesn't sound too comfortable, but I guess babies are flexible. I'm not sure if I need to actively start trying to turn him around (there are all sorts of unusual methods described online!), or if there's a pretty good chance he'll flip before birth. I won't do anything before talking to my doctor. Luckily, our next appointment is on Tuesday.

  Because of his funny position, we didn't get any good views of his face or profile (but we did get visual re-confirmation that he is a boy). Oh well, we'll see him soon enough.

• Mr. Frank Breech is huge for his age! He's supposed to weigh 3-4 lbs at 32 weeks, but based on the measurements the ultrasound tech made, he weighs about 5 lb, 5 oz (equivalent to 34.5 weeks gestation). Wow, baby, I haven't been eating that much! It's better than him being underweight, but he's big enough that it merits some attention, apparently. So we'll be discussing that with the doctor next week as well.

I spent a little time reading about both findings online. It sounds like these could be cause for a C-section or early birth via induction, both of which I'd like to avoid if possible. But I'm trying not to worry about it. My boss told me that when she was pregnant, there were multiple times when her doctor predicted she might need a C-section, but everything resolved before birth. I think this baby knows what he's doing.

Thirty-two weeks! This marks the start of the eighth month--whoa! If I think in terms of months, two months still sounds like a decent amount of time to get ready, but 8 weeks, not so much. Babies are normally born between 37 and 42 weeks gestation, which means that he could be here 5 weekends from now. Oh man...

Not much to report in the past few days. Our follow-up placenta ultrasound is tomorrow, and we're hoping for good news.

As predicted, the meal planning kind of fell by the wayside this week, so I only have one meal to tell you about--saffron-basmati rice with chicken in garam masala sauce (from Whole Grains Every Day) and sweet and sour okra. Patrick made this, and it seemed pretty easy to put together, and the end result was nice. The chicken was good, but the okra was my favorite part of the meal. Yum!

Although I didn't get much cooking done, I did get some crafting time in. Remember the ripple blanket I started back in November? Well, I'm still working on it--almost halfway done now. I had originally planned on crocheting a row a day, in which case I would have been done by now, but that's not how it worked out. I'm not going to stress out too much about finishing this before the baby gets here. It'll get done eventually. Patches likes sitting on my lap (and periodically attacking the yarn) while I work on it.

And I finished sewing that potato sack dress I mentioned in my last entry. Luckily, the addition of a waist tie and ruffles helped a lot. It was based on the maternity or not frock tutorial on Presser Foot, with a few changes based on the limitations of my cheapo sewing machine (I attached the elastic differently, and I pleated the ruffles instead of gathering them). I used Joel Dewberry's Deer Valley columbine fabric.

I love projects where you don't have to cut and pin pattern pieces--this dress is basically two rectangles sewn together and embellished. Very easy! And if the dress isn't flattering when I'm no longer pregnant, I can take it apart and reuse the fabric to make a skirt or a different dress.

Thanks to Patrick for taking these pictures, by the way. They turned out much better than my tripod self portraits. While we were both semi-dressed-up, we took a few family portraits too. And then we went to Por Que No and had fish tacos and strawberry-mango lemonade for dinner. Life is good :)

Thirty-one weeks! Actually we're at 31.5 at this point. Patrick was out of the house this weekend enjoying some pre-baby hang-out time with friends from college (they rented a condo downtown for the weekend and sampled beer at many locales), so my normal routine kind of fell by the wayside. I didn't do my weekly meal-planning either. What are we going to eat!?

• I seem to have reached the stage of pregnancy where strangers feel comfortable assuming I'm pregnant. I've had a couple people ask me when I'm due, but no belly touching yet. I've even had one person express surprise that I still have 2 months to go (I assume because my belly is so massive). I actually found that strangely gratifying, like I'm doing an extra good job of being pregnant or something. Silly, I know :)

• We had another OB checkup last week, and everything continues to go smoothly (yay!). The doctor palpated my belly and guessed that the baby is head down, with his back facing to my right. I had been thinking that he was sideways with his head on the right side, but her interpretation makes more sense. We'll know his position for sure on Friday--we're going in for a follow-up ultrasound to see if my placenta has moved off of my cervix into a more normal location. Cross your fingers!

  When the doctor had me lie down for the exam, she told me I was having a contraction (apparently a normal occurrence when pregnant ladies lie on their backs). I had no idea! Even when she pointed it out, I couldn't tell--it just felt like the baby's back was pushing on my belly, which is a pretty normal occurrence. I wonder how often I have contractions and mistakenly attribute them to the baby.

