(Very) Random Baby Musings

First thing's first. I guess I should mention to those who don't know, we plan on naming the baby Mia Rylee. I'm 99.9% sure. Why can't I just make a full commitment?! Anywho... yay for that getting checked off the list.

So, Mia met her first friend this week. My friend, Jen, had her daughter, Mckinlee, on Tuesday night (I predicted her birth within 5 minutes! Winner!!!). I went to meet them at the hospital on Wednesday after work and got to hold her tiny 7 lb 12 oz baby girl who came 6 days early! While I was holding her, what did baby Mia do? She kicked her! Repeatedly! Mckinlee didn't seem to mind and, in Mia's defense, it was her sheduled active time. What do you do when your baby's kicking others and she hasn't even left the womb?

I had been afraid to visit Mckinlee because in the Childbirth class I overheard a woman saying how her friends had gone into labor shortly after holding infants while they were close to their due date. As we all know, I'm not in a rush to get this baby out so I was really nervous.

Anywho, I was sitting in my office feeling the baby kick away while talking with my co-worker and I heard her joints POP! Gross! I've read about others hearing this but didn't think I would actually hear it also. Surprise, Mia's joints are already poppin' in there.

Wednesday night Mia was moving like crazy. She was making me concerned because I was feeling all sorts of things I haven't felt before and I was starting to freak out - please don't be dropping! I guess she just felt that looking towards my right side was getting boring because she ended up having her booty on my left side so it felt like she was backing out of me. She also seemed to have been sideways at some point looking up because she had the hiccups pretty bad but I felt them in very weird areas instead of at my left side as usual. She was also getting all up under my ribs - usually I feel her feet under my right ribs and somehow she had contorted herself so that she could put multiple body parts under both sides of my ribs at the same time. Not painful, but uncomfortable for sure. I don't know what "dropping" feels like and I know it doesn't happen for everyone, but I'm pretty sure she hasn't done so because my ribs tell me that she's still up there.

This Friday morning she has completely changed which side she is looking on. Now her little toes are on my left side and her back is on my right. Why after all these weeks did she decide she needed to look out the other side? I'm debating on whether to call the midwife or not. Now that she's settled she seems to be calmer (remember, she almost hasn't stopped moving since Sunday night!). 

So cute, because she's been so active at night that I've been getting even less sleep than usual, Bruce suggested that we buy her headphones so that I can play lullabies to hopefully calm her down so that we can ALL sleep better. What a nice daddy.

Not cute, I had a nightmare that I forgot to feed the baby and she wasn't crying about it or anything. I woke up at 3am unable to go back to sleep because I was so upset by this. Bruce assured me that it wouldn't happen, that it wouldn't be possible, but I still couldn't sleep after that.

I started timing my contractions because for some reason I started getting a lot of them. Just as I suspected, they were just more Braxton Hicks. I get so many I was thinking of calling the midwife to ask if there was such a thing as too many 'practice contractions.' I also realized that I haven't really internalized all the things I learned in my childbirth class because one of the first things I noticed (ok, not really first, maybe 4th or 5th), was that I tensed up and tended to hold my breath. The exact opposite of what I'm supposed to be doing. Hello! They're practice contractions for a reason, maybe I should actually start practicing the techniques I learned or I'll end up yelling for pain reliever during the actual labor!!!

This week I also learned from my dear co-workers that I need to have plans for just in case for lots of different scenarios. They informed me that labor & contractions don't necessarily begin at the most convenient times or places (so maybe not an evening or weekend or day off of work). Now I had thought about a plan if labor was fast at home (call 911 then call closest relative) and fast at work (go to Good Sam hospital) and who to call if Bruce is out of town (closest relative). I guess my non-plan of driving myself to the hospital 30 minutes away was not acceptable to my co-workers so now I have volunteers to bring me to my actual hospital should I need that. Great. Now I'm thinking, what if I'm shopping? What if I'm on a walk? What if I'm stuck on the side of a road with a broke-down car? Maybe I should research how to deliver my own baby if they think it's a good idea to have multiple plans! What if I didn't realize I was in labor until it was too late and Bruce has to deliver the baby? Ok, I think I'll go back to being blissfully ignorant.

Comparison photo! Look what's changed in just 10 weeks!!!!! Whoa baby!