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February 9, 2002
February 9, 2002
33 Weeks
I almost didn’t type an entry this week because the pain and swelling in my hands and fingers is so bad, it hurts to type even a few paragraphs. Therefore this will not be one of my usual long entries...
It has been a pretty unexciting week for the most part, so I warn you, be prepared to be bored by the mundane recollection of my week’s events. Healthwise, I feel pretty good except for as I said, my hands. The pain resembles what I would imagine arthritis to be like. The joints and knuckles of my fingers suffer the worst and sometimes the pain in so bad, I wake up in the middle of the night from it. I will ask my doctor more about this at my Wednesday appointment but the last time I mentioned it, she said that this is normal and that as long as my BP is low, my urine is normal, etc., there really isn’t much I can do. The pain is no big deal really, it’s just hard to do a lot of my normal activities when my hands are aching so much.
My feet don’t hurt at all but they look like they do because they are getting more swollen by the day and I now have only one pair of shoes left that fit - barely. It looks as though I will have to break down and buy a new pair today, I was thinking maybe a pair of slides/mules. I have not bought a pair of shoes this entire pg because I swore I would never wear a pair of shoes higher than my size nines, but I guess now I really have no other choice. The only shoes I have left are beginning to hurt me too.
One of the few things I ever actually appreciated about my legs were my thin ankles - well, those are now gone and have been replaced with the dreaded “cankles,” which represents the newer and less improved combination of the calf and the ankle, with no distinction inbetween. I’m sure anyone who has ever been pg before understands what I am talking about. The other change in my feet’s appearance is the overabundance of skin that falls over the sides of my shoes. None of this actually bothers me at all, in a way it is sort of comforting to see because I realize that these are all signs of a normal pg and that I am getting that much closer to seeing my baby.
Speaking of him/her, I was really worried a couple of days ago because I didn’t feel him/her move as often or as strongly as I had in the past. The following week s/he was kicking up a storm and this week, all I felt was a weak kick and a random roll here and there. I know that all the books say, and my friends have reassured me as well, that by this stage (32-33 weeks), the baby is getting bigger with less room to move around inside me and that I may notice a pronounced decrease in the baby’s movement. Despite this reassurance, I couldn’t help but worry. I needn’t have, as last night it seems the baby was back to his/her old self, kicking up a storm, rolling all over the place and causing quite a stir. I definitely breathed a big sigh of relief over that one.
This past Thursday on the 7th, the baby furniture arrived and the delivery men set it all up in the baby’s room. Actually, all they really had to do was set up the crib since the dresser/changing table and the armoire were all in one piece, but it was so nice not to have to set up the crib ourselves, we are so not handy when it comes to stuff like that. If we had tried to set up the crib, surely it would have collapsed on the baby’s first night home, and we’d probably be spending that first night in the emergency room.
I think I may have mentioned that the furniture is antique white, meaning it is slightly distressed looking. It is really very pretty except that now we really have to get a move on decorating the rest of the room to get a little color going. As of right now, the room looks like The Land of White - everything in that room is white/eggshell, except for another huge armoire that is periwinkle blue. We ordered a glider/rocker and chose a separate slip cover to be made to match the bedding, but until that is finished, the rocker/glider has only a pure white slip cover. Originally, we had said we wanted no rug since our carpet is basically brand new, off white and very pretty but with all the white furniture and walls, it is obvious that a rug is a must at this point.
I saw a lot of rugs in Pottery Barn Kids that I loved but at the risk of sounding cheap, some of them are a little pricey which might be OK except for the fact that they are all pretty feminine as well. We were thinking of checking out IKEA too and a GF of mine also suggested Target because she had found a really nice rug there. I realize I should not really be looking for top quality necessarily as this rug will soon be the recipient of many spills, excretions, stains and God knows what else, so I really want to keep that in mind when I choose it.
We do have the option of painting our eggshell walls an actual color, but because we will be moving not long after the baby arrives, I simply do not feel it is worth bothering painting that room. I know that is very lazy of me and I should just take the initiative and do it but in the grand scheme of things, what does it really matter? I don’t think the baby will care one way or another if the room isn’t the exact perfect shade of honeysuckle yellow, aubergine or azure blue . Again, if we weren’t moving I would definitely paint and do chair rails and the whole nine yards but for the 4 or so months we will be there, I think we can survive with colorful additives such as pictures, shelving , bedding and “knickknacks.”
Today we are finally going to go out and get the crib mattress, it seems every time we decide to go to the store to purchase it, we get sidetracked with another errand and never make it to the store. I really would like to get this done so that I can finally put the bedding on the crib. I can see already that with the pattern/color we chose for the bedding, (raspberry red, periwinkle blue and violet combination), I have nothing to fear if this baby should be a boy, there is nothing overly feminine or masculine about the bedding we chose. You know, sometimes it’s hard to tell when you are just looking at a fabric in the store, things don’t always appear as they seem until you actually have them home and all set up. But I can say now that I have seen the bedding up against the furniture and in the room itself, I am very content with the choice we have made.
Our home is really starting to look like a baby lives here and when you have been childless for awhile and have wanted a child so badly all your life, it is quite the “surreal” (most overused word on the planet but I can’t find a better one that applies) experience you can imagine. I mentioned last week that we bought the bassinet. Since we were unable to fit it in my mom’s car with everyone in it, Charles went back later with our own car and picked it up himself. This actually turned out to be a plus for us because as it turned out, when we got the bassinet inside and unwrapped it, we saw that the store had mistakenly given us a brand new bassinet that was being held in the storeroom for some other poor couple who had reserved it. You may remember that when we went to pick this bassinet out, it was back ordered and they let us purchase the floor model. Though it was pristine, it still didn’t look as good as the brand new one we ended up with. I must admit I feel badly for that poor couple who paid for a brand new bassinet and ended up with ours instead. Admittedly, I do not feel bad enough that we will be driving back an hour to the store to correct the error. I would bet anyway that the couple whose bassinet we do have won’t even notice the difference, at least I hope they don’t.
Because my main shower is being held in CT and because people realize it will be hard for us to transport larger gifts back to VA , items have been arriving at our house every day now. We have received a jogging stroller and a big “regular” stroller, both still sitting in their boxes in our entrance hallway. It is so weird every time I go past these boxes and think that our actual baby is going to use these items, it blows my mind every time. I also see the bassinet next to our bed, the bottle scrubbers in the kitchen cabinet, the box of diapers in the linen closet and I still can’t believe it is all real. And though I realize that I am due in 7 weeks, I just know I will not go that far, I bet anything I have 6 weeks left at best. Not that I care one way or the other, it’s just the reality of having so little time left (and so much to do) is mind boggling. I feel I should have accomplished a lot more by now.
Well, I said I would not make this long and it is actually longer than I had planned but as my hands are now throbbing, I will end this entry now and go soak my hands in a bowl of ice. Good luck to everyone still TTC and to everyone expecting their new arrival, I wish you all the best.
Love,
Corinne and her baby
EDD 4-1-02
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