This is I think one of the weirdest months of this pregnancy… just mentally. The first trimester was terrifying for good reason. The second was exciting and fabulous for good reason. Even the last month has been really good to me – I feel good, I look good, the baby’s moving good.

It was right around when I hit 30 weeks that the little mental calendar flipped over and started looking at the last stretch. The end is coming, and I feel conflicted about that – especially when you take into account that I haven’t yet reached Devin’s loss point. I can feel myself winding a little bit tight in anticipation.

I want this month to be over. My mental goal is 36 weeks – a marker I never reached with Devin (he was stillborn at 35w5d). Hitting 36 weeks will do some important things for me: it will put me past his loss date, and it will also put me 4 weeks away from my due date, looking at that last month that I have never experienced before. I’m eager for that. Right now, at 32 weeks… I’ve been here before. I remember this type of baby movement, I remember this aching hip. And the closer I get to the loss point, the clearer it all seems. I can’t look back at my pregnancy with Devin and tell you how I felt at 28 weeks – but I can tell you exactly how I felt at 35. That was the end, the wall – the vision of pregnancy that is burned into my brain. I want to open the door. I want to step through. I want to see what’s on the other side.

At the same time I feel really guilty about wanting to fast forward anything at all. My hands rest on my belly possessively, knowing I’ll have to give this up to move on to bring home a baby. I so desperately want to bring home a baby – but I can’t picture it. This is all I know. This, to me, is the ultimate joy I have ever experienced. I know that the baby in my arms will probably be far and beyond this joy, this love. But still, I am scared to let go of this. I want to treasure it as fully as possible.

Then once in a while I get this image in my head of us actually holding our daughter in our arms, of getting to meet her, SEE her, hold her… to really see what she looks like, how she moves, how she cries. My chest gets tight just thinking about it. Part out of hope, part out of fear. Mostly hope, though.

Physically I’m finally starting to feel it. I still feel pretty darn good but just this week my hip started aching during the day – just my left hip. A very dull throb, like I need to shake it out or something. And I know it’s because I was sleeping on the joint. I’ve had to modify my pillow situation – I was sleeping wrapped around a body pillow, but it felt like that just had me laying square on that hip, no matter how I stretched out. I took the pillow away and I’m at least sleeping a little better… but the achiness all day today doesn’t exactly tell me it was very successful.

I can tell that Kate’s still expanding upwards into my ribs, because it’s becoming increasingly uncomfortable to sit. I admit it, I’m a sloucher. I hunch over my laptop – typically sitting indian-style. Now all that accomplishes is several good whacks to the ribs and a very unpleasant feeling of a bulldozer under my chest. Even sitting in my recliner watching TV I find myself fidgeting, trying to stretch out (while baby girl does more than fidget).

And tis insomnia thing I’ve been having is pissing me off. I’m tired during the day at work, but then get a huge burst of nervous, nesting energy soon as I get home in the evening. I don’t feel like I’m full unwound when I go to bed, so I am wide awake at 3am with more of that nervous energy floating around my head. I’m all for getting things done in the evenings, but I like sleep. I’d like to get more of it. Plus, every time I wake up I have to go pee. And no, it’s not the having to pee that wakes me up – it’s the nervous energy or the cold sweats, then I have to get up, which makes it even harder to fall back asleep!

It will be very interesting to me to see how these next 8 weeks go.

Well today was my 32 week appointment and growth ultrasound. First I’ll tell you what went well, and then I’ll tell you what didn’t.

Most importantly, above all else, is that the baby is doing just fine. I knew on some level that she was, but at the same time I woke up this morning having somewhat of a panic attack. Not the immediate, hyperventilating, freaking out completely kind, but rather the kind of anxiety that sits hard on your chest, following you about your morning. Den asked me a few times if I was okay, because I was very short, and very unable to concentrate or converse. I was feeling some kicks, but not enough to completely reassure me. And she felt so low down, like she compacted down into my pelvis. I was just wrapped up in mental knots.

I’m not even sure that the entire reason for it was the ultrasound. We’re also at 32 weeks here, getting very close to my loss point. And the reminder card I got in the mail told me that the appointment today was to be with the Midwife I saw when I found out Devin was gone. I loved her, and all pregnancy I’ve been wanting to have an appointment with her just to show her how I’m doing and to say thank you… but at the same time today I just thought, I cannot have history repeat itself.

