it's hot

Anyone can tell you that I love the summer - hot weather, sunshine, sandals and sun dresses. For the first time in my life, however, I'm getting to know what it means to suffer in the heat. It hasn't been hot in Berlin by Sacramento standards; it's only in the low 80s. It's humid, though, and that makes 80 degrees feel like you're swimming through the mugginess. Even that I could deal with, but the thing is that I'm extremely pregnant, and the heat has been getting to me in ways heretofore unknown. Yesterday, for example, I was holed up in the apartment all day and even had my feet in a bucket of ice water for a while. Then Toffi came home and brought our fan up from the basement, making life much easier. Still, I was outside for only half an hour today and all I wanted to do was go back home. It was hot and muggy (there was a thunderstorm right after we got back), my feet were red and swollen, and since the baby has dropped into my lower pelvis (a sign that labor isn't too far off), my gait has started to resemble waddling more than walking. All in all, it's hot and I want to hurry up and have this baby!

laugh your ass off

I just read through these hilarious stories told by new parents. It's all about the embarrassing mistakes they made in the first few weeks of caring for a new born. I laughed so hard it hurt!

nesting

So I suppose that I'm going through my nesting phase now. I've been putting everything together for the first few weeks with the baby. Partly, it's because I really love folding teeny tiny socks and imagining the little feet they'll be keeping warm. But partly, this late phase of pregnancy has become so physically taxing that I don't leave home much anymore. Just taking Oko out for his daily walks is exhausting!


As you can see, Oko finds all of this to be exhausting too:

Happy Mother's Day!

This being the first Mother's Day I can celebrate as a (expecting) mom, I figure this blog needs an official message to all the moms in my life, young and old. I wish you all a wonderful day and hope there's someone to spoil you today!!

(not so) happy feet

So I guess is the part where pregnancy gets to be less fun. I finally understand why people say you may go up a shoe size while pregnant! Not only are you carrying an extra load with you (in my case, close to 25lbs), but you also have 50% more blood pumping through your veins, combined with the blood-vessel-widening effects of progesterone, which makes it harder for your body to pump that blood back up to your heart. In fact, my midwife says I most likely have about 2 liters (that's half a gallon) of extra fluid in my tissue, and this is perfectly normal - now THAT's what I call water retention! Last but not least, there's relaxin, another pregnancy hormone and one that loosens your tendons and ligaments, allowing your joints to spread out. Combine all these factors, and you've got the reason why a normal amount of running errands leaves me with my feet feeling like they're going to explode any second.

And I'm not going to even get into the baby's sometimes painful kickboxing routine...

I think this cartoon, which I got this morning with my weekly email from the Baby Center says it best: