It's a Boy!

Right, so I know I stopped posting over a week ago ... but the baby hadn't come yet. I was just tired of saying "no baby yet" over and over again.

Declan actually arrived on Monday, Oct. 17, at 8:13pm. He was 9lbs and 21.5 inches long. He is also emphatically Eleanor approved, despite his status as a boy.

Of course, there's plenty more to say but I'm going to stop there and get ready for bed. The details, like many other things, are not nearly as important as sleep right now.

Still. No. Baby.

I don't really want to talk about it.

Photo Challenge: Traffic

This week's Shutterboo Photo Challenge is "traffic." Last week I ruminated on whether Keith could catch the anal retentive planning bug that I have, and manage to take, edit, and post his picture over the weekend to get it out of the way.

He didn't. You'd think after we've been together for over 14 years, I would know this isn't going to happen. But I still thought maybe.

By Tuesday night, I told Keith that--if he really loved me--he would now wait to take the picture. It's supposed to be posted by Wednesday at midnight, so he should wait until about 11:50pm on Wednesday to run out and find a traffic picture and slap it on flickr site. Because, as everyone knows, putting something off is guaranteed to make the baby come. Right? RIGHT?!?

Instead, he went out Tuesday night and took some pictures, came home and edited and posted. So now he's neither ready super in advance, nor postponing for my sake. Completely foiled!



I'm currently operating under the assumption that making lots of plans and putting off tasks for a future day is the best way to make the baby decide now is a good time to be born. Inconvenience! That's the key! I've planned too well; the house is clean, the freezer is stocked, I've even blogged in advance! Clearly, I've brought this sad state of post due-date anticipation upon myself.

If you'll excuse me, I need to go and find some other urgent tasks that I can postpone until tomorrow. Maybe the stress of having them hang over my head will induce labor ....

To Induce or Not to Induce?

Well, I had my first post due-date doctor's appointment today. The appointment that, when I made it last week, I kept thinking to myself, I really hope I have the baby before this appointment!

But I didn't. So I went to the appointment and we talked induction. How long past my due date would he feel comfortable letting me go? How long would I feel "comfortable" (the term being relative) waiting?

He offered to induce me tonight/tomorrow morning, but I wasn't quite ready for that. He said the latest he's willing to wait is a week after the due date, so Monday or Tuesday next week at the very latest. Somehow, just have a firm end in mind (by next Wednesday, this baby will be here, one way or the other!) calmed me down a bit. I said "no" to being induced tonight.

Currently, I have an ultrasound appointment for Thursday morning. If the baby's not born by then, we need to make sure he/she is still doing okay in there. The doctor went ahead and scheduled an induction for Thursday night/Friday morning, but said we can cancel it if everything looks okay and I want to keep waiting.

I don't know how I'll feel by Thursday. Of course, my most fervent hope is that I don't make it to Thursday and go into labor on my own in the next 10 minutes! (To that end, I've posted the flower picture because I've read that visualizing a flower opening can bring on labor.) But I still have to consider the possibility.

I've heard that being induced can mean that labor goes more slowly, and it can be more painful/intense. Overall, I was very happy with the way that my first labor went. It was fast and ... well, that was the main point in its favor. I liked letting nature take its course, and letting Eleanor come when she was ready.

On the other hand, I must admit that I like knowing induction is an option. This pregnancy isn't going to drag on for weeks. (Weeks!) I sincerely hope that labor starts on its own, ASAP. But if we make it to Thursday or even--perish the thought!--next week, I'd imagine my resistance to induction will significantly lessen.

This Is a Post about Nothing

Today is the due date, but nothing is happening. I've cleaned the house, we've stocked up on food, Keith mowed the grass, we bought Eleanor's pumpkin .... of course, there's always other tasks that could be done. But the truth is, I have no concentration or willpower to do them. I am a little tempted to make myself clean to try and fake the nesting instinct, but the couch is comfy and I really don't think it works that way.

So I'm just waiting. But I felt the need to post this, so no one takes my lack of posting as evidence of some great and wonderful events keeping me from the blog. None of that going on here! Gomez is sleeping on the back of the couch next to me, while Beckett insists on licking his legs, curled up in the armchair.

I'm not very good at waiting. I know I should be doing more to keep my mind occupied, but all of my attention is focused on what's NOT HAPPENING yet. Grrr .... If anyone has any good suggestions for how to stop driving myself crazy, I'd like to hear them!

Baby Projects: Sewing

In conjunction with Eleanor's room and baby preparations, I've had a lot of sewing projects going on. Most time-consuming, and most fun, were Eleanor's new curtains. She requested purple. She wanted light purple, actually, but I'm a big fan of blackout-type curtains for babies and toddlers, so I made dark purple curtains with purple and pink felt flowers.

This is the same way I made the nursery curtains, which are dark brown with green felt leaves. (Why felt? Why, no hemming of course!) I then used spray adhesive to attach the leaves to the curtains.

In the intervening three years, almost half of the leaves have fallen off or been ripped off by tiny fingers, so I did realize this time around that just spray adhesive wouldn't be enough. When making the new curtains, I did use spray adhesive to position the flowers, but this time also stitched around the edges of the flowers to make sure they're not going anywhere. Because, of course, after all of this work Eleanor will never be allowed to redecorate or change her room in any way. These curtains will last until college!

After finishing her new curtains, I went back and reattached or attached anew the green leaves on the nursery curtains, then sewed around the edges of those, as well.

Also learning from past experience, we had made cloth diaper wipes from cut-up receiving blankets for Eleanor. These did require hemming, but just a quick zigzag stitch around the edges. For diaper wipes, it doesn't have to look pretty--just get the job done! I hemmed a few more of these that we had never finished off before, because we can never have too many wipes!

