33 Weeks, 1 Day

People keep asking me why pregnant women always have a hand on their bellies. For a while the Gap Maternity online catelog was an excellent example of this, but now I don't have an easy visual reference to direct you to. In any case, for me, the reason is that I can feel Baby-G's movements much better through my hands than my internal organs, and I spend a lot of time in complete curiosity asking "What the hell is she doing in there???" As a result, C and I also spend a lot of time handling my belly and trying to guess what baby-part is poking out this time. There are so many positional permutations it makes this new game very hard to win, and I spend a lot of time trying to understand how the lumps could possibly be attached to each other. I also feel like Baby-G has discovered that my belly button is a weak spot, and spends a lot of her time trying to turn it from an innie to an outie, so a lot of time I'm trying to move her foot/hand/elbow away from it. Not because it's painful, just because it's somewhat disconcerting to see your belly button grow an inch suddenly, and it's an odd feeling as well. And because manipulating her is fun.

Speaking of pain, my last entry was pretty grumpy, and I wasn't any better through the last week and a half, but I think it's been getting better. One of the many non-fun parts of the third trimester for me is the development of Pelvic Girdle Pain. Basically, transitioning from sitting to lying down to standing hurts my crotch. Rolling over in bed can also cause pain, as can too much walking. It got to the point last week where continuously dealing with pain had completely disintegrated my desire to give birth without an epidural, and I would have taken any amount of pain drugs possible had they been within arms reach. Luckily, sharply dropping how much time I spend on my feet and walking has decreased the pain's intensity and brought back some semblance of resolve. I also had acupuncture on Friday and am going again today - I am a firm believer in the placebo effect, and for me, it seems acupuncture helped. It doesn't matter whether I attribute the decreased intensity, or the better mood, or the ability-to-deal to acupuncture, I'll take whatever works. (However, I'm still scared-to-death of chiropractors. Basically I tried going to a chiropractor years ago to get rid of residual RSI. Now I can crack my neck in 5 different places by turning my head a certain way, and I don't consider this a good thing.) Besides, acupuncture is the closest one gets to an insurance-covered massage.

We had a Newborn Parenting class yesterday, which was somewhat useful. We both have been reading so many books about babies that I think most of it was redundant for us, but it was fun to learn the best way to pick up, diaper, and swaddle a baby hands-on with a baby doll. It was like h.s. health class, for 40-year-olds(I think we were the youngest in the class), and as the teacher said, "If you really need your 8-hours of solid, uninterrupted sleep, y'all made a huge mistake ~8 months ago." We chatted with another couple who don't have any family around and both felt really grateful that we'll have such awesome support from our families and friends. Though did you know that 1 in 4 babies come out with poop on them? This is why only C and I will be in the delivery room. Ew. Anyways. The class was from noon to 5pm, and they gave a lunch break at 2:30, so I was dreading what we'd find at the tiny, deserted cafeteria on a Sunday afternoon, but they actually had jook! (AKA Congee, or Chinese rice porridge.) And it was good! I was unreasonably excited by this, but I could have guessed it'd be decent by the number of Chinese cafe workers. C had made us egg/bacon/english muffin sandwiches for breakfast, and after the class we were just in time to grab seats at a Japanese Izakaya that has the best ramen in the city, so by my metrics it was a good Sunday.

We found a pediatrician recommended both by our Dr. and friends that adopted a baby 3 months ago, and the office is even walkable from our apartment. They had a parent-meeting last week, since they only accept new patients while they're in-womb as a way to control how many new patients they take. The nurse that met us after-hours and talked to us was pretty reassuring, and our friends can't praise the Dr. enough, so I'm content with only "interviewing" one practice. Our friends also dropped off a mother-load of newborn clothes that their baby no longer fits, so I'm not worried that Baby-G will come home from the hospital naked anymore. I think she now has more outfits than I do, and certainly has way more hats.

According to our pediatrician, everyone who wants to be around babies before they're 6 months old should get a pertussis vaccine, and the new flu shot for this year. You may be able to get these at any drugstore - Walgreens definitely has them. I'm not sure how vigilant we'll be with Baby-G, most likely we'll still let you hold her if you haven't been vaccinated, but it'll definitely reduce our anxiety if you're already vaccinated, especially since our pediatrician has already had one newborn die from pertussis, and CA has called it an outbreak. Blame it on all the friggin crazies down here that refuse to vaccinate their kids. That's what I'm doing. I also have to go get the vaccine and flu shot, though I have to wait until she's born, as we had no idea that you were supposed to do this before you start trying. A few of the mom's in my mother's group are anti-vaccine, and I really have to bite my tongue whenever the subject comes up, since debating it is about as useful as proselytizing religion, and I need mom-friends more than converts.