Today Is My Due Date

My kids keep asking me what time today we are having the baby, after all, it is my due date.

Friends and family are calling me just to see if I am still home.

I am feeling very pregnant and not feeling much in the way of contractions.

All these things add up to a certain level of frustrated anticipation.

I would like to call for a modification of the "due date", something like the "due date spectrum" or the "due date range" in which you get more like a 14 day window of dates from the earliest date your doctor will induce you to the latest your doctor will let you go before inducing you. Not that I want to be induced, that's just crummy, but that it gives a better feeling for when you are possibly going to have that baby. Pregnant women could then give out the range of dates and mentally feel less stress over the one day you are supposed to have that baby.

Yeah, well, it's a random idea because I just want to bean the next person who says "You haven't had that baby yet!?" In the same tone of voice they would use to ask/accuse you of a multitude of sins and failings. Thank you to the people who just ask how I'm doing and move on to other subjects, I can't get away from the whole pregnant thing, distractions are appreciated.

Home Birth Opinions

I have a few friends who are serious home birth people. I also have a mother-in-law who had her babies at home by choice. I'm going to be honest here and say that I kind of think this is nuts. Having had four babies I'm pretty sure I'm entitled to an opinion on the subject but I do not believe I have the "right" opinion on it as having a baby is a pretty crummy experience and if it makes them happy then good for them.

I have had to change my opinion of home birthing in a few ways lately and since I've been thinking about it some I thought I'd blog about it.

I have a degree in history and with the research I've done I have a pretty good idea of how many women and children died during birth back in the day. I thought this had something to do with hospitals and the availability of hospital care for delivery. After reading a few medical studies published in reputable journals of medicine I've found out a few things. There are actually three factors that are much more important to the positive outcome of a delivery; trained persons assisting, antibiotics being available, and limits on interference in labor.

I thought this was really interesting.

One study showed that trained midwives at home births had statistics just as good as doctors in a hospital, even in the last few decades and their numbers during the era of putting women in labor to sleep were much better than hospital numbers. They have records for midwives in Europe back a hundred or so years that clearly showed that it was the training that made the most difference. The antibiotics part was clear with the statistics as well, as soon as they were available the mortality rates dropped sharply and as they became available in other countries they made a big difference there. The non-interference thing was kind of proving a negative as one of the studies showed that the not so smart idea of putting mothers to sleep and then using forceps for the delivery caused higher rates for complications and mortality but some of this was from anesthesia so I didn't get a clear picture of how that related. They could prove that during the same time women who gave birth at home with a trained person assisting did a heck of a lot better in the process.

It does still concern me that of the women who have their babies at home that I am personally acquainted with, the majority have children with problems like learning disabilities or autism, my brother-in-law was diagnosed with damage to his brain from being deprived of oxygen during birth but since I (gratefully) wasn't there I don't know if having hospital facilities available would have changed this. The others I don't know if it's related and hospital babies have autism too so it's mostly just a strange and disturbing coincidence I guess, but it still concerns me.

If nothing else, having a baby is messy and if I did it at home I'm pretty sure I'd end up having to clean up afterwards.

Throwing a pity party.

I am in such a bad mood.

I am 37 weeks pregnant tomorrow and the heat wave is getting to me.

My family has tons of things I need to do for them but when I ask for help they are too busy. I've quit asking for help as the guilt and stress are becoming overwhelming.

I feel crummy all the time. Eating makes me feel sick and gives me terrible heartburn. Not eating makes me sick and gives me terrible nausea. Nothing sounds good.

I've got this crazy notion going (I'm trying to talk myself out of it) that all the people in my family who have informed me, or just demonstrated rather blatantly, that I have offended them deeply over 'whatever' lately are just coming up with excuses as to why they are going to be unavailable to help me out any in the next few weeks.
I've never had anyone come help me for more than an hour or two when I had a baby so I guess it's not super necessary but it hurts my feelings that family members went to help my sister-in-law with her first baby for over a week and had a "we will drop everything to help her" attitude that I tried my best to enthusiastically support.

I'm not myself right now. I guess you can chalk it up to hormones, exhaustion, etc.

