coasting...

so we havent updated this in a while because there is nothing newsworthy really happening right now, and we feel a little boring...(aside from the whole miracle of life thing happening inside me, but its hard to paint that picture in a blog). but for the sake of not going a whole month without a post (thanks aunt jo) i will see what i can muster up.

we are now seeing our OBs every other week instead of once a month. we are rotating between all 4 doctors in the practice and after next week will have met every single one. we are trying not to have a favorite because that would mean having a not-so-favorite...which would pretty much guarantee having that OB on call the day we deliver if God's sense of humor stays consistent. they are all really nice and seem pretty open to our minimal-intervention birth plan (i mean why not? thats less work for them), but they all have very different personalities and ways of communicating. its fun and challenging to picture laboring under the supervision of each one and how the process might be different depending on who we "got."

i have gained 21 pounds total (putting me on track for 30-35 total...fine by me, just keep me away from the fifties!), blood pressure is 104/70, and judah is head down (hopefully for the duration) with a strong heartbeat. i am Sally McLow-Risk. boring for the doctors but great for us!

i had my 28 week glucose tolerance test screening for gestational diabetes last wednesday. it was yucky. i had to drink this huge bottle of nasty orange "glucola "in 5 minutes and then wait an hour and have blood taken to see how well my body metabolized it. if i failed that one i would have to come back and do it again: over a 3-hour period drinking a bottle every hour and having blood taken 4 times during that period (or something like that). no thanks! if i failed that one too, i would be branded gestationally diabetic. it was funny, i knew that i did not want to have GD but didnt really consider how bad it would suck until after i got to work after having my blood taken and waiting for the results. i looked up what all it would entail and got really freaked (especially considering i had eaten half of captain crunch's entire payload of crunchberries earlier that day). having GD can make the baby gain a lot of extra fat, making him much bigger than normal, making a natural vaginal birth less likely. dream-crusher! and then of course i would have to monitor my diet like crazy and maybe even do insulin shots. not quite how i imagined my ideal 3rd trimester. but anyway, the happy ending was that i passed so i dont have to deal with any of that.

here i am laughing in the face of any silly dietary restrictions on free pancake night at IHOP after birth class (26 weeks 1 day)

judah is moving like a little maniac, which has so far been 100% fun. he doesnt wake me up with his "moves" and jesse is able to feel them and see them most of the time now. jesse was actually talking through my stomach to him the other day and he was telling him that we cant wait to meet him and that we are sorry that we are going to cause him some pain right after that because of the circumcision and right after he said that judah gave him a violent kick to the face. it was pretty funny.

sleeping is getting kind of uncomfortable, but no real complaints yet. i will celebrate wildly the day that i get my full bladder capacity back. every bathroom break seems to yield the disappointing volume of an eye-dropper, no matter how sure i am that there is a quart in there busting to get out. additionally, its like there is a bladder waiting list, and as soon as i let out the stuff currently in there, the line just moves forward and immediately refills. we tried to go for a long walk around lake peachtree on saturday and about 15 minutes from the car (and nearest bathroom) i HAD to go. this ended with a shameful attempt behind a tree and wet pants. so classy. i have fantasies of a perma-catheter where i never have to get out of bed or worry about where the nearest toilet is when we are out in nature. sadly, judah is already closer to accomplishing this dream than i am. only boys received the blessing of god's natural catheter.

showing off my wicked tan (lord, give him jesse's pigmentation) at our awesome picnic last weekend at lake peachtree. my super-ladylike position will show you that the peeing my pants incident was already dried and in the past (27 weeks 5 days)

i have also started having braxton-hicks contractions which is way bizarre. one section of my belly will just all of a sudden get really hard...like as if i was flexing certain abs ("abs"...what are those?). at first i thought it was judah's back or something and he was balling up really hard towards one side, but we learned at birth class that those are the braxton-hicks practice contractions: painless, normal, and part of the process. its just weird having a muscle in my body flexing so hard without my permission. i bet its going to be even weirder when that flexing starts hurting like hell!

we are 6 1/2 months done and this is all becoming very real. i mean, we have always known that this little adventure would end with a real human baby, and i have been very aware all along that i am, in fact, pregnant. but that is very different from truly realizing that there is a tiny human living in me that would be an infant that could survive out here in the world if he came right now. mind job! i am starting to get scared about labor and nervous about being able to accomplish our "dream birth" (see below), but indulging those fears and playing them all the way out in my head usually still always ends with a vision of the moment we get to hold our tiny brand new son for the first time, regardless of what kind of birth and delivery it turned out to be, and that is a super emotional and amazingly positive mental image. so we are running towards that. holy cow, i cant wait to meet him.