full term

Two days ago, Hosanna officially became "full term" - 37 weeks - the date at which the baby is fully developed and can be born at any time. For us, this big milestone means we can officially have the baby at the birth center and not go to the hospital, which is hugely important to us.

We passed this date over the weekend, and for the entire weekend we were both really stressed - we really felt the magnitude of this event deep down within us. We barely slept both nights, we felt a sense of urgency about completing our batch of errands, and we bickered a bit as we tried to figure out what we were feeling. It wasn't until the day came and went that we fully appreciated what had been going on.

We set up the crib that my sister gave us. Whoa. There's nothing quite like a crib to really cement in your mind that a baby is coming. The room looks really different now. Where once we had all of our keyboards and musical gear, now we have a changing table, crib, and (soon) a glider for Hosanna to rock the baby in. The room looks mostly ready. You can really picture a cute little baby in there. We've also been doing other projects like hanging more curtains, painting our room, finishing the downstairs bathroom, and other little things we've been putting off.

Since we moved so much stuff down into the garage, a bunch of other stuff had to go... so we had a garage sale. And we were so stressed out the whole time, just praying that people would come and take this stuff. Especially the couch. Nobody wanted the couch all day and we were going crazy. Who will take the couch? No one. At the end of the day we left it out on the street with a big sign that said FREE. It finally went the next day just as the sun fell, at the exact moment when we had given up and decided to bring it back into the garage.

You would not believe how big Hosie is. None of us can believe it. But she looks beautiful. She's in really good shape because she has been walking two or three times a day, seven days a week. She's probably walked 3-5 miles a day every day. From the back, you can barely tell she is pregnant. But then she turns around and you gotta jump out of the way of that oncoming belly. It takes up another zip code.

Plus, over the past week, we've watched her belly slowly drop down as the baby shifts down lower. It's in a good position, our midwife assures us, and everything is looking good.

Earlier today Hosanna thought that her water had broken, so she called me, then the midwife. The midwife had her come in to the birth center to take a look. False alarm. She had to reassure Hosanna that when the water breaks, there's a much bigger amount of water that comes out. But she did say that she would be surprised if the baby waits all the way until our due date (9/19). She's pretty sure it will be about a week early. That would give us about two weeks. Holy crap. That's not a lot of time.

I have been riding a crazy rollercoaster the past month. Sometimes I'm ok, other times I'm way stressed out and scared like a little kid. I've been trying to support Hosanna in every way that I can, but sometimes it is all too much and I just want to run and hide away for a little while. It's hard to fight that urge. But I'm trying my hardest.

One piece of advice we've really taken to heart is to go out on the town and enjoy ourselves, go on some dates. We've gone out to dinner a few times. We went to see Batman Begins on IMAX, which was really fun. And we went to go see Robert Walter play at Harlow's, a swanky club in downtown Sacramento. Hosanna even got to go out hiking and swimming at her favorite spot on the Yuba River up near Nevada City with her brother, his girlfriend, and some of their friends. This is a trend we will try to keep up over the next couple weeks, although it looks as though our hiking days are probably over for a little while.

All in all, this month has been a crazy ride... and I know we've barely even begun. It's hard sometimes to just stop and take a deep breath and try to slow everything down.

Taut as a drum

Week 33. There are 45 days to go, according to our little calendar, and the past few weeks have been so full of activity it's hard to know where to even start.

First there were the baby showers. Hosanna and I can't even begin to comprehend the love and generosity of our family and friends. We received such an overwhelming bounty of love and gifts for the new baby that we are left literally speechless. We don't know where to begin to thank all those who are giving of themselves so selflessly to help us. We especially owe thanks to Tracy, Mike, Jennifer, and Doug for planning and hosting our San Jose baby shower, and to Mrs. B for planning and hosting the Sacramento one. And to our families for their amazing outpouring of support, both material and emotional. We love you all so enormously.

Speaking of enormous... Hosanna is huge. And those are her words, not mine. She went swimming the other day, and she said she floated in the pool, blissfully bobbing around "like an orca." (Again, her words, not mine. I don't make the whale jokes. I just help her get up from the couch. And get her shoes on and off. And open that one window in our room that she can't reach anymore because the keyboard stand gets in the way of her belly.)

Apparently, swimming was the best thing ever - so all you ladies who will get pregnant one day, and subsequently become HUGER THAN MOBY DICK, should take note. To quote The Tick, "Gravity is a harsh mistress," and never more so than when you weigh an extra 25-30 pounds and your bones are all rubbery.

In addition, Hosie's belly is stretched so tight. If you put your hand on her belly, you can practically feel her skin stretching. It's really amazing. But she really is getting uncomfortable now, so of course that's no good. Not just her skin, but now she's getting the pains in her hips and pelvis too, and she's starting to have trouble sleeping. She tosses and turns a lot during the night and is incredibly hot all the time.

Remember the blood tests? Two of the four tests that came after the drinking of the extra-jumbo size of the orange-soda-with-twice-the-sugar-and-none-of-the-fun were apparently abnormal, which caused our midwife to put Hosanna onto a strict regimen of testing her blood sugar after every meal. She had to get a bizarre array of supportive paraphernelia for this effort. First she gets the little auto-finger-pricker dealio and sticks herself with it, drawing up a little bead of blood. Then she feeds it to the device that looks like a cross between a tricorder and a palm pilot, which chews on it for a couple seconds, goes boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-BEEP, then throws out a number out at you. She's supposed to always be under 140. What 140 really represents, we have no idea. But we know she's been consistently under it, so that must be good. We'll find out more tomorrow morning when we go back to the doctor's office.

Hosanna's routine all week long has been like this: Eat. Walk a half mile to a mile. Prick finger. Feed the tricorder-palm-pilot thingy. Write down the number. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. She has to do this for every meal. Today she came home and said to me, "I'm tired of eating. I'm tired of eating, walking, and pricking. I don't want to eat, walk and prick anymore." I just told her that she had one last prick to go and that was it.

Today, though, she really, really made me laugh hard. Apparently she was running a little late to go to work, because she had a late lunch. She didn't have time to go outside and walk around the neighborhood like usual. Plus it was really hot out and that air conditioning felt really good. So she walked around inside the house instead. Up and down the stairs a bunch of times. Around the kitchen / dining room / family room loop about fifteen times. Back upstairs. Back downstairs. I can't explain it but I found this image of her just wandering aimlessly around the house for fifteen minutes terribly funny. I laughed and laughed. Then we ate dinner and watched The Tick (yay Netflix!) and laughed some more. Laughing is good.

Oh yes, and we started the birthing classes. They are pretty good. For the most part both of us aren't absorbing everything there too well, because most of the information seems like you really can't understand it until you start going into labor, or are actually having the baby, but so it goes.