:(

Now I'm convinced that the various colleges here are trying to induce labor for me by stressing me out. First, I convinced myself that some of the possible restructuring ideas that were being thrown around weren't *SO* bad. Then, most of them seemed to fade into the background, and I was immensely relieved. Now it sounds like they are back on the table, and are perhaps the *only* things on the table, and I'm more stressed out about them than I was the first time I heard about it.

Well, I get to go to the midwives today, so we'll see if my blood pressure has risen above the "making jokes about how I am really dead" level.

Hmph.

I'm starting to feel like the wife of an 18th century explorer. Hubby will now be on something like 6 trips, at least 3 international, this coming spring. And I completely agree with him that he can't really say no to any of them. I think that the key thing is that I will have to find a sitter of some sort who can help out a bit during the weeks that he is gone, particularly for times when there are seminars that I need to attend (like our annual graduate research symposium).

Wildlife

We saw a mink today playing around down by the river. And I'm really gigantic. I get lots of Braxton Hicks when we're walking, especially if we start uphill or go a little faster.

No trick or treaters for us this year! One side benefit is that we now have lots of candy!

Happy halloween!

I'm dressing up as the blob!!!!

I've gained 33 lbs at this point, and am just starting to feel like it's kind of up in my face and neck instead of just the belly and legs. However, I think that the fact that I still feel pretty good, can go up 4 flights of stairs multiple times per day and don't have back pain means that I haven't gained too much weight. I'm looking forward to that quick 15-20 lb weight loss regime next week or so, but that's mostly because I really want to see the baby's feet now!! She's taken to kicking me in the side with a foot so that I can actually see this little lump stick out and move laterally across me. So cool!!!

We are house cleaning/yard fixing up today for a bit - my only real goal is to NOT end up really really sore tonight. I'm close enough to labor now that I don't want to show up at the hospital already worn out too badly. So I'm not doing anything that requires lots of bending over. Plenty of time for that later!

Baby status

ear baby has her head down still, and the midwife commented that she felt "low". The fun thing at the appt today was that when she first put the heart rate monitor on my belly, it registered 180 or so. Then it quickly dropped down to about 140 over about 20 seconds. The midwife says that this is a great sign and shows that she is responsive and aware of her surroundings. So, of course, I talked to her during the whole drive back to the office. It turned into a bit of a dissertation on inverse theory, as I explained to her that she was kind of performing a Kalman filter, since she updated her "model" of her surroundings after her initial scare with the heart rate monitor thingy.

I wonder if she's like me, actually... My heart rate always races when I can hear or feel my own heart, and then decays. Makes it REALLY hard to get a good pulse quickly while training. And that monitor is pretty loud - I'm sure she can hear it.

ne more pretty capital letter, just to play with it.

Hubby

My husband is a rock star. He just got one of the best types of grants you can get in our field. Although this means that now we have a *LOT* of work to do in our group! We need to buy some bigger computers.

Lightening?

I'm coming up on my 39th week now and the baby still has apparently not "dropped" yet. Things do feel like she might be a LITTLE bit lower today, but I think that's probably my imagination. Apparently it's common for babies to drop as early as 34 weeks or so for first pregnancies, but I'm sure that there are plenty of women who carry high right up until they go into labor. So...I guess I should count myself as lucky since I don't have to pee all the time yet, and didn't have too much indigestion as long as I ate somewhat reasonably at night.

Actually...had a huge meal last night and no indigestion. So maybe my feelings of the baby being lower aren't completely mistaken!