Meltin' Mama and the Peppy Pumpkin: Jaunting to July in the 42nd Percentile.

Through the thirty-second week of child-miracle-ing gestational excitement, hot hot jicama cabbage kiddos thrashed enough to raise the heat on an already sweltering mummy-tummy. Daddies and daddy's-daddies went on the lam to the Great North, as dataversaries were remembered at the flip of a phone. Work went wild in the south and mums-to-be had bouts of nesting between torpid roostings. Internet terrors as a netless Monday threatened to take a week off track. But miracles abounded in time for daddies and daddy's-daddies to fly to the Greater North for daddy's-mommies magical marriages. 

In thirty-third week,  Air conditioning cranks to a jagged ragged rousing as the trumpets blare with heated haze yet another leg of this darned heat-wave. Mr. (W)right flies to the fog of Saint Francisco to celebrate nuptial rites, while wifey-poo-pooh shutters the home and seeks respite anywhere but there. Love from a cranky distance celebrates entry into THE FINAL MONTH of belly beasty's inside job. Grand debuts threaten as babies biggen. Ultra-mega-super-ultra-sounds bode tidings of good growth and fastidious positioning and peppy pinappley pumpkin keeps up her mad baby rager in the over-heated oven.


Piney Punkin' and the Ultimate Ultrasound (maybe - I have no idea)

Little belly creature (or as her uncle-to-be is purportedly calling her "L.C." to sound like "Elsie") is getting less little by the day. She's rounding out the gestational calendar towards her doo-bee-dooo-beee-due date with a striking celerity. That's right, we're already on week 33! 

Meaning 7 weeks until D-date. Meaning - more terrifyingly - that the "term birth" window breezes ajar in just one month! One sticky, sweaty, hot and steamy month. I could go into labor while watching the Tour de France. Gulp. Andrew seems to think this is a fabulous idea - we could really relate, me and the tour guys. Especially in a mountain stage. All that digging deeper and pushing and hitting up against the sheerest physical limits... We could name our unfortunate little girl after whomever won the stage or tour on the day of her birth. Just think! 

Yep, still a she. So sayeth the follow up ultrasound. And still in the 42nd percentile, growing just on schedule. Phew! "Measuring small": Pshaw. My belly needs its own zip code these days. 

She's still being compared to various items of produce, of course. At this mid-to-late stage, our mega-munchkin can be compared to: 

1. A Pineapple - Again! Just in time to complement my estival obsession with frozen pineapple chunks. (I ran out of melon). She did not appear to be spiky in the ultrasound, but one can never tell. Ultrasounds can be a bit hard to read. 

2. A Head of Lettuce - Lettuce thrash about in mummy's belly? Lettuce see if a good punch to the diaphragm will make her faint? Lettuce play the umbilical cord like ukulele? Lettuce stay right and comfy in that baking baby oven until August and not wind up being named Contadora or Nibalia?? 

3. An Average Pumpkin - Aww punkin, you are adordable! But much prettier than any jagged Jack o' Lantern I've seen. Really. we saw her face yesterday. She has blinky little eyes and the cutest pursing little lips. She was happily slurping up amniotic fluid in just such a way to make me worry she was blowing smoke rings from some teeny pipe hidden in her itty bitty hand. 

And really. The nerve. Average? Well, I guess she's just a little below average size-wise. But pretty darned close to dead-on average at four pounds and a few ounces. The baby sites predict that she will continue to put on half a pound a week. Possibly doubling her current weight by birth. 

In this week alone she could grow another inch (ouch ouch abdomen says ouch) and her head circumference will increase by half an inch (ouch ouch, other parts say ouchie). And while my amniotic fluid is right on track (for her to drink a liter of it a day - little hog), it's also starting to diminish in ratio to baby. Which may be why all those tossings and turnings and rompings through the mid-portion of my body is starting to feel a fair bit sharper to full on Alien. 

My favorite advice this week, in fact is all about increasingly strong baby movements: "place a small object (baby blocks or a remote control) on your belly and see how far your star-kicker can lob that thing across the room!" I think we've discovered our weekend entertainment here. 

