Day 15: Baby Update

Chris took some nice pictures of me last weekend (37 weeks), better than my usual quick snapshots (it helps that we just went on a date so I look nicer than usual). It's hard to believe we're getting so close to the end! I'm now going to see my midwives once a week, and the baby is considered 'full-term', which I think means she is mostly just putting on weight the next few weeks. It turns out she could use a little extra weight, as we found out at my appointment last week. Despite eating copious amounts of meat, desserts, and mayonnaise-covered dishes at a friend's cookout over the weekend, I had lost weight and my belly was measuring 1-2 inches smaller than my previous visit. My midwife was concerned that the amniotic fluid wasn't being regenerated and ordered an ultrasound for later that day.

This was both exciting and frightening. It was scary that something might be wrong with our baby's living quarters. Chris left work a little early to meet me for the ultrasound. We learned that the fluid is fine and the baby looks healthy - what a relief (although I guess I will be a good mom because it took me a couple of days to get over the worrying).

On the plus side, we got to see the baby at 37 weeks, which is a rare treat. She has a small head and a long femur (taking after her dad in the latter category), and they estimated her weight at 6lb 4oz. The coolest part was seeing her face! We saw her eyes (they were opening and closing) and nose, and it looked like she was trying to fit her entire fist into her mouth! Here's a picture of her - starting on the left is her arm and, then fist in front of her mouth. You can see her right eye and nose. It's hard to pick out any real features though, she looked very smushed. We are very much looking forward to meeting her!
Lastly, here's a picture of me today (38 weeks) at Rocky Mtn National Park (Chris, Nick and I went up there for some silliness -no hiking- which I'll hopefully post about soon).

Day 17: 'Some things never change', or 'what I do at work when I'm not working'

Today I put some thought into whether or not I might be able to run the half marathon I did last fall again this year. Last year I was about 7-8 weeks pregnant, and as soon as I finished the race I started day-dreaming about doing it again this year. For one thing it was on a really great trail, and I was just starting to fall in love with trail running when I got pregnant. Also I had to hold back and not let my heart rate get too high. I think I could have gone quite a bit faster, and would love the opportunity to try (although this year a goal of finishing in any time is probably more realistic).

I decided it's possible, barring a really difficult delivery or maybe a c-section where my recovery time will be longer. The half is on November 12, so hopefully a full 4 months after I have the baby. With the goal of just finishing, I think a moderate 10 week training plan would suffice, which would give me more than 2 months to work up to running about 12 miles a week. I'm also assuming I won't feel like or have time to do any exercise for about the first month of motherhood. Anyway, now I'm really excited about the prospect of running again.

On the other hand, I have totally lacked motivation to exercise recently. It is so boring ... just walking around the neighborhood or swimming the slowest laps ever, blah. Hopefully I won't be a total sloth by the time the baby is born.

Day 20: A day in the life of crazy me!

There is so much going on in my head lately, this post might be a little frightening. It could also be inordinately boring. Either way, I apologize in advance.

8:30 Finally get out of bed. By some divine miracle, I was at work every day last week by this time, but this week I just cannot wake up. Part of the reason is I am losing any hope of being at a good stopping point when the baby comes. I feel like a lot of my research is not going at all the way I would like, and I'm finding more problems than solutions. So needless to say, writing up results seems like a long way off right now.

9:30 Show up at work ... think about roots ...

11:30 Have coffee (just a little) with Nick and Levi. They spend most of the time talking about a few hiking/backpacking trips they're planning for the summer. I listen in as if I'll be going too, and try not to think about how much I miss being above treeline. But then I think about all the new ways of enjoying the outdoors Chris and I will find with our little girl and it makes me happy. It also dawns on me that I have NO plans between now and ... September, maybe. Oh, other than seeing Harry Potter some time around July 15, haha. It is an unusual feeling!

1:00 Hmm ... I still haven't really gotten back to work since having coffee.

2:45 Chris interrupts my thoughts on negative runoff with some good news. A few months ago, he bought tickets to the Mumford & Sons concert for tomorrow night. Considering I prefer to sit down while drying my hair now because my feet/back hurt so much, I decided standing in a crowded concert for several hours didn't sound too fun. He was still going to go with another friend of ours. Just for fun, he posted an ad for $125/ticket on craigslist, and someone wants to buy them for that price (he paid $80 for the pair). People are crazy!! It would be a really fun concert to go to, but considering our current financial situation it would be dumb to pass the sale up. Just think of how many diapers that can buy ...

5:15 Back at work after a GLORIOUS pre-natal massage. Thanks to my friend Kate who passed along 3 free massage tickets at Amara!!! Who knew my back, hips, and feet could accrue so much pain and tightness from just day-to-day existence. Also went by the house to make iced decaf lattes and heard from Chris about training he received on this electrocution unit we can use for pain management during labor (Strange? Yes. Effective? Apparently). Sounds like he had a little too much fun seeing how high he could turn up the voltage.

5:46 Waiting for code to run ... here are some pictures ... This is me and my friend Kim, we raced together for the CSU cycling team. Our babies are due just one week apart! So funny. :) She's having a boy.

My mom came to visit over Memorial Day weekend. It was really really nice to have her here. I had high hopes for our productivity in the baby room, and we did get a lot done, but mostly it was nice to hang out. I have to say, the highlight of the weekend for me was breakfast at Lucille's. :) (Apologies this is not the best picture of either of us, we didn't think to take a picture all weekend until we were dropping her off at DIA!)

