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October 19, 2003
October 19, 2003: Moving, Half-Cooked Day, and First Midwife Appointment
The Great Move Finally Occurs
After nearly a month spent fixing up our empty house, we eventually had to haul our possessions into it. When we last moved, a mere ten months ago, we hired a moving company to deal with our big furniture and used a Budget truck for the little stuff ourselves. Despite having only a half dozen family members helping out, none of whom qualify as big or buff, we emptied the entire house in two hours and had to twiddle our thumbs until the moving guys showed up three hours late. So this time around, we figured that with a few more hands, we could do everything ourselves and save the $200 moving company fee.
Unfortunately, after spending so much time on the floors, we didn’t do much packing until the Thursday before moving day (Sat Sept 27th). I preferred to do the packing myself so I would know where things were and I left all the lifting and electronics for Dan. The evening before moving day there were an awful lot of things still needing to be boxed up. My 19 year old SIL had mentioned her willingness to help, and she ended up staying at our apartment until 1:30 that night packing our kitchen. My hips gave up long before that, and after 11, I directed Dan and Randi from the couch until I fell asleep around midnight.
When I woke up at 8 Saturday morning, every one of our boxes had been filled and stacked in the dining room. Only a few small kitchen appliances still needed to be contained. Amazing. I went out and bought two dozen bagels to feed our helpers and we picked up the truck and a few extra boxes from the rental place—I highly recommend Budget. We’ve been happy with them twice and they seem free from the scary stories that plague UHaul with a similar cost.
By 10am, we had a dozen family members and coworkers show up. The entire place was shoved onto a truck, driven across town, and loaded into the new house by 1pm. I couldn't believe it. It took another 3 hours to get the place to a livable point, with furniture turned right side up, and the kitchen unpacked, thanks to a friend, my MIL, and the same SIL. I was able to direct traffic and never was tempted to start carrying things myself. The friend helped Dan reassemble our bed and find ways to plug in lamps and such so we could see upstairs. Then MIL brought us out to dinner. My FIL spent two days cleaning our apartment so when we gave our landlady the keys, she asked if we’d shampooed or steam cleaned, everything looked so good. I was so, so grateful to my in-laws for doing so much for us. I’ve been planning to give my SIL a gift certificate to thank her but haven’t gotten around to it yet (bad me!). My MIL and FIL been paid in kind, but I’ll explain that later. My own mom wasn’t even in town for the weekend. Dan and I both had a few co-workers come, and it ended up being just the right amount of people to move things quickly but not get in each others’ way.
I love the house. Love love love having our own place. Love being able to run down to the washer and dryer. Love having a deep clawfoot tub (even though it's encased in something and still doesn't have a shower curtain or drain plug). Love being able to pound on the floor without worrying about bothering the landlady. Love knowing that our baby will call it home.
We’re Moved In—Now What?
Within three hours of moving in, I decided the kitchen had to go. I was astonished that everything found a place there, it is so horrid and squashed. I cannot figure out what the last owners were thinking. It's a small, small kitchen, and any space it has seems totally wasted. The place desperately needs its cupboards and drawers ripped out and replaced. The appliances are fine, but I will go crazy cooking in there. The low cupboards don't have shelves, which wastes all but the bottom foot of space. The drawers were cut so there are more of them, none of which fit anything. And only one wall has upper cupboards, when we clearly need them on one more wall, plus maybe a shelf on the third. Not to mention the former pantry, now fridge-space that is slightly too wide for the fridge, but not wide enough for anything extra. Agh agh agh! Redoing the kitchen was on my maybe-2-years-away plan, but it jumped to the top of the list immediately. Our spices are on shelves in our back porch (which I call the lean-to) because they don't fit anywhere else. We have an appointment with one contractor (a friend’s brother) next week, and I’ve gone to Home Depot and chatted with the cabinet guys there. I’m pretty sure this is a bigger project than we should tackle on our own. Even if I can handle finding a cabinet guy and possibly a plumber and an electrician, the time I’d stay home from work letting people in and coordinating things would make up for the cost savings by avoiding a contractor. The more people I talk to, the more money I fear this will take. But I’ve already broken the blender while getting the crockpot off the shelf, and we need a chair to reach our Tupperware. This isn’t going to work when we have a crawler in the house. Might as well deal with it now and have a functional kitchen as soon as possible.
In addition to the kitchen issues, we’ve had a variety of other new homeowner delights in the three weeks we’ve been there. As I mentioned above, we have neither a shower rod nor a drain plug. We’ve also been too lazy to spend 30 minutes to run to the hardware store. Luckily, our claw foot tub is high enough that a towel outside it collects any escaping water during showers. I think it’ll be a fun place for a bubble bath since it’s so high—I remember begging my mom to let me fill the tub all the way (in our 70’s style boring tub). Also, the entry lightswitch stopped working two days post-move, the front door hinges are falling out of the wall, our toilet drains very slowly, and our tub drips a bucket worth of water in about six hours. Amusingly, a bucketful of water quickly flushes the toilet, solving two problems at once! Dan promises to get around to some of these things soon. I’d look into them myself, but I’ve declared unpacking to also be my responsibility, and that sucks up all my thumb-twiddling time.