But all that moving has paid off: she's in head-down birthing-approved position now after having been slantwise for a good bit. So nice to have seen the ultrasound and know more authoritatively which little baby body parts are beating me at different parts of the day. Girl can shake her toosh, that's for sure.

As we saw with all that eye-blinking, she's getting much keener in the vision department. Apparently she can actually tell night from day (in this scenario am I a nudist?) and her pupils can dilate. She's also sporting her very own immune system these days. I am so very proud. 

Me? Same old same old. I should have my hospital bag packed and be pre-registered. I am halfway packed and I faxed a pre-registration sheet off somewhere into the abyss. Not really sure that it managed to hit any targets, though. Will have to check in on that ... eventually... using the dreaded telephone. Me and the hubs should also program the doctor and birthing center numbers into our telephones now. It's getting real, baby. Panic panic panic!

Oh yes, and I can expect all the same stuff. Hot flashes. Heavy fatigue. Heartburn. Indigestion. Waterbed legs. Overheating at the slightest suggestion of incandescence. Living the rest of this atypically steamy summer in a blacked out room with cardboard stuck up in all the windows and several fans plus an a/c unit whirring me to a shhhhhhhhhh-ing slumber.  

Which will be more appealing with the hubba-hubby gone all weekend for the grand wedding. Except I do have a massage scheduled and I may find my desperation to be mediated by a nicely cooled movie theater (playing a nice quiet art film that doesn't jump start premature labor). Possibly I will dare to inch out towards a lake But mostly legs on pillows and surrounded by fans in a crepuscular cave. Oh heaven... 

-ish. I do like moving. And with the a/c in the office, I'd consider coming in to use the treadmill this weekend except... seriously it's been less than three months and the darned thing already is threatening to die on me again. This time, it sounds like a rear roller is defunct. I can use it for a little bit before there's a horrible knocking noise and the belt gets weird. We have an appointment with the right people this time fairly promptly, but they won't be able to come out and look at the problem until July 9th. I may go crazy here! I can't really stand for periods of time. I hate sitting. I must be in the stream of the air conditioning or I'm burning up, which limits me to about two spots in the office. It's not great news. Two weeks. Sigh. I'm going to have to get a new office fidget-outlet. this treadmill is just being a nuisance these days. 

But maybe it's time to set up a bed where the treadmill used to be and see if the baby can kick paper off my stomach into the trash can or something... we are at that point after all!

Happy Friday all! Stay cool my hep cats. 

Flame-Eared McPreggerston and the Torrid Humid Heat-Horrors

We're havin' a heatwave. We always have a heatwave at some point during  summer here in the Pacific Northwest. Or recently, it's been a consistent trend that at some point, we'll all suddenly wonder why we didn't think about climate control previously and everyone starts obsessing over the weather. Typically, it comes some time in July and temperatures scale into the unpleasant nineties before abating back to our nice temperate middle ranges. We all complain and obsess over the weather and people who've lived elsewhere in the country laugh at the silly pampered Northwesterners for their swooning swan dives. I used to be of that number, but over the years I've grown less heat tolerant and this year's "condition" has amplified my intolerance quadruple-fold, what with the internal baby-making oven going on full blast. 

Also, I will note that we've been having a bit of a moderate heatwave for all of June, with temperatures all quite about average. And this heatwave will likely not be an anomalous little burst of a week or two. It's probably the harbinger of parturient summer to come. 

And so I say to you, stupid stupid weather: BLURG!

Today is supposed to be the high peak... of this week. Yesterday was technically cooler than Thursday, but felt far less tolerable due to a higher level of humidity. My poor little a/c unit could not keep up and left our bedroom several degrees hotter than tolerable. In fact the downstairs, which has no air conditioning, was only about three degrees hotter than the air conditioned bedroom. And that was before I drafted mombossa to "help" (read "do all the hard stuff because I'm weak and wussy") put up some black out curtains in the bedroom and downstairs. We broiled a bit and then escaped to her house, where the air conditioner was also having trouble keeping up but not be nearly so direly behind. At her house there was at least a good ten degrees' difference between the un-airconditioned house and the air conditioned room. 

