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January 31, 2004
Week 37: Cold, Changes at Work, and Showers
My 37th week of pregnancy came as a shock to me. I left the world of preterm babies. I happened to catch an episode of ER where a 36 week pregnant woman came screaming into the ER in the midst of pushing and they told her it was okay, she was “normal term”. That sounded about right (I chose to ignore all the other ridiculous stuff they showed with her delivery) – it’s not exactly full-term, but no longer premature either. Knowing that going into labor now would still mean a hospital birth, but no efforts would be made to postpone labor really hit me.
Baptism
On Sunday, Dan and I finally made it to the baptism class at church. We felt like big bums because we’d signed up to attend the previous month’s class and forgotten to cancel when we realized that it was the same afternoon we were bringing our niece to a play. Then this time around, we forgot to sign up until 5pm the Friday beforehand. Dan left a voicemail on the church machine and we headed over there crossing our fingers that it hadn’t been cancelled. Since there’s a decent chance the baby will arrive before the next fourth Sunday of the month, we didn’t want to wait around for the next opportunity.
After all our worrying, there were plenty of others at the class and no one bugged us for not signing up. Some of the other parents brought small babies with them and a few, like us, were still expecting. Baptisms at our church are done twice a month at a special service just for the sacrament. This means that about a dozen babies are baptized at once. Our biggest concern was the timing—since Dan’s a new convert to Catholicism and I’m in process myself, we weren’t sure when the recommended age was. We still didn’t get a clear answer—essentially, sooner is better, within reason. We did find out that it might be an option for us to baptize the baby at the Easter Vigil when I officially join the church. I like the idea of the baby and I joining the church together. We’re not exactly sure what we’ll do about godparents because at least one needs to be Catholic and none of our family and few of our friends qualify. We can have one Christian, non-Catholic sponsor. I wish that could be my sister, but she’ll be in England until May. If the Easter Vigil plan isn’t okayed by the priest, I’m hoping to wait until she gets home.
Clothing Troubles
Hitting month nine was not kind to me in the clothing department. After wearing my normal coat all winter (it’s huge and down-filled), the zipper popped. I didn’t think it was all that tight, but I guess I bent over and pulled it one time too many. Thankfully, it also has buttons that will do for now, but they don’t keep the cold out as well. The zipper should be easy to fix, but I don’t have a spare one to wear while it’s gone, so the buttons will have to hold out another month.
As the baby keeps dropping, finding comfortable pants becomes more and more difficult. I finally gave up on my under-belly cords when I realized how badly they were irritating my abdomen. Many of my other pants left painful marks on my belly wherever their seams hit. Throughout the day, I would alternate pulling them up and pushing them down in an attempt to keep any one area from getting too sore, but nothing felt good. Wednesday night I needed to run some errands (yet more homebirth supplies and Home Depot odds and ends) and I stopped at Target and picked up two pair of Liz Lange pants. They’re the stretchy kind that are supposed to fit throughout pregnancy and in the early postpartum days. I didn’t want to start buying panel pants at this stage (it’s great not having to worry about whether the panel shows from under my shirt, since most of my shirts are riding up these days) and my frugal self likes thinking that I’ll wear these for more than a month. One pair looks a little dressier than the other, but if anyone dares tell me at work that my clothes aren’t nice enough, I’ll have them shell out the bucks to outfit me in Japanese Weekend attire.
January Ice Leads to Big Changes at Work
The last week in January was really, really cold here in Minnesota. I know that Minnesotans have a tendency to take pride in our ridiculously cold temperatures, but living through it is another matter. Dealing with multiple days when the temperature never goes above zero and windchills bringing the apparent temperature down into the minus 40 degree range while 8+ months pregnant was not my idea of a fun time. With my poor pregnancy-addled brain, I went outside more than once with wet hair to wait for a bus. How I’ve survived 25 years without frostbite I just don’t know.
Walking from the bus stop to my office without the capability to hurry began to get the better of me and on Wednesday I’d had enough. I went to my boss that afternoon to discuss the possibility of me working from home. She’s seen me hobble around the office and wasn’t surprised when I told her I was desperate to work out a better approach. It turned out that she was pretty nervous that I would stop coming to work and not finish my current project and was almost as interested in my working from home as I was. Our unit had an extra laptop, so she didn’t think there would be any extra cost involved with setting me up at home. I went down to the IT people and they determined that the computer needed a few upgrades and a couple days to get the necessary programs installed, but otherwise, I was good to go. What a relief! I’d rather keep working up until the baby comes both because it would help financially and because I’m nowhere near done with this project, but the idea of getting myself downtown in this weather for another month was more than I could imagine handling.