  It turns out that I don't have sciatica, but something similar--the baby is pressing on my femoral cutaneous nerve, not my sciatic nerve. The doctor said sciatica affects the back of the thigh, but for me it's the skin on the front of the thigh that goes numb. Actually, my condition has a much racier name than sciatica--tingling thigh syndrome! So I can't walk around talking like an old lady anymore, since the people who most often get this condition are women in tight jeans and high heels. Patrick and I have been referring to it as tight pants syndrome, but apparently that's something different. Anyway, the good news is that this should go away once the baby's born, so it's nothing to worry about.

• In general, I've been pretty comfortable during this pregnancy, apart from some normal aches and pains. A strange thing happened on Saturday though--I walked up to Cool Cottons, which is less than a mile from our house. By the time I got there, my lower abdomen was aching. Sitting down and standing still helped a little but didn't make it go away. The pain lasted all through my walk home, which made it pretty unpleasant. I considered calling a cab, but I just gritted my teeth and kept going (I know, probably not a prudent decision). I made it home, lay down on the couch and put on my relaxation CD, and within 10 minutes, I felt totally fine. My guess is that the baby settled on some nerve or internal organ while I was walking, and he just needed some help getting repositioned. I should have gotten on all fours at the fabric store and done a couple cat-cows to help him out. Pregnant ladies are allowed to do weird stuff like that, right?

• One of the less exciting baby-related tasks I've been putting off is choosing a pediatrician (also: writing a will). This past week, we met up with a pediatrician in Sellwood, and I think we've found our doctor. Phew! She's on board with our parenting approach and seems to know her stuff, plus she went to college and grad school in the Bay Area (I guess that's not really relevant to our child's care, but it's nice to have something in common that we can talk about). She's only been with this practice for a few months, so she's actively looking for new patients (the other doctors in the practice are busy enough that they don't do meet and greets, so we lucked out that we were able to talk to her).

  Sellwood is a little far from where we live (there aren't any pediatricians in our immediate neighborhood), but it's nice to have an excuse to go down there. When the baby's older, we can bike there via the Springwater Corridor! And bonus: There are multiple ice cream shops/bakeries near the pediatrician's office, so we can institute the important "you get a treat after your doctor's appointment" tradition. In fact, we have already instituted the tradition--we stopped at Lovecup for ice cream after meeting the pediatrician. Mmm, Tillamook mint chocolate chip. I hope the baby enjoyed it!

• We crossed another item off the to-do list last week--buying a glider for the dining room. I had been watching Craigslist for Dutailier gliders for months, but most of the listings were pretty far out in the suburbs or too expensive. I was also kind of hoping that a Monte Luca glider would magically pop up for cheap (yeah, right). There actually was one listing for a used Monte glider and ottoman a month or so ago, but the seller was asking $800, which, while reasonable (they're $1400 new), was still a lot of money. I hemmed and hawed about it long enough that it was gone by the time I contacted the seller. Oh well!

  Anyway, I finally got it together and responded to a listing for a Dutailier glider and ottoman out in SW Portland. The seller was asking $150 (they go for $600-$700 new), which is pretty standard. It looked good (apart from some pen scribbles on the wood and some dinginess to the cushions) so we brought it home. Based on what I've read online, Dutailiers are considered very comfortable, but not particularly stylish. I agree with that. I'm planning on covering the cushions in a more exciting fabric. If we had unlimited time, I'd also want to stain the wood a darker color, but with all those little spindles, I think it would be better to just leave it alone. I'm sure I won't even care what it looks like once the baby's here.

  

• I was originally planning on covering the cushions this weekend, but I ended up doing some maternity clothing sewing and fabric shopping instead. The maternity dress I'm working on now looks kind of like a potato sack, so I don't have high hopes for the finished product. But I'll persevere. I also bought some beautiful Anna Maria Horner voile at Bolt for a sundress, and I'm much more excited about that project. Hopefully the sun and warm weather will return by the time I finish it!

In house news, the plasterers started today, and they're basically done--no more holes in our walls and ceiling! The guy just has to come back on Wednesday to do a little sanding. I continue to be impressed by how quickly contractors work. Here's a picture I took of our stairwell wall hole while they were plastering it. Instead of installing new wood lath, they used metal mesh--much easier!

