May mamas--last half of March - Page 2

[Sarah'sMama]

Hi Ladies! Sounds like we're all getting ready to get to know our babe's outside the womb. I know I sure am! Mine has been getting lots of hiccups lately! Has them right now, actually! I love feeling the hiccups. Its the coolest thing in the world to me. She has them sometimes up to three times a day! I'm getting really ready to start digging through dd's old clothes, and I think I'm going to dismantle the carseat, and bassinette, and wash all things washable this weekend. I have about 5.5 weeks left! Where has all the time gone? I know some women look forward to having an early baby, but I don't have the time to have her early.:LOL I have too much to do in the meantime.

Looking forward to tonight. Two friends are coming over to scrapbook with me. It should be a fun night.

This is a little OT, but I'm beginning to worry about my dd. She just turned two this week, and is very much a Mommy's girl. (and I say that with the most respect and love I feel for her). But I'm worried about how she'll handle life after this baby gets here. I literally cannot walk ten feet to my laundry room to switch the wash without her yelling Mamamamammamamama constantly until I get back. And she *has* to be in the same room as me. Like if dh takes her upstairs sometimes, she'll keep calling for me. Its not that I expect her to be able to entertain herself all day, all the time, but a few minutes here and there she can't tolerate now, what'll I do when I have a new babe to tend to? OK, enough about that. Just wondering if any of you can relate or give me some advice?

I am really thinking about placing my order for diapers sometime this week or next. I am planning on making some Honeyboy Homes (hopefully at least 6), but I need to order some prefolds and covers.

OK, enough rambling fo rme. Hope you all have a spectacular weekend!

[kittymama]

Hi Mamas,

Sorry to hear so many of you have the blues, discomfort, and the icky sickies these days. I almost feel guilty saying that I still feel great for the most part. I've been tired sometimes, but 3 weeks of extra iron supplements seem to be helping with that. DH and I were just talking about moodiness recently, and he agrees that I have been an amazingly even-tempered pregnant lady. Even with stuff going on in our lives that should be stressful, HE'S the one who's been moody. I do feel like I'm starting to get pretty big, and the baby is putting a lot of pressure on the bottom of my ribs, but it's so high up, it's not pressing on my bladder so much. I can still go the whole night without getting up to pee! Anyway, I guess it's good that I feel this way, because I still feel like it's FOREVER (10 weeks) until this baby's due.

I had a scary thing happen to me the other night. I woke up in the middle of the night with excruciating pain in the right side of my belly, where the baby likes to hang out. I breathed through the pain for awhile, changed position a few times, and the pain didn't get any better. In fact, when I moved, the baby started moving, and it felt even worse. I finally got to a point where, as soon as I could stand to get up, I was going to walk around for a couple of minutes and then call the doctor if it didn't get any better. As I rolled over one last time, I let out this TREMENDOUS fart, and lo and behold, the pain was gone! Sorry if TMI, but I thought this was hilarious. :

One more thing, has anybody else noticed their baby moving around less as it gets bigger? It seems like a couple of weeks ago, it would squirm and wiggle and kick for several minutes at a time, but now it's more likely to move once or twice and then stay still for a long time again. Just curious if this is normal or what?

[TurboClaudia]

kanpope: regarding the keeping the birthing tub warm, buy yourself one of those emergency mylar camping blankets to place over the birthing tub to keep the heat in. They usually cost like $5 and that's what was recommended to me.

[Defenestrator]

Welcome Kanpope!

Usually with homebirths where I work, we will tell the families to crank up the hot water heater to the highest setting, then fill the tub until the hot water runs out and then cover it. For most people, that will be about 1/3 to 1/2 full. You would do this when you think your labor might be settling into a regular pattern. If you need to get in it before it cools off enough, adding cold water is easy enough. If it cools down, you can fill it with the hot water again. I find that it stays warm for 2-3 hours if covered. It is a big mass of water so it stays hot for longer than bath water would.

I have been at a birth with a malfunctioning hot water heater and filled the tub entirely with water from boiling pots on the stove, so if you run out, that is also an option.

