Let's hear it for maternity leave!

No, I haven't had this kid yet. I just am so fucking tired all the time that instead of working till my due date, as I originally planned, I'll be starting my maternity leave on Wednesday of this coming week. It makes no sense for me to start a new project at work and then mostly just sit and stare at stuff and wish I were napping, and then be exhausted when labor finally hits. I am REALLY PUMPED about getting to nap. Depending on how I'm feeling, I also have exciting plans to clean the bathrooms and bake some stuff, like oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and granola bars and the like, to have on hand after the baby arrives.

We went to a wedding last night and despite my best efforts I was unable to dance her out. I did plenty of my classic wedding dance move - pelvic thrusts - and got a whole lot of people to join in. I considered, but ultimately decided against, walking off the dance floor, spilling a cup of water, and then standing over it looking panicked, just to fuck with people.

Have I mentioned that M's worker, the one we like so much, is pregnant as well, and due twelve days after I am? She'll be out for FOUR MONTHS so we'll have a new worker for that time. M's worker really likes the new one and says she's on her game, so maybe, just maybe, the paperwork for termination of parental rights will be started and/or filed by the time the regular worker is back. (Yes, that's the paperwork that could have been filed in April. You can guess how optimistic I am about it happening any time soon.)

Oh, things are moving along with our house. We accepted an offer (the first one we got) and have a "sale pending" sign in the yard now. We put in an offer on one we liked but knew it was very low, so we don't expect anything to come of it. It's looking certain at this point that we'll sell our house and then move in with my parents for a few months while we finish the buying process. Because nothing screams "SUCCESS!" like moving in with your parents at the age of 28 with your husband and a toddler and a newborn and two dogs! (In fact, my parents have plenty of room and are thrilled with the idea and will be delighted to chase M around while I deal with the newborn, so it will be as okay as it could be.)

Maybe one of these days I'll get back to posting interesting stuff! Maybe!

Nothing new.

Dudes, I have been too tired to remember to blog. Also, because we've been keeping the house super clean, my computer has been actually put away, and getting it out and turning it on seems pretty complicated some nights.

I'm 36 and a half weeks along now, and feeling kind of huge and very tired. I had an appointment with my midwife today wirh my first internal exam, where she stuck her hand up in my bizzzz to find out if my cervix is up to anything. Turns out I'm one centimeter dilated and about 50% effaced. For those of you playing along at home, this means exactly nothing about when or how I'll go into labor. It does indicate that my cervix knows something is going on and that it plans to get involved, which is good news. The baby is also sitting much lower, which means she  occasionally headbutts my cervix, resulting in a phenomenon I like to call Vagina Lightning. FUN.

M's case is exactly where it was last time I blogged. They still haven't even started the terminaton paperwork. Oh, the worker did finally confirm that the dad's girlfriend
is pregnant. Apparently she was due this week with a little girl. And the worker saw the dad's house and said there was no crib, despite the dad telling us at court in  February that he had a room all set up for M with a four-hundred-dollar crib* and all. So it looks like he's not planning on this new kid living there? Who knows.

So things are moving along slowly all over, and this has been a boring and perfunctory blog post typed from my phone. To be frank, I'm not even going to bother correcting typos and shit. Sorry.

If I can be bothered to get my shit together, I'm planning to do a post about pregnancy products and my hopes for nursery space for the new kid, if we ever find a new house.

*No, I don't believe this, but also I really, really don't care. Her crib at our house is from Wal-Mart. When we get a crib for the new baby (she'll be in a bassinet in our room at first, plus with moving we didn't want to keep extra furniture on hand), it will likely be the same one. I just feel kind of uncomfortable with the dad trying to impress us with shit like that.

Being pregnant is weird.

I'm almost 34 weeks pregnant now. I'm getting big enough that I'm often uncomfortable and rolling over in bed is now a three-point turn. Or a five-point turn.

I'm short (5'1) so my abdomen is completely full of baby. It's hard to take a full breath, it's hard to sit comfortably, it's impossible to eat a full meal. Getting settled on the couch is an ordeal that often leaves me out of breath. My back and hips are usually at least somewhat sore, so I occasionally do that delightful pregnant lady waddle, particularly right after I get up and start walking. My belly is so big that it pushes any bra I wear right up into my ribcage, guaranteeing discomfort by 10:00 a.m. I was trying on bras at Target the other day (note: all nursing bras are fucking ugly) and caught sight of myself in the mirror and couldn't stop picturing a gorilla, with the way my boobs now rest directly on my giant belly.

It's really, really weird how totally normal and, simultaneously, how completely fucked up it feels to be pregnant. The baby rolls around and kicks my guts and gets the hiccups and I'm so totally used to it, but it also regularly blows my mind that there's a human being living in my abdomen. I've been pregnant, with one short break, for almost a year, so it's really hard to imagine our life with a newborn instead of life with me just pregnant forever.

We've been taking our childbirth classes at the hospital where I'll deliver, and I asked a good friend who's a labor and delivery nurse for a recommendation for a doula. After discussion with her, I'm calling tomorrow to look into switching from my regular obstetrician to a midwife practice nearby. My pregnancy is low-risk, and they offer many of the same services that a doula would, except they're covered by insurance. Really, my main reason for wanting a doula was to have someone there throughout the labor to support Andy in supporting me, but we think we could be okay with the support of a midwife instead. So we'll see how that goes.

We just watched the movie Seven Psycopaths and it was so nuts that it took the length of the whole freaking movie for me to finish writing this. Have you all seen that shit??

