Induction in 60 hours!

WHHHEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

The worst part about false labor...

isn't the pain, it's the disappointment of not getting to actually go into labor and meet our daughter. Our Bradley instructor told us multiple times that labor often starts in the evening and subsides in the middle of the night and will pick up again in the morning. I've had extended periods of false labor over the past 10 days but the worst/ most like real labor was last night. I was just convinced that we were going to head to the hospital and then...nothing. I can handle the pain, but waking up this morning and going through today with just sporadic contractions is the absolute worst. I really, really thought I was showing all the signs of early labor. Grumble grumble.

Up and out!

So I've successfully kept a schedule for the last 2 days: I've gotten up at the same time as I did before, put on make up, put on real clothes, and done grown up things. Today I'm off to a volunteer event, which is my first attempt at doing something professional.
I can do this. I can do this.

The good news is last night's sleep was more than double the night before! The night before being 2 hours and last night was 2.5 hours, being awake for 2 hours, then another 2.5 hours.
NEAT.

"But little Mouse, you are not alone,In proving foresight may be vain:The best laid schemes of mice and men Go often askew,And leave us nothing but grief and pain,For promised joy!" - Robert Burns.

"Let our advance worrying become advance planning and advance thinking." - Winston Churchill

Pro Tip:

If you're 38.5 weeks pregnant, have a 20 minute conversation with your estranged father about how much he loves you, and get a couple of emails from coworkers full of positive thoughts, and DO NOT want to sit in the dark crying, don't listen to Ben Harper's "Roses from My Friends."

Today's thought is inspired by the most recent episode of "The Walking Dead".

All I'll say is that for the past few days I thought I was in a bad place, not unlike trying to survive a zombie apocolypse. Then today was like I found out that not only am I trying to eke out an existance in a zombie apocolypse, but there are contaminated zombie guts in my drinking water and I have to leave the place where I'm seeking refuge.

From here to Maternity (Leave)!

6 weeks! 6 weeks! Woo hoo! That's right, 42 days till my maternity leave!
Some of the more astute people may be scratching their heads and wondering why in the world I'm starting my maternity leave 5 days AFTER my due date. Primarily, it's because I'm a first time mom and I know I will go over my due date. It also coincides nicely with leaving for the Thanksgiving holiday. There are financial reasons, too. If I work up until the Thanksgiving holiday I will get paid time off for Thanksgiving just like any other employee. However, if I leave the office before Thanksgiving I won't get paid automatically for those days. I'd have to use days from my cache of PTO or go without pay.
Also, since a due date is basically impossible to pin down, it's easier to get excited about a day that I can say will definitely happen as opposed to counting down to my due date and then getting deflated during every day that passes.
6 weeks! 6 weeks! I can do this!

Sentences I never thought I'd hear a doctor say

"Well, that's a head...or...nope...maybe she's been doing Buns Of Steel..."

She's my dancing queen, young and sweet, only unbooooooOOOooorn...

I'm really hoping that this dance party in my uterus means Ava is flipping. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE feeling her feet and head and hands and knees. I'm actually kind of sad that in the next 4-5 weeks she'll run out of room and her movements will start to decrease. However, she's still breech and I'm getting anxious about it. About a quarter of babies are breech at this point in pregnancy (30 weeks) and that goes down to 5% by the time the actual due date rolls around. I'm just a worrier and I can't find any information on first time moms and being breech this late in the game in relation to actually being breech when labor starts. I can feel her pedaling her little feet, which I know means she's trying to turn, so keep it up little girl!

Shower Apologist

I'm super uncomfortable with my baby shower. I didn't have any wedding showers, or engagement parties, or formal pictures, or bachelorette parties, so it's just very weird to be the center of gift-giving attention. After all, these people didn't get me pregnant, so why should they be responsible for my stuff?
I used to really roll my eyes at people who put expensive things on their registries. Do you really think your friends are going to buy you a crib or changing table or fancy stroller? Then I learned that many baby stores have discounts on items you registered for if you purchase them after your due date. Though it may not be the best idea to wait till after the due date to purchase a crib, I can totally see waiting to buy a stroller or breast pump or changing table after the due date if it means saving 20-25%.
Basically, if you're reading this and are coming to my shower, please don't think that I expect you to get us a big ticket item!

What I feel like after every meal.

This is not a complaint! Every meal or snack makes me feel like I've just backed away from gorging myself at a Golden Corral buffet. I never thought I'd get the itis from 6 ounces of yogurt.

Things that I just can't stand.

Do you ever feel like you're the only sane person in the world? There are a few things about pregnancy that just boggle my mind. In order from "stabby" to "eye-rolling", they are:

1) Gender Reveal parties

2) Babymoons

3) Maternity photo shoots

Gender reveal parties...UGH. I swear, we are about 5 years away from pee-stick reveal parties where you'll have to go to your friends house to see the overly annoying couple dramatically unwrap a gigantic box that contains a positive or negative pregnancy test. Not every aspect of pregnancy deserves a party, OK?