Whooping Cough

I just read a news byte on Yahoo! informing me of an outbreak of Whooping Cough also known as Pertussis that has become a serious epidemic in California and has spread through Texas. It's most dangerous and even deadly to infants, one of which I am about to have. This has made my very pregnant self a bit paranoid and rather cranky. Whooping Cough is one of the nasty diseases that can kill kids and yet there are still people out there who refuse to vaccinate their children for it. I have some mixed feelings on blanket vaccinations and I did not participate in the H1N1 vaccine push. We only get the flu vaccine in the years when I'm pregnant or when our Pediatrician (who I respect very much for his 30+ years of experience dealing with healthy and sick kids) has strongly encouraged it. If I remember right, that means Krista, my almost 10 year old, has had a flu vaccine twice in her life and I've had it 4 times. The flu is crummy but if you're in pretty good health and take a few precautions it's not deadly. Also, even with the vaccine you can get the flu and spread the flu so in my mind it's kind of "optional". Vaccines like Chicken Pox I go for because it wasn't around when I was a kid and I still have scars from that thrilling two week experience, also I have guilt for having been the one to give the Chicken Pox to my entire Kindergarten class after picking it up somewhere else. The vaccines for diseases that kill you slowly and in nasty ways are pretty much mandatory in my mind. Look what they did with Polio. My grandfather had it and barely survived and it left him with serious health problems for the rest of his life. Now it's pretty much wiped out. To me, that says a lot. I don't want my baby to end up with Whooping Cough because it's still being spread by those who refuse to vaccinate against it. Well, enough of that soapbox for one evening.

Simple Mothers Day Card for Nursery

For any of you that don't know Nursery, it's the kids ages 18 months to 3 years old who get to have a class together for two hours during meetings for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons or LDS Church). We get asked to take turns helping with the little people and doing a short lesson, some singing, a snack, playtime, and little activity things.

Since we're big on families Nursery can be quite the group, especially here in Utah. I personally get a kick out of working in there but I know some find it overwhelming.

Anyway, I did the Mothers Day activity for the kids this year and thought I would share how it turned out. I've got two kids in the Nursery right now so I got to keep two of the cards we made. These are half sheets of paper but a full size works better if doing a poem and the prints.

Step 1- Pre-print cards (I used a poem about footprints a few years back and that was way cute but handprints are easier).
Step 2- Get materials all set up in a corner so crowd control is easier. You need pre-printed cards on card stock, a clipboard, a non-toxic stamp pad/ink pad, a LOT of baby wipes, a pen for signatures.
Step 3- Demonstrate what you're going to do by rubbing your own hand or a willing participants hand lightly over the stamp pad and then having them "high five" the card stuck to the clipboard. Quickly set aside the card and scrub the ink off the hand with the baby wipe. Then have them sign the card putting a translation next to the signature as needed. Put finished cards on display out of reach.
Most kids will then just go for the idea. Work with the reluctant few or grab their dad out of his class for just a minute to encourage them. Include a piece of candy or a flower or something and you've got a great little gift from a little person. If all goes well, consider the footprint card for Fathers Day ;o) .

No pajama goal

Well, I made it to yesterday with the goal to get up and get myself presentable first thing in the morning. I even put on lipstick and eye-liner every day. That's pretty big for me because I don't wear makeup most of the time. I actually kind of enjoyed having the goal and doing pretty well at it but the part where I go into the closet and select something from the over-size shirts and panel pants for pregnancy was a bit of a downer.

Yesterday I was just too miserable to make it out of the pj's. By the time I went to bed last night I had heartburn so bad I felt like a dull spoon was digging into my chest. I tried naps, snacks, TUMS, and just waiting it out but the tummy problems of the morning just got worse all day. So, I didn't make it into real clothes until late afternoon when I had to take Kylie to dance class. No makeup.

Today I got up, got dressed, and got going but since I didn't get a single thing done around the house yesterday I was confronted with the depressing amount of housework that can pile up in a single day around here. I'd like to hire someone to come in once or twice a week and help me out (one of my under-employed siblings or a teenager on the block) but having anyone see this mess is so embarrassing and I'm too far gone to do the crazy-clean-before-company-arrives thing at this point. SIGH

