Week 34!

I think the shadow makes me look bigger than I really am.  He's a pineapple.

It's getting real, people.  I'm getting less and less mobile and more and more tired.  I went to school the other day feeling light headed and shaky.  I came home, took a 2 hour nap and then felt fine.  How am I going to make it to the end of the year?

We got to have a long meeting with our wonderful doula and she enlightened us on all sorts of tricks, tools and prep work.  My iron is a touch low which is not good because I will soon lose lots of blood.  My stupid OBGYN put me on iron pills, which aren't absorbed well and make you constipated.  My doula, on the other hand, required that I eat beef and lamb at least twice a week (please send along your favorite recipes!).  She also recommended coconut water to help with the hydration, which has been difficult to keep up with.  In an attempt to strengthen my amniotic sac, I'm to eat grapefruit once a day.  In an attempt to ripen and soften my cervix for labor I'm to use Evening Primrose Oil suppositories and have lots of sex.  Apparently, one of the many interventions they will use at the hospital if things aren't moving along quickly enough is a massive dose of prostaglandins.  As always, the synthetic stuff isn't as good as the natural stuff and semen is a great natural dose of more effective prostaglandins.

We are trying for a natural birth which isn't easy to pull off in a hospital.  Our doula warned us that at our next appointment we'll be required to do a Group B Stress test.  Basically our doctor will test the levels of bacteria in my vagina and anus.  If they decide the levels are too high, I am required to be hooked up to the IV and on strong antibiotics throughout labor.  This is because the bacteria could cause problems for mom and more serious problems for baby.  As usual though, it is quite rare AND there is really no reason why they should be checking for group B in the anus, as we all know babies don't come out of butts.  Doula Michelle to the rescue!  I'm going to use a homeopathic treatment called Gynatren two weeks before my test.  I'll also clean my anus with tea tree oil.  This will help make sure they don't find more bacteria than they want and I won't have to be tied to an IV.   Knowledge is power.

Lastly, Michelle told us about the vitamin K shot which the hospital automatically gives to the baby immediately after birth.  Vitamin K helps the blood clot and somewhere along the lines of 5 in 100,000 babies will have a problem with blood clotting and will suffer from "tragic intracranial bleeding".  On the other hand, who knows how this massive dose of vitamin K affects a newborn.  We can ask that they do not give our baby the shot, but we've got to explicitly include that in our birth plan.  Along the lines of torturing our newborn, we have to decide if we'll have him circumcised.  It turns out there is no medical reason to do it and it is very much going out of fashion, especially here in the Bay Area.  Michelle says that if we circumcise our child he'll actually be in the minority.

Right after the surprise, I'm still in shock.

The diaper cake (not edible)

The other really exciting event was the surprise party that the parents and students at my school threw for me.  Leighton told me he was taking me out to dinner on Friday night, which was shocking and very exciting.  He was acting funny and I kept asking questions.  We started heading into Piedmont, so he says, "we're going to have dinner with my ex-girlfriend".  I thought that was fishy because I didn't know of any ex-girlfriends who lived in Piedmont, so naturally I started yelling at him.  We pull up to a house and he makes me go in first.  I recognize a parent who answer the door, but he's acting weird and sends me to an empty living room.  I hesitantly walk forward and out jumps, from both sides mind you, about 60 parents and students!  They almost surprised me right into labor.  I couldn't believe that all of those 12-14 year olds were able to keep their mouths shut all week.  We had a HUGE paella, salad, cake, and then I opened hundreds of wonderfully thoughtful gifts.  One of them was this creative "diaper cake".  It's all little baby diapers rolled up and surrounded by awesome toys (little rattles on the ends of booties!)

opening tons of gifts while everyone ooo'd and aaahhh'd.