Babymoons and maternity photo shoots are just the biggest, most self involved wastes of money, IMHO, especially when the couple involved is also having a baby shower. I feel like they're saying, "Hey! Look at us spending money on frivolous stuff! Disposable income! WHEE!!! Now buy our kid a gift that we preselected."

That was easy.

So I postulated earlier on our daughter's name. We're not ready to announce it quite yet, but we have the name all picked out!
I posted some name options and all of a sudden got some new followers and reblogs from more PG-13 sites. One of the names we picked out is the stage name of an adult entertainment model. Not that there's anything wrong with that; it's just not want we want people to find if and when they google our little tiny princess.
Thanks for making name selection easy, adult sites!

This is a Mom blog.

I don't want to coat my facebook wall with pregnancy stuff (ewww, I just realized how gross that sounded), so I think the majority of this blog will be related to my current gestating status! This won't be a pregnancy blog per se, or one of those dear baby blogs, but I've been censoring myself on the internet about my pregnancy and I won't do that here.
I'll still be AGirlNamedStewart, but that's only because there are so many cool pregnancy blog names that are already taken.
Girls Gone Child? From Here to Maternity? My Lovely Lady Bump? The Daily Discharge? All taken.

Owie Zowie

I had Braxton Hicks contractions for the first time today...yikes! "Painless" my foot. I had super strong pain in the center of my abdomen for almost 2 hours. My doctor's office was closed when I called and I didn't want to incur the costs of calling the on call practitioner. After a lot of hydration and walked I stopped feeling so horrible.
I finally am not freaked out since I've felt her move for a while. I can't believe anyone ever said Braxton Hicks were painless.

Joy to the World

I'll have a little human being with no free will and almost no muscle control to dress up this holiday season.
HALLELUJAH indeed.

I must seem like the biggest nerd

Today's my birthday! Everyone at the office wants to know what I'm doing to celebrate. I'm telling them the truth: I'm going home and sleeping. People have kind of given me weird looks and it just dawned on me that people in the office don't yet know that I'm pregnant. They just think I want to celebrate my 29th birthday by being unconscious.

Current state of mind: terrified

One of our pets had a seizure today. We've ruled out anything that was ingested, so this is probably genetics.
I never want to leave my baby again.

Deep Breaths

I'm a little bit frustrated right now. It's not a big deal.

Back story: this summer I had a large ruptured ovarian cyst. My period was 12 days late (!), I was tired all the time, I felt full after eating small amounts of food, I gained some water weight below my belly button, and I sometimes had a dull or even hot ache in my lower abdomen. I got it checked out, no big deal, it went away after a month or two.

Right now John and I aren't trying to not start procreating, if that makes sense. I'm 4 days late and I was actually getting a little excited! I've been tired and feeling uncomfortably full. I was waiting until I was a full week late to take a test because I don't want to get a false negative. For about a week I'd intermittently have a sharp twinge in my lower abdomen, which I thought were maybe maybe maybe round ligament pains. This morning I started to feel a dull pain in my lower front side and after lunch felt that familiar hot sensation right where my ovary is. Not being pregnant right now isn't the biggest deal. I just really wish I wouldn't be growing a cyst the first month that a pregnancy would be happy news. Oh well.

TMI?

I think John's in guy heaven. This evening he watched Star Wars and then watched porn while playing Angry Birds.

Non-breeder rant

I don't have kids, so I can't pretend to know what it's like to have to dress a little idiot. It won't prevent me from judging people, though. Here are 2 pairs of sunglasses from Gymboree:
Our society is so crazy over consumerism. I can tell EXACTLY what kind of parent would buy these glasses. There's no way a parent over 26 years old would buy these and the purchaser is probably a single mom. She can't relate to anything in hip hop but listens to it all the time and thinks it's cute when her kid knows the words to songs. She either went to community college or got some kind of technical training after high school and lives with her parents or rents an apartment. The inside of her older Honda Civic or Nissan Sentra is totally decorated with stuff that says "princess". She has a tattoo with her kid's name. Her kid's name is a weird spelling of a traditional name or a noun that kind of works as a name (and is probably also spelled weirdly) like Natalee or Justyce.

Then there are these:
Oh yeah, hipster glasses for kids. Jesus take the wheel. The parents of this kid weren't married when the mom got pregnant. If they're not married now, it's because they're waiting till everyone has the right to get married or they see marriage as an outdated tradition that doesn't apply to them. If they're engaged now, they got engaged in between when the mom found out she was pregnant and the kid was 6 months old. They have no plans of getting married. If they're married, they had the twee-est ceremony ever. They both wear hipster glasses. They shop at Goodwill for their clothes and some of their baby's clothes because they don't want to buy into the materialism of society, but they will totally buy most of their kid's clothes at Old Navy and Target because they love to dress their kid in new clothes that look old, like t shirts with faded writing. They have a big dog and had another dog or a cat but they "had to" get rid of it when the baby came. They take every picture with the Hipstamatic app on their iPhone. The kid's name is from some book or an author that the parents think is so special because they were so touched by it, but the book or author is very mainstream and has had great success. Examples would be Harper, Puck, or Esmerelda.

