davejenbarnes

I’m going in every week now.  Not much changed in a week.  Here’s the info:

Blood pressure - 102/70, weight change - nothing (overall gain of 19 pounds, which is more than I gained in 41 weeks with James), 50% effaced, 1 cm dilated, braxton hicks - 1 or 2 a day, and Lowell?  He’s head down and he’s small… they’re guessing if he is born, like, now, he’d be around 5 pounds, so they’re hoping for a 7 pounder in 4 weeks.  He’ll likely be smaller than James was at birth, but we’ll have to wait and see.  Lowell’s heart rate was in the 130/140’s which is about 20 bpm slower than James’ was at the same “age.”  I was told I wouldn’t have any more internal exams until the week of my due date or if I start having regular contractions.

My next appointment is on the 9th.

I hadn’t even blogged about starting this project and it’s already done. A playgroup mommy friend of mine gave me three 50g skeins of Bio-Natur wool in Donkey a week and a half ago. I started knitting a swatch (always, always knit a swatch first - or two or three if you need to change needle sizes) and found the wool to be quite scratchy, though it feels durable, yet very light-worsted weight. Knowing nothing about wool, really, as I’m new to knitting, I did some research online and couldn’t find out much about this particular wool. I had read, though, that Nature Wool (which is in my stash) knits up quite nicely when doubled. Since the Bio-Natur and Nature Wool felt the same thickness, I decided to pair them up and knit a teeny pair of pants for the baby who will be born in need of some pants.

The Nature Wool is the same I used for the size S Curly Purly soaker. The Bio-Natur wool is the grey. At first I didn’t really like the color combo but since working on it a little at a time for about a week, it’s grown on me. The aqua makes the grey seem metallic. I knit the entire pants with the magic loop method using some loooong cables with the Denise needles.

I’ve also got a baby cardigan on the cables but I’m losing momentum with it because the yarn is seven-or-eight year old Red Heart and that yarn just feels like straw after working with wool. Maybe I’ll finish it just to get my cables back. Right now, they’re holding stitches in the sleeves… Or I might use scrap yarn to get those cables back.

My mom took me to my local (well, semi local, it’s a drive) yarn shop and beefed up my beginner stash. What to knit next?

The boy seems to be catching a cold.  I suppose that’s why he slept so awfully Thursday night.  And the only place I can think of where he’d be able to catch a cold is the church childcare during my Thursday morning Bible studies.  It’s the only time he’s not with me.

My wonderful 13-hour-plus a night sleeper is gone, overnight. He never went to sleep at 8 pm last night until after 1 am. It was so unusual that I did go in twice (at 10:30 and 12:30) to see what all the crying was about. While awake, like, today, during the day, he seems to be perfectly normal but it’s supposed to be naptime and it’s a frightening flashback to 12:30 last night, only the sun is up. He just calls and calls and calls for me. Something tells me it’s just his age right now. I’m going to be a bad mom and let him cry until 3 pm today. Now, why don’t I have that iPod? I guess earplugs will just have to do even though they don’t help distract my brain like the iPod would.

18 months old sucks so far. It’s physically exhausting on me and mentally impossible. GO. TO. SLEEP. JAMES.

Other than the tantrums, hitting, biting, not sleeping, and throwing of food I really enjoy him at this age.

UPDATE: he wiped out at 2 pm and with a false alarm around 3:15, he’s still asleep as of 3:50, so all-in-all, it has been a decent nap, jut off to a rough start.

Yeah, so it’s been over a month since my last appointment and the midwife who saw me was pissed about that. I was supposed to have been seen every 2 weeks since 28 weeks along but it’s been a regular 5 weeks between appointments ever since I started there at 12 weeks. I can’t help it - I had appointments for when the previous midwife decided I needed to have been seen… so it was the last midwife’s fault for the large gap in appointments and the ice storm which added another week to the wait. So I go in every single week now until Lowell is born. Most appointments will be on Wednesdays but there is a Friday in there somewhere with the head midwife.

Quick overcap - gained 6 pounds in 5 weeks for a grand total of 132 (which is, like, totally my goal weight for my height as a non-pregnant person, not for a 35 week pregnant woman, I should be in, like, the 150’s or higher but oh well) - blood pressure something like 110/60 which is, like, totally perfect. Fundal height is 33 cm, so, small for the time but he did flip head down and was pretty low in my pelvis which would affect that measurement so no concern over measuring small. Plus, those of you who know me or have seen me know it’s better for me to have a smallish baby rather than a huge one because I am just not big. Tall, okay, but big, I’m not. Lowell’s heartrate was in the 130’s but quickly jumped into the 160’s upon some nudging and poking by me and the midwife. The midwife laughed because we woke him up… you could pretty much tell the exact instant he woke up because the bumpa-bumpa noise sped up and he started moving.

So my goals are to gain 1-2 or more pounds per week which would put me close to what I weighed when James was born and to figure out what to do with coordinating family and friends’ offers of help. We’ve pretty much ruled out moving James to a toddler bed before the baby is born simply because the shipping on the toddler bed we’d get would take as long as we have left in this pregnancy so perhaps closer to 2 years old for James… I don’t mind having 2 in cribs… or diapers… or 2 under 2… they’re only little for so long that it really won’t last all that long. Shoot, in the blink of an eye I’ll have two hairy stinky teenagers to worry about… no need to flip out about them in diapers.

James is 34 inches tall, weighs 27 and a half pounds, and has a large noggin’ which puts him in the 90th percentile for height and head and somewhere about average for weight.  When he’s around other 18 month olds at playgroups, though, he is shorter than they are and weighs more, so I don’t know how accurate those percentages are.  Personally, I think he’s just right.  Clothes-wise, he’s currently wearing a 2T size shirt (3T if it’s a college-logo shirt) and 18M sized pants (see, I think his legs are still short because they’re the smaller size.) Oh, and just for the record, he learned about 6 new words and signs yesterday, all from copying David and me.

For Christmas, my parents got us and my brother (and themselves) each an iSight so we could video chat and they could see James. We’ve used it several times to chat with them. Even when there is no one online to video chat with, James still loves seeing himself in the monitor.