6:35 Soil texture is my enemy right now. It is poorly observed, highly variable, and makes a big difference in water retention of soils and root depth. Between a wacky soil texture map and the negative runoff problems in my code, I'm looking at rerunning about 15 simulations. Each one takes about 20 minutes, and I've already made a gajillion plots with the old results. See why I'm feeling pessimistic about work?

7:15 2/15 runs done. Heading home. Plans for the night include grilling hamburgers, washing off the veggies we got from our CSA (lots of lettuce!), and vegging out (probably watching 24). If something interesting happens I'll let you know :)

Day 23: Country music, & Hopes for my daughter

I'm not a huge Carrie Underwood fan anyway, but there is one song of hers that really drives me mad. Here's the short version: Man wants to have a son so he can go fishing and play baseball with him. Fine, I can understand. Then he finds out he's having a daughter, and ends up falling in love with her, which is all very sweet, but instead of the rest of the song being about how he realized he can still go fishing and play ball with a girl, it's about how "sweet, little, beautiful, wonderful, & perfect" she is. Oh and her big accomplishment in life is that she makes the quarterback of the football team fall in love with her. Ack! Give me a break!

Luckily a new song is out now that makes me much happier, from Trace Adkins. This one is about a father who is fishing (gasp, outdoor activities!) with his daughter, spending time with her like he probably would with a son. It's a nice song about the memories they're making, and of course at one point he mentions how she's going to grow up to be beautiful like her mom, but it's not the point of the song.

I like to think of the things Chris will do with our daughter to make her feel special. It's true that even little things can turn into great memories. My dad used to take me out to Shoney's on Saturday mornings. My cousin takes his six year old daughter to baseball games every chance he gets, and I love that about their relationship. I swear one of her first words was "ball".

Probably I am over-analyzing things here. Maybe I am oversensitive to gender stereotypes. But I am so happy to have grown up feeling like I could do anything that the boys could do. Maybe my daughter will end up being super girly and despise fishing, but she is going to have the chance to make that decision for herself.

Day 24 - What life throws at you

The cowboy couldn't save the garden ... no riding off into the sunset today.

I had planned on writing a post about how amazing our yard looks now. This is the time of year when everything is growing, and before we get tired of watering the lawn. Also it is a little early for the weeds. So in general our yard looks like we give a crap.

I have two things I love about our yard this time of year. First, next to our house are two bushes - one with white pom-pom looking flowers, and one with very fragrant purple buds. I love coming home in the afternoons and smelling those flowers - the smell permeates the air near the house and it reminds me of happy things and spring time. (Do I sound like a spaced-out hippy yet?) The second thing I love is our irises, one of my favorite flowers. They come in so many different colors, and the petals are just so beautiful. We have a row of about 40 purple iris flowers in the back yard (thanks to a friend who planted them back there 2 years ago). They were just starting to bloom this week and I was super excited.

Exhibit A: The offending hail, still hanging around 7 hours after the storm.

Well ... it hailed last night. Many of the plants in our yard were pretty badly damaged. Luckily I think the garden plants will make a come-back, since it's still early in the year. But I was kind of sad to lose the flowers on the bushes and the irises. I should have written this post two days ago, and then these pictures would be much nicer!!

Spinach, which we have been eating for the past month, now trashed.
Oh, Irises, what could have been ...

On a slightly related note, we had dinner tonight with some good friends. We have lived in Ft Collins for almost 7 years and these friends have been a part of our lives for almost as long. Over the years, we've been with each other through lay offs, stresses with work, health issues, births, family problems, and other life events. It seems there is always something that could get us down, but it's thanks to friends like these that life stays as good as it is. We touched briefly on the hard things in life now, but spent most of the evening cracking up over silly stories or teasing each other. So I'm sad about the flowers getting trashed, but grateful for the reminder that life moves in cycles, with both ups and downs, and can still be beautiful even amid chaos. If nothing else, life is very interesting right now!

Counting down ... Day 25

Hypothetically, Chris and I have 25 days left as the two-person Harper family. Yesterday, I was wishing that number was more like 1. It was just one of those days when all of the pregnancy symptoms were present. I had another restless night on Sunday and was out of bed by 5:30, and was still exhausted on Tuesday. Also, my feet were HUGE, and this was what was really ticking me off. It's not that big of a deal but is kind of the icing on the cake. I expect to get fat in other places during pregnancy but now I am just embarrassed by my feet, ankles, and calves, and don't like the feeling of my pudgy toes rubbing up on each other. I didn't know such swelling was possible in the absence of broken bones. So I felt very tired and uncomfortable and annoyed all day.

Today has been a lot better. Partly because I've decided to give myself a bit of a break and work at home in the afternoons. So today I was at work until about 2:00, then I went swimming, and then worked at home until about 6:30. This worked out pretty well except that swimming (as with most other activities these days) wiped me out and I wasn't super productive after that. I think I will keep up this schedule but try not to have such an exhausting "break".

The big downside of the day was finding out that Chris got laid off. Talk about bad timing!! Luckily his boss is going to pay him through July, and I have my own insurance, so we will still be able to pay for minor things like delivering a baby. It is disappointing and will be a challenge, though. But we are trying to be optimistic. Chris was out of a job for 8 months a few years ago and we were just fine. Also, now we don't need to find child care, and we will qualify for Colorado's low cost health insurance plan for the baby. Between those two things, we will probably save ~$800 a month. And we'll have the benefit of Chris getting to spend more time with the baby. As long as I can finish my PhD sometime later this year and hopefully make more money, and/or he can find a new job in a few months, we'll be alright. Even if not, we'll find ways to make things work. This is a time when I'm glad we have our faith to help us out, and we can hopefully be a support to each other as I'm sure there will be some stressful situations in the next few months!