Sorry about the pajamas

I find myself still in my pajamas later and later every day. I got to 4 pm today (time to drive Kylie to dance class) before changing. This is becoming something of a problem and I'm having some serious guilt. I've got lots of good reasons, the pajamas just fit my distorted pregnant figure better being the main one but it's kind of making me feel all frumpy.
The problem starts in the morning when I have a good chance of waking up feeling crummy and often nauseous. I grab some breakfast, take care of any immediate kid issues (their breakfast, clean diapers, etc.) then I tend to curl up in a ball on the couch or the bed for a little while while the kids watch something on TV and I wait for my stomach to settle. Pajamas are nicely conducive to curling and settling.
With all the kids awake it is almost dangerous to get in the shower for even the 10 minutes I have learned to live with. There will be faintly heard shrieking over the sound of the water and I don't dare shut the door all the way or it's just asking for trouble, kind of a Murphy's Law thing. So no shower, no real reason to change clothes...
I get some housework done, chase the kids, then it's time to fix lunch. With my belly sticking out in this awkward shelf there's like a 80% chance I'm going to spill something down my front. So I don't want to be wearing the good maternity blouses because I hate buying maternity clothes. Pajama top with some slight staining seems like a much less bothersome laundry issue than expensive maternity tops made of fabric that always seems to stain more easily and then show stains so much more prominently across stretchy belly fabric...
After lunch I can drive Kylie to kindergarten without being seen outside of the car so I sometimes don't bother changing out of the pj's for that one either. Nap time for Andrew and April comes next and that's about when I can sneak in a shower, handle a few things and sometimes even take a bit of a nap myself. More and more often I just can't get up the energy to do more than flop down and watch Sesame Street with April until we both pass out on the couch and then I wake up to the sound of the school age people returning and demanding snacks, help with homework, and the usual other stuff.
It's getting kind of pathetic. I don't really have a reason to get dressed until just before Jared comes home. It's kind of nice to know I still at least want to be out of my pajamas for my husband but it's also discouraging in that on the days when I have really been miserable, sick, tired, and uncomfortable all day to the point where I didn't bother getting out of the pj's he doesn't notice.
So yeah, frumpy mom is settling in more and more. I've never been a big primper and high-maintenance type but when even the jeans are too much effort I know I'm on the wrong end of a slippery slope. I'm starting to need one of those "mommy makeovers" they give to the women like me.

Mothers Day

Here we are. Andrew on my lap, April in the blue shirt, Kylie in the pink shirt, Krista in the white shirt. We played outside for a while in the afternoon while Jared made dinner for my mom and I and the rest of the family. It was a pretty good day. I got flowers and chocolate and a couple of nice cards.

Banana Bread

Cream together:
1/2 cup shortening
2 cups sugar

Beat in:
4 eggs

Add:
4 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
6 mashed up bananas
1 cup nuts (optional)

Pour into greased loaf pans filling as many as it takes half way up the side. Bake at 350 for 50 min or until golden brown on top and a clean knife stuck into the center comes out without banana goo on it.

Just made two loaves and the whole house smells so nice. My kids love this stuff and it's the same recipe my mom made for our family so it's got comfort food appeal written all over it. I've seen my sister use applesauce for part or all of the shortening and it comes out pretty good but I don't know the conversion for it. Oh, just a note, those are 6 normal size bananas, if you put in 6 Costco size bananas it makes a mess of banana pudding/bread.

Ham and potato casserole - write down what you did

My mom has this thing where she makes lots of recipes with little alterations or completely from her imagination and if it turns out well we laugh and say "You should write down what you did!" but we don't usually get it written down and the next time it doesn't turn out quite the same.

So last night I made a casserole that the family all liked. Only problem, I used a recipe from a cookbook as a guideline and threw in substitutes where I didn't have the right ingredients and then threw in a few things from the back of the refrigerator just to use them up.

So it went something like this:

7 medium potatoes, peeled, diced, boiled for abt. 25 min or until tender
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 1/2 cup (approx.) left over frozen hash browns maybe a tiny bit freezer burnt, thawed out
1/2 cup mayonnaise because I was out of sour cream
1 Tblsp of the Costco dried onion flakes because raw onion always makes me feel ill when I'm pregnant
2 big handfuls of grated cheese, I'm guessing that makes a cup and a half to two cups or so? with my kids the more cheesy the better
2 cups (approx.) of diced ham left from Sunday dinner so only slightly aged

I put everything but the boiling potatoes into a bowl and stirred until well blended, then I drained the potatoes and put them in a 9x12 baking dish then poured the mixture on top and kind of mashed/stirred it together. I looked for the potato chips or corn flakes to sprinkle on top but since the kids had finished off both of them I gave up and put the pan in the oven just like that for 25 minutes at 350.

Everyone said it was really good. Andrew ate it with both hands (he eats everything that way though so I'm not sure it's a good indicator).

