Hallelujah!

Wifey brought me an air humidifier the other day. What a life saver!
My constant nose bleeds have almost stopped, I no longer drink 3 liters of water every night and need to visit the bathroom accordingly. I don't wake up feeling like I crawled through a desert, having eaten my way through the sand. I can actually breathe without creating an addiction to nasal spray. I highly recommend it for all you poor congested preggos out there!

Happiness...

... like love comes in all shapes and sizes. My happiness right now is bordering on immense. Baby is kicking so energetically, my bump is shaking like a minor earth-quake under my woolen blanket. I'm so facinated by and proud of our strong little dancer!
I'm on my sofa with a big container of carrot juice within reach. It might be too optimistic to say that it's sunny outside, but atleast it's bright with promise of spring. Melissa Etheridge on Spotify, no work for a week and today we are celebrating the beginning of week 31!
Wifey is on her way home, we have an entire weekend infront of us.
What more can one wish for?

Goal outfit

As taught in the profylax-class, we set out to buy a goal outfit for Baby. Something she would be wearing when we bring her home after birth.

We settled on this in organic cotton. Wifey loves brown, I had my heart set on white for Baby's first outfit; a perfect compromise.
She'll need a onesie under it, of course. We have both a white and a brown candidate. And some socks, I think we will go with white, and a white baby hat.

Now, ofcourse you never know what the weather will be like in May. It might as well be a heat wave as freezing. We might have to adjust clothing accordingly.
But this might be what Baby will wear for her first public appearance.

I wasn't hard to talk into buying something for Baby. We also came home with some organic cotton baby blankets, some onesies and a pyjama that was totally unnecessary but made me laugh.




(Stinky is a Moomin characters, for you non-Scandinavians who might not recognize him).

Freedom!

Only one more working day left of this week. And then I'm off for a week. After that; only four weeks left of work!
I can smell the freedom!
I don't know how much time I will take off. A year perhaps, or more. I wonder if it will feel weird to be off work for such a long time? I suspect Baby and sleep deprevation will keep me from pondering too much over it.



Baby is all over the place. At times I feel her under my ribs and low down in my pelvis at the same time. She must have a lot of space to move around in and be quite tall. She kept kicking my bladder while I had a meeting at work today. I kept my pokerface while madly doing Keagles.
I sure hope there is only one of her. My mom has been set on twins since we came home from Denmark. She does have good, bordering on 6th sense, intuition. But this time I'm hoping it's more of wishful thinking than intuition.
One baby at the time is quite enough.

Once in a lullaby...

After being kept up all night with Baby's tiny hick-ups, my restless legs, congestion, thrist, a zillion bathroom vists etc, it was time to get out of bed and go to the hospital for the anti D-profylax.

It was freezing outside and I was so glad wifey had brought the car so we didn't have to spend the morning waiting for commuter trains that never come while slowly turning into blocks of ice.

I had a vague memory of the hospital being depressing and huge. I had some of my Uni classes in one of the Kafkan bulidings and remembered endless hallways, perplexing stairways and anonymous steel elevators, so I wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to find our way.

First was a stop to leave a blood sample, only 27 other people in line before us. However, once we got in (after 40 + min) the nurse was the most professional I have ever been drawn blood by. I have shy veins and people usually end up poking both my arms a number of times before hitting the right spot. Not this lady; in, out, thank you! You wouldn't even have time to pass out, if you would be so inclined.

Then the puzzeling task of finding the maternity ward. We finally found it tucked away behind the ortophedic ward, hand-made signs randomly taped on walls leading the way. Once (supposedly) there, there was no reception but an area with some worn out, stained sofas, so dusty my astma would not allow me to sit down. The paint was falling from the walls, the upholstery was coming out of the chairs. It all felt sad, dirty and like being transferred to some forgotten part of eastern Europe. There were 3 other women in the waiting room. All alone. I was the only one who had my partner with me.
And I once again thought of how lucky I was to have wifey. Someone who thinks it's just as important for her to be there as I do.
It's my body, but our pregnancy and our baby.

20 min after our scheduled appointment, we got to see the midwife. She was calm and had a very kind energy about her, I instantly liked her. And felt sorry for her to have to work in such a horrid environment. She told us the hospital was tearing down asbestos and that's why they had to share space with the orthopedic ward. Mmm, asbestos, that sounds great for my unborn child and my astma.
She suggested we stay around after the shot to make sure I got no allergic reactions. Needless to say, we didn't.