Now we just have to paint over all the new plaster work. Actually, that's not as straightforward as I make it sound--we don't have all of the paint that the previous owners used on the walls, so we'll need to match those colors. I'm guessing we might end up putting that off in favor of more pressing house work. But you never know--Patrick is way more motivated than I am about getting this kind of thing done. I'm so lucky to be married to him--I would do such a crappy job of taking care of this house on my own. I'm pretty good at keeping it tidy, but it would totally fall down around my ears over time. I'm just put off by the bigger home improvement stuff.

A quick round-up of last week's food:

1. Patrick made fancy pizzas topped with sauteed nettles (yay, spring!), fromage blanc, mozzarella, and farmers' market eggs. For future reference, he added the egg 5.25 minutes before he took the pizza out of the oven, and it turned out just right. He used the whole wheat dough recipe from Whole Grain Breads. He's getting good at pizza-making!

2. Black bean chili (from Morning Food) and corn muffins (another batch from Whole Grains Every Day). This chili wasn't super exciting, but doctored up with cheese and sour cream, it made a perfectly fine meal.

3. Brown-sugar rubbed pan-seared salmon (from Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook), roasted brown rice pilaf scented with leeks (another repeat from Whole Grains Every Day), and sauteed spinach. Healthy, easy to make, and tasty. Yay!

It took a little work, but we have obtained a dresser for the nursery!

Yesterday, we went to five consignment/vintage stores (Consigned Home Furnishings, Rerun, I Heart Retro, Shag, and Hawthorne Vintage). We didn't have any luck finding a dresser at those stores, but we did get a cute nightstand for me and a sweet mini credenza at Hawthorne Vintage. Both were priced reasonably, as far as I could tell. I love those little legs.

Just a note--for future Portland furniture shopping, I would skip Rerun and I Heart Retro. Rerun didn't have much furniture, and I Heart Retro's furniture seemed kind of run down (drawers didn't open smoothly, loose drawer pulls). But we didn't spend much time in there--maybe I missed some hidden gems.

Today, we visited Lounge Lizard and Look Modern, both of which had some good options. I love the furniture at Look Modern, but it is definitely more expensive than we're used to. They had a couple dressers for $500-$600, which I could almost justify paying (a new dresser from Land of Nod costs about that much), but the drawers were a little fussy, and it seemed kind of imprudent to have the nicest piece of furniture in the house be in our child's room. What if he drew on it with markers? I'd be sad. So we didn't buy the pretty dresser. Someday I would like to buy some furniture from Look Modern though.

Lounge Lizard had about four dressers that met our requirements, each in the $100-$150 range (much better!). We ended up getting a lime green changing table/dresser combo from the 80's (the woman who sold it to us was really nice and told us that she's a mom, and she'd checked to make sure it hadn't been recalled, so everything seems fine on that front). The drawers stick a little, but Patrick thinks he may be able to fix that, and if not, they work well enough. I'd definitely like to repaint it, if we have time.

Since we have most of our key nursery furniture now, I decided to spend some time thinking about the room layout. I started out using Google Sketchup, but it was too fancy for my purposes, so I went with graph paper and little scale representations of the furniture instead. Fun!

This one's my top choice. It puts the changing table by the door, keeps the crib away from the bookshelf, and still leaves a decent amount of space in the middle of the room for some sort of a rug for playing on. And there's room along the left-hand wall and in the closet for more storage in the future. The chair will prevent us from opening and closing the closet door a lot, but I think we'll just keep it open all the time, unless we want to make it look nice for company or something.

My plan right now is to move our IKEA Poang chair and ottoman into the nursery for seating, and then since I think we'll be spending more time downstairs than upstairs, we're going to set up a little nursery annex in our dining room with a glider (still need to get one of those), a rug, and maybe a second changing pad and diapering supplies on the mini credenza.

I realize all this careful planning will probably go out the window when the baby actually gets here, but it makes me feel better to have some sort of plan!

Wow, 30 weeks! Three-quarters of the way there. I'm definitely starting to feel a little unwieldy, but it's not too bad.

• I've been feeling fewer sharp kicks recently, which is consistent with what the pregnancy book says--the baby has less space to flail around in at this point. Now he's working on putting on some fat, rather than growing any longer, which sounds like a good plan to me.

• It's becoming harder to sit comfortably for long periods of time. I can sit on the couch for a little while if I cram two pillows behind my back, but that only works for so long. I think I need to start carrying around a little lumbar pillow for when we go out to restaurants (I've also found that a roll of paper towels works well, but Patrick doesn't want me carrying those around everywhere). We finally got around to buying an exercise ball for me earlier this week, and that has worked out pretty well as a couch alternative (it's also supposed to come in handy during labor, and the books say you can use it to soothe a gassy baby).