Jared asked how I grated all that potato into it, I rolled my eyes over that one. I'm not sure if he knew we had hash browns or they would probably have been eaten already.

Andrew's summer haircut

I helped Jared give Andrew a haircut just before we put him to bed this evening. So far we have just been trimming his hair here and there. My sister Lois has done the most trimming for us because she has a steady hand an a pretty good eye. This time Jared and I decided we would go for the full buzz all over type cut and try to shorten and even the whole mess up. Andrew has sort of wispy hair still but it's filling in enough that it looks shaggy if it gets too long.

We got out the clippers, trapped Andrew on the counter, and went to work. Poor Andrew did not enjoy the experience at all. Jared did a pretty good job under the circumstances and I held Andrew's hands so he couldn't slap at the clippers and hurt himself. We used the 1 inch attachment to stay way on the safe side and the clippers don't make too much noise, just a kind of soft buzz, but something about the thing being run over his head set Andrew off big time. He was so mad and upset by the time we were done. I intended to take pictures but I had my hands too full of angry, crying, squirming toddler.

He looks pretty good, a lot different, but good. With practice I'm sure Jared and I will do okay with the occasional cut and we'll send him to the barber with dad when he's a little bigger.

More spring in my yard

The lilac bush is blooming!

It may seem like a small thing but it makes me happy even if I am allergic to the bush. I like the way it looks but between the kids and the dogs next door this bush tends to struggle. It rarely blooms like this and I'm not sure what the magic combination of sunlight, water, and attention/leaving it along really should be. I was just thrilled it bloomed like this so Kylie and I took pictures while we worked on the yard yesterday. The other kids took a load of stuff to the green waste dump with Jared.

The tulips look pretty good again this year. Here's an open one to update the pictures from a few days ago of the ones that hadn't opened yet. We just have red ones. I would kind of like to have a few other colors eventually. I like the pale purple ones but they would clash a bit with the red maybe? So yellow and white or whatever I can find in the next few years.

Kylie helping me weed the tulip beds. She found a few bugs and that made her nervous and then Jared came out with the weed whacker and between the creepy crawlies and the noise she fled the scene.

Spring in my yard

The daffodil that's the new corner picture is one of the few that came up this year. I used to have a lot more of them but I think maybe the bulbs have given out. I don't know how long they are supposed to last or if they reproduce somehow and these are actually new ones.

Even though I'm going to have to pull these before they start spreading seeds, the dandelions are kind of a favorite of mine because they're the ones the kids bring to me. They're so very cheerful even if they do sort of make a nuisance of themselves.

I get just a couple of hyacinths among the tullips. April is particularly excited about the "blue flowers" and wanted to make sure we got a picture of one of them posted here. Now she's wandered off to watch Clifford.

These are blossoms on my pear tree. The tree produces amazing tasty pears and I bottle some every other year or so because one tree makes so much fruit we don't eat it fast enough to put up that many jars every year. We end up giving away fruit to friends and neighbors. Good stuff.

Here are some of the tulips. We've got quite a few, all of them are red. They are just getting ready to open. The brown stick things around them are the ornamental grape vine that we have been trying to kill for a couple of years now. No matter how much we chop off, cover up, dig out, or just think really mean thoughts at, it comes back huge every year. It's got roots that go under the fence and into the neighbors yard (they don't think much of the vines either) and so taking out the fence is the only way to get to them. Cost prohibitive, sigh.

We also found a hollow egg. I don't know what kind. Small and rather oblong. My camera needs to charge before I get a shot of the egg so I'll just leave it at this for now.

Play Ball!

Andrew and the girls play a game where they throw a squishy ball up the stairs and watch it bounce back to them. Andrew thinks this game is very funny and will play with anyone who will toss the ball.
He's been kind of like a golden retriever with balls and a few other objects since he got himself mobile. One of his first words was ball and now he's added catch, kick, and run-run-run to his vocab.
So anyway, we were playing ball today and the ball made it all the way to the top of the stairs and rolled out of sight. Andrew turns to me and pointing commandingly says "Get it!".
First two word sentence and dang funny. Usually it would be his job to fetch a ball that went out of bounds but I did indeed go get it for him; although I'm going to have to make a point of retrieval being his responsibility in the future.

Playing With Photoshop

I had so much fun doing the mossy rock thing for the top of this page that I started playing with other pictures. I emphasize the word "playing"; my sister can put the ears back on someone cropped out of a picture and make it look real, I can barely match the edges on two pictures that are exactly the same.

