Nada, Zilch

It's been a week since I lasted posted and I was sure a week ago that we would be so busy with our new bundle of joy that I wouldn't be posting for that reason.

Well, I have not delivered yet. I'm now officially 1 week overdue from my ultrasound date of July 19th. Our daughter is firmly a Leo now (so much for being a Cancer).

I started a series of acupuncture last Thursday for inducing labor and my midwife told me to relax because my body is still showing signs of progress, even if they're not as fast as I would like.

The last day my midwife can deliver me at home is August 2nd, at which point I'll be 42 weeks. I've been told that she's never not been able to induce before that point. Castor Oil appears to be the favorite last ditch mechanism, but I think that she thinks I'll naturally go into labor before then. I guess we'll see.

All the predicted dates of delivery by various friends has passed. The only other fun date is July 26th, which is my mother-in-law's birthday. That would be quite a present, but I'm guessing I would already have to be in labor to make that mark at this point. I'm expecting labor to take many hours, 16+ or so. But I really have no idea how long it will take in it's entirety.

Weekend Fun and Due Date

The best part of my weekends right now is that my honeypot is around. Otherwise he's at work.

I took it pretty slow this weekend. My energy levels are pretty low these days. Today's my due date (according to the 20 week sizing ultrasound.) My other due date was the 7th and that was based on my own information. Any day now I should be "popping." I'm completely ready and slightly desperate to have that happen. I'm really uncomfortable right now.

Yesterday I made a pair of purple yoga pants complete with a fold over top that I can wear right now, and when I'm not "big bellied" also. I only really have one other pair of pants that I can wear right now and I'm liking wearing them a lot more lately.

Earlier in the day we went down to San Leandro and hung out with my honeypot's sister while she unpacked. She moved into a house close to a new teaching job she took. It's a super cute house with a great back deck. It'll be great for parties.

Today I went to the Renegade Craft Fair and then had lunch at Plant. They both were really awesome. The craft fair had so many really creative vendors and inspiring artists. Quite a bit of the style of the crafts there remind me of Portland, OR. I bought a really cool purple coat even though it was breaking my rule. (I'm not allowed to buy clothes that I can't try on which means anything not maternity.) I couldn't pass this coat up, it's not something I would ever run across again. It's just that cool and creative.

Plant is this amazing restaurant that I'd heard about before from my honeypot. He ate there after a bike ride and loved it. I was also really impressed with the food. I had the garden burger, but the name doesn't describe how amazing it was. It was this lentil and beet patty with tons of other stuff (vegies and seeds) on really good bread with a side salad. They had lots of vegan options and everything just looked amazing. The best part is that they were still serving brunch and it was probably 2pm or so. Too bad it's not closer, we'd probably go there often. I'll have to do my best to remember it for when we're in the city and hungry.

Then we went to the park and played with juggling clubs, whips and just watched the dogs and people. Today was beautiful and sunny. I didn't last long in the park though because currently it's really hard on my body to sit without back support.

Lake Merritt

Yesterday I got up really early and continued my tour of coffee shops. This time I walked to one that's on the edge of what I would call "my neighborhood." I had the best bagel and egg and mocha there. They even double toasted the bagel for me. And the best part is that they open up at 6am. This is really great for folks like me that can't sleep so well anymore.

Yesterday afternoon I decided that I wanted to go for a walk and get some exercise. Instead of doing the loop that I normally do around here, I decided to drive to the other end of town and walk around Lake Merritt. It's a really nice walk and there are always tons of joggers there also. It's 3.2 miles and I had walked it last week with my friend with no issues.

I made it about half way around when I realized that this wasn't such a good idea. I've been really achy and sore lately, probably my body getting more and more ready for birth, and doing this walk was really taking it out of me. I had also already walked several miles earlier in the day for that coffee shop visit and an errand. Anyway, finishing the loop ended up being quite a chore and I was pretty beat up the rest of the day and night. Luckily I woke up today and I feel ok. I'm still achy and sore, but that's become "normal" lately. I guess that's the great disadvantage of walking around a lake, you can't cut and make it shorter if you need to. I'll be keeping that in mind for the next week or whatever I have left when I'm taking my walks.