Speaking of unpacking, it’s slowly coming along. The kitchen was done on day one. The living room and dining room were usable by day two. We made a computer nook out of the corner of the living room, and the (electric) piano is in the dining room. Maybe not ideal, but it'll work. I'm trying to keep our extra stuff out of the 2nd bedroom so it can become the baby's room without too much work, but that means that our living room and dining room have more things in them than in our old place. We used to have two (very small) bedrooms and a sunroom, so even though we have more square feet now, fitting everything in is a big puzzle. At this point, the first floor just needs pictures hung, but that’s it.
It took us a week to unpack our clothes. Until then, they sat in bags and boxes on our bedroom floor and we dug through them to dress in the morning. I bought three big clear bins and began putting all my outgrown non-maternity clothes in them. Full-blown maternity shirts still look goofy, but I’ll have to live with sweaters and the tent-look for the time being. I have three boxes of maternity clothes (light shirts, heavy shirts, and bottoms) that I’m slowly removing and wearing. Eventually, I’ll give away or sell the things that I never wear.
The back bedroom is the vortex of the unpacking tornado. My mom came over Wednesday and we sorted through most of the remaining boxes. We’re left with four boxes of Dan’s papers, two boxes of papers I need to look at, and a closet of things like games, hats, backpacks, and baby clothes that will probably stay in the closet but still require sorting. I went through three weeks worth of mail the other day and we only had one overdue bill—that was a bit of a relief.
I had hoped the unpacking and settling in would all be done by this weekend. To assure that I’d get my act together in that amount of time, I invited 25 family members over for either brunch or dinner tomorrow (my extended family will here for brunch—that’s ten people including Dan and I, and there will be fourteen of both sides’ parents, siblings, and their spouses and kids over for dinner). I’m not quite sure how I’m going to pull this off. I think we have food ideas ironed out, although none is purchased. Vacuuming and other cleaning would be a good idea. We’ve never had this many people come to our home before so it could be quite the day. If I’m not on the computer for a few days, I’ve collapsed in exhaustion from it all.
Half Cooked Day
Saturday, October 4th, I hit twenty weeks of pregnancy. This milestone hit me even more than reaching the second trimester. I guess feeling the first baby movements in addition to having weeks starting with ‘2’ made it obvious that this pregnancy is rolling along. In my family, half birthdays are always a festive occasion, so I decided to throw a party for the baby at the twenty week mark. I bought angel food cake and whipped cream, and we sang a strange rendition of “Happy Birthday”. Dan and I had a good time, at least :) I’ve attached a picture, so hopefully that will get posted at some point.
The combination of hitting twenty weeks and cleaning out the back bedroom is making this baby’s presence more real all the time. Now that the bedroom is mostly straightened out, I’ve been spending some time there reading or just sitting and daydreaming. Soon, we’ll have to get a dresser and start stocking it with baby things. For the time being, it looks more like a sewing and reading room. But, we’re getting there. I have a feeling it won’t really be decked out in baby stuff until after Christmas.
While You Were Out—The In-Law Version
My MIL and FIL went on a rare vacation to Arizona for 10 days, and my SIL’s decided to redecorate their kitchen and dining room. My MIL had started removing wallpaper months ago but hadn’t gotten around to anything else, so the hope was that she’d be happy someone finally took care of the remaining work. And that they’d repay us afterwards :) Dan and I said we would help some, but due to our own new house, we didn’t want to live over there working constantly. Since moving furniture and painting are both iffy activities for me anyway, I didn’t do much of the work. But we still ended up spending the better part of the week going to Home Depot and buying paint, or choosing colors, or watching SIL’s kids so she could go help. Wednesday night we were over there until 12:30am waiting for them to get home from the airport. They did like it, which was a relief. The same SIL who helped us so much with our packing ended up doing most of the work with this house too because she’s the only one left who lives there, even though it wasn’t her idea. So now we REALLY owe her.
First Midwife Appointment
I wrote this on the boards right after my first appointment with the homebirth midwife, and I’m just pasting it in directly because I can’t re-create my excitement two weeks after the fact:
“I saw one of the homebirth midwives this afternoon, and it was so awesome you guys! Dan said I had a silly grin on my face the whole time. I got a big health history to fill out in the next 3 weeks and send back, and I get to keep track of my eating for a whole week now. Happy happy joy joy :P She had me pee on a stick that said my glucose and protein levels were normal, and she stuck me twice before my blood would behave itself enough to get a hemoglobin count. Then she asked a whole lot of questions re: sleeping, varicose veins, headaches, constipation, nausea, stress, energy level, back aches, hip aches, heartburn, cramping, and probably some others that I'm missing. The only one she worried about was that I woke up with a leg cramp this morning, which she thinks means I should up my calcium level.