Anyway, I downloaded the recent picture of my brother-in-law and his family and somewhere during the download it turned kind of overly red so I thought I would tinker with it.

Original is on the left, the one I messed with is over on the right. I think I helped the composition but may have done bad things to the color settings... I tried black and white but then the windows were a huge focus. I could not find the sepia button that the computer assures me is under one of the tabs called profile. I would love to take a class on this kind of thing one day.

One day being that imaginary time in the future when I get to decide what I do with my own time, as opposed to present day when I have a one year old with a terrible odor tugging on the back of my shirt. Gotta go change a diaper.

I need a new tent.

Kylie, April, & Andrew are playing under the air hockey table with a sheet draped over it.

April crawls out and comes to talk to me:

April- I need a new tent.

Me - Why?

April - This one too small.

Me - What kind of tent do you need?

April - Giant big, big and big. (she does hand motions like exploding stars in front of her then crawls back into the existing tent)

El Azteca make me feel better.

When Krista was little she had this funny thing she would say when she had hurt herself or was sad about something, "treat make me feel better", she would say it in this plaintive kind of voice and it was so cute and pathetic that it won me over most of the time.
So this afternoon, when I was feeling a bit discouraged about a number of things, including the weight gain measured at the doctor appointment today, I had a "El Azteca make me feel better" moment and went and bought myself lunch.
Yeah, I know, making myself feel better with food is not so much a good idea when I'm gaining weight this fast with this pregnancy but I've got to be realistic about it, the only way to control the nausea is by constant small snacks and there is just nothing I can do to "diet" until some time in October after my 6 week post-baby appointment. Besides, with this kid I crave protein. I'm not a big red meat eater and I don't like fish usually but right now I'm all about a nicely cooked steak or some hamburger or a shredded beef taco... whatever I can get my hands on. So a chicken enchilada, a beef taco, and the combination of beans and rice that form a perfect protein did indeed make me feel better. They also seem to have pleased the "tummy baby" who is doing happy little wriggles now. I resisted the impulse to buy a churro to go with lunch.
I've added El Azteca to the pages I am a fan of on my facebook.

Girl!

Since I haven't been posting very regularly I thought I should get this in here now.

Baby Stone #5 (as far as the ultrasound could tell) is going to be another girl.

Yes, I'm happy about this. Andrew is a one-of-a-kind little boy and I'm not going to test my luck on getting another one quite like him. It would have been kind of nice for him to have a brother close to his age but with four sisters he will never be bored.

As for names... Jared says he really likes Jessica. I would like to go with another girl named after a grandma and do Beth or Anne or Anna maybe so we're still playing with names and ideas. Kylie told me we should go with Chrysanthemum (I don't know if I can even spell that correctly) because of the Kevin Henkes book we just read. The girls also like Tia from the Princess and The Frog or there was another one from a movie but I can't think of it...

My parents always have outlandish suggestions from the family pedigree...

I really don't know very many Jessicas so it doesn't have a gut reaction attached. I tried to find out why Jared likes the name but he's pretty vague so I'm going with the belief that he had a crush on a Jessica in the 4th grade, LOL.

Milk, Eggs, Bread, Cheese, Donuts...

April turned 3 last week. Lots of fun. She's a busy cute little kid with a tendency to do what she wants even if mommy sort of said not to.

We kept asking her what she wanted for her birthday and it was pretty easy to see she really wasn't getting the concept. She told us more than once that she wanted milk, eggs, bread, cheese, donuts, and other grocery items. Her big sisters thought this was very funny and had lots of suggestions on what we could get her instead.

On her birthday I thought, 'why not?' and went with her to Toys R Us to the aisle where they keep the pretend kitchen stuff. We found a great set of food and a nice toaster to go with it. Now she has an incredibly well stocked play kitchen that had a pile of tea party set stuff before we got the new food.

Bunny Cake for Easter

Because I got a kick out of these I thought you might as well. The kids and my sister decorated the traditional cake this year. It's easy to make. Two 9 inch circles and you cut one of them so you get the ears and the bow-tie out of it. Freeze it, frost it, use random candy and frosting to create a unique-every-year look. Eat rabbit on Easter :o) .

This year we found that the bunny had nicely mobile eyebrows that made him a very expressive little guy. Got a couple of pix of the "faces of the bunny".

This last one is my favorite!