Feeling the pinch

Hi guys,

In case anyone was wondering about the progress I thought I'd blog for a minute while my darling girlfriend finishes making the breast pads she started this afternoon. Home made reusable breast pads from old tshirts and older washers that my mum guv us.

Obviously kt180 is off work now and her whole world has changed. The house is becoming more babyfied every day. There are two changing stations -upstairs and down, and the biggest washing machine you ever saw in the biggest and nicest laundry you ever dreamed of. kt's parents have been round a bit, sewing covers for the change mats, washing windows, painting bits of wall, fixing things, drinking wine, and I even managed to get my old lady round one afternoon this week to get in on some of the action. We sat and folded a mountainous pile of onesies and tiny singlets.

kt is large as a tub and her skin is so stretched across her belly that it aches and stings and reddens and if I forget to send a text message on her behalf and she finds out she stands in the kitchen and yells and yells and yells.

She is 36 and a half weeks pregnant. If she went into labour now, the birth centre would accept her. The baby is head down, has been for some time now, and engaged. Meaning his head is right on the cervix, ready to go go go. It's all a bit bloody amazing and scary and full on and every time I make an entry in my diary now I wonder if I'll have to cancel it at the time.

We went to a lovely, practical birth class at the hospital earlier and I think i mentioned it before and how we met the nice lesbians who were a few weeks ahead of us. They have not had their baby yet. They have stayed a little in contact with us and have burned us a copy of a meditation cd that is really calming and empowering and has put us in a pretty groovy headspace generally for the birth. I do honestly believe it will be ok. Hard, but good.

On Monday night we paid a woman $180 to pinch my girlfriend. We went to another birth method class, wanting a calm birth-type hippy experience to put in the "tool bag" and the woman pinched her, hard, several times on the inner thigh for, like, a minute and a half, and then two minutes at a time, telling her to "meet the pain with your breath, breathe all the way in, in, in, take what you need, and nowww breathe it out and downnnn, washhhhh it alllll the wayyyyy downnnnnn, dowwnnnnnn, keeep going, it's stilllll there, washhhhhh it downnnnnn, ok it's passing and it's gone.' kt was so frikken angry, that woman is lucky she did not get screamed at and head butted. It was a total rort, looking back on it, but at the time you just sort of went along with it, thinking about how big of a deal the birth of your first baby was going to be and how you needed this heads up and any damn help you could possibly get.

But it was a big fat rort and we paid $180 to look at a very interesting book with good birth canal images and get kt well and truly pinched.

I am secretly very nervous about coping with watching her in pain because I have this nerve thing in my bum cheeks which goes psycho buzzy like electric pulses whenever I see her in pain or think about someone cutting open a vein or getting a needle or something painful. And I might just totally freak out and not be able to be with the fact that she is really, really hurting. That is a bit of a fear, but also I have been known to be very brave in the past so praps I will be again.

nearly there

A lot of folks say they can't see the baby in this picture but they are blind. This scan was taken on monday (34 weeks). We learned that the placenta has moved away from the cervix (the car is no longer parked in front of the garage, as someone said. Lucky we hand-painted that sign on the door: NO PARKING DAY OR NIGHT-PLEASE. IN USE 24 HOURS. BABY DUE ANY DAY). So Bless the Universe, kt can try for a vaginal birth. She is starting to feel scared and I do not blame her. Although I feel it will go very well, I know I would be swooning with nerves at this point. In fact, I had a little swoon the other night. We were eating dinner in bed and suddenly kt jmped up in pain and started leaning on the cot and swaying. The room tipped right up like a rolling boat and then straight back down again. I looked at her, said "breathe", and kept shovelling food into my gob, thinking it might be the last time I eat for a while and I was gonna need it. I am like a dog that way. Each meal could be the last for a while...and now that instict has multiplied a million-fold. Needless to say, my girlfriend did not go into labour and I have had several meals since then.

I don't want to bleat on about it because it's kind of obvious, we're having a baby, we're worried about money. Today is kt180's last day of work. She is very happy-scared about that.She is far more articulate than that about it. I am really hoping to hit the big time very soon because the financial reality is becoming a bit of an issue. But we will not be stopped. never ever. See the last several years of our life if you want proof.

check yez later. baby could come any day now. He already weighs 2.8kg which is more that the books say by about 600g. excited.