Project Condom

Project Condom (Project Runway but with condoms) was last night at USC and it was fantastic! Here are some of the dresses. The winning one was the gigantic Vegas showgirl outfit with the headdress. I love my job!

Born to do this

When I saw Mariah Carey in Disney’s Christmas Parade last year all I could think of was how she was born to do this. Her life had all lead up to this moment of her lip-synching on a pre-recorded broadcast that celebrates the most sacchrine, commercial aspects of the holiday season while she was pregnant and dressed like a Christmas ornament in a dress so short that the whole world was her gyno. I’m not being facetious. She was born to do that. I was born to do the job that I have now. That’s the best way I can put it. This job is what I was put on Earth to do.

New Addition!

Introducing Deputy Awesome! She joined our little family two Fridays ago and she's getting along with everyone like gangbusters! Her first night here she and Cujo fought like, well, cats and dogs but check them out now! Look at her actually hugging Cujo with both of her front paws. Yay for new friends!

Fudge, I miss my cat

I really do. Gosh darn it, he was just so awesome. So friendly and loving. John and I used to joke that our animals were equally parts dog and cat since Cujo would climb on the backs of furniture and Odin would wait for us when we got home. He knew when the garage door opened, that meant we would come home and there were almost always four little orange feet under the door when we would walk up the stairs. We didn't let him sleep in our bedroom because he would walk all over our faces at like 5 am but without fail he was outside our door at about 6:30 every morning meowing. It was hilarious because he had food and water and access to the litterbox; he just wanted us to watch him go to the bathroom and eat. One of us would open the door and Odin would race down the hallway to the litterbox as if we had just put it down.
I miss him every day and John has been having anxiety dreams about him every other night. I just miss him.

I'm on to your game

There are several jobs that I've applied to that are just PERFECT for me. Some have turned me down and some haven't replied to me. I've called the non-repliers to ask if they got my resume, cover letter, etc. I just called one organization where I've spoken to the hiring manager before. Here's a rough transcript.
Me: Good afternoon! Is so and so there?
Receptionist: Yes m'am. May I ask who's calling?
Me: Stewart lastname.
Receptionist: Thank you. Please hold while I transfer the call.
**small pause**
I go straight into voicemail.

I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE. I have been a receptionist. Oh, you're avoiding me? Expect me to come by the office. For real.

Caturday

John, Mike and I went to check out some places that did kitten adoptions on Saturday afternoon. We first went to the county shelter, which has only charges $60 for cats but doesn't do FIV testing. What's up with that? We went to PetSmart to see what organizations had kittens for adoption and there were some young cats, but no kittens. We then went to Wescott Acres, where Cujo and Bodhi used to go to daycare and where we've boarded the dogs and Odin before. They have an actual cat rescue now (when we were looking to adopt 2 years ago and eventually, fortunately got Odin we were interested in getting kittens from Wescott Acres but at that point they only housed cats/ kittens from another rescue organization that was over capacity and that organization totally dragged their feet on our application.) so hopefully we won't be in paperwork limbo like we were before. We decided to only get a kitten from Wescott Acres because we want to support them (they're totally awesome) and the staff and volunteers there know us, so we know that they would only call us if a kitten who would fit with Cujo and Bodhi came in.
John and I discussed it and we aren't getting a kitten to band-aid the hole that Odin's loss has left. The house definitely feels empty without a cat. We liked being cat owners and want another high energy cat who will have fun with two energetic doggie playmates.

Not a winning combination

High gravity beer and emo music are not my friends tonight. The only thing keeping me from digging up Odin's body and opening his eye and holding him is the sub-freezing temps.

I'm out on the sofa because John is sleep talking and calling out "Come here! Don't take him! Sugar, don't take him! Come here!" while rapidly patting his thigh. I don't know how Sugar (presumably Allie's dog) fits into the equation but he's obviously talking about Odin.

The right thing and the easy thing are so rarely the same.

That was horrible.

My biggest fear, since Odin became sick, was that he would die alone and uncomfortable. We took him to the vet tonight to have him put down and requested to be there when the sedative was administered. His liver was so far gone that his blood wasn't clotting and two vet techs and the vet couldn't get an IV in him, so the vet had to kill him by sticking the medicine directly in his heart and we couldn't be around to see that. He was bleeding so badly that they wrapped him in two towels.
His burial was what I wanted, though. This is so gross. I'm sorry. He was still warm and pliant so we let him sleep nice and wrapped up in a little box and he is deep in the ground. I didn't ever want to hold him when he was cold and stiff, or really anything that wasn't nice hot cat body temperature. I kissed his little dead head so much.

Last night with Odin

I'm going to miss this beautiful eye so much.

"Good night, sweet prince. And flocks of angels sing thee to thy rest." - Horatio in William Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act V Scene ii.

"To sleep, perchance to dream: - aye, there's the rub. For in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause." Hamlet in William Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act III Scene i.

I didn't intend for both of these quotes to be from Shakespeare or Hamlet, but they seem the most fitting.

It's eerie. You can recognize firsts: first house, first kiss, first day of school. It's rare to know when something will be the last: last date before you break up, last time you see someone, last time you go to a store. This is Odin's last night.