Regardless, I made it through my morning and drove white-knuckled to the hospital. (Den was meeting me there so I drove myself. It was raining pretty heavily and my car really needs some fixing because it’s not handling rain very well, so no, it was not a fun drive.) I was taken right in and got to see Katherine on the screen. She’s head-down still, calming my worries about her having flipped. And she was sleeping, explaining why she’d been quiet most of the day except for a few pokes. She had her arm over her face and was making little sucking motions – at first we thought she was sucking her thumb, but it appears she was just sucking on/against her arm. Her measurements are all still very normal, various parts of her measuring between 31w6d (which is exactly what I am today) to 32w5d. (It was her head that was measuring ahead! Abdomen and femur were right on.) Her estimated weight is 3lb 14oz, which is right about average (she didn’t give the percentile, I should have asked). Then the tech pulled out the 3d wand and tried to capture her little face for us. We got a half-view, due to the arm she was nestled into, but we also caught a big sleepy yawn! OMG how friggin cute.

So then we were led over to the midwife office and that’s where we started getting irritated.

We sat in a room for a little bit until the Midwife walked in. And much to my surprize it is not the Midwife who saw me when Devin died, but someone new. She introduces herself, sits down, observed that we just came from an ultrasound. I mention something about my monthly ultrasounds. She asks, “Why are you having growth ultrasounds?” I swear, even though Den and I didn’t actually look at each other there was this zap of highly irritated energy that flew between us. “Previous stillbirth,” I said tersely. “Oh sorry,” she looks down at the chart, “I didn’t read the chart yet.” No shit.

The rest of the appointment went well enough. She answered my questions. She asked some things about labor/delivery. She scheduled me for my weekly NSTs (non-stress tests) starting at 34 weeks (though that wasn’t simple). When I was laying down for her to measure and listen to the heartbeat she had Denis come over and feel the baby’s head, her back, her bum, as she pointed things out. That was pretty cool. She smiled the whole time and was polite. And yet. There was just something that I didn’t like, something that rubbed me the wrong way. How she’d phrase a question, or maybe I just never got over the fact that she didn’t read my damn chart first. Maybe I was annoyed that I just wanted to know The Plan for monitoring and appointments and she knew less than I did. Maybe I’m just not up for meeting new Midwives. She asked me if I had any preference for who I’d see for appointments, so she could pass it on to the receptionist, and I told her who I usually see. She pointed out, “[that person] probably won’t be at your birth, you know.” Yes, I am aware of that. But honestly? I don’t want to explain my situation to anyone else. The previous stillbirth, the IVF, the depression, the monitoring-even-though-I’m-not-high-risk. And if they can’t even read my chart before walking in my room – because it’s all IN THERE – then no, I don’t want to see anyone else. Give me someone who knows it all, then I can get on with what I’m actually concerned about at this point in time rather than re-hashing my whole freaking history. And when I don’t go over it all – like today, I didn’t mention the IVF part at all, it wasn’t relevant – then I feel like my caretaker doesn’t really understand where I’m coming from, doesn’t get the whole picture. And that means I don’t feel relaxed or comfortable.

But the true bugger of it all is that all of the various appointments I need makes it next to impossible for me to request a specific Midwife. If I was just going once every other week for an appointment it wouldn’t be much of a problem. But first I have to book my ultrasounds, and then book the midwife around that. Or, starting at 34 weeks, the NSTs. There was only one time slot open for an NST on the days I have flexibility, which means they’ll just have to give me whatever Midwife has an opening around that time. And all of that doesn’t even take into account Den’s schedule. And of course the day that I have off and Den has off half the time is Monday – and that’s the one day that they don’t do scheduled NSTs at the hospital, which means I now need to somehow majorly shift around my work load.

On one hand I think all of the appointments and ultrasounds are making me more stressed out – but at the same time, I’m pretty stressed out anyways. If it’s a week that I don’t have an ultrasound I worry that something’s wrong and we won’t see it; if it’s the week of the ultrasound I get anxious that we’re going to see something bad. I’m just anxious in general – I worry about all of her measurements; I worry that my weight is too much or too little; I worry that I’m measuring too big or too small. I really try to clamp down on it and just repeat positive affirmations and let it go, but it’s hard. My appointments at least give me something solid to hold onto. I am getting concerned about how the anxiety is creeping up, I may need to increase my antidepressants if I can’t get a hold of it. I really don’t want to become a raving lunatic. Throw in all the house disarray of the past few weeks and there are plenty of days where I am close!