33 and a half weeks

It's been a very busy time. Part of the process for me has been getting money together so that my Mrs can leave work and we don't go to the poor house. We are really hoping that she gets a few weeks off before the kid comes. Every shop assistant and passer-by seems to feel that they owe it to kt180 to tell her that she could go any day now, that she has a big baby and that she could be having twins. Yeah...they know. In any case we're putting the birth centre on speed dial.

There are some brown discharge stories but I don't wanna say anything about kt that's too private. (ha!)

All is well.

Rock and Roll

uluru by dayDear Blog,

We spent Saturday night at a birth class. There were 5 pregnancies there, 5 partners and one Grandmother-to-be. Of the 5 partners, two were women. Of the two women, I was one. It was very odd when the midwife said at the beginning "OK, men on one side and women on the other." She quickly realised her mathematical and political error and amended most of the rest of the night to referring to the "partner" and not the "man" .

In the video, we saw German women in labour, clutching ropes and husbands. They looked like they were in a lot of pain. I have been very proud of my darling and her very big belly. (It really is big. This photo is two weeks old. It has got bigger). I still am proud, but Jesus, i was a bit worried about her for a bit there. I did that thing, watching the panting, crying germans, when you giggle a lot because you are so terrified. I looked around the room. Other people looked serene and interested. I looked at the pregnant bellies. All of the babies are due weeks sooner than ours. All of the bellies were smaller than KT's. I was even prouder/scareder.

She can almost not get into the shower recess. It only opens so wide. Clambering out of the car, she then closed the door on her belly, not realising it stuck out quite that far.

It was certainly a good and practical class and I feel much more in the spirit of things having done it. I have a good sense now of all the stages of labour, what to do when KT's water breaks (clean it up), when to go in to the Birth Centre ( when the contractions are five minutes apart and/or she can't stand the pain any more or I can't stand the screaming) and what pain relief she can get there (a bath). Also we got a bit friendly with the other lesbians and maybe if one of us is feeling brave we might even call them. Coz they seemed really nice and pretty together. Which could mean they made an attractive couple or that they were relatively grounded and emotionally stable.

There is an adventure ahead, it seems. And that's all before the little tacker comes home.

Soon this will be a parenting blog and not a trying to conceive blog or a pregnancy blog. Parenting seems so grown-up.

Thirty Weeks

Just spent weekend in the country not really doing anything except rubbing KT's delicious belly. I am thinking a lot about the Olgas and Uluru when I look at it. She is thirty weeks. I have even started to photograph it in different lights, much like the rock. I told daddy M that she looked like Uluru and he said I had to respect the indigenous culture and not climb her. We are getting better at being funny with each other which is great for our bonding and understanding. Things are going fabulously with M and J, actually.

Also a whale, I am thinking of.I have to resist saying "my big girl" when I see her as it upsets her enormously. With the emphasis on enormous. Have thought, therefore, that Jonah would be a greeeaaat name for our baby boydee.

You gotta ac-cent Chuwaitthepositive.

Indie Film fodder

Now it just feels like gloating. My GF is bloating and I am gloating.

Watched Away We Go last night on video, being a huge Allison Janney fan and also really liking that nice young fellow John Krasinski when I saw him in It's Complicated, which I bloody LOVED.
Plus it is a baby-on-the-way film. I noticed they never talked to the baby or engaged with her. The pregnant character was about as pregnant as KT is and not once did they have a conversation interrupted by either "Baby's kicking ohmygod!" or "Baby hasn't kicked in ages, ohmygod!" Good film, but. Melanie Lynskey is in it for a bit -another old fave- and her character is a bit sad and then it is revealed that she had her fifth miscarriage last Thursday. I think a fifth misscarriage would drive me to amateur pole dancing, too. It still touches a real nerve, that story for other folks. It's beautifully dealt with in this movie.

I can't believe at all how far we've come. We changed biological mothers. We changed fathers. Would a natural disaster stop us? I have no steady income and my partnerr is leaving work in nine weeks! Baby on the way! Can't wait! This is the best story ever.

viable pregnancy-baby

we got ourselves a baby in there, swimming around and kicking. 24 weeks and all's well. Personally I am drinking like a fish for the last few months in the lead up to my own pre-coception health kick. We are also getting rid of a large amount of stuff so there is room for the bouncing baby. The pregnancy is going well. One thing we learned at the last scan was that the palcenta was over the cervix -which is dodgy for the birth and means if it doesn't move, kt has to have a caesar salad and she is a vegetarian apart from some fish oil of a morning. But usually they move and by all accounts the baby has kicked it out of the way.
this is a terrible post and i'm not fishing.