[fiddlefern]

hey everyone!

Just checking in to say that Tucks and I have become good friends, and I am no longer suffering.

That was my only real preggo complaint, so now I'm a happy camper. I'm still reasonable mobile (32 weeks) and have energy, can breath, etc. First trimester was definitely way worse for the exhaustion. I've been taking iron- I wonder if that has helped, or if I'm just randomly fortunate.

My little one doesn't seem all that little to me- sometimes his squirms are uncomfortable. I just rub whatever is poking out (I still can't tell and am clueless about position) and that convinces him to readjust. I remember back when his existance was a stretch of the imagination- no more! I'm starting to get excited about meeting him on this side.

[KKmama]

Welcome, PoeticNSoul! I'll add you to the roll call!

I'm resting, after helping with the compost pile and yard work and trimming the dog (standard poodle--she looks so skinny now!). We're soon to launch into a major landscaping project that will hopefully wrap up by the end of May... Why do we all do things like moving/remodeling/huge projects of some sort right around when the baby comes??? Is it an insane form of nesting?

Jesikaj, there's a ton of info *somewhere* on this site about turning babies... have you thought of doing a search or posting a question to the general pg area?

Gus'mama, I feel so bad for you. Wow, a sick houseful. I hope everyone is feeling better (tummies and ankle) by now.

Pottermama, I still have a waist from the back, same as with ds (and generally seem to be carrying similarly, except baby feels more "up and down"). Don't know the gender of this one, though we suspect it's a boy.

Stacia, I swear by a bowl of yogurt with a sliced up banana before bed to help with RLS and leg cramps, too.

Boy Nicole, you were so perky in your post! It cheered me up!

Kittymama, around here we call those impacted farts.

Jealous of you Sonoma folks... we moved ~a yr ago from Berkeley (which I don't particularly miss)... Sonoma/Napa/Mendocino are splendid, though.

Is anyone else *stuck* on names? I feel like this baby will never get a name...

I feel pretty good, but my hips often feel "tired" in the evenings (not particularly painful or anything, just tired, and dh has been faithfully massaging them every night... he's a saint). I doubled my iron, and I think it has helped my energy level and in turn my mood. I sometimes feel guilty about complaining about how I feel and my bouts of moodiness, but I feel like I make up for it in my cheerfulness with a newborn...

[mollyeilis]

I didn't know this thread was here!

My due date is May 12, but I've had a feeling for ages that I'll go really late. So I try to just say I'll likely have a Taurus baby, and leave it at that.

I've had a really hard time with this pregnancy. OK so it's my first so I had nothing but my expectations to go by, but I get so disappointed in myself. I was absolutely exhausted until the third trimester started; it was at that point I realized I didn't like my midwife and had to find someone new.

I feel guilty about it, and really try to revel in the baby, but it's hard when I feel soooo bad. So I talk to the baby and apologize for complaining, and tell it what is going on and how I'm not complaining about him or her, just about how my body is handling it all.

On top of it all I now have the head cold from Hades, though I think it's fading away now.

We're planning a homebirth with midwives who are ~1.5 hours away...that should be fun.

OK, gotta go work on my list for the birth...

[PattyCakes]

Welcome mollyeilis and PoeticNSoul!

I hope everyone had a restful weekend and is feeling better today. I can understand the miserable moments... I've certainly had my share. Heartburn, hips, swelling. But I'm really trying to just keep it in perspective. I've been working at finding my own comfort measures and just doing them whenever I feel like I need to. Stretching helps A LOT for the hips (and the swelling too). Warm baths with epsom salts work WONDERS when I'm feeling really achy all over. Heartburn - well, I'm still working on that one. Singing or listening to some upbeat music helps too. It's hard, DANG it's hard, and sometimes I just let myself feel miserable, but I try not to dwell on it.

Just think in a few WEEKS our babies will be here. That's blowing my mind right now. I booked the rest of my mw appts last week. Completely wierded me out.