• And hey, I have a new pregnancy side effect this week--sciatica! If I stand up for more than 20 minutes or so, the upper part of my right leg goes numb. But it goes away when I sit down. I'm just glad it's manifesting as numbness instead of shooting pain. It kind of puts a damper on making complicated dinners (or washing the dishes from complicated dinners), but it's not so bad. Plus I get to walk around the house talking like an old lady and complaining that my sciatica is flaring up again.

  Also, I think I might have had my first practice surge (Braxton-Hicks contraction, for those of you not up on the hypnobirthing lingo) this morning. It didn't hurt at all; my belly just felt extra firm for a few minutes, and then it went back to normal. Pretty cool!

• I wasn't feeling super excited about our name list last weekend. I'm just having a hard time finding a boy's name that I'm excited about (when it comes to girls' names, I have much stronger preferences!). Like every other parent out there, I want a name that is unique, but also one that won't be so unusual that it will be a burden to our son. I shouldn't worry so much; it'll be fine. Anyway, I spent some more time with our various baby name books (this one is my favorite; it has more information than is available on the website) and our full list of names and added some more names to the in-the-running list. So now the list is up to 30 names, but I'm sure Patrick will veto some of those. We're also working on narrowing down our girl name list, though we're a little less motivated on that front. But it seems wise to have a girl's name in reserve, just in case the ultrasound was wrong :)

• I've been feeling anxious about not being prepared enough given how far along I am. We are pretty well prepared in some respects (educating ourselves about how to take care of a baby), but we're kind of lagging in the "buying stuff" department. Part of it is that we want to buy as much as we can used and/or locally, and that takes more effort than ordering everything off of Amazon. I think most of my anxiety stems from the fact that we haven't made much progress on the nursery, which is a silly thing to worry about because (as Patrick helpfully reminds me) the baby won't care if his room is finished when he gets here. Still, there are definitely a few more basics that we need to buy--like a dresser/changing table (we're working on that one this weekend).

  I thought it might help motivate me if I post a before picture of the nursery. Here's what it looks like right now (the first picture is the room, the second picture is the closet, which is actually pretty big!). I'm not a big fan of the brown color, so I'm excited to paint it! So far, we have been cramming all baby-related stuff in there willy-nilly, along with guest room sheets, laundry drying rack, out-of-season clothes--you name it! Everything is extra disorderly because we had to move stuff when the electricians were here. Anyway, stay tuned for a dramatic nursery transformation sometime in the next 10 weeks. Well, maybe not dramatic, but there will be a transformation of some sort. There has to be!

  
  
  

  I actually made a good amount of progress on sewing the Roman shade for the nursery last weekend, but we won't be able to hang it up until we've painted, which we can't do until the plaster man does his thing and fills all the holes from the electrical work. We've got two plaster guys coming to give quotes early next week, so that should get the ball rolling.

This past week, we made some fun plans for my 30th birthday in early May. Since I'll be 36 weeks pregnant at the time, we didn't want to travel too far away, so we decided to take a quick overnight trip to Hood River. I'm excited! We're going to stay at the Columbia Gorge Hotel, which is supposed to have awesome breakfasts, and on the way there/back, we'll get to see the Historic Columbia River Gorge Highway and Multnomah Falls (can you believe we've lived in Portland for one and a half years, and I haven't seen Multnomah Falls?!). I'm looking forward to it!

Patrick continues to do lots of work on our garden, which I appreciate, since I haven't given it much thought this year. I wanted to share a cool project that he did. He made cloches out of used bike wheels (which he got for free from Seven Corners). He removed the spokes, cut the rims in half, and then covered them with plastic sheeting (using wire to attach the plastic to the rims). He used some of the spokes to secure the rims to our raised beds. Our baby radishes and spinach seem to like them, as does our cat. Perfect for warming up on a cool day!

We've had some pretty good meals this week.

1. Sole with chanterelles, cherried and chickpea'd couscous (both recipes from How to Eat), and roasted broccoli. I was happy with this meal--it wasn't too hard to prepare, and it was tasty and pretty healthy. I was worried at first because the sole was full of bones, but most of them stayed attached to the backbone, so we ended up with perfect fish skeletons at the end of the meal. Plus it was cheap and locally caught. Yay, sole!