 I'm not the slightest bit certain what today will look like. Other than "Adella with very red face and a surlier than usual disposition." But I've done what I can to prepare by rising at 5 a.m. and flurrying about in a "it's a tolerable temperature, must MOVE" frenzy. In addition to forestalled household chores, I did attend to the air conditioner filters. They are supposed to be cleaned every two weeks. They have not been cleaned in my memory. And I know the a/c is my baby (Andrew mostly tolerates it - given his magical ability to sweat, he could easily live in the hottest of climates without much noticing). Thus, I'm pretty sure that means "they have never been cleaned." They were dirty, but I doubt the a/c now magically pumps ice into the Sahara. Ah well. Every little bit. And hey, I deconstructed an electrical device without electrocuting myself! I win! My prize is not being in the hospital... yet. I'd like to keep my hospital visits exclusively to the birthing center and at least a month away. 

Oh and any window that isn't covered by a black out curtain probably has cardboard shoved in it at this point. I think it's all a lost cause when you wake up at 5 a.m. and the temperature is already the typical average for this time of year. And probably even more so when the humidity is 88%. But every little bit helps. And if it doesn't, at least we can pretend I have done something. Since reloading the weather forecasting sites repeatedly is a fun compulsion but does not appear to actively impact the weather patterns. 

Currently, all the windows are open and the fans are on full blast. I am trying to get in all the cooler air before there's none left. Once the temperature outside exceeds the inside temperature, everything will be sealed off and I'll be fleeing to try to bide my time in various air conditioned locales. Including a massage, which I certainly could use. After that though... I hear the Denny's in Ferndale is nice and cold. Maybe the Pickford. A walk-in cooler or ten. 

Possibly even the office, which at least has a slightly more efficient air conditioner. Sometimes you find a way for work to become massively appealing and it's usually the air conditioning. 

Happy last weekend of June! I can't believe we're moving into "the month before and/or of my belly creature's birth" Yikes. 

Moany Monday and the Harrying Heatwave

I should grant that yesterday turned out to be far less taxing than initially predicted. Between the time that I went in to see Julie Taymor's Midsummer Night's Dream and the time that I was released full of sleepy eyes and marvelous fantasies, the temperature had actually dropped. It was scaling 80 at 10:30, but down to a relatively more comfortable (if humid) upper seventies by afternoon. The respite was short lived, but it certainly was less taxing on our poor air conditioning in the meantime. 

This morning, the house had cooled a scant two or three degrees from the incalescence of the night before. The windows were open but a curtain had fallen in front of our screen door. And we just can't bring ourselves to leave the garage door open overnight, despite its excellence in cross-ventilation. Today will be a "mild" day by comparison to the bookending weekends, but with the house already fairly hot and with skies predicted to be clear... it will feel pretty bleck to me regardless. 

I'd love to acclimate to these climes and stop fussing and complaining. I know there are parts of the country where things are much worse. But at this point, well... it's not happening. I know there are pregnant women who love the heat. I'm not one of them. And at this point, I can't really draw the line between "third trimester symptoms to be expected" and "heat stroke." But whichever they may be, the combination is leaving me perpetually grumpy, tired, absent appetite, nauseous, and headachey. And I'm not loving it. 

I did read that actually overheating could be very unhealthy for the baby, so it is a relief to have a thermometer tell me that I'm staying shy of that mark, but my body is radiating heat like a little furnace. I'm cooling for two and not super effectively. 

I'm afraid Andrew's homecoming from the grand wedding was less than a surge of romantic music and a passionate embrace. More of a harried "hi" followed by a kiss with some instinctive distance tossed in and an immediate reference to various HVAC components of our house. I may also not have looked my most elegant, although I was still riding on the joy of a lukewarm shower. Apparently super cold showers would likely cause me to overheat later by priming me to retain heat. I'm not 100% convinced it's not worth it, but lukewarm feels pretty frigid to me by contrast anyways. 

At any rate, wheeee welcome to the final pre-baby (knock on wood) month. It's all whale waddles and back aches from here on out. And an adorably roiling little tummy.