I would far rather be getting kicked in an uncomfortable place while trying to sleep than laying awake wondering if she’s okay. (Though some nights I wish she’d aim about 2 inches over.) I lay in bed and whisper, “Ouch! Thank you.”

Not so fond of this waking up at 3am thing, though. Shouldn’t I be tired after everything I do during the day?

After seeing a rash of online friends deal with third trimester complications and early deliveries, right now I’m just feeling extremely thankful that so far everything is normal, I’m healthy, Kate’s healthy, and we’re all just hanging out for hopefully another 8 weeks. Though having our house look more and more finished – including Kate’s room – we’re both getting very excited/hopeful/impatient to have her here. (Here safely and full-term, of course.) But we just want her home. We’re counting down the weeks.

::

In moving all of my stuff back into the bedroom I have ruthlessly gone through my clothes. Things were donated, things were tossed. And most of the rest was bagged up, labeled “pre-pregnancy”, and will be going down to the basement for the next few months. I neatly sorted and folded my maternity clothes and realized… I need more short sleeve shirts. A lot of what I have is heavier winter clothes and suddenly I am starting to feel the heat of this preggo body. Last week I was running late one day and unable to find my black undershirt, so instead I grabbed a very light turtleneck to wear under my shirt. Bad idea. By the end of the day I was sweating. Not good. No more turtlenecks. Even super light ones.

I love my cats. I love my dogs.

I keep repeating this as I watch my cats wrestle on the futon and my dogs slide around the new hardwood floors. And while I wipe the fur off my brand new desk. (Also when my dog wakes me up at 2:30am for a drink of water.)

A long time ago I realized that I would never have Nice Things. That sounded fine to me, acceptable, the way of life. Now I have my own house, with newly refinished floors, and we slowly buy new furniture to replace the hand-me-downs and yard sale finds we have survived on for many years. And I think to myself, man, would it ever be nice to have Nice Things. I spend a few nights at my brother-in-law and sister-in-law’s house during the floor refinishing. Now they don’t really have all nice things, and they have an almost-two-year-old so there are toys everywhere, but there is no fur! The floors are shiny! No dog crates or gross bones! No half-ripped-apart cat tree!

But then I have a purring cat on my lap and a dog sleeping on the floor next to me. My lap and home would be very empty without them (and their fur).

::

First night back in our own bed. HEAVEN. It feels absolutely huge (it’s a king size). I can snuggle up to my husband for warmth, and then shuffle over to my own side of the bed. And my hips don’t ache.

Of course it’s 3:40am and the question remains… why aren’t I in said bed?

Yesterday was another quiet day for little Kate, and they tend to make me a tad nervous. Not a lot nervous, since she’s still moving, she’s still obviously alive in there. But normally she is a crazy mover and shaker, and when she is just kicking here and there, wiggling around only a little bit, I can’t help but worry that there’s some reason that she’s quieter. I remind myself that this does seem to be her pattern – a few days of high activity, then a couple days of quiet movement. I just get the feeling that she sleeps a lot on those days. I can get her to kick me when I poke her, but she snuggles back in and falls asleep again. (I wonder if babies do that after they get out, too… have sleep days and active days.)

I was frustrated doing kick counts last night because she was apparently trying to nap again, even though she had just been active while I ate dinner. I wanted to go to sleep, but I really couldn’t until she convinced me she was just sleepy, and not in distress. Den finally ended up leaning over my belly, nose close enough to touch, and said, “Missy, stop scaring your mother. Don’t make me scold you for the first time!” I couldn’t help but laugh. She did end up waking up enough to reassure me (and then of course woke up even more when I went to bed).

As expected (well… hoped for), today she is wide awake and active as hell. (And then a tiny part of me worries that she’s too active. Yes, I realize that there is no getting around the worrying – it’s just going to stick with me!)

::

I’m not really getting more uncomfortable yet, with the exception of her feet getting closer and closer to (and further up into) my ribs. Today she’s been happy about kicking me up there, so it’s kind of hard to sit and, well… sit. Even reaching for the volume in the car can cause a grunt, because she gets squished and frequently whacks me for my nerve.

