The Laundry List Goes On

I have so much to be thankful for as I prepare to launch here with Baby T, yet before I gush about love and the stellar support of friends and family, I would just like to add a couple of items to my list of why pregnancy is not my most awesome way to be.

Stretch marks(galore)

Vertigo-go-go-goooo

The stretch mark problem is not just one of vanity. Sure, it may have started out that way, but that was in the small potatoes days of one...maybe 10 little vertical purple marks expanding out horizontally from my belly button. Now, my stretch marks have stretch marks. Most of them I can't even see (mercifully). This morning, I awoke to a burning (literally) desire to scratch the skin off this alien epidermis, discovering that I had yet another new one that kind of felt like a stab wound the size of the Grand Canyon healed over. I haven't drummed up the courage to look at it in the full-length mirror yet. I may never do this. It's like a paper cut you don't feel until you see it, and then it throbs. Only in this case, I already feel it quite as much as I am willing to. The only thing I can figure as I get more and more (and more!) stretch marks is that this baby and I are so anxious to meet one another, we're slowly dissolving the barrier between us through amazing claw action--he from the inside and me from the outside. The best part is when people who, if they've ever been pregnant (bless them), ask me if I'm using any cocoa butter on them. HAH! I am, of course--it's a small comfort to these angry crags--but you can hardly dig yourself out of an avalanche with a garden trowel. C'est la vie.

Vertigo: hello, I do not like you at all! Even after taking lukewarm showers, I now find that I have to lie down immediately to prevent falling over while I dry off. It's always the worst in the morning--by which I mean of course, until about 3 p.m.-- and I wonder if it's because I have been peeing out elements of my inner ear in the night. I don't that mean to sound as crass as it does; this is seriously something I'm questioning. I pee way more than I remember drinking (how could I drink the 8 glasses of fluid--at least!--I am parting with, nightly, in addition to all I part with in the day) and I am wondering if something essential is leaving each night that takes me all day to re-build up. This is bad though. Dizziness is very, very bad.

Okay, so now who wants to get pregnant? Raise your hand, but not all at once now! Hee hee. Well, we'll see who's jazzy when I am holding my little sweet one. I can't wait to say: what vertigo?

News Items For Your Edu-Tainment

Sonnie's Momo (now: O-Mo) blog makes me feel like a serious quitter when it comes to blogging. So I thought at least I'd take the opportunity to share a few items of interest that are completely unrelated to one another, if only to add another little hashmark to my Maw Blog post tally.

Item 1: I have had a bizarre, but insatiable craving for cigarettes. I guess insatiable because I have obviously not attempted to sate this craving. The only thing that makes me feel better about it is sniffing unbrewed black tea bags. I really don't know how to explain this. Matt thinks I am not craving what I think I'm craving because I don't even know what smoking is like, but I typically find it repulsive. Maybe I will buy a pack just to sniff it. I know that's weird, but so is most of pregnancy! I can't explain half of the stuff going on up in here, so I roll with it.

Item 2: Baby T is head down at (almost) 33 weeks, which means he will very likely stay that way. And that is fabulous news! (Is anyone else excited? I am excited enough for us all.)Of things I can stress/obsess over as we count down to due time, one of them does not have to be spinning my baby around for ideal labor positioning. Way to go Baby T! I love an overachiever!

Item 3: Baby T is a tall boy. This comes as a surprise to no one, but again, I really love an overachiever. Yes, bragging that you're tall is one of those things I delight in! :) Obviously, we don't know exactly how tall, but at my midwife visit yesterday, Vicki identified his body for me and noted his little behind was all the way up by my ribs with his legs kind of curled around across.

Item 4: Family party/shower this weekend! Can't WAIT to see all of our relatives, coming from near and far. Most people, I haven't seen at all since I've been pregnant due to: feeling awful for many months and it is going to be the best to have all my best around me sending Baby good vibes for a safe birth.