“My blood pressure was 98/58, my heart rate was 80, I'm up 9 lbs total, or 1 1/2 lbs from 3 weeks ago, and I'm measuring between 18 and 19 weeks fundal height, which she said makes sense because I'm long waisted.
“Then the cool part--palpating my uterus. I didn't care worth anything that she couldn't get the baby's heartbeat. At 20w2 days, I'm on the low end of when that can be heard with a fetoscope. She did let Dan and I both listen to the placenta, which is cool in itself. But the niftiest thing was how she could tell that the baby is using my uterus as a hammock, lying transverse. She wasn't completely sure which end was head and which was butt, but she did show us that the placenta is off to the side. A couple times she almost got the heartbeat, but there's enough space in there that the kiddo would scoot out of the way.
“I just thought it was so amazing that she could tell just where the baby was by feeling my belly. I won't know where elbows and toes are now like I could with an u/s, but as the baby gets bigger she said she'd show us how to identify body parts.
“I asked her what she does about Group B Strep. She said that generally they don't check for it unless the water breaks early or the mom has a fever. Makes sense to me. She gave us a big packet of info about the GTT, GBS, Vit K, and PKU tests so we can read more and talk about it next time. We also got a pamphlet on Bradley classes after asking about them. Also, this weekend I had people telling me that I should get a doula even with 2 homebirth midwives, so I asked what she thought about that. She said that one midwife is usually in the doula role, and that most of the moms she's worked with only bring doulas if they're friends or relatives or have special considerations. Seemed reasonable to me. We'll probably have my SIL come during early labor, and depending on how things go, she might stay for quite awhile getting food and doing things like that.
“I feel like I'm just floating right now. This was SO MUCH better than the CNM visits that last 15 minutes and she doesn't ask much. Wheeee!! Oh, we were there for an hour and 15 minutes. “
As you can probably tell, I really enjoyed the appointment. Now that I know how much more thorough the homebirth midwives are, it would be so hard to go back to the CNM. It feels like she’s looking out so much more at my overall well-being. I’ve been keeping track of my food intake for the past week (which really helps cut back on unnecessary junk, if you need some inspiration), so hopefully they’ll tell me that my diet is relatively balanced when I go to my next prenatal in a week. If anything, writing down what I eat made me realize that since the early nausea left, I really don’t eat much more than I did pre-pregnancy. So the couple times I ate more at church potlucks and whatnot, I’m wondering if I should eat like that all the time. I guess we’ll see what the midwives and the scale say next time.
Other Pregnancy Tidbits
On Wednesday, at 21 weeks, 4 days pregnant, Dan felt the baby kick. I’d been feeling movement pretty much every day for a week at that point, but nothing was all that strong. The only way I could really tell it was the baby was because it was the same sensation in almost the same place every time. But that night, they seemed a little stronger, so I had Dan put his hand on my abdomen. Suddenly, it felt like the baby took a running (swimming?) start and threw him/herself at my uterus! Dan could feel it, I could feel it in my hand on top of his hand—this was quite the kick! He/she repeated that maneuver a couple more times, with lighter kicks in between that Dan couldn't feel. It seemed like the baby was saying "Yo Dad! Watch me do THIS!" If it had kept up, we never would have gone to sleep. Very fun. I haven’t felt anything that strong before or since.
The weather here has been crazy—sunny and 70 one day, then 38 and frosty the next. It’s hard enough to figure out what to wear without factoring in my too-small-for-maternity, too-big-for-standard dilemma. On Friday, I caved and wore the least tent-like maternity top I could find. Everybody at work asked about the baby. Everyone in the skyway smiled and glanced at my belly. I was happy to finally be recognized as a preggo (up till this point, only two people had asked me outright, and no one else showed any knowing glances), but I felt so ridiculous. My shirt was clearly way too big, and I felt like I was trying to prove something. Dan says I’m being too picky, especially since two days before I’d come home upset after attending a monthly meeting where no one realized I was pregnant—and they even talked about babies! I desperately want to go buy a couple of those adjustable shirts that will fit me both now and later. But I’ve been too busy or lazy to do so.
I am now 22 weeks pregnant, and close enough to five full months along that I’ve started rounding up when people ask. These months are really flying by now. We survived our house warming parties yesterday, but I’ll go into that another day so I can post this now. Hopefully, I’ll have another entry up this week. I’m getting a little more regular with these, I think!
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