 In the meantime, I'm planning my massages every two weeks and doing whatever I can to eat small cold meals in nicely cooled areas. And reminding my husband that I don't feel super stellar. And his window for doting wife probably closed some time during one of his exciting adventures last month. Now it's wailing whale-wife. Feel the love. Just don't feel me!! 

Fingers crossed that we get a little break from the East-Coast weather, although none is predicted. And that maybe that can coincide with a little burst of energy. I still am promised some of that nesting instinct before the baby's born, but grow more and more skeptical by the day. 

Happy Monday. And it truly is happy. For we have two air conditioned offices in which I can hide today. I can't tell you how much I was looking forward to that this weekend!

Stay cool daddios and mom-to-be-ios!

Merry Mama Meltaroo Mambo

Weather Underground lied to me yesterday. Or the forecasters magicked their little meteorological mojo inaccurately and showered me with false promises. Yesterday was supposed to be a cooler day compared to the weekend and the days to come. Instead it veered erratically straight into one of  the - if not the - hottest days of the year. We are not amused. But we are glad to have been at work for much of the torpid trauma that was yesterday. 

Needless to say, the air conditioning unit did not keep up. But oh so like its owner, the portable a/c seems to underestimate its own impact and overdo things to compensate. This weekend, I bought a second room thermometer to check the various conditions of the room. I've often suspected the a/c thermostat both for claiming coolness that seems inaccurate and calescence in variable and unpredictable manners whenever moved.

While the a/c doggedly struggled to get the room below 75 (verified with the other thermometer), it did not in fact allow the room to get up to 77. And by the time the evening had cooled off to allow a nearly tolerable 72 in the rest of the room, the a/c was still claiming it was 76. 

We suspect that the heat of the hose is part of the problem. The hose gets quite hot on days like yesterday for obvious reasons. The hose is necessarily right next to the a/c unit. I suspect it can cause false temperature results on the hottest days and probably not in a linear fashion. Although this morning, I had set the a/c/ to 68 overnight and it was about 66 across the room. So perhaps there is a usual deviation that can be predicted. Except that when I came home earlier in the day, both the a/c and the thermometer agreed on 75 for most of the evening. And in prior times, the a/c has claimed 71 with several fluctuations while the room thermometer remained at 72. 

Oh fictive measurers of the chimerical "objective reality," how you fail me and cast me into existential crises beyond all fathoming. 

Because one cannot obsess over air conditioning units enough, we also experimented with moving the unit. Actually the hubba-hubba did the experimenting. I did the complaining. But in fairness to me, he did something I'd feebly attempted to do (and nearly killed myself in the offing) a while before: to put the a/c unit up on our dresser so that it was no longer isolated in the corner. Nobody puts baby a/c unit in the corner... without maybe suffering spottier climate control in the related room. It didn't necessarily change the effectiveness of the cooling element of the room, but the humidity did go down notably after this action. And it did seem to help reduce the "freezing bicep and broiling body" syndrome otherwise associated with keeping the air conditioning unit about a foot away from the head of my side of the bed. Now it's more like "fairly cool right side and steamy left side" ... which is progress. 

Of course, this move correlated with the major increase in thermometer temperature read-outs. And it's still not 100% comfortable. Not to mention the fact that the dresser is not quite deep enough to hold the entire a/c unit, so the dresser is now pulled away from the wall at a rakish angle with the a/c unit propped awkwardly atop. Or the fact that our baby bassinet will still be going in very nearly in the same corner by my side of the bed... there may still be some moving to be done. 

But it's an improvement. And we got time! I mean not in some grand sense, but the wildness of June has not yet infected July. Yet. There are rumblings of course (least of which being the threat of belly creature's early arrival on the scene). But we may actually have some time to put the bassinet in the room and move the air conditioning around it somehow. 

And we'll need that time. Because time's all we've got in terms of this stupid heat wave, which is increasingly promising to dominate the entire summer. Pshaw blobs and ridges and high pressure areas! Fie on you!! A pox on your houses. Wunderground is once again reassuring me that this will be the "coolest day of the coming week." I've been jerked around once before. I won't trust again so quickly. And when eighties counts as "coolest" there is still something very, very wrong.