Hugs Mamas.

[theelves]

Monistat safe right now?

Just when I thought my problems might be getting better....the antibiotics I took for my knee has given me a yeast infection! The second one I have had this pregnancy! Bummer! My midwife has told me it is Ok to treat it with Monistat 3 day, as well as take acidophilus, and eat yogurt, cut out sugar.
But I am wondering how safe it really is to use the Monistat? What do yall think? Seems kinda....?....to be injecting medicine up that way getting so close to "the time"?

love and hugs... Elfmamma

ps....last Thursday I backed into the mailtruck! That is the third Thursday in a row something "has happened"!

[scbegonias]

Welcome mollyeilis and PoeticNSoul!

Theelves, a mail truck? Ack! Maybe this Thursday business means that the babe will join you on such a day.

At 31 weeks, DH and I are in major nesting mode. It started a couple weeks ago...and has built up to where DH commented on it yesterday. We've been buying new furniture (two of our rooms, family room and babes room, had no furniture), painting every imaginable surface (good thing DH is such a diligent painter), organizing our outdoor living space, and trying to hold off on buying baby stuff (our shower is April 9...an anniversary of sorts for us since we met on a Good Friday...that we now call Great Friday).

Fiddlefern, I'm with you on the rubs to readjust baby's position. Sometimes that knee is just not where I want it. I'm also trying to give baby lots of positive reinforcement...to promote movement to the 'right' position.

I'm still feeling decent and riding my bike to work every day. When we do a lot of work at home, I'm a bit ache-ey, but an epsom salt bath works wonders. I love my pregnant belly, and from the back many people comment that I don't even look pregnant, but I know my butt and thighs have enlarged. I'm kind of ok with it, but kind of not...it is a little freaky as I'm one of those who has been the same size since mid-highschool (nearly 15 years now), except for when I was riding my bike tons. Maybe I should mentally approach this as I did then...accepting my thunder thighs as a beautiful part of my body that allowed me to ride 60 miles a day if I chose.

PattyCakes...the passing of time, oh so quickly now it seems, is mind blowing. Soon we'll all be holding and feeding our babes!

[shalom]

So fun to hear from all of you. I can commiserate with all of the aches and pains -RLS too but also am in love with being pregant. Still trying hard to think positive and enjoy it while it lasts!!! Baby is still breech which I am trying to take in stride and not get too stressed out about. I've been doing all the appropriate exercises; I have an appointment next week for the Webster technique and an external version for the week after that. I am SO hoping to have a vertex baby before then!!! My midwife will do a breech birth, but she is going out of town a week after my due date (when my first two were born BTW) and our backup has never attended a breech birth. So.... I'm trying everything to get the baby to turn. Sometimes I really think this is just how he/she is meant to be though.....

I'm starting to get freaked out about how soon these babies will be here!! I honestly haven't thought much about the birth or actually holding a newborn in my arms yet. I'm going crazy getting my diaper stash together though- and I guess they must be for a real life baby . We just moved a couple months ago and are still trying to get the place in order. Also getting our birth supplies together.

Ditto on those midwife visits- I was floored when we scheduled our home visit. I can't believe my baby could be here in a matter of weeks!

Take care!

[kittymama]

Still feelin' groovy here...

DH and I are going to make the 1 1/2 hour trip to the nearest Babies R Us this afternoon, so we can register to please my oh so mainstream family. That's ok, though, free stuff is free stuff, and if it's anywhere near as fun as registering for wedding stuff, I know we'll have a blast. We're also setting up a website with wishes for things the megastore doesn't carry, so I hope between our very normal families and our very crunchy granola friends, we'll get set up pretty well. The shower is still almost a month away, and the baby a month after that, but it feels good to finally be doing *something* in preparation for this kid. We're getting a giant box of hand-me-downs from my sister's kids this week, too! It still feels like a long way off, but the impending arrival is getting more real by the day. Yay!

KKMama- I'm with you on the complete name block. I think we've settled on a boy's first name (Avery), but no middle name and no girls' names at all. I'm definitely starting to feel the pressure of figuring something out soon, but it just seems like such an incredibly important decision, and we don't want to pick a name in haste and regret our choice later. I'm so frustrated with the baby name books too, because they just don't seem to have anything to offer that's good enough for our kid.

We start childbirth classes on Thursday and I'm sooo excited! One more thing to get the ball rolling in the direction of having this baby already!

Have a great week mamas!

[mollyeilis]

Re: website for wishes. There's an official website out there, www.felicite.com, that maintains a registry for you, for just about any store with an online presence.

I used them for a registry with a CD company. People order through felicite.com, they send the order and money to that website, it's sent to me or to the gift giver.

People can even make cash gifts to go towards something that's more than what they want to spend.

It's cool.


I had a lot more fun with that than with Babies R Us. I am overwhelmed by the amount of stuff at BRU in which I have NO interest, and I think I have a paltry 12 items on the list. If I'd heard of felicite.com before I told someone about the BRU registry, I would probably have just used felicite, even for the car seats, etc.

Hope you have more fun than we did! Good luck!

[pottermamma]

Hey...way to go everyone with that positive outlook!!!!!! Pregnancy is such an amazing thing and only lasts so long....at least this is what I tell myself when I start to feel huge and uncomfortable

My hips are for sure opening/spreading...it has been unseasonably warm here (and oh have I been crying about that!!!!!...but I was psyched to get out in the gardens)....and it feels like there is so much to do...we are contemplating building another home this summer and doing all the work with that (pricing things out, talking to financial people, looking at land etc....neat idea and great house plan Dh did, but horrible timing(Dh will do all the work and be oh so busy instead of giving extra support to Ds and I and the new baby)...my SIL is coming with less than a weeks notice...but she and her fiance are great and we'd love to see them...I'm getting pictures taken this Sat by a friend and am so excited but so nervous....never had nudes taken before and am such a bad poser....But the best of all is Dh and I are going on our first date since Ds was born 3 1/2 years ago and probably the last for another few years!!!!!!!

We are starting to get our birth supplies together as well...really helps it all sink in!!!!!! There is so much to gather...and I have to have it all by 37 weeks which is in 3 weeks for me...plus we have to pay off our midwife by then too....AHHHHH

Take Care mammas

[Marco Esquandolas]

Hey mamas!! Just giving us our weekly gratuitous bumpity back onto page one.

Kanpope-yes, the hugeness feeling here is unbelievable!! I've definitely got some serious stretching and growing pains going on.

kittymama-I'm kinda waiting for mine to chill out, still. This one takes the prize for being the most active in utero. I hope this isn't a sign for what to expect once it comes out! A LOT of the kicks and movements are quite uncomfy.

WELCOME, mollyeilis. Glad you joined us.

Goodness, elfmamma. You better start bunkering down on Thursdays, lol. I hope everything is OK. Oh-about the monistat, I started to get a yi w/one of the boys and my practice told me to only use the cream and only apply it externally. They didn't want anything going "up in there". I don't know if it had to do with how far along I was or anything like that, though...just thought I'd share my experience.

Nothing much to report here. I need to stop buying diapers/covers. : I'm feeling good and am chillin' overall. The heartburn I could do without, however. I have an appt in a week or so, and that should again be uneventful. I still need to go to the hosp to do the pre-registration paperwork. I forgot to do that w/ds#2 and I was literally answering questionaires and signing my name in btwn active labor contrax! ...don't wanna do that again!

[Marco Esquandolas]

Oh, duh! I did have a question for the slingin' mamas....what sling do you like best, esp for slinging your newborns (and discreet nursing)? Are the padded ones a better option? I'm getting more instead of less confused the more I read up on slings. : I think I've narrowed it down to the maya and the kangaroo Korner all cotton (don't want fleece for summer), but I'd love to hear from mamas who use slings. And yes, I am a sling virgin, tee hee hee...I always carried the boys on my hips but don't think I'll be able to do that this time around w/a 4 yo and a 2 yo. I hated all those front carrier and backpacky things...those I have used. TIA!

[kanpope]

Originally posted by phishmama
Oh, duh! I did have a question for the slingin' mamas....what sling do you like best, esp for slinging your newborns (and discreet nursing)? Are the padded ones a better option? I'm getting more instead of less confused the more I read up on slings. : I think I've narrowed it down to the maya and the kangaroo Korner all cotton (don't want fleece for summer), but I'd love to hear from mamas who use slings.

I think that I may be in the minority here but I do NOT like the Maya! I used it for almost a year and thought that I would get over the back/shoulder pain but never did. I switched over to the Kissasling and it made a world of difference!
The Maya has no padding at all and the shoulder is just gathered. I consider myself an experienced sling user (being doing it everyday for 5+ years) and I had a hard time getting the positioning right on my shoulder. It was always slipping and I had to keep on tightening and readjusting. THat was just my experience.
I prefer a very lightly padded sling. THe Kissasling is the best sling I have ever used. It has light padding and the shoulder is "constructed" to have a shoulder that stays put and is comfy! Kissaluvs has stopped making them but you can still get them from some distributors.
I do not like the havily padded slings, esp with a newborn because they do not adjust well enough. You have the tail and that is as tight as it goes. If your breasts are high, the baby is little, or you are petite, it can be a challenge. I always had to hold my kids while they nursed in the OTSBH. Not to mention that if you live in a humid climate, it is like earing wet sponges on your shoulder and all around you and the baby.
There is my 2c!

[Defenestrator]

I like the non-padded slings for newborns -- it just seems easier to get them in a variety of positions and cinch them up close to you. I am a big fan of the maya because it stays useful well into the toddler years, while some of the pouch slings either become hard on the mom or cut into the baby's legs with hip carries.

That said, I also really like the new native for newborns, as well as the kk fleece pouch. I haven't seen the cotton ones yet in person so I am not sure about them-- one of the things that make the fleece pouch so cool is its stretchability and I don't know if the cottong pouch stretches. The new native seems really well constructed for smaller babies, very solid and snug if you get the right size. If the kk cotton is just like the new native, but adjustable, cool!

Most of my experience comes from friends and from helping moms who I work with in childbirth classes and births. As for me, I made it through my son's baby and toddlerhood with a hand-me-down nojo! It wasn't perfect, but it was still pretty useful. This time, I have been offered loans of a couple of other brands of slings, and hope to get a kk fleece pouch for the winter.

If you get a sling that comes in sizes, my advice is to size it small. You can probably return it if it really is too tiny, but a sling that is too big will never feel secure and will hurt your back as well.

Slings are great! They will really free you to do so much more with the older kids and increase your mobility. Good luck!

Stacia

[kanpope]

Originally posted by phishmama
Oh-about the monistat, I started to get a yi w/one of the boys and my practice told me to only use the cream and only apply it externally. They didn't want anything going "up in there". I don't know if it had to do with how far along I was or anything like that, though...just thought I'd share my experience.

I could not find elfmama's original post about yeast infection. I got a yeast infection on my breasts and started taking acidophulus everyday and before I knew it, it was gone. I am not into taking the over the counter yeast stuff, esp when pg! Gentian violet works very well too. I have not had experience with it because of the messy factor but I have heard from several LLLL and IBCLCs that they have seen more success with that than with nystatin or other topical anti-fungal treatments. The other option is to "douche" with live culture yogurt. I know that it sounds gross (and it is) but it works nicely. No matter what you decide, definitely consult your OB or MW before trying anything!

Once again, my 2c! :LOL

[Defenestrator]

I cross posted with kanpope, but forgot to say something, which is that a ring-style sling will be more discreet for nursing than a pouch sling, simply because the excess fabric that is gathered at the shoulder, and the tail on some styles, both cover more of the front of your body. That said, I never mastered nursing in the sling and only was able to do it for a short period of time. I found if I wore t-shirts that were relatively loose, it was easy to nurse discreetly.