Breathless

This last little while I have been quite out of breath, and it got much worse a couple of days ago. I was waking up out of sleep feeling like I couldn’t breathe. The feeling would go away as soon as I sat up. I will talk to my obstetrician about it in a couple of days, but until then I have been consulting Dr. Google and finding that many people experience this. 

In particular, this baby is currently in a breech position, and apparently that can contribute. Instead of little feet kicking at my lungs I have little feet plus a great big skull headbutting my lungs. So lots of people who are carrying breech babies have worse breathlessness. There are exercises that one can do at home to try to turn a breech baby, and they mostly involve having your hips higher than your head in order to let the baby slide out of the pelvis and have more room to turn. I am finding that these exercises are becoming increasingly uncomfortable, and that the headbutting of my lungs is becoming less tolerable.

Two nights ago and three nights ago it was so bad that I basically did not sleep. Last night I propped myself up using six pillows (four regular and two wedge pillows) and I was able to sleep much more reasonably. Not great of course because it has been quite some time since I had a great night of sleep, but reasonable. This is essentially the opposite of the exercises for turning your breech baby, in that it slides of the uterus downward toward the pelvis and away from the lungs. I have no idea whether doing this is contradictory to what I am trying to do with turning the baby, but I was going insane without sleep so I will try the same tonight.

Hopefully the baby will just turn on its own, as happens with more than half of babies, but if not stay tuned for more intense baby-turning plans!

Getting ready

How is it that a week has passed already since my last blog post? I have taken no photos in the past few weeks. It seems like nothing interesting has happened.

We did start a list of things that need to be done before the baby is born. We spent some time on Friday night talking about names. I am realizing that we are months behind where we were when we were preparing for Maren — with names, and with every kind of preparation.  

When Maren was born we had the freezer stocked with meals. We have no freezer meals yet. I think we will make some big soups for the freezer before this baby is born, but it will be nothing like the level of preparation that we had for Maren. 

One thing we did accomplish over the past week was getting a plane ticket for my mom to come out. She will be here for a month which is going to be amazing for help with the new baby and also for helping Maren to adjust. Like I said last week, part of our lack of preparation is knowing that one way or another we will be able to manage just fine. But I think finalizing dates for my mom’s visit has actually made me feel less concerned about preparing, because with that much help we definitely can handle this.

I am doing my best to wrap up things at work before the baby comes, but I’m finding that it has been a bit challenging. There was a deadline last week for a grant I am applying for, and getting that done was a big weight off. But I still have four graduate students and one honours student in the middle of research projects. Their programs don’t stop progressing just because I am going on maternity leave. I am getting the impression that several of my students expect me to be at full capacity until the baby is born, and that they are banking on the baby not being early. I can’t necessarily make them change their expectations, but I have to be careful not to get caught up in them. I will do what is reasonable, and I have to be okay with certain people being disappointed with that!

33 weeks

I am suddenly just over 33 weeks pregnant, and the realization is starting to hit me that the baby is coming soon. We have done practically nothing to prepare, which is a stark contrast to what happened when I was pregnant with Maren. A big part of it is that we know we are pretty much ready – if the baby came tomorrow, it would be hard but we would be able to quickly get everything ready. We have all the stuff like a crib and car seat and change table and clothes and cloth diapers and a million other things that we didn’t have before, and which we had to acquire. But now we are pretty well set in terms of stuff, so it is kind of easy to forget how soon we have to be emotionally and mentally prepared.

My body on the other hand keeps reminding me how far along in pregnancy I am. My legs and feet are starting to swell quite a bit, and the last couple of days my hands have swollen up by the late afternoon as well. I was hoping to avoid this, hoping that perhaps the swelling that I experienced in my last pregnancy had a lot to do with being pregnant in the summer, but I will be ending pregnancy with cankles once again. 

Three Christmases

This year we celebrated Christmas three times. The first was in Vancouver with Jeff‘s siblings and their kids in early December. Here are three of the four cousins listening to a Halloween story even though it was our Christmas Eve celebration (photo taken by Jeff’s sister):

Then we celebrated Christmas again, just me, Maren, and Jeff at home on actual Christmas day. We made lots of cookies, had stockings and presents, and tried to make it a fun relaxing day. I somehow managed not to take any pictures at all on my phone, so here is a picture of Maren playing with one of her Christmas presents yesterday:

After that we flew to Oregon where we celebrated Christmas a third time with my family. More stockings, more presents, more cookies, and more stories with cousins:

Overall we have had a fun and relaxing break, but we are glad to be done with travel. Also, I managed to get a really nasty cold which I am still battling. We go back to work tomorrow, and even if Jeff and I don’t feel quite ready I think Maren is — she keeps asking whether it is a daycare day. We had her at daycare while I had a medical appointment on Friday, just for about an hour and a half or so, and she seemed to really enjoy it. So we are back to the routine tomorrow!

Almost Christmas

Tuesday evening Maren had her first ever Christmas recital, with her preschool. Her class is only eight kids, but there are other classes taught by the same teacher, and they all had their recital together. This is a 5-minute video of two of the songs - Maren is in the front row, in the purple hoodie.

We were surprised to discover that all the kids were dressed up, and Maren was the only girl not wearing a Christmas dress. We didn’t really think it was a formal affair like that, and almost let Maren go in her dirty pajamas, which she had been wearing all day (it was pajama day at preschool in the morning, and it only occurred to me maybe half an hour before we left for the recital that other kids might be wearing regular clothes). Fortunately she doesn’t notice or care about that kind of thing at the moment, and I hope it mostly stays that way. I don’t want her to be ostracized as a weird kid, but I would love it if she continues to not be influenced too much by social pressures. Time will tell.

Also, her drawing skills have just exploded. Not sure why this suddenly happened, but it is lots of fun. This is grass, a tree, a girl with very long hair, and a sun:



We are gearing up for Christmas. I finished grading and submitting grades on Friday midday, and my break started at that point. Jeff had finished a bit sooner. So now we are free from work responsibilities for a little while, just enjoying some family time. There are cookies baked (probably too many), gifts purchased, grocery shopping done. Maren is so excited that sometimes she can hardly contain it. I hope Christmas Day is not too much of a let down for her, because I am not sure anything can live up to her expectations. At the same time, she will probably be happy and excited no matter what, so it might be just fine.

Last night in the bath Maren suddenly said “for goodness sake!,” and I realized that she was referencing the song Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Then she said “but Santa’s not real, so that’s why I’m goodness saking him.” I could not stop laughing 😊