2. Red split lentils with cabbage and whole wheat naan (recipe from Whole Grain Breads). The lentils were pretty good, though not remarkable. The naan was hearty, but not bad. Definitely not as delicious as the naan at Indian restaurants, but that was to be expected.

3. Braised pork chops and creamy cabbage (from All About Braising) with roasted sweet potato wedges. The pork chops turned out fine, but I probably wouldn't make this recipe again. I think my main problem with it were the caraway seeds. I'm just not a big fan of them. But if you like caraway, definitely give this recipe a try!

4. For lunches this week, I made the tart and tangy baked beans recipe from the Moosewood Cookbook. I was expecting them to be like normal baked beans, but that's not really how they turned out. They're more like beans with some baked apples and tomatoes thrown in. Not exciting. On top of that, the recipe made 10 servings instead of 6, so we've got plenty of disappointing beans waiting in the freezer to be eaten later. Oh well, it's food!

5. I was craving rice pudding last weekend, but since I'm still trying to eat more whole grains and less refined sugar, I tried the coconut-black rice pudding recipe from Whole Grains Every Day Every Way. It sure is purple! It was more hearty and less sweet than normal rice pudding, but definitely not bad. Patrick and I both ate it happily.

Ooh, and last night we finally made it to Dove Vivi for the first time. We'd heard good things about the corn pizza, and it did not disappoint. Yum! After dinner, we went to the Laurelhurst and saw The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was fun. An excellent Portland date night :)

I wanted to leave you with a few recent pictures from our garden. I'm sure I posted an almost identical tulip picture last year, but I just can't help it--it's so exciting to see flowers blooming! I've also thrown in a picture of a surprise anemone growing under our grapes, plus a very sneaky kitty hiding in some long grass in the front yard. I love hanging out with Patches. She's always entertaining :)

Twenty-nine weeks! This belly means business.

• I wasn't sure if I should mention this, because it might move me from the "slightly unorthodox pregnant lady" category to the "crazy new age pregnant lady" category, but what the heck. So in one of our hypnobirthing classes, the teacher mentioned the concept of placenta encapsulation--dehydrating the placenta after birth and making it into pills, which are then taken daily for the first few months following birth. The assertion is that they can prevent postpartum depression, improve milk production, and prevent anemia, since the placenta is full of hormones and iron. Not surprisingly, there's a local midwife who offers this service (which is good, because if I had a food dehydrator and had to use it to dry my placenta, I don't think I'd want to make dried apricots and fruit leather in it later on, you know?).

  There's not really much scientific evidence on the subject, apart from a study conducted in 1954. On the one hand, most non-human mammals eat their placentas after birth, so maybe it's not a bad idea, but most humans don't consume their placentas, and they do just fine. I'd be more inclined to try it if it weren't so hard to get the placenta from the hospital after birth. Apparently the hospital we'll be birthing at holds all placentas for 10 days, and then you have to request your placenta in writing (and make sure that they store it properly so that it doesn't go bad while they're holding it). Otherwise it goes into a big bin with all the other placentas and gets incinerated (poor placenta--after nourishing a baby for 9 months, you'd think it would get a little more respect!). Word has it that a doula once stole her client's placenta from the hospital so that it could be encapsulated promptly, and it caused a rift among the nurses--those who believe the placenta belongs to the woman it came out of vs. those who believe hospital procedure must be followed. I thought that was pretty funny :)

  So yeah, it sounds like it would be a hassle to liberate my placenta from the hospital, and there's no guarantee that the pills would actually have any benefit. I probably won't do it. But it is an intriguing concept...

  By the way, I find it pretty amusing that I just devoted three paragraphs to talking about placentas. This kind of thing was totally off my radar before I got pregnant. See, pregnancy is expanding my horizons :)

• We're still not making much progress in narrowing down our list of baby names. We've got our top 10 list (five from me, five from Patrick), but we've kind of lost momentum in narrowing it down further. We'll get there! And actually, after seeing a recent episode of The Office, we're down to only nine names, since one of my top 5 was also on Dwight's list of acceptable baby names (Ebenezer, Jebediah, Honus, Jedediah, and Worf). Nope, it wasn't Worf...it was Honus! When I first came across it (probably in a baby name book), I thought it was kind of neat--old-timey, but not trendy, and the baby's nickname could be Dutch! I associated the name Honus with baseball, not Pennsylvania Dutch beet farmers. Shows what I know! I was already on the fence about it, since it's pretty unusual, and now that it's associated with Dwight Schrute in my mind, I'm feeling like we should spare our kid and give him a slightly more normal name. No offense to any Honuses out there!