Speaking of Work
Late in the week, an email was sent to the office inviting everyone to a shower for a manager in another unit who is due two weeks after me. For the past month, I’ve been wondering whether there were plans to throw me a shower, and I didn’t know what to think after getting this email. Last summer, we had two baby showers in the office, one for a new mom and another for a new dad. Both of them had been working here just slightly longer than I have. It seemed horribly rude to ask around if someone was going to throw me a shower, but I found it fairly insulting that no one had mentioned anything. I know the earlier showers weren’t surprises—there was registry information included—so I didn’t think that was the plan. With only a month left before my due date, I was starting to get anxious. It’s not that I desperately need or want any gifts, but it was disappointing to feel overlooked.
Well, apparently, the notice of the other woman’s shower was enough to spring people into action. The day after the email came through, the office manager and secretary drew me aside to ask if I would mind having a celebratory lunch. I think people just forgot, or everyone assumed planning something was someone else’s responsibility. They had me write up a list of things we needed after I mentioned that I didn’t have a registry with the usual stores. I ended up telling them that we could use help buying a carseat (the 5-40 lb variety) and gender-neutral non-newborn clothes. In the past, people have passed around a card for new babies/anniversaries/family deaths and given people the opportunity to donate money as they see fit. Then for the other new parents, a lot of people in the office enjoyed having the excuse to go buy itty-bitty clothes. It seems as though the almost-grandmas in the office go out of their way, even when they don’t work closely with the parent. I figured that if the donated money could go towards a gift card at the store where we’re likely to buy the car seat, that would do us more good than anything else since we don’t have any big items on our registry. And so long as the grandma-types don’t load us with 0-3 month outfits, it doesn’t matter to me what styles they choose. I wouldn’t have even been that specific with my requests if they hadn’t forced me to give them a list =) On Friday, they sent out an official announcement that the shower-lunch will be February 11th. Hopefully the baby will wait until then! Apparently, I’ve done a pretty good job of avoiding stating my true due date because when I mentioned how close the shower was to my due date, the organizers thought it was farther off than that.
Now, for the Family Shower
On Saturday the 31st, my SIL threw me a baby shower for all the women in Dan’s family, plus my mom, aunt, and grandmas (my own extended family is throwing a shower in April when the baby can join the party and people can buy gender-specific clothes). Because of a lucky timing coincidence, everyone was able to attend, including Dan’s aunt and cousin who live six hours north. There were sixteen of us there—not too many to be overcrowded, but enough to be surrounded by family. I’ve always gotten along great with Dan’s family. I only have one sister and no cousins of my own, so I was ecstatic to inherit three more sisters and a handful of cousins near my age when Dan and I first got together. Only one of his aunts lives here in town, but the others find reasons to visit regularly and always stay with either Dan’s parents or grandparents. We also spend time with many of them at the family cabin every summer.
My SIL Elise, who has three kids of her own, made it a brunch shower, serving mini-quiches that looked like cupcakes, a French toast bake, loads of fruit, and many other tasty dishes. She wanted to throw us a wedding shower three years back, but it never worked out, so she was eager to throw this shower as soon as she heard that the baby was on the way.
We played a couple games—a word scramble, and the Price is Right. We determined that Dan’s grandma should never be sent to look for good deals after she guessed that everything would cost twice as much as it actually did.
Elise had me call Dan before opening gifts so he could be part of that too. She had told most of the guests about our registry at Peapods, and almost everyone bought things off of it. We ended up receiving six Kissaluvs fitted diapers, six diaper covers, two hand-made blankets, a few wooden toys, and the complete set of Baby Einstein DVD’s. We were very grateful to have received so many of the diapers we’ll need. I’d waited to buy diapers until after the shower and having so many was really helpful. With those covers, we didn’t need to buy any more. I’d asked for 12 Kissaluvs, but after hearing about a number of great WAHM-diaper sites, I was glad to have an excuse to go buy some online.
Overall, the shower was a great few hours spent with people who I know will love this baby. More than one of Dan’s relatives have already mentioned that they’ll gladly watch the baby if we need help sometimes. Oh—my mom also gave what might be the most practical gift—the promise to bring us one week of food after the baby arrives (with help from a caterer-friend). Now that will come in handy!
The Never-Ending Kitchen Project
Rather than drag out the remodeling project on paper for as long as it’s taking in my house, I’ll just say that the counters did arrive on Thursday as expected. The installer wasn’t able to put in the sink or microwave as he promised because his help never showed up and those are heavier than one man can deal with. He did place the counters on the cabinets so we could see how they looked. Also, the brackets that will eventually hold our bookshelves were installed, and the trim around our back door was removed because the cabinets wouldn’t properly fit otherwise. We decided that we’d get the door re-hung because it’s clearly not level and it got worse when the trim was removed. At that point, we knew that the sink wouldn’t be in until Monday at the earliest, so I spent Friday evening cleaning the living room floor and dusting the tops of all the shelves and tables because I just couldn’t live with the dust anymore. I didn’t get too careful because the chances were too high that everything would get grimy again. That night I also put a few dishes in the cabinets to get an idea where things would go. The new cabinets are slightly shallower than the former ones, but the additional cabinets should more than make up for the fact that we can only store glasses three deep.
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