I'm hoping for a better nights sleep tonight. Wifey's staying at our country house with the dog tonight (I've gotten too allergic to the dog to go with them), so no one will sing Baby her lullaby.
I'll play her this version instead;

Cravings? I would say addictions;

These are some of the things I am addicted to;
Lingonberry juice;








Lemonade;













Baby carrots;











Carrot juice;














And last but not least (nor healthy);
Marabou milk chocolate, in a roll, a bar won't do!

Welcome to week 30!

Sorry I haven't blogged much lately. I've been busy working and being tired. The time I spend online I read birth-stories and watch
documentaries about births and babies. I've seen babies being born in week 24, 26 etc and now Baby and I are in week 30. That is just amazing. It's an actual little person in there, somersaulting around, gently nudging and kicking.
Some days I feel her more than others. But it's never painful, as for some women. Baby is very kind to me, or she has a lot of space and fluid to move around in.

Wifey and I have also kept busy getting our home ready for the baby. We bought a new bed (for us) and some stuff like changing table mattress and bath for the baby.
We've also been looking at bigger appartments. But the right one hasn't come up yet. So we will just have to do the compact-living routine with Baby until we can move.

It feels weird that in just 10 weeks we will have an actual baby on our hands. Sometimes I so long to see her and touch her. And sometimes I enjoy the peaceful coexisting we have while she's in my vomb. It is amazing really that she is inside my body, in perfect temperature, getting all the nutrition she needs to delvelop.

I have no pregnancy ailments except for not being very graceful and sometimes a bit of pelvic pain when I bend over. I'm hoping for a glorious 3d trimester since I never had a golden 2nd trimester.

I saw an interesting documentary yesterday, about donor children;




http://svtplay.se/v/2320601/dox/donator_okand (you will have to copy-paste into your browser, can't seem to create a link).

I thought it was quite comforting. From what I read/heard about it beforehand I braced myself for getting anxious about us choosing to have a baby by donor, thinking the children in the film would be miserable about not having a father.

But actually, I thought all of them, execpt for the girl with straight parents who felt like she was lied to her entire life before she found out, seemed very content with their family situations and not really lacking anything except for that tiny piece of the puzzle of genetic origin.
They got a person to attach to the donor profile and they were happy to continue on with their lives.

I'm glad we got a non-anonymous donor for Baby, so she can look him up when she's 18 if that is important to her.
From the documentary, it seems like the donor siblings are more important to the donor children than the donor per se.

It is a different way of family life, and should Baby be really upset about it, we'll just have to deal with it as a family. Both wifey and I are very nuclear-family oriented (as in two parents + children), and would have a hard time sharing Baby with a known father. I cringed when people in the Rainbow parenting group talked about joint custody as soon as the baby stopped brestfeeding.
Could you imagine giving up your baby and not see it for 50% of the time, for the rest of your life?
It wouldn't be emotionally possible for me and wifey.
Baby is part of us, and it would be as possible to give her up as it would be to cut out your own heart and give it away.

Also have known families consisting of 2 fathers-2 mothers where the original couples break up and the children then need to be split 3 or 4 ways. Then we're down to having your child 25 - 30% of the time.
And have the child move around between 3 or 4 different homes.

No thank you.

Baby is stuck with wifey and me, for better or worse. She might not have a father, but she will never get rid of her 2 mothers. I'm sure she will want to when she's in her teens, but we are here to stay.

WE DID IT!

We finally decided on a pram; an Emmaljunga Edge Duo, Silver Stitch. The road was long; we considered several options, models, buying used etc.
I'm not gonna take you through it. It's tideous, exhausting and littered with hormonal crying attacks. For a while wifey even considered going to a different part of the country to get me the pram I wanted.

But, as things worked out, we didn't have to, but set our hearts on another pram and tonight we bought it.
I'm back to working full time now, and am back to being exhausted most of the time. But hey, who cares? We got a brand new pram!!!
Hurray!
Am very, very happy. Can't wait to take long walks with baby sleeping in it!
Love baby, love wifey, LOVE the pram and love my life!