Sunday 12 February 2012

Viability, and Gobs of Other Pregnancy Stuff

Technically baby Klug has been "viable" since 24 weeks, which means that if he were to come too early he would have a chance at survival (babies can live when they are born even earlier than 24 weeks, but it is rare). The odds of survival at 24 weeks are still to low for comfort, but these odds go up dramatically after 28 weeks, which is where we are as of today. This makes me feel much better. Now, I realize that I probably shouldn't even be thinking about things like "odds of survival" and such, considering that statistically it is very unlikely that something would go wrong at this point, but I've been on the wrong end of one of those statistics before, so thinking about the "what ifs" was pretty much bound to happen.

It's odd to know that we have passed so many critical milestones, and I have no idea what most of them are because I don't pay any attention to fetal development or what's happening this week in my pregnancy. I did that the first time around, and I'm just not interested this time (as if I have time to be trolling baby websites, when pinterest is obviously far more important). I know all the important stuff is in place, because I saw it on the 20 week ultrasound, but I have no idea what the little fellow is up to, other than clearly getting larger because I certainly am growing.

I've officially hit that point when people who don't know have started asking, albeit with hesitation, if I'm expecting. At least once a day Tommy looks at me and says, "Mommy, wow, your belly is SO FULL of baby." I respond that the big belly phase has only just begun.

Right now I have a slightly below average amount of energy. I think I would actually have a great deal of energy if two certain children would decide to stop waking up at 5:45 every morning. Or if Nicolas hadn't decided to cut eight (yes, eight) teeth this week. It appears we are about halfway through that wretched process. Only one more eye tooth and three more molars to go. Thankfully, Jeff is the best husband/dad and he feeds the early risers breakfast and keeps an eye on them while he gets ready for work, but I can't get good quality sleep with all the noise they make. It hasn't helped that both of them are then very cranky all day because of waking up too early, and that has been rather draining too. I'm bummed because I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be the "best" part of pregnancy, and I would like to enter into the uncomfortable phase with a few good night's sleep under my belt. Before the boys started their undesirable morning routine I was feeling fantastic and getting so much done. Now I am starting to get antsy that I'm going to run out of time.

We have a few big projects (along with a million little ones) that need to be done before I will feel ready for the arrival of the little man. First, we need a car that holds three car seats. We currently are a one car family, and that one car is a Corolla. I love it, but there is no possible way to fit three car seats in the back. Trust me, we would if we could because we really like our car and its awesome gas mileage. But the physicist has declared that three car seats cannot fit no matter how we engineer it. Thus, we have decided to go big. We are the kind of people who drive our cars for a very long time (the Corolla has been in service for ten years now), and in the next ten to fifteen years we expect that we will need room for more than three kids. I believe I've mentioned that I'm not "done" until I have a daughter that I get to keep. We may take a breather after this one, but we'll see. I have a hankering to buy sparkly pink tennis shoes, and Jeff simply won't allow his boys to wear those.

After test driving and climbing in and out of numerous vehicles I have decided that I absolutely want a minivan. I am just way too short for a crossover or large SUV. We are looking at eight-seaters so that we have the ability for maximum expansion (Tommy has already started asking for one more brother and two more sisters). Now we just have to bite the bullet and actually buy one. It just feels so wrong to spend so much stinking money on a car. They cost as much as an adoption! And they aren't nearly as cool of an investment. I don't image I will be receiving any kisses from my minivan, no matter how well I take care of it.

We also need to figure out where the baby will be sleeping, where his clothes will go, and how on earth we are going diaper him. I am secretly hoping that Nic will potty train himself (I am so not fool enough to try) miraculously before the baby comes, and then I can just use his set of diapers for the little fellow (in case this confuses you or sounds gross, I use cloth diapers, and they are the one size fits all sort. I bought the current set thinking it would be a great investment because they tend to last for more than one child, but I didn't really think through the whole two kids in diapers means buying two sets thing). As far as sleeping, I think we have a decent plan for the first few months, because we can keep the baby in the bassinet of the pack-n-play in our room. I am really hoping that after that we will be ready/able to move to a bigger place. If not I may start strapping children to the ceiling. Hammocks maybe? Tommy would actually probably like that...

We are planning to go on one of those hospital tours sometime in March, since the April tour is a little too close to my due date. We are also going to do an online birth class. Since I will be doing the whole labor thing without the benefit of crazy doses of narcotics this time, I figure I should probably have some idea of what is going to happen. It's funny, when I was looking at the schedule of classes that my OBs recommend, I turned to Jeff and said, "what do all these people do with their kids while they attend so many classes?" Then I realized that most of the people who attend birthing class have never given birth before, and they don't have kids to worry about. I'm sure they find it great fun to attend a class eight weeks in a row, or all day long on Saturday, because they don't have to think about babysitting!

3 comments:

Jess said...

Amen to the pinterest, ah, what a glorious waste of time! We also had our littlest in our bedroom due to too many children and not enough finished bedrooms, but I need to warn you now that newborns are noisy! Purchase a supply of ear plugs, and if you don't get a bigger house, plan on banning him to the living room after as many as a couple of weeks like we did with our first. Truitt held in there much longer mostly because it was a pain to push his mini crib out into the living room every night and into the bedroom every morning, but now he is so noisy and we are so desperate for sleep that we don't have a choice!

mary said...

You might want to pay for a babysitter and take the class. It is well worth it if you aren't going to use any drugs. I took classes for each one of you :) and am glad I did.
I like the hammock idea. ;)

Emily said...

Belly pics asap!