But the rest of me… well, the rest of me is doing just fine. My lower back is feeling loose. It gets compressed when I sit and tends to pop and shift when I stand up and walk around – it actually feels good to feel it pop and shake itself out. My wrists haven’t gotten any worse with the carpal tunnel thing – actually, I think it’s gotten better than I was feeling a couple months ago. My pelvis feels fine, no cramping, no aching. Of course she feels heavy in there and, depending on her position, I feel like I have to pee a million times. Some days the ligaments along the sides of my belly feel a bit stretched, but very rarely do I feel any sharp twinges like earlier in pregnancy when things were growing up out of my uterus.

My hips are not happy with still sleeping on the futon, but at the same time I realize it could be a lot worse. I’m still able to shift my position around to keep most of my weight off my actual hip joint (though there are some days I must roll onto it while I sleep). It’s not the most comfortable, but it’s certainly not bad. And hopefully tomorrow night we’ll have our bed moved back in to our bedroom! (We both are very excited about that one.)

I do need to start getting more sleep, though.

As I have said before, I do my kick counts every evening. Usually about half an hour after I sit down she wakes up and starts going at it, and I try to just take a few minutes then to count and record. But some days that proves harder than others. Today I was busy eating and talking something over with the hubby while she was active, and now she’s being all laid back. I can feel her butt pushing out, and she just had the hiccups – but not kicking or moving frequently enough to count. (And most of her movements are slow snakelike movements of her foot towards my ribs, as if she’s plotting a sneak attack soon as I’m not paying attention. I am ON to you, baby.) So now I’m stuck in a dilemma. I know very clearly that while I was eating dinner she was kicking away at me and I could easily have gotten my kick counts – plus she was normally active all day. But now that I’m quiet and counting, she’s facing the wrong direction and isn’t cooperating, so I can’t get my numbers to plug into my fancy little excel chart. And it’s not like I can just leave today’s blank, I am a wee bit obsessive about things like this. So I poke Kate’s cute little butt (which is protruding yet again) and say, “Umm, I know you’re fine in there and you’re probably wanting a nap, but could you roll over so that mommy can get her numbers? Thanks.” So far she has not obliged. Not sure how long I’m going to have to sit here. Apparently a good long while.

Den and I finally found a paint color that we liked the test patch of, so today I bought a gallon and Den painted the top half of the room. And then I started fretting that maybe it wasn’t the exactly right color. It’s just a paint color, for crying out loud! This should not be a month-long process! (But it has been.) And then of course we get to the problem of what to do between the two colors. My original idea was to just paint a white stripe, but now neither of us are too fond of the idea. I’m thinking a white chair rail, he’s thinking a wallpaper border. We have spent hours (hours!) searching for the right border paper that matches the room colors and fits my idea of what her room should be. We have a couple of “maybe”s, and I still would prefer the white chair rail and he still really wants wallpaper. I found one combination idea that I really like, only for Den to say, “But that will be too hard to do.” And of course it’s a discontinued pattern for sale on ebay. Throwing hands in the air now.

On a related note, if anyone knows where I can buy wall decals of the entire alphabet in a single color, that would be great. My mind sees a script font, but at this point I’d take any kind of font. I can make my own effing border. (I want a pink or chocolate brown alphabet on her wall. Not multicolored, not with all kinds of picture scenes. Just the damn alphabet. That should NOT be this hard to find.)

I guess all I need to do is roll over and pretend to go to sleep. That’ll wake her up for sure.

I am 31 weeks. I have 9 weeks to go until my due date. 5 weeks until I hit that “last month” mark. That’s kind of key for me. That was the point I didn’t get to with Devin (he was stillborn at 35w5d), the month that I lost. It’s significant. I’m counting down.

The husband and I are getting along really well throughout this house remodel, except when he says the wrong words, then we aren’t getting along well at all. I tend to hover at the edge of tears – minutes after laughing and smiling happily, gleefully. What did you say?? WELL FINE. I’LL GO DOWNSTAIRS AND CRY. Husband has, I am certain, contemplated running away. Or maybe boarding me up in a padded room. I love him. Most of the time. (It’s the hormones, I swear.)

Our whole family – 2 adults, 2 cats, 2 dogs – are living in our basement this week. One room down here is finished, it’s Den’s “man room” with the big-screen TV, XBox, his computer, couch. We are sleeping on the futon mattress – just the mattress, on the floor. We are both very sore and cranky. It’s only a full size mattress, and compared to our king size it feels like we are crammed onto a postage stamp – and that’s when it’s just us, without any of the furry creatures climbing on too. (The dogs have been smart and have stayed off, mainly I think because they see how uncomfortable we are all crammed in!) My hips hurt, this mattress is far too solid for me. Even Den is complaining that it’s not comfortable. He may choose to sleep on the couch tonight to see if that’s any better. Maybe that will help me, too.