Finally, completely unrelated to the kids, Beckett has twice chewed holes in our one sleeping bag, for no apparent reason other than he's a dog. I sewed up the holes when possible, or made patches when necessary.

You might think that I felt a sense of accomplishment after all this, right? Except that, as I was making progress on all of these projects, Beckett was at loose ends one day and occupied himself by puking on, and then eating, one of the dining room curtains. So a sewing project that had been finished five years ago is now back on the to-do list.

Just like so many aspects of life, the sewing tasks never end!

Continued Preschool Skirmishes

It's not an outright war anymore, and no more tears (thank God for that), but Eleanor is still not totally on board with the whole "Preschool" concept.

For the past week, I have had to wake her up and spend the 20 minutes before school arguing/discussing/cajoling why preschool is a good thing. She doesn't want to get dressed. She doesn't want to go. She doesn't want me to drop her off at the door; she wants me to come in to the classroom. (Which is a terrible idea, and will happen over my dead body.)

Yet I know she has fun while she's there. When I pick her up, she talks a mile a minute about story time and her friends and all the activities. But as time passes, she seems to convince herself that it's all terrible. She missed me and thinks I shouldn't make her go. So by the next morning, the first words out of her mouth are again, "I don't want to go to preschool!"

Why are we still having this conversation?!? I don't know what it's going to take to get her fully convinced that preschool is not the enemy, but I hope it happens soon.

Photo Challenge: Technology

Poor Keith. He was really hoping that the prompt "silhouette" would be assigned for the Shutterboo Weekly Photo Challenge before the baby is born. But this week's "technology" and next week will be "traffic." So much for that!

Luckily for Keith, even though it was a last-minute photo, he's the kind of guy who knows how to--and feels comfortable--opening up a computer and pulling out a piece of it for pictures.



Like everything else in our lives, I wonder what will happen next week with the Photo Challenge. Everything feels so up in the air, as we wait for the baby to decide when he/she is ready to arrive. Keith has managed to submit a picture, on time, for the first 40 weeks of the 52-week challenge. Keeping in mind anything from life upheavals like illness or car breakdowns to good distractions such as vacation or even the garden variety lack of inspiration, I think this is a very impressive record. Will he be able to keep it up, or will next week be the one that finally breaks him?

Keith "joked" about how lucky it would be if we hit lots of traffic on the way to the hospital while I'm in labor. I put the word in quotation marks because of how utterly humorless his remarks are.

Will he do what I would do in his situation: Make sure to take a picture and have it all processed, possibly even posted, by Sunday night? Or will he live dangerously and see what happens early next week?!?

My Expiration Date

It's hard to believe, but my due date is less than a week away.

With large life events that are on the calendar for ages, it's always somehow surprising when they've actually arrived. Sure, I've known since January that my due date is October 10. But that's, like, a real day. Um, this is really going to happen. We're having a baby!

It all "becomes real" to me, for some strange reason, when I buy milk and the expiration date is further out than whatever big event I've been looking forward to. If the event happens before the milk will expire, that means it is now happening very soon. By the time someone opens this carton of milk and wrinkles her nose at it, I will have graduated/moved to England/gotten married/had a baby/etc. It's when Big Life meets everyday life, and it weirds me out a little, every time.

I remember first experiencing this when I went grocery shopping the week before college graduation. I'm pretty sure I stood in the dairy aisle for a few minutes, trying to process the fact that this skim milk had a longer shelf life than the rest of my college career. I would be drinking this milk as a college graduate, maybe on the morning of graduation, or maybe even on the morning of moving out and leaving campus for the last time. I was so not ready for college to end, but there it was, written on the side of the milk carton. I had to move on.

Of course, my feelings about the event are a little different this time. I was very sad to be done with college, and a tad bit overwhelmed about figuring out the rest of my life. I did have some beer/pizza/pop college weight gain that made my clothes a little tight around the middle, but nothing like the tightness of a pregnant belly that has been stretched about as far as it goes. My skin itches all the time.

It takes me about three different positions to actually get myself rolled from one side to the other in bed at night. And a whole lot of grunting (although some of that is just to wake Keith up a bit and make sure he knows how uncomfortable I am). Physically, I am so done being pregnant. And emotionally, I'm ready to. I'm getting so excited to meet this new baby. Is it a boy or a girl? Will it cry for the first day, like Eleanor did? Or will he/she be calm and curious?

I bought milk today; it expires nine days after my due date. There had BETTER be a baby in my arms before that milk goes off, or I .... I don't even know what. I can't consider the alternative.

I've warned Keith that I am aware that having a due date of October 10 is no guarantee a baby will be born on that day. However, I am guaranteeing that my patience in dealing with the physical difficulties of pregnancy will expire on that day. I'm not particularly patient right now, but I am quite certain it can--and will--get worse if the due date comes and goes without any sign of labor.

I've been telling myself all along that this baby won't be early. Eleanor was a few days late, and I'm just going to go ahead and assume Baby #2 will be the same. I do have my bag packed, although I keep reading the novels I borrowed from the library, which are specifically supposed to be for the hospital. I keep trying to picture what my life will be like next week. Will I be taking Eleanor to Preschool on Monday? Picking her up on Tuesday? Meeting friends at a tearoom for our tentatively planned outing on Wednesday? Going to Parent/Teacher conferences on Friday ... with a new baby?

I'm trying to think of a good, solid conclusion to this blog entry, but I think I'm just going to have to accept that this is one situation that is all about questions and no answers. I don't know how or when labor is going to happen. I do know that I'll be constantly thinking about it until it does.

I'm also pretty certain that, the rate I'm going, I will have used up all the milk in my nightly chocolate milkshakes before we get anywhere near the expiration date. Maybe they can help my patience last a little longer, if needed.