Item 5: I weigh 203.5 el bees. I am not sure why I delight in this and find it empowering. Maybe it is because if I don't delight in it, it will make me feel very sad and large. But I have stretchmarks to do that. Enough stretchmarks to circle the moon and back if connected end-to-end, as it happens. So when I think of my weight, I flex my arms and chant USA! USA! because I kind of feel like a champ for carrying it around all the time. I also feel very proud of my tall, healthy son! :)

Item 6: Homebirth is happenin'. Some of you know I was VERY concerned that my midwife had overbooked her clients for my due time and suggested that I may "have" to come to the birth center to have Baby. I finally summoned my courage and best stern voice and told her that under no circumstances was I coming to Tyler while I was in labor and that I'd choose a local hospital birth over that option. Meanwhile, I was shaking in my boots, hoping there was no bluff to call, and thinking I'd need to get together a very assertive birth plan in case of hospital. But as it happens, Vicki heard me loud and clear and told me that I was the only homebirth planned around my due time. She has back-up midwives she can have go to the birth center in order to make sure that, come hell or high water, she can attend my birth. I feel a lot better about this and cannot wait for the day when we welcome our son to the world in the peace and sanctity of our own home.

Going Green for Baby

I like to think that before I was carrying Baby, I was fairly earth-friendly. I used to make the claim in college that I was a "plain-clothes hippy." Most of my friends rejected this description, but I still stand by it. I used to be president of the Eco Club in high school and I've long been into "alternative" health care options, especially when it comes to Molly Tee (raw chicken anyone?). The other day, I expressed to Matt how I hoped this one vet might be available at the animal clinic I was going to because she was an herbalist and practices more natural-care remedies for animals. Matt asked "Why do you always have to seek out the weird option?" Because I am a plain-clothes hippy! Plain clothes because, come on, you don't have to neglect fashion and look homeless or a prairie-dweller just because you don't like chemicals.

Okay, but my point is that since Baby has been on the scene, I've become a pronounced, obvious hippy (who still enjoys fashion, thank you). Part of this transformation has been the fact that my nose/senses will NOT tolerate lab-brewed scents. I was never way into sun-riped razz-chemical, but now, I don't even like well, anything. I have pushed my Method body wash to the perimeter of my shower and have been instead using some Go Texan bar soap I got at the fair made of, I don't know, wheat, or something. My fancy Martha Stewart-recommended Fekkai shampoo has succumbed to the same shunned fate, replaced with some hippy juice that I think you can also use on mosquito bites (?) I acquired from Morning Glory. I threw out all the liquid Dial refill soap I had for bathroom soap dispensers because it caused the already threatening nausea waves to wash over me completely, which pre-pregnancy I had thought to be unscented. (What's in my bathroom now? You guessed it: more wheat bars.)

And the green cleaning workshop I attended with my pals for Chay's b-day was another major epiphany. I've used up all my comet and am now BFFs with Borax. It's super cheap, can be used for everything (kitchen! dishes! laundry! bathroom!), earth-friendly, and NO SMELL. I'm now trying to decide what to do with the few bottles of commercial cleaners that have been lingering in my cabinets for years. Ideally, I'd like to use them up and never buy them again, but I haven't used woolite pet stain spray since Molly was a puppy (an actual puppy and not just MY puppy). I've never used the weird free bottle of whatever that the Kirby vacuum people gave me, not to mention it reminds me of almost getting swindled. And honestly, now that I've gone green, it's hard to imagine getting any fulfillment out of using these products. On the other hand, I hate to just throw them in the garbage; it seems the pollute-y way. It's just that I have come to view commercial cleaners the same way I look at processed, chemical-y foods (peanut butter and jelly in the same jar will NEVER sit right with me) and I really want them out of my environment.

[brief interlude to allow you all to nap from the excitement induced by this post]

Hmm, I'll wait to hear y'all's thoughts on it. Meanwhile, I will go brew myself some red raspberry leaf tea (for toning my hippy uterus for birth times) and then perhaps wash some of my cloth diapers in borax. But don't worry y'all, I still really like hot dogs and candy, which I'll enjoy while I am reading Mothering and proclaiming my lactivist and intactivist views. Plain clothes. Hippy. I think I've made my argument!