Saturday, June 25, 2011

Oh, Come On!

Hubby and I started our day at 7:00 this morning visiting a couple of garage sales in our neighborhood. I got an email on our neighborhood list yesterday about some multi-family sales with baby stuff going on today around the corner from us, and since hubby had to leave before 7:30 for a work-related training thing today that meant hitting them when they started, which isn't a bad thing for garage sales, anyway. The last time there were garage sales hubby ended up bringing home a bunch of great stuff for only a few dollars (things like toys and a diaper pail and a toilet trainer, which we'll need eventually), so we wanted to take the opportunity to try again. We got some more toys, a grocery cart cover for Kidlet to sit in, and a couple books, which the woman said to just take. When we thanked her I pointed to my stomach and said, "He thanks you, too." She said, "Oh, I hadn't noticed!" I'm 3 weeks away from my due date now so her comment elicited the title of this post from me: "Oh, come on!" I know I haven't shown much through the entire pregnancy—at 7 months I was standing in front of someone at work and mentioned something about being pregnant and he said, "What, you're pregnant?"—but come on, surely I look pregnant and not just fat by now! Sigh.

For those of you who aren't aware being 3 weeks from my due date means I am now considered full-term—or will be as of tomorrow, to be exact. That's a HUGE milestone and a huge relief: It means if anything happened now I could be induced without having to worry about having a preterm baby, and it means I could safely go into labor naturally myself at any time. Not that anyone has asked me and I know I have no control over it whatsoever, but it'd be really nice if Kidlet decided to be born naturally between 39 and 40 weeks, that'd be perfect. Again, not that anyone is asking me, but his coming before 38 weeks would be very inconvenient: That'd be next week, which is my last week of work (yay!) and hubby is on closing shift through the July 4th weekend at the park so he could be a little harder to reach if I really need him. (I plan to have the park superintendent's home phone number with me over the holiday weekend in case I can't reach him, just in case anyone is wondering.) It'd also be nice to have a real week off from everything after I'm done with work, so if Kidlet waits until a little closer to my due date that'd be nice. As the doctor we saw yesterday said, at this point everything is going well so we'll just see what happens.

Friday, June 10, 2011

Hose

I know, I've done a horrible job of keeping up with this blog lately. Oh well. To summarize: I'm 8-months pregnant now (35 weeks) and doing fine, heading down the home stretch and looking forward to having kidlet on the outside rather than on the inside. I have three weeks of work left and then I'll be on maternity leave. That about sums it up.

So let's talk about hose. No, not the garden variety, I'm talking about maternity support hose—you haven't lived until you've worn them. One thing I've dealt with for about half the pregnancy is very swollen ankles and feet. The technical term is edema, otherwise known that-which-makes-your-feet-look-like-tubers. I was advised by my doctor a while ago to start wearing support hose to help with it, and she suggested I just wear knee-highs since that's all I really needed. Unfortunately, the knee-highs made my knees look like grapefruits because they were tight right below my knees. At my appointment today the doctor suggested I switch to full maternity support hose since the knee-highs may have been doing more bad than good. Support hose are actually a medical item worthy of a prescription, which is a good thing since maternity support hose in particular cost a small fortune. ($92 per pair, if anyone is interested.) Thankfully, my insurance covers them so we paid much less than that at the medical supply store where we got them.

I'm not a huge fan of pantyhose, anyway, and rarely wear them except occasionally in the winter with a nice dress for church. Support hose are a whole different matter: Regular pantyhose stretch; support hose don't. I'd been having a hard time getting the knee-highs on lately but I usually managed on my own. When we got home with the full maternity hose today there was no way I could get them on by myself, and it still took 20 minutes with hubby's help. Not fun at all. I don't know if I'd be able to get them on by myself without being 8-months pregnant and now I'm thinking it's probably never going to be an option. I'm supposed to wear them all day every day until delivery, so that means on days hubby works opening shift we may both have to get up extra early so he can help me get them on. (I don't have to sleep in them, thankfully.) And did I mention they itch? Yeah, not surprisingly they itch some.

I'm thankful I only have to wear them for a few weeks at this point and not a few months, but that's as close to the bright side of things I'm gonna get. And, in reality, I am thankful that this is really just another pregnancy annoyance I have to deal with and not something ultimately significant that affects the baby. God willing it'll stay that way for the remainder of the pregnancy and we'll have a healthy baby boy in due time.