Off to the hospital

Water broke and we are off to the hospital. Taking bets on Septermber 30th or October 1st. good thign I charged the batteries on my camera last night. Wish me luck!

Nursery photos

So I didn't make a post yesterday, my excuse is a good one I was busy watching the rest of "Lost season one". Now that that nonsense is over I can get on with this baby thing. I had a few Braxton-Hicks false labour contractions yesterday but they did not amount to anything. They started in the late evening and I went to bed figuring that if it were the real thing my body would wake me up, alas I woke up and they were gone. I had a doctors apointment today and found out I am dialed to 1cm, but thats no big deal because I was at 1cm a week ago. Talk about lack of progress.
As promised her are the nursery photos ( I especially like the octopus in the crib and the matchign quilt and curtain that Krista made), now all we need is the baby. Don't worry it won't be long, but perhaps don't hold your breath for it beign a September baby.

Estimated date of confinement

So the medical term for the due date is estimated date of confinement (EDC). If anyone can explain to me why they choose such a terrible name please to enlighten me. Who is going to be confined mother, baby or both? Anyways my calculated EDC is today September 27 and the ultrasounds I had at 15 and 18 weeks both seemed to back up the September 27 date. But its really silly how these things are calculated becuase less than 5% of women actually give birth on their EDC, so I guess I can say with 95% certainty that I will not go into labour today. In fact most women will deliver after their EDC. So It seems to me that this day is just some sort of cruel tease. Oh well I guess I should make the most of these baby free days while I still have them. I am tremendously lazy these days and I feel no guilt for it! If I wan tto sit in my basement and watch the complete first season of Lost then I will.
A special thanks to my friend Krista who sent me the most amazing baby quilt, it arrived last friday and it looks awesome with the matching bumber pads and curtains. I will post a picture of the nursery very soon.

filling in for Heather

Heather is feeling a bit tired from watching 8 episodes of lost and she is making me fill in for today.
We are approaching the due date in about 1.5 hours and the lazy baby is making no attempts at
escaping from its uterine bastille. At this point we are pretty confident that we will have a brand new baby within the next 8 days or so (at a week past the due date labour will be induced by the good people at rocky view hospital). I've been making my attempts at communicating with the baby, taping some beats on the belly, shining the flashlight, forming a tight seal around the belly with the mouth and exhaling a roaring
tremourous blast. Hmmm maybe thats why the baby is tightly clinging to the uterus terrified of
what dwells beyond. I tried just talking but I don't get nearly the same level of response.
What I want to create is to establish a bunch of familiar patterns of noises it can recognize me by when it finally decides to come out. I should probably try to make this a bit longer seeing how this is my first entry on this B(aby)log but Im pretty beat up today. I bruised myself at work when a plank fell on my hand and a wasp stung me on my way home. Fell behind my shirt through an open car window, bloody wasps.

Lazy sunday?

Ok so no new post yesterday I was way too tired to make a post. The discomforts of late pregnancy are really begining to annoy me. Anyways people have begun to speculate htat when I don't make a post that I have gone into labour, not true. I will try to send off a quick post before we go to the hospital. So keep checking the blog you never know it could be any time now.......

Mom and dads baby photos

Ok I decided this blog needed some more pictures. So I apologize for the quality as there are digital snaps of some pictures I have. These are pictures of Chris and I as babies. So if you use your imagination and meld the two together you can get an idea for what the new baby will look like. If you have not figured it out yet Chris is the black and white baby and I am the one in colour (note the wicked 70's tub flowers).

I hope you enjoy these pics and as you glance at Chris's photo take note of the large diameter of his head and say a little prayer for me. His mom assures me that the delivery was not so bad and that his head really was not that big. But I digress. You be the judge of this photo.

So tonight is friday night, date night. Chris is taking me out for dinner and a movie. I am not sure what to have for dinner, I would love sushi and all the warnings about pregnant women not being alowed to eat sushi seem a little too overprotective to me. As for the movie we are goign to see Tim Burtons latest Corpse Bride. We are big fans of The Nightmare Before Christmas so this new animation looks very promising and its not too long so I should be comfortable in the theater seats for the duration of the film. Take care everyone and keep the comments coming.

