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The eagle has landed!

The chair is here! I slept part of the night in it due to heart burn and feel like I have gotten my money’s worth already. It isn’t the lazy boy I dreamed of because it turned that the one styling modern chair they have that I love starts at 1,100 and takes 6-8 weeks to order. Puffer you are right to plan ahead.

Luckily a store next door offered a much much cheaper chair that reclines with no rocking and it was available that day. Much better. We are calling it the faux leather boy. It isn’t that shiny in real life!

Thanks for all the comments. I realized that there isn’t one perfect chair for all this business and since I am itching to recline right now I went with that. I will figure out Junior’s ladder and the mountain of pillows later.

A chair and a ladder?

There is nothing comfortable for me to sit in in this house. After work in the evenings I am either soaking my hands in hot water and using ice packs (I do this twice a day now) or pacing around. Nothing feels right for my back and my hands and feet aren’t comfortable either from swelling.  Moumee is loving it that she can sleep on F on the couch and I am no longer there bugging her. I don’t like it. A good friend also pointed out to me that I should get something comfortable to sit in for nursing.

The whole thinking about getting a chair for nursing lead me to trying to picture nursing and what it would look like. Suddenly the nursing pillow I have seems totally inadequate. I may have handed in my ittybittytinytitty membership card when I got pregnant, but they are still not that big. Junior is going to need some serious help to get up high enough to for a drink. This is going to take a lot of cushions and possibly even a ladder for Junior. What kind of chair works best in this kind of situation or does it even matter?

The other issue is that F has extreme motion sickness. Ferries even on a calm day, light flickering on a computer screen, elevators, any transportation that she is not driving, canoes, hand held movies and seeing people in chairs that move all make her sick for hours. We have tried different things, but so far she is stuck with it. While traveling in Asia she took 130 motion sickness pills. We bought them in every country we were in. I know most people get gliders to nurse in, but she will have to close her eyes or go in another room anytime it is moving. That seems a little crazy. How important is it to be in a chair that moves?

I am considering getting a modern looking lazy boy. I just can’t do the old school kind even though they are comfortable.  They don’t rock, but they do recline. Would that work?

A strong heart

So many of my dear blogger friends are duking it out with fertility issues. This is such a hard road to be on. The hormones (drugs), the expense,  the difficult medical procedures and the roller coaster ride are a brutal combination. You have to be seriously hard core to get through it. You also have to be seriously hard core to quit ttc and pick a new direction. F and I spent two and a half years and fell on the lucky side of the 50/50 chance of success we had with IVF. That was likely going to be our last attempt whether or not it was successful.  That tww with nothing in the freezer was the hardest one I have ever done. I was staring at two paths in front of me not sure which one I was going to be on.

Fertility issues take such a toil and truly require a strong heart and spirit.  I see evidence of it everyday in blogland. People who pick themselves up and keep trying or pick a new path that leads to something else that is great. I see people finding more strength than they knew they had as they take another step and head bravely forward. The journey of dealing with fertility issues is so invisible to the world we live in as part of getting through it tends to be putting on a brave face when heading out into the world. The world misses out on seeing the strength that you have.

This post is dedicated to those still on the journey.

Pregnant lady bus ticket

My bus ticket now includes a seat. I have decided that it is better for everyone if I can sit. I have made it this far being ok most of the time if I stood, but I life at 33 and a half weeks just isn’t the same as life before.

I walk a lot and use transit, but in the last week or so walking is getting less comfortable.  If I walk for very long, I feel like my belly will fall off. F says it won’t, but it feels like it will. By the time I have walked to the skytrain and or walked around during the day, I am not comfortable standing on the bus or train with all the stopping and starting. Even worse than just having to stand, is that transit here is generally crowded and my belly sticks out far enough that people bump into it.  Then I have to break out the belly shield which involves the claws.  I am not scared to use the claws. From now on I will be sitting on transit for public safety.

I have claws, but not fangs.

Every morning when I wake up my hands are claws. They don’t bend well, are stiff and sore and are stuck in the claw position. It is hard to brush my teeth and I can’t do my job with claws. It just won’t work. I need human hands. Luckily I am working afternoons and evenings and by then they are more hand-like and less claw-like. Even when they are more hand-like they are still sore when I have to open heavy doors and work.

According to an expert, not google, it is fluid in the joints from swelling. At night while I sleep my hands aren’t moving, they swell up and gradually make the transformation to claws. They way to get my human hands back is to move them around in hot water every morning and then alternate ice and heat until they are human hands again. I start tomorrow.

Sleep…less is more??

