23 weeks

Ash and I both SAW Lucca moving for the first time at the same time last night!! He was kick kick kicking me while I was laying on my back (I hope that doesn't mean he doesn't like it, I'm loving the fact that it is still comfy to be on my back for a couple minutes). I dreamed that my belly was totally transparent, and I was taking pictures of him through my skin. He had 6 toes on one foot and he looked like me in the face and Ash in the body.

Last night was another first for me... I made homemade bread AND HOMEMADE SOUP. And I didn't even follow a recipe... I was just improvising. Not only did I make lentil soup but.... IT TASTED DELICIOUS. Anyone who knows me knows what a big deal it is for me to 1) cook and 2) cook well. And I had fun! Woohoo!

NEXT WEEK I WILL BE 6 MONTHS PREGNANT HOLY COW. I don't feel overwhelmed about the stuff I have left to do yet... I guess I feel a little nervous about the baby shower though, because I haven't been to any so I don't know what makes a good one. I'm torn between making it tiny and casual or just letting Robin do it right with all the silly games and pretty foods. Either way, I've got to buy some thank you notes today because I have already received some nice gifts from my registry!!

22 weeks

Everything went well at my appointment last week. I got to meet Samara, another midwife who has joined the practice as an assistant. She said my dizzy spells were probably low blood sugar and that I just need to eat more in the mornings, especially protein. It's possible that it could be low blood pressure as well, since my blood pressure is already at the low end of normal... but I'm guessing it's the blood sugar thing since I have always had a raging metabolism in the mornings. The back pain and the stabbing-pain-after-eating have eased up, making my days a reverse of what they were (previously I couldn't be up walking around in the afternoons due to back pains, now i can't be up in the mornings due to dizziness!). I'm now about 135 so I gained back the weight I lost to food poisoning, and have gained about 10 lbs total since getting pregnant.

Here is my little souvenir from the Shakori festival... a tiny henna flower. It was $10 to get that tiny flower, and that was from the cheap henna place... I will have to just mix up my own and decorate further.

I haven't seen my debit card since that day so... that's not good!

That dress I am wearing just BARELY still fits, and none of my other summer clothes fit at all. I have drawn up plans to make myself a maternity dress, modeled after another dress I own that still has plenty of room in it. I also found some old white chiffon curtains in the attic, which I plan on making into a skirt. I'm going to have to buy some maternity shorts though... there are many activities that require a material a bit more dural than chiffon.

I picked up my pregnancy support herb blend! It is composed of:

3 parts raspberry leaf (astringent, toning, relaxing, nourishing, coordinates effective and productive contractions)
1 part chamomile flower (for digestive problems related to stress, soothes intestines, relax muscle cramps)
1 part lemon balm (relieve stress, sooth pain and gas after eating)
1 part dandelion leaf (vitamin A, calcium, potassium, iron, stimulate digestion, diuretic)

I drink about three cups per day until I am 32 weeks, and then we will change the herb blend so that I get my body super ready to give birth (and he will also give me herbs to use during birth, if my contractions need help picking up). I also will pick up some other herbs for reflux, even though I haven't had too many problems with it yet, I probably will as my third trimester approaches! Poor Ash has some really terrible allergies, the kind that make you sleep all day. But his herb tincture actually works really well for him and he takes it three times per day, giving him an hour or so of total relief following ingestion.

I am still undecided on the doula issue. I am already looking into hiring someone to do my placenta encapsulation, which will be about $200, so I really don't want to spend another $500 on yet another person! My birth class starts this Sunday, I'm sure I will have a better idea of what I want and need at my birth after attending the class.

I can go from zero (blissed-out and totally relaxed) to 100 (wanting to scream from stress) in about five seconds. It's no fun at all! Especially because I am used to a meditation or self-hypnosis session lasting an entire day... I don't know what to do about it since the source of the stress isn't going anywhere until the end of August (Jonathon moving away for college and Quinten possibly starting public school again). Ash is just as stressed out as I am so we can't really help each other out energy-wise, other than the basic sympathy and comfort we can offer one another. I'm afraid that all the stress will affect my birthing process, or worse, affect my relationship with my newborn (or EVEN WORSE, both). I wish my due date were later so I could have a week or two to decompress without them around, before attempting to give birth and nurture a newborn.

Dreams

My pregnancy dreams have all been the craziest, weirdest, most violent and most emotionally complex dreams of my life.

Last week I dreamt I was in an attic of a house, and I was staying with several roommates in this house. I was in the attic looking through one of my male roommate's personal belongings and I found the most disturbing book. It had antique, hand-drawn illustrations of infants being dissected and dismembered. It appeared as if this book was being fetishized by my roommate, because there were lots of hand written notes in it and it was a well-worn copy. I suddenly became terrified for my unborn child and realized that the ultimate intention of him moving in with me was to gain access to my baby to perform these dissections.

The night before last, I was in post-apocalyptic 19th century London, and I was a male apprentice in a law office of some kind. The whole dream was me fighting off my boss who was coming at me with a knife. I got away by swimming through miles and miles of ice cold water. That's the first time I have ever dreamed I was someone else, or that I was male! I feel like since my baby is male that had something to do with it... it felt like I was watching someone else's dream but from their perspective.

Last night I dreamt I was pregnant with quintuplets. I was extremely excited about it and the whole dream was me daydreaming in my head as I drove around in the car with my family. Eventually toward the end of the dream I started to wake up a little, and I remembered my real life ultrasound and that there was only one baby on the screen. I woke up feeling very upset that my other four babies had died.

Coffee blues

I just had a quarter cup of coffee and I almost blacked out! Suddenly I felt very nauseous and dizzy, and then my vision started going. I sat down and sipped some water until it went away. I didn't even have it on an empty stomach or anything!! The further I get in my pregnancy, the more sensitive I am to EVERYTHING. I really love the taste of coffee and am pretty bummed that I can't even sip on it occasionally anymore. Oh well.

I haven't felt Lucca move very much since the food poisoning episode, which of course has me irrationally worried. I feel a general anxiety and insecurity that I haven't felt since I was a teenager. I really need to do my hypnobabies track or my calm birth track and get refocused. I think I feel this way because pregnancy has been so disorienting for me... every day I wake up and am physically, mentally, and emotionally a different person. I have over 20 tabs open right now because I am about 10% involved in 20 different things. Ash is hyper focused on making this record and I am completely the opposite, thinking about too many things at once. When we get in different head spaces it becomes harder to cope. I like to operate on the same wavelength.

All I want to do is eat an entire tomato and then take a nap.

Edit: I have felt him move plenty since I wrote this yesterday :)

21 weeks

This is me at 21 weeks! I had to go buy an XL sports bra at Target because my medium does not fit anymore. By the time my milk comes in, NO BRA will be able to hold me!!



I made a dirty diaper bag, which is just a pillow case I lined with fleece and added a drawstring to.



I also made several more cloth wipes... basically anytime I get a hold of some super cheap or spare fabric, I make it into wipes.



I also made a hooded towel with some pink polka dot trim.



I tried to make a maternity skirt for myself. I just made a tube of fabric and added elastic on the top. So it looks pretty much like... a potato sack. Haha. So I'm trying to make it less ugly. Any ideas?? I took in the seam in the back on the top half, so that it's a little more fitted in the tush area and it gives it an illusion of an A-line... but it's still pretty ugly.



Our friend Dan is visited from Charleston. Ash and Dan are working on a record in one of my parent's walk-up attics which Ash converted into a temporary studio. When we went to Charleston last August, they started this album.

Sick all day yesterday with food poisoning symptoms, which started immediately after I ate AN ENTIRE PINT OF ICE CREAM at 10:30 in the morning. Oh yeah... remember that thing called lactose intolerance? YOU HAVE IT. Every normal sickness is just 300 times worse when you are pregnant, because the baby pretty much sucks all of the life energy out of you in order to be ok (that was my only comfort yesterday, knowing that I was feeling so horrible because my baby was strong enough to suck the life out of me). Every bone in my body aches as if I have the flu, but I have no fever. Hopefully that is just from the food poisoning and not from the two tick bites I had this week!

I actually tried to get in the car and go to my chiropractic appointment and then work, but when we got in there we found TWO GALLONS OF SPOILED MILK in the backseat. Needless to say, even after much cleaning, the smell was impossible to get out and we both couldn't stand to be in the car. It turned out to be a good thing since I immediately went inside and puked and it was all downhill from there. So thank you, spoiled milk, for keeping me home where a sick pregnant lady belongs!!

I ate the whole tub of ice cream because I had less than a half a cup of coffee, which sometimes makes me RAVENOUS a couple hours afterward. It makes me so mad that I can't enjoy a simple cup of coffee anymore, it's one of my favorite tastes in the world. I used to work at a coffee shop and drink multiple cups per day, so I haven't always been this sensitive. I also ate all the ice cream because I haven't gained weight in about 3 weeks, and I'm trying to eat more in general. Thank you, baby, for letting me know that I need to do it in a healthier way!!

I found this great link to some squatting exercises. Due to the fact that we sit constantly, we sit to go to the bathroom, and we get so little exercise, first world women have a harder time giving birth because things aren't aligned properly. If you are female and are reading this, you NEED to strengthen your pelvic floor! This can also help with common first world postpartum problems, like peeing when you sneeze or run, or discomfort during sex. I have been standing every time I pee since a little before I got pregnant, and that alone has made me feel much stronger. I can't wait to do these exercises after I start to feel better.

For more info on the subject of women's posture, the Spinning Babies website is excellent.

Baby wearing!

I made a sling!! I followed the directions on this website, Mama Roo. I met this mom when she gave an elimination communication demonstration in Raleigh last month. I used my mom's old couch slipcovers to make it, so it cost me nothing but time. The colors are a lot uglier in person so I'm thinking of dying it. That's my stuffed animal RC the raccoon pretending to be a baby.





I also made bread, following my friend Cindy's recipe on her blog. SO DELICIOUS. I made the loaf a little too big which meant it wasn't QUITE done in the middle. Live and learn.

The results are in...

IT'S A BOY!!


James Lucca Hopkins

I knew all along, but I was still really excited to hear it and cried in the ultrasound chair. I could see the penis a mile away before she even pointed it out. It was just a normal 2D ultrasound, but it was really high res on the big screen and we could see every little detail of his anatomy inside. The technician pointed out all his little parts and organs, the umbilical cord, the placenta, my ovaries, my cervix (which is curved!), his little feet (they are big like his daddy's feet).... he is head down already and he's facing my back (I pictured him transverse for some reason), and the placenta is not covering my cervix. I think his face has a good shape for being an Allegretti face (those Italian genes are strong!) but he looks long and proportioned like Ash. They said either I'm a week farther along than I think I am, or he is a bigger baby. There is a New Moon on August 29th, so I'm liking the chances of the birth happening around that day.

The trip to UNC hospital was so... interesting. We showed up and were immediately overwhelmed by the size of the place and the hustle and bustle. There was a large open entrance with an escalator- it felt like a shopping mall. The women's hospital is right next door to the children's hospital, so there were sick, sad-looking kids everywhere. The place was really hot, which is weird because I thought hospitals were supposed to be cold. There was a woman crying in the ultrasound waiting room, and another woman came out of a room crying as we went in. Needless to say, it sort of put a damper on our spirits since we were there under such happy pretenses (and BOY ARE WE GLAD we chose to do a home birth). Our friends Lauren and Carter had their ultrasound technician write down the gender on a card and they read it later when they were alone, and now I really understand why that might have been a great idea!! I'm also really glad we found out the gender, I feel like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders and I can start really mentally prepping for the reality of parenthood.

If the ultrasound is right, then I will be 5 MONTHS PREGNANT next week. I didn't know time could move so quickly. I really don't look 5 months, and I still only weigh about 133-135ish. I still haven't found the time to go to a prenatal yoga class even once!!! I finally have some time tomorrow, I just have to drag my ass out there (everything is 30 minutes away from here).



After the ultrasound we went to the chiropractor who owed us some sessions after we played music at his party for him. He gave me my first ever adjustment! It hurt a little bit, so he just did a couple vertebrae in my neck and a couple in my back, and will do the rest next time. My whole body felt flooded with giddiness after the pops. I got a massage afterward too. Apparently my sacrum is tilted, which makes my right hip a whole inch higher than my left hip (which makes my left shoulder higher than my right shoulder). My posture is pretty good now (I need to lift my collar bone a bit more), but I slouched so much as a teenager that I almost have no lower back curve. The car accident I was in when I was 17 actually did more of a number on my neck than I thought, and all that violin playing as a teen did about as much damage as I thought it did. I don't know why I haven't gone to a chiropractor before!

I finished making that all-in-one cloth diaper. It looks really cute (for something sewn so poorly, haha), but I can't decide if I want to bother making more until I know how many I will be getting at my baby shower, or if the pattern/material is even any good and holds up in the wash. I think I will make some other projects for a while and come back to it if I want to. I bought some really nice wool felt, it's maybe 70% wool which is the highest percentage I have found so far. I want to make some little felt things, like animals and mushrooms and other pretty things that can be mobiles now and toys later.







My mom brings home random baby stuff sometimes. She got me some wipes (disposable... even my own mom has trouble listening sometimes!), some baby powder (does anyone use baby powder these days?), and some diaper rash ointment (I have no idea if it is compatible with cloth diapers though). Hopefully my pottying baby will never need the diaper rash cream, but it's good to have some on hand. She also got a pretty cool baby food musher. You just put whatever you are having for dinner into it, and instant baby food!





My parents implemented mine and Ash's idea of hiding all the dishes in the house except for one per person (so one bowl, one plate, and one cup each). So far it has helped IMMENSELY with cutting down on the kitchen mess. This is essential since my mom is going back to work and therefore the kitchen fairy has retired.

EDIT: Just looked up the Avalon Organics Baby products on consumerdatabase.com, and they got rated a 4 (moderate hazard) because it contains an ingredient that is an 8 (high hazard). SO I guess I won't be using those.