Pregnancy Update, Fleas and Mites

I just had an appointment with my midwife and her apprentice and I was told that I'm 50% effaced and -2 engaged (which is how far down the pelvic cavity she is currently, the larger the negative, the farther down she is). She mentioned that I had about another week to go, and that the effacement was super soft and really great.

Knowing that I probably have another week has inspired me to start working on the yard a bit. We still have this open part just waiting to get planted with some food starts. It's been sitting fallow since I took out the tomatoes easily half a year ago now.

Yesterday I cleaned like a maniac again because I kept getting bitten and I'm pretty sure that it's flea bites. I treated Stella last week for fleas, but I'm guessing she had them bad enough that they just jumped cat and were lurking and waiting to bite myself and my honeypot. So I basically washed everything made of fabric in hot water, vacuumed like crazy, and I think I've got them beat. I'm so glad that we have hardwood floors and not carpet. It's so much harder to beat them when the entire house is carpeted.

Cooking and Cleaning

I've been using my free time to cook a lot lately.

Yesterday, was a day where I kept myself really busy all day long. I never had a moment of down time and was on my feet most of the day. It helped me sleep really well last night.

Today, I wasn't moving quite as fast. After I had breakfast, I fell asleep on the couch for an hour, and then I got up and have been doing stuff, albeit a little slower.

Yesterday, I made kimchi, yogurt and green curry for dinner. I ate some of the yogurt this morning, and it came out pretty good. I couldn't figure out how to "cook" it though after I added the cultures because our oven doesn't go that low. Instead I put a couple candles in the oven and hoped for the best. It seemed to work ok.

The kimchi was actually a lot of fun to make because I had to pound the crap out of all that vegetable matter. It's currently sitting on my counter fermenting right now and will sit there for a couple more days.

Right now I'm making ranchero sauce. We're having huevos rancheros for dinner tonight. I've always wanted to figure out how to make a decent ranchero sauce. It's not completely done yet, but so far it tastes great! I'm hopeful that I've found my recipe.

In other news I started reading "The Red Planet" by Robert Heinlein last night. It's pretty good and I'm about half way through. I'll need to find a new book soon.

Kids Clothes

Tomorrow we're celebrating the third birthday of my friend's twin girls. I had little idea of what size they actually are, but I used some pattern measurements to figure out the height and waist of size 3. I'm hoping that these sparklie skirts either fit well, or are too big. It would be a bummer if they were too small.

I got to use my newly rebuilt serger and also the ruffler foot that I'm still really excited about. Both skirts together probably took me 4 hours total, possibly less. I also used my serger to fasten in the elastic waist band, which is a first for me. I historically haven't used my serger to do things that don't require cutting, and it works pretty well.

I Am The Luckiest Person Ever!

Guess what I woke up to this morning? Breakfast in bed! And not just any breakfast, but an egg sandwich complete with greens and cheese and walnuts and a perfectly toasted whole wheat english muffin and other ingredients too. My honeypot, who is working his butt off right now, made me, the "big bellied" lady who is no longer working, breakfast in bed. How special is that? Extremely special and I so appreciate the attention. He's so fantastic and for many reasons way beyond today's treat.

In not so great news, I had two leg cramps yesterday. The first one was actually in the bottom of my foot while we were watching Juno last night (a great movie). I've never had one during waking hours and that one was relatively mild. I've discovered that if I take my calcium/magnesium supplements once in a while, which has a bunch of other nutrients in it also, I don't get these. Even after the mild one, I forgot to take that supplement and it's been a couple weeks now. Oops. Well, I paid for that mistake with a pretty bad calf cramp at about 5 in the morning.

The notable thing about all this is how much better I've gotten at handling these cramps. The initial bolting upright in bed from a deep slumber to this amazing pain is still the same. It's startling and annoying. Now I immediately start to use the pain management meditation techniques we learned in our birth class and it usually doesn't last more than a minute or two. Another interesting thing is that previously I would be hobbled for the entire day because my leg would be so tight, even though I would spend lots of time rubbing it out. Well, now I'm quickly relaxing my leg in that meditation and even 20 minutes later my leg was completely normal without any pain or tightness. It's pretty exciting because, besides the lack of hobble, it reconfirms my belief in these pain management meditation techniques I've learned. Which is a darn good thing, because that's the majority of what I'm going to be using for my home birth.

