Wednesday 28 March 2007

All I do is dream

The wacky dreams have started, but funny enough, they aren't about the baby! For the last couple of nights I've had rather alarming dreams where Joe has mysteriously (or not) vanished.
The dreams are never about our relationship breaking down or anything like that. In fact, it's always pretty clear that we are just as close as ever. The circumstances are more that he becomes distracted and forgets about me, leaving me to fend for myself, or in one of the dreams, I leave the house where he's busy making dinner for me and when I try to get back to the house both the house and Joe are gone.
I suspect that it's my subconcious playing out my fears that once the baby arrives, Joe's attention will be focused on the baby and I will be pushed to the background. We've talked about this and he's assured me that this will not happen, but my abandonment issues run very deep.
I do find it strange that the baby never makes an appearance in my dreams. Joe has been dreaming of it though. From what he tells me, they are rather strange dreams where I give birth to a freakishly intelligent baby that can speak right away.

Saturday 24 March 2007

I'm not sure if what I'm feeling is what I think I'm feeling, but for the last couple of weeks there's been some sort of, well, whooshing feeling where my lower intestines usually are. I'm beginning to suspect that it's the kid moving around in there. And the other night, while Joe and I were talking to the baby, I'm pretty sure I felt a distinct jab. I've tried to recreate the circumstances to feel the jab again, but so far nothing. I"m starting to feel excited about it.

Monday 19 March 2007

Just signed up for the prenatal yoga at the Miles Nadal JCC with Baby &Me Fitness. It starts tonight at 6:30. This should be interesting seeing as I haven't done any yoga for years, and when I did, I wasn't exactly regular about it. I was also thinking of doing the aqua fitness class they have going on Tuesdays and Thursdays but decided against it as I don't think I should jump into a heavy exercise regimen when I've been a couch potato for the last couple of years.

I'm feeling very positive about keeping up with this. I'm usually very bad at going to the gym or doing any kind of regular exercise, but I realized that was the case only when it had to be totally self motivated. I could never get it together to go to the gym on a regular basis, even if I was paying for it, but the free swim classes at the community center, no problem. Only missed one week! The difference was that before every swim class, they took attendance. People were expecting me to show up! I can't let them down! They know who I am!
That's why I like these classes, they're not drop in. I've signed up for 7 classes (it's 10 weeks, but there's passover and Victoria Day in there, so no classes for three of the weeks.). If I like it, I'll probably extend it for another 10 weeks which would take me into August.

Friday 16 March 2007

Lately, I've been pondering that age old question 'cloth vs. disposable'.
I'd like to think that I am ecologically conscious and all that, but let's face it. I'm also incredibly lazy.
There are a lot of minuses in my book for cloth diapers. First, I don't really like the idea of a diaper service. I don't know what kind of chemicals they are using to clean the diapers, but I'm not sure I like it going on my baby's ass. Then there's the leakage problem, I don't think I have to elaborate on that. Then there's the fact that I have a large family that gets together a lot. If I went with cloth, that means carrying stinky diapers all over the place.

On the other hand, disposables... convenient, but-

Whenever I'm faced with a tough decision like this, I like to research the hell out of it. In the course of that, I came across these cloth diapers. I like them because it addresses at least one if not two of my big problems. First off, they are machine washable at home and they don't want you to use bleach. They also say, they don't leak. I'm not sure I would just take their word for it, but it is a two part system with a waterproof outer layer which should prevent some of the leaking.
I did some number crunching. They say that if you want to use the Fuzzi Bunz exclusively you should buy at least 24 of the small and medium sizes each. That totals 960.00, which is a lot of money. After a quick boo at price of disposables at Costco, it seems that they come out to approximately $60.00 a month. If the kid is going to be in diapers until it is at least, say, about 2 years old, that totals out to $1440. Of course that's stretched out over the entire two years while the cloth ones are a huge initial cash outlay. The slightly cheaper, but kinda eww route for the cloth ones is ebay. Believe it or not, people sometimes sell the used ones there!

There is still my issue of carrying around the stinky diapers. I don't mind if I'm out for an hour or two, but if I'm out for dinner or something lasting a few hours, that's just a bit too gross for me. In my mind, the perfect solution would be to do both. Have the cloth ones for days at home and quick visits with people and disposables for longer trips. Does anyone know of someone who pulled this off? I'm afraid that the convenience of plastic will seduce me, and after spending a ton of money* for the cloth ones, I'll never use them.
What do you think? Should I give the cloth ones a whirl, or just revel in my planet killing laziness? I do still have a lot of time to consider it, but it's always good to have a head start.

*of course I'll be spending considerably less than the numbers I was throwing around above since the cloth won't be my only option.

Monday 12 March 2007

Just got back from the doctor's appointment. Whew.
My blood pressure is still good, and we heard the whoop whoop whoop of the heartbeat, so I am reassured - at least until the ultrasound in 3 weeks.
He also said the screening tests came back beautiful and he didn't think we would need any more tests done. So no Amnio!
The whole thing was a huge weight off of both our minds.
So Joe noticed last night that right before every doctor's appointment I get very tense. I don't know how normal this is, but the fact is, I'm terrified that the doctor will have bad news for us.
There's no real reason for me to think this. Everything seems to be going fine with me, no spotting, no pain, no weird symptoms. Just a huge amount of free floating paranoia.
I'm telling myself that it will go away once I can feel the baby moving, but until then, I'm thinking of renting a fetal monitor for a couple of months. The one my friend Stef gave me is not very sensitive. Apparently you don't really hear the heartbeat with it until much later in the pregnancy and as my sister says, by that time you're getting kicked in the ribs all the time, so you don't need the reassurance as much.
The one thing I'm hanging on to right now is the fact that once my sisters got past the third month, there were no real problems with their pregnancies. I know that every pregnancy is different, but it does make me feel better that, genetically at least, there is a good track record.

Tuesday 6 March 2007

After a bit of a bad week last week, I realized that it had been a very long time since I had just been by myself, doing whatever I wanted to. So on Friday night after work I took off to the Eaton Center to just wander around. Wow did I need that. I came back home totally revitalized. I keep forgetting I need me time every once in a while.

While I was out wandering, I did make one purchase. Long ago, when we first started talking about having a kid, I promised Joe that when I got pregnant, I would get him the Ray Harryhausen Sinbad Collection of DVD's. He saw them when he was really young and he really wanted to share them with any kid he had. (get them young with the stop motion animation we say!) As one of my friends at work says, with the two of us as its parents, this poor child probably won't be aware of any current entertainment for years! (except for Dr.Who of course)
I'd actually love it if my kid was like Mel's two year old that loves Miyazaki movies and Warner Bros. superhero cartoons. I would do the entire Warner's cartoon canon personally, I love me some Animaniacs.