Pregnancy thing I never realized

Here's a minor thing that makes a lot more sense to me now: You know how tv likes to show pregnant women always touching or rubbing their bellies? I do that all the time now. I don't even always notice I'm doing it, although I try to avoid it when I'm talking to my boss or whatever. Turns out a baby pushing hard against your guts with her foot is pretty uncomfortable, so pressing back, at least gently, provides some counter-pressure and makes it a little less uncomfortable. How about that shit.

We have a "for sale" sign in our yard.

First, an update on my last post: Our friends found out that their foster son didn't die from SIDS, as was originally assumed. The poor thing had an undetected hole in his stomach that let formula and stomach acid into his abdomen, and the resulting infection is what led to his death. Obviously this doesn't make the situation any easier, and it's especially shitty that our county assured them that they were in no way at fault but still removed the other twin from their care. Please continue sending positive thoughts their way.

Second, an update on selling our house: We have the "for sale" sign, but the house isn't going to actually be listed until Saturday. It is a lot of work to get a house ready for sale, if you have any interest at all in getting a good price for it. Andy is shampooing carpets while I type this, no joke. We're having an open house next Sunday so we're living in this weird limbo of "where are the tissues?" and "is the blender already packed up?" and "is it worth the effort to fetch the coffeemaker from the garage to make a pot then bring it back out there?" (Answers: top shelf of the linen closet; yes, and at my mom's; nope.)

Third, an update on my pregnancy. I'm seven months pregnant now, which seems kind of nuts. Besides the exhaustion and occasional OH THE FIRE heartburn, I've been feeling fine, so it's been easy to float along like this isn't a huge deal. I just signed us up for childbirth classes through the hospital, and this weekend we're doing a tour of the birthing center therein, and now all of a sudden it's a lot more real that in short order I will be producing an actual human baby. In the last three days, four different people have commented on how much bigger my belly suddenly seems (THANKS GUYS) and I do have to say that things like settling in on the couch or even sitting in the driver's seat comfortably are a big production now. My weight gain is still on the low end of the scale* (get it?) (but not in a concerning way) so I guess I just forgot that all of a sudden I wouldn't be able to do things like tie my high-tops easily or shave my goddamn legs. Oh, and I passed my gestational diabetes test (which was as disgusting as they all say it is) and they found out I'm slightly anemic, so now I'm on an iron supplement that contains a stool softener and life has gotten more interesting re: bathroom time.

*This is not deliberate. I had two donuts and a huge glass of whole milk for breakfast. I think it's mostly attributable to the fact that I don't ever really feel that hungry, since my abdomen isn't large enough to contain my basketball-sized uterus and also a full stomach. I don't snack much, and when I do it's usually fruit or a handful of peanut m&ms.

Fourth, an update on M's case. Her dad got a new job a few weeks ago, which meant moving her visits until late in the afternoon, in a way that was guaranteed to disrupt evenings. The timing also meant he wouldn't be out of work early enough to be in the building early like they had been requiring, so they decided to give him a shot without that. Well, as of today he'd missed three out of six visits at the new time, so they're telling him he has to be there early again. In the short term, that means there won't be visits for a while; I don't know if he'll try to change his schedule or what, but they won't be bringing M from daycare to hang out with the worker without the dad there anymore. I fully expected the dad to be on his best behavior this month because tomorrow marks M's 15 months in care (!!) and I know he has been told this. The worker told me today that they haven't even pulled her files to write the termination paperwork, but they could file any time after tomorrow, legally. In reality it's likely we won't know a thing more about where this is heading until after this new baby arrives.

I sure hope y'all like hearing about foster care and me being knocked up and selling my house, because I do not have the energy for pretty much anything else. These are the makings of an exciting blog.

If you pray

...would you please direct some prayers towards friends of ours who are foster parents?

They accepted a new foster placement last night: newborn twin boys.

Then this afternoon, one of the twins died of SIDS while he was napping in the same room where the rest of the family was hanging out. The county has placed the surviving twin in another foster home at the request of the bio-family (the county does not suspect that our friends did anything wrong; this is just to simplify the situation).

Obviously our friends are devastated and I have no words to express how incredibly awful this must be. If you believe in a god, please ask him or her to be with our friends. If you don't, maybe just send them some healing thoughts.

Fuck, man.

I haven't slept through the night since October.

The title of this post isn't an exaggeration. I got knocked up again in September, and I started waking up every night to pee in early October. In fact, for a few solid months now I've been waking up two or three times a night. It is some bullshit. Other than that, the pregnancy has been kind of awesome, but it is pretty grating to never feel like I've gotten enough sleep.

Things are progressing smoothly with the house. Our realtor had an interior designer come over on Saturday to help us stage the house. She had a lot of good suggestions along the lines of "Move that lamp here! Put some houseplants here! Take out that bookcase and shift that one over here! Try centering the kitchen table like this!" It was really interesting and I think it would be kind of awesome to hire an interior designer to come do a consult like that after we're settled in a new house. Some of the suggestions definitely make things look better but make the house slightly less comfortable to live in, like how the lamp that used to be right behind the chair I'm sitting in is now across the room. She wants us to get some accent pillows for our bed, which I think is silly because I am NOT into spending money on pillows that will sit on the floor most of the time, especially since they cost like twenty bucks a goddamn pillow. Did you know that? Throw pillows are fucking expensive! And stupid!

I've got a friend who works for a children's book publisher, and I do some occasional freelance work for them. I just signed on to work on a year-long book project and they want me to come to Pennsylvania for training on Wednesday and Thursday this week. So that should be fun and not at all overwhelming to add an overnight business trip midweek while six and a half months pregnant and putting my house on the market.

Hope y'all had a lovely Easter and the like!