On to this week's food...

1. Quinoa and gruyere with sauteed mushrooms (from Super Natural Cooking). I wasn't expecting much from this recipe, but it turned out surprisingly well, especially given how easy it was to make. Not very fancy, but if you're looking for healthy comfort food, this would be a good recipe to try.

2. Healthy pancakes (from Morning Food) with blueberries and pecans added during cooking, shirred eggs, and buttered toast fingers. The pancakes were indeed healthy, perhaps a little too healthy. The flavor was good, but the texture was a bit on the leaden side. The eggs were a fun change from our normal egg preparation methods--a good recipe to try if you have a couple teaspoons of heavy cream leftover from another recipe. I love food in ramekins!

3. Pot-roasted brisket with rhubarb and honey (from All About Braising), spicy sweet potato wedges, and sauteed kale. I tried the brisket recipe because we have a bunch of rhubarb in the freezer from last spring, and I was looking for recipes that used rhubarb without a lot of added sugar. This one fit the bill. It required a decent amount of work to prepare, but it did turn out pretty tender. I'm not thrilled with the flavor, but that could just be because I'm not wild about beef. Now the sweet potatoes--those are definitely worth a remake.

The recipe made a lot of brisket, so based on a suggestion in the recipe notes, I turned part of it into sandwiches for lunch--on multigrain ciabatta spread with plain chevre and grainy mustard, topped with arugula. They sound more exciting that they actually were, but again, that could be because of my lukewarm feelings about beef. Oh, and those pickles are the icicle pickles I made last August. I like sweet pickles, but these were a little too sweet, even for me. They also weren't quite as crisp as I would have liked. Not bad though.

4. Earlier this week, my lunches consisted of non-photogenic crockpot white bean chicken chili topped with avocado and Monterey jack cheese, with a side of jalapeno corn muffins (recipe from Whole Grains Every Day Every Way, substituted nonfat yogurt for the sour cream). Maybe I'm just sick of protein or I have an unfair bias against boneless skinless chicken breasts, but the chili just didn't do it for me. Patrick liked it just fine though. We both liked the corn muffins. They're made with whole wheat pastry flour instead of all-purpose flour, but they're not heavy at all. Definitely worth making again.

5. And to satisfy my need for sweet things while avoiding white sugar, I did some more baking from Smart Cookies--another slab of apricot-almond granola bars and a batch of peanut and raisin cookies. Considering that these cookies don't contain any sweetener or white flour, they're not bad. The dried fruit, cornmeal, and peanut butter add some sweetness. But I'd still rather eat a brownie...

In other news, it has been warm and sunny the past few days, which has been wonderful! Our front yard is in bloom (tulips should be opening any day now!), and Patches has developed a sudden affinity for sidewalk dirt baths (I'm not sure why she feels the need to roll around in the dirt, but she looks cute doing it!).

Our electrical work is done, the sun is out--I'm definitely feeling more relaxed and happy this week. Another big contributor to this improvement in mood is that my family got some great news this week. I hadn't mentioned this before because it's not my story to tell (and it's a little more personal than I normally get here), but it definitely deserves a mention, considering how much space I devote to baby minutiae and baked goods. The short version is that my sister has a brain stem tumor (which still makes no sense to me--she's 20 years old!), which we've known about since November. She had a biopsy last week to figure out what type of tumor it is, and the preliminary prognosis was not encouraging. BUT! They got the pathology results back on Tuesday, and it turns out that it's a much more treatable type of tumor than the doctors originally thought. The expectation is that after 5-6 months of radiation/chemo, her life should be back to normal, which is such a relief compared to what they were originally projecting. I know Lianna is going to kick this tumor's ass!

Twenty-eight weeks! We've made it to the third trimester. Good job, baby! Here's a bonus family portrait to celebrate (we tried to get Patches in there too, but she wasn't interested).

We had our last hypnobirthing class this week. We spent most of it talking about labor and birth logistics (like how to apply what we've learned when we're actually in labor), and we watched a few more birth videos. I'm glad we took the class; I've enjoyed it. Now we just have to keep practicing regularly!