Beware the thin, green peppers

Ok so no baby yet. I am really getting tired of this whole waiting thing and I am ready to sign an eviction notice. Since I am not like Ms. Spears and am not "too posh to push" I can't just schedule the babys arrival at a time that is convenient for me and before the stretch marks on my abdomen get any worse. Moving on, I went to the doctor today and everything is well with the baby. There are "natural" ways of inducing labour that you can try at home one of which is eating spicy foods. I think this is an old wives tale but hey those old wives have to to be right once in a while. So after the doctors appointment Chris and I went grocery shopping to prepare food in advance of babys arrival and maybe soemthing to hasten up its birthday. Chilli is a good option because it freezes and thaws very nicely and is a good hearty, spicy meal. So Chris decided to get experimental with the assorted peppers that are so temptingly displayed in the produce section. These bright shiny little veggies in shades of green, yellow, red and orange in all sorts of shapes and sizes are nice to look at but carry their own hazards. Now I want this baby out but I am not desperate enough to start munching on some unknown pepper. So I warned Chris not to use the seeds in the chilli becuse they contain all the oil and thus all the hotness . I also told him to wear gloves when chopping the peppers becuse once you get the oil on your fingers it is really hard to get out (common knowledge to anyone who watches the food network). Having satisfied myself with serving up this sage advice I went to go take a nap while Chris cooked up a storm. When I woke up from my nap I found Chris downstairs on the couch curled up in the fetal position. He told me he should have listened to me (words every wife loves to hear). Apparently he nibbled on the end of a thin green pepper and having found it not too spicy he decided to chop it up and put it in the chilli. Subsequent to this he decides to sample some more of this pepper so he takes a lagre bite out of one. He immediatly ran to the sink and flushed out his mouth with cold water for 15 minutes. Not only that but he also got the oil all over his fingers and every once in while I would hear him yell after he rubbed his eyes or nose or something. *sigh* Anyways we managed to get the pepper out of the chilli and I enjoyed a nice spicy bowl, but it did not do squat to start labour. Oh well I don't think I will have to wait that much longer.......

I would also like to congratulate my neighbour who gave birth to a baby boy last weekend. As it turns out Chris an I moved next to another couple from our prenatal class. So now I know that my baby will have a play mate waiting for him or her when it arrives. It looks like it could be the begining of a beautiful friendship.

Of scrabble and scalloped potatos

While waiting for the baby I have to come up with various ways to keep myself entertained. I have been out of the work force since the end of May and many people ask me what do I do with all my time. Having been used to the 40 + hour work week I thought that there would be so much empty time to fill while staying at home. While I have found more time for relaxation (my post- breakfast and post-lunch hour naps are essential to me these days) I still find that I need to carefully organize my time or else nothing will get done. So last night after a carefully prepared meal of chicken masala (thanks to the pataks people) and garden salad, Chris and I sat down for a game of scrabble. Now when I play scrabble with Chris I insist that the TV stays on because otherwise I get bored during his 15-minute turns and end up walking away from the game. So a little bit of channel surfing while he comes up with his monster words is the perfect solution. Naturally Chris grumbles about the distraction of the TV but on that point I do not budge. Anyway he did very well even pulling out "continue" and getting 50 bonus points for using all his tiles. We are not overly competitive with points but every once and a while we try to play words that are questionable and get indignant when the other does not allow them. And on yesterdays board Chris was determined to play the word "amoan" because by placing the "a" in front of "moan" he could pull off another 8-letter word (which at the moment escapes my mind). Naturally I would have none of it, because "amoan" is not a word. Later on I had the oppurtunity to play "reclaw" on a tripple word and at the same time landing the "w" on a double letter tile. Even though "reclaw" was not in the dictionary per se I still felt it was a word because you can claw soemthing and therefore if you can do it once you can do it agian thus "reclaw" somthing. Ultimately Chris caved and I was able to play "reclaw" (which earned me a stellar 45 points!). A subsequent google search revealed that neither "amoan" nor "reclaw" would likely hold water at a scrabble players tournament but the important thing is I got my way and we ended up finishing very close in points.
On to the scalloped potatos, I put them in the oven some time ago and I have not checked them since and I can smell them all the way upstairs. I should not neglect my dinner, even if it is for the sake of a blog post.

September 19th - Pregnancy home stretch (literally)

Ok here is the inagural post for my new baby blog. I hope that you can all share in this online journal with me and keep checking in from time to time for updates. I am just shy of the 39 week mark and I am amazed at how much my body has changed since January. As my husband Chris said yesterday " we have come a long way from two pink stripes". I think the baby has dropped because I can breath easier and I can eat more food, but it still can reach my ribcage with its wee foot so it has to be getting the hint that I am running out of room!
As I enter the last few days or weeks of my pregnancy I am getting a serious bout of that "nesting instinct" that I read about in my pregnancy books. Apparently women get the urge to prepare their homes for their new arrival. It seems like some sort of evolutionary throwback to me but I did spent the better part of last saturday painting the nursery green with the help of my mom. The odd thing is I don't really think the baby will give a hoot about the appearance of the nursery but to me it was really urgent to get it done. Also I had the impulse to buy new smoke detectors, a CO detector, a fire extinguisher, and get my furnace and fireplace cleaned and serviced. I guess that nature has a purpose for this nesting impulse (and also the side effect of emptying my wallet). Ok thats it for the first post I will be updatign this blog regularly so keep ckeckign back for more in the life of Heather and baby (and Chris too).