For the record, I think I've had maybe 10 leg cramps throughout my pregnancy. Which isn't really that bad. Zero would be better, but 10's not so much either. I can't imagine being one of these women that have them all the time. That would be a huge bummer.

The Geography of Bliss

For the past week or so I've been slowly reading this book where the author tries to quantify why certain cultures and countries appear to be happier than others according to happiness researchers.

The happiest place according to positive psychology researchers is Switzerland followed by Qatar and then Iceland. I haven't gotten to the chapters about the other countries yet.

It's pretty entertaining partly because the author has a partially jaded view on happiness (a self declared negative person) and mostly because he has a hard time trying to quantify the qualities that make these very different cultures happy.

Nourishing Traditions and the Attraction to What We Can't Have

The other day I was hanging out with Krista and she mentioned this nutrition cook book whose basic angle is that whole unmodified foods are best for you. And that our society's obsession with altering food formats (by homogenizing, sterilizing, or denaturing) is seriously detrimental to our digestion and general health. This book also promotes eating fermented foods.

While I was in college I got really into this type of nutrition; and was a huge advocate of this philosophy. My philosophy is still pretty closely aligned, however I am a vegetarian and this book isn't completely on board with that. I also feel strongly about only eating foods that have a low glycemic index.

As a side, there's been studies that have linked folks who eat fermented foods with less incidence of allergies. I've been taking a probiotic recently and my honeypot took it for some days. While he was taking it he had less issues with his body reacting to certain foods. Interesting, no?

I'm going to make yogurt today, and see how it goes. Wish me luck.

On another note, my serger has been breaking needles for several weeks now when it shouldn't be. I finally brought it in to get it fixed because the timing probably is off. It'll be gone for a week and now that it's gone I've come up with all of these projects that I want to do. Why are we attracted to things we can't have? I must be patient.

Big Bellied Swimming

I can't express how fantastic swimming is when you're big bellied. I only wish I had made time to do it earlier.

I went to our local pool today during their open swim and swam laps for an hour. They were slow laps. It was so nice!

I'm sure I'll go again tomorrow.

Has a Week Really Gone By Already?

I'm always amazed at how fast time passes on by.

There are lots of high lights this past week. Like my in-laws visiting, going to the California Academy of Sciences night exhibit to celebrate a friend's birthday, hanging out at the Thornton's complete with a watermelon seed and cherry pitt spitting contest, visiting with my friend Krista and her daughter Molly (so cute!), sneaking up to win a game of settlers, watching The Hangover (pretty entertaining and that has a character that reminds me of somebody I know), starting to write my first iPhone webapp using iWebKit, and yesterday going to Angel Island to celebrate another friend's birthday and hiking the 5 mile perimeter trail. It felt really good to hike and hang out with friends, but I can really feel it today. Besides all that, I've been running loads of errands. They never end, it seems.

Another highlight for me has been our screen printing adventures. My honeypot and I have been hanging out a lot this past weekend and we've been exploring the world of screen printing. He's done it a couple times before, but I haven't. I've had really bad luck getting good screens to come out and am going to work at it again, possibly today. The onsies pictured are my honeypot's first two color design.

In other news my Mother had emergency surgery mid week due to a hernia in her small intestine. It sounded really painful, and they finally operated on her to solve it. She's recovering well, and sounds in good spirits. It's pretty lucky that they figured out what was wrong and were able to fix it.

And another not so great thing that happened this past week is my iPhone tweaked out .. again. Just randomly my phone was acting really weird so I rebooted it (which in the past has solved it's responsiveness issues), except this time when it came back it had no service or software it appears. There's an image above. Apparently when they die, they die hard. I've had other random issues with my phone before, and while I still like what it does and mostly how it works, I find it really annoying that it's not dependable. Thankfully it only dies infrequently, or I would have ditched it a while ago. As it turns out, I rebooted it again and presto(!) it's all back to normal, even going so far as to remember all my data. I guess it was a hiccup.