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I'm loving my pregnant belly! It's just neat that my body is set up to protect and support a baby. Early in the pregnancy, I was worried about whether I'd need some sort of support for the belly (like a girdle), but it seems to be doing just fine on its own. The human body is pretty impressive! I'm enjoying tracking the progress of my belly button too--it's pretty much flat at this point. I had expected it to just pop out at some point, but that doesn't seem to be what's happening. I guess it still has three months to do something dramatic.

I went in for my glucose screening on Thursday. The Glucola wasn't as bad as I'd expected. It just tasted like flat 7-Up, maybe a little sweeter. My doctor's office called yesterday, and I passed the glucose test (yay!), but I have low iron levels. I wasn't too surprised about that, since I haven't been eating a ton of red meat or leafy greens (with the exception of my weekly green smoothie from Sip). So I'm supposed to start taking an iron supplement in addition to my prenatal vitamins. Fair enough. I'll take low iron over gestational diabetes any day!

Good glucose results aside, it has been a rough week for a couple of reasons, one of which is that we're in the middle of having some major electrical work done on our house. It's just tough having our daily routines (and typical peace and quiet) interrupted. The good news is that the electricians should be able to finish up on Monday. I thought it would take weeks to get all this work done, but it has only taken four days. Pretty awesome! And even better, our house's electrical system is in way better shape than it was before. The temporary disruption has definitely been worth it.

The impetus for this work was to get rid of the old knob and tube wiring in our house (to reduce our insurance costs and make it possible to insulate our walls in the future), but we figured while we're having holes cut in our walls, we might as well make other improvements to the electrical system. We had the electricians update all of our light fixtures with wall switches (instead of pull chains) and upgrade the lighting in our closets, stairwell, and entryway. We're getting a second light fixture in the kitchen (better lighting for food pictures!), and--the thing I'm most excited about--our old and noisy bathroom fan has been replaced by a new model that is super quiet, with a timer and a built-in heater. Very luxurious for those cold winter mornings :)

We're getting a couple new light fixtures from Schoolhouse Electric (yay for cool Portland companies!). I'm excited to see those go up, but that has to wait until we can get a plaster dude in to patch up the multitude of holes left by the plumbing and electrical work. It's like a giant mouse has gone through our house and nibbled holes all over our ceilings and walls. It's kind of cool to see the inner workings of our house, but I'll be glad to have things looking a little cleaner and not have plaster dust all over everything.

Once this round of work is wrapped up, that should be the end of our big house upgrades for a while. The goal was to get as many big items as possible taken care of before the baby comes. Patrick has orchestrated all of our house repairs so far, and I'm so grateful to him for doing that.

Since our kitchen was taken over by electricians for a good portion of the week, there's not much to tell about food. We had a major cooking flop early in the week--cabbage rolls that were fiddly to prepare and then turned out to be totally undercooked and full of raw meat after an hour in the oven. Ugh. Thank goodness for boxed mac and cheese. We did better the next night. Patrick made lemony broccoli and chickpea rigatoni, using whole wheat penne. It seemed pretty easy to make, and it was tasty. Thanks to Alison for mentioning this recipe!

For lunches this week, we had otsu again. Tasty, but I'm feeling a little pasta-ed out at this point.

Patrick's birthday was this week (yay!), and to celebrate, I baked the lemon buttermilk rhubarb Bundt cake from Rustic Fruit Desserts, using some of our frozen rhubarb from last spring. Definitely on the tangy side, but the glaze balances it out nicely (even though much of the glaze slid right off the top and pooled underneath the cake). I love how majestic Bundt cakes look right after glazing. Sadly for this particular cake, I have no picture of it in its uncut glory; this one will have to suffice.

Having a whole Bundt cake sitting around when you're trying to avoid delicious baked goods is dangerous, but luckily we were able to send some home with friends, and then I sliced and froze most of the rest of it, to make it a little less tempting.

Speaking of delicious baked goods, we went to Besaw's for brunch today, and Patrick had a jelly roll, which was pretty much a cinnamon roll, but with jam in the middle instead of cinnamon-sugar, frosted generously with cream cheese icing. I can confirm, it was tasty. My eggs benedict (with spinach and oven-roasted tomatoes) were yummy too. The service was fast and friendly, and we only had to wait about 10 minutes for a table. Definitely a good place for breakfast if you're in NW Portland.

Twenty-seven weeks! We've got about three months left until the baby is due, which seems like a long time to wait, but I guess it takes a while to grow a human being from scratch. It's a good thing I'm enjoying being pregnant!