One of the cats is about two seconds from being throttled at any given time of the night. He’s our resident idiot – he’s lovable as all hell, but dumber than a box of rocks. He likes to cuddle. He likes to lay right up at your head and roll all over you. He likes this – and he does not get the freaking hint that we are not so appreciative at 3am. All fucking night long, every 10 minutes, the cat steps on your head. We can feel him coming, walking closer on the couch, then his giant fat-cat-paws land on your hair/face/whatever and we start flailing around, eventually tossing him heartily off the bed. And you know what? He comes right back. We’re going to murder him. (This is the reason he is NOT allowed in the bedroom.) And here he comes again. Why can’t he just sleep at my feet like a normal cat?

And then I have the unique situation (at least in this house) of being kicked from the inside all night, too. Every time I roll over – which is often, given how uncomfortable this mattress is – Kate starts up again, rolling to whatever side I’m laying on and kicking away at the side of my belly that is pressed up against the mattress. Not that this is something that I mind – it’s very reassuring – but at the same time after a half hour of being pummeled I start wishing I could just fall asleep.

All in all the dogs are the easiest ones to deal with, and who expected that? Not us! They’re not trying to dart upstairs like the cats are, they’re happy just to have us down here spending all our time with them. They sleep in their crates (which we moved downstairs) out of free will, though Zeeke also has a fondness for falling asleep on the carpet right beside the mattress – he really prefers to be within reach of us at all times.

Oh, and my anxiety attacks have gone away after that first initial freak-out. It’s still hard to be living without access to most of our stuff, but we’re keeping busy with house projects and soon we’ll be moving our stuff back in. We want to get baseboard put in before we do that, though! Which is an exciting thought – we haven’t had baseboards in here since we tore out the paneling in 2006.

Den and I are positively giddy when we stand in our living room. Little by little we see this house take form and it just feels so good. This is never going to be the perfect house, it’s certainly not a large house, it’s not a new house. It’s a fixer-upper. But every year we turn it more into our house. Every bit of paint, moulding, flooring… it’s all us. With the exception of bigger projects, like the fence installation and hardwood floor refinishing we’ve done almost all of it ourselves. And neither of us are contractors. We’re just homeowners, trying to figure it out. It’s a lot of hard work, but it’s all worth it when at the end of the day when we can stand back and say, “Wow, I didn’t know we could do that! That looks awesome!” Of course that can get dangerous when we finish one project and start thinking, hmmm, we could do the bathroom just as easily…

Of course with a 2-month deadline we’re feeling mighty motivated to get everything that we can done now. I’ve been putting money away all winter, just waiting for the warmer weather to arrive so we could dive into everything. The other side benefit of all of our hard work has been keeping me busy and distracted. The weeks are going by fairly quickly, and I don’t have the time or energy to sit and worry about every little thing about the pregnancy – which I could easily do, left to my own devices. I definitely check in with Kate a lot during the day, and do my kick counts and “how was she moving” notes every evening, but I just don’t have time to start imagining scenarios and freaking myself out.

I am back in my house, and boy does it feel good. The floors are quite simply gorgeous. Den and I keep walking in the upstairs just to stand and look at them, marveling at how different the rooms look now. I really just love watching our home renovation projects get completed – bit by bit I love this house a little bit more. And that’s saying a lot, because when we got this house I really hated it. Immensely.

All in all I slept somewhere else for three days. I’d come home to grab some clothes, check my email, and then the smell of the poly would start making my eyes burn and give me a headache and I’d have to quickly get out. Though I must say, sleeping at my brother- and sister-in-law’s was very peaceful; last night was my first night back and I had cats crawling on my head and dogs hogging the blankets. Then with all the fur… (I can easily see why some people don’t have any pets in the house.)

The cost of the contractor was less than I budgeted for, though the amount of work it took Den to clear out the house was significant. We’re not going to be putting furniture back for at least another few days – we don’t want to take any chances on hurting the floor before it’s fully cured – so we’re stuck in the basement on a futon with all four animals, all of us piled on top of each other.

But it was all well worth it.

Before:

And after:

I’ll be spending the next few nights at my SIL’s, with limited access to internet. But boy did it feel good to sleep in a bed in a house with furniture. Only a few more nights to go…