This back to school time coincided with starting to feel big in the belly.  In September I switched campuses, offices and am now on afternoons and evenings. My office is far far away from everything; water, a fridge, the bathroom and the classroom. I have been working on improving the office and finding ways to make everything work. It has been hectic, but is getting better.

On top of the school changes, it is harder to stay feeling comfortable during the night with the growing belly. I am hoping someone will invent a giant spatula that with the push of the button will flip me and all the pillows onto my opposite site. Until the giant spatula has been invented,   I have been experimenting with how early I go to bed. I am finding that if I push myself to stay up later, that I sleep deeper and wake up less. This means that  I wake up feeling more rested.  It is odd, but it seems to be working. I made it tonight until 9:30, but now I am heading to bed.

32 Weeks

Our clinic

At our first appointment,  while I was busy peeing on sticks, F met two of our care providers who asked if we were partners. When she said said yes, they both cheered and declared themselves gay too. At our first prenatal class we were taken aside with the other gay couple for a special gay meeting at break with the nurse. The nurse explained that if both partners wanted to breast feed that it was possible and explained how to go about doing it. No one jumped on that opportunity, but I appreciate the thought.

We are incredibly fortunate to be in this program. It is the only one in the city. It is a group health care community kind of a program. Our prenatal class at the clinic is really diverse and I feel very at home in it.  Aside from the gay meeting and cheering, we are treated like any other couple.

At first I was intimated that there is a team of 7 doctors and midwives and that anyone of them could be at the birth.  It seemed like a few too many.  Now that we have been in the program for a few months I am less worried about that. I have a better feel for the philosophy that they all work under and it feels like a good fit. I also will get a doula given to me by the doula match maker. I will get to meet her ahead of time and for sure she will be there with us the whole time. That takes away most of my concerns about having such a large team of doctors and midwives.

Last week we started on stages of labour. We had to watch the video. Yikes! It was weird sitting there and realizing that I was the one signed up for labour and F was going to be the superduper support person. It could have been either one of us in the hot seat and I don’t even know which seat is the hot seat.

September’s seriousness

I thought nesting instincts would naturally kick in at some point during pregnancy along with a surge in energy. I think about doing something to get ready sometimes, but then I go to bed or take a nap. Really since getting pregnant my primary focus has been on swimming and prenatal yoga. Everything else I figured I would do later. Then later came and there were tears. Somehow I thought when I came back from vacation in September I would get serious and get things done. The only problem is that I still want to swim and do yoga and I still have to go to work. I spent the majority of the time left sleeping.

This weekend I did go to a diaper workshop, washed 500 loads of baby laundry things, washed various other things that have been sitting in the basement and built a white frilly bassinet (Eek I am not a white frilly bassinet kind of  a person, but it is a very practical hand me down from F’s mom.)  My mom and a friend helped hugely with this and then F did more when she got home because my back said no more lifting of anything including Moumee. Luckily Moumee didn’t know that I could only catch her if she was up high and wasn’t able to take advantage of my no bending ability. I booked us an appointment with the law students to talk about Second Parent Adoption.  I also researched the car seat safety check program and emailed to  get the car seat instruction manual.

This was a good start (And I did on the day that I ran out of clean maternity panties) but it was not fueled by any kind of natural energy surge.  I was beyond tired by the end and was only able to splash around in the pool the next day.  My other attempts at doing errands have been only sort of successful. I forgot to put money in the parking meter and get a ticket, I left the thing that I just bought at the store, I just noticed that I haven’t opened any mail for at least a month (which means I didn’t pay the bills)  and I have to stop and eat snacks  all the time because I am constantly hungry. I feel so ineffective.

Now I am going swimming again! This is the last day of outdoor swimming and I just can’t miss it. I have had a great season at Kits. It is my favorite thing about the city and what I would miss most if I were to move. This pool is no ordinary pool. It is six times the size of a regular pool. It is 137.5 meters long (445 feet long.) This amazing pool was built right beside the beach. It is beautiful. How can I do laundry and organize things when there is something like this in my city? I also belief that all this swimming and yoga is what is keeping my body so healthy and strong and that when push comes to shove this is what will pull me through labour.

Moumee’s adventures

Here is Moumee at her Japanese homestay. She stayed there while we were away with F’s friend. She is supposed to be making friends with Hatsi the other cat and practicing Japanese. Unfortunately when Moumee arrived at her host parent’s home she behaved like a tiger and not like a cat at all. She was hissing and clawing and one day had soft poo! F’s other friend, also known as the cat master came to visit, and Moumee became a cat again.

Here is a link to Moumee’s host parent’s blog and the story of the Cat Master.