• I've noticed recently that it's harder for me to get comfortable and stay comfortable when I'm sitting down. My back tends to start hurting. It doesn't help that our couch pillows are old and have lost their oomph. I guess it just gives me extra incentive to get up and walk around, rather than sitting on the couch so much. Luckily, I'm still sleeping just fine--yay, Snoogle!

• Feeling the baby kick still entertains us. Every so often, he flails hard enough that we can see and feel a tiny appendage (foot? elbow? Who knows...) protruding a little from my belly. He seems to like having his head nestled on my right side--sometimes I can feel it pushing against my belly. It's nice being reminded that there really is a little person in there.

• I still haven't had any food cravings, as far as I can tell. I have been eating a lot of citrus though--grapefruit and oranges are so tasty! I guess I do have cravings for junk food, since it's not allowed right now, but I think that's a pretty standard response; I don't think it's pregnancy-related.

• We spent most of our hypnobirthing class this week discussing birth preferences and talking about what to expect when we go to the hospital. It's helpful that the teacher is a nurse at the hospital we'll be delivering at, so she has the inside scoop. I had been a little nervous about what the hospital would be like, so this helped demystify it a little.

  This class was also focused on releasing our fears (so that we can be more relaxed during birth). In advance of the class, Patrick and I listed out our baby/birth-related fears and then talked about them with each other. We had a decent amount of overlap. I think it's pretty standard stuff--financial concerns, preserving our relationship with each other after the baby comes, making sure that we have the kind of birth experience that we want. It was good to talk about it. And then in class, we did a fear-release session, where we pictured unpleasant memories from our past and then replaced them with a mental picture of the two of us, smiling and confident and eager to meet our baby. It made me kind of emotional, but in a good way. Even though we do have some fears, they don't occupy my mind most of the time. We are, more often than not, happy and confident and excited about having a baby. Life is good :) It doesn't hurt that the sun is shining and the flowers are blooming outside right now. It's easier to be joyful and eager in the springtime, I think.

In kitty news, I'm happy to report that Patches recovered really quickly from her hospital visit last weekend. Less than a day after returning home, she was back to her normal, hungry self. It's such a relief to have her back. We still don't know what caused her to get so sick, but hopefully it was a one-time occurrence. Poor kitty does have some fur to grow back though; they shaved her belly and front leg at the hospital. I think she's a little embarrassed about the missing fur.

So in addition to the healthy baked goods I just posted about, we've done pretty well eating healthily this week. We've definitely added more meat back into our diet, just because it makes me worry less about whether I'm getting enough protein. I'd like to cut back again once the baby is born though.

1. Kamut, broccoli, and sausage medley (from Whole Grains Every Day Every Way). I cooked the kamut ahead of time, so it didn't take Patrick too long to put this meal together at dinner time. Not a bad meal, though it might benefit from a little more sauciness to pull everything together--maybe mix in some pesto next time?

2. Popcorn-crusted catfish and cornmeal spoonbread (both from Whole Grains) and pickled coleslaw. A very beige meal. The catfish was fine, and the spoonbread tasted good (mmm, butter), but the texture was a little too light and insubstantial for me. I prefer a nice creamy polenta instead. The coleslaw was too vinegary for my tastes, but we learned in class that eating acidic foods might help prevent group B strep, so at least I felt good about eating it.

3. Cannellini bean and sausage gratin. This tasted good but reinforced my ambivalence about Italian sausage (I'm just not wild about the flavor). If I make it again, I'd probably try using a different type of sausage. Or no sausage at all!

4. Our hypnobirthing class this week included a potluck dinner, so we brought Tracy's favorite lentil salad (with a few slivered sun-dried tomatoes and about 10 oz of steamed spinach added for good measure). Always a good choice.

And Patrick baked two loaves of Otis Cafe brown bread, using our newly cultivated sourdough starter. It smelled so good when it was baking, and it tastes good too! Patrick had some problems with his first attempt at starter (it got taken over by leuconostoc bacteria), but his second attempt (using pineapple juice and more frequent stirring, as suggested on the linked page) behaved like it was supposed to. Go little starter!

5. For my lunch this week, I made a batch of chunky lentil soup from Super Natural Cooking, but I added some chicken sausage and sliced mushrooms, and I used cubed sweet potato instead of butternut squash. I was worried that with all my changes, it might turn out badly, but I was pretty happy with the results. It was thick, so I served it over brown rice. I topped it with a little ricotta salata that we had on hand. Not bad!

Okay, that's enough computer time. I'm going to go take a walk and enjoy the beautiful spring weather while it lasts!