Last post before the hospital. Tomorrow morning, we take Gigi to day care, then proceed to the place I didn't really want to go: the operating room. I'm bummed about having to have a repeat C-section, but as long as Baby comes out healthy that's all that matters. I tell myself that it's not important how the child is born; how the child is raised is what really counts. I only get to give birth to the child once, but I get 18 years to screw up his foundations, ha ha.

Anyway, I'm running out of time when I'm allowed to eat (nothing after midnight!) and it's past my bedtime. Thanks to you all for your love and support. I may not be able to post from the hospital (the Island has a lot of things, but 'net access away from home is not plentiful), so it will be a few days before I'm back on line. Peace.

It's Official: surgery scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday. So much for my Florida football theory. Of course, factor in that the Patriots play this evening... still time to slip in under the wire!

Still no major news, sorry. Gigi is taking a nap, her Daddy is dissecting the Florida-Florida State game over the phone with his dad, and Mom and I just took a tea break after clearing stuff out of the garage. We discovered several neglected boxes, whose contents were infested by mildew and molds that were no doubt on the verge of developing the wheel and representative democracy. Euw ick.

I'm glad that the FLA-FSU game is on, because once it's over I'm free to give birth. You see, I have a theory: Gigi was two weeks late, I am convinced, because she knew Daddy was a Red Sox fan and she had the good sense to wait until the ALCS and World Series were over before making her debut. Likewise, I speculated early on that "Halley" here would wait until FLA/FSU had their matchup. Daddy roots for Florida State; his Daddy is a Gator. (Paging Dr. Freud...) So even though Florida State is having a really bad season, Halley has similar sensibilities as his big sister, and will not deprive his Daddy of a chance to exchange trash talk with Grampy. (Did I mention that my father-in-law is also a Yankee fan?)

It's the third quarter, and Florida is up 14 points. I'm going to chug down some more evening primrose oil and lift some heavy things. Maybe a newborn will cheer up my husband after his beloved Seminoles get their butts handed to them.

Went to the hospital this morning for pre-admission stuff. Nothing else to report. Didn't sleep much last night - too much tossing and turning (internally, that is). Naptime now. Ooooooog.

Happy Thanksgiving! Not much to report from The Island. They don't observe the North American holiday here - which shouldn't come as a surprise, but for some reason not everyone gets that. Think about it for a minute: anywhere they still have pictures of a European monarch on the currency, they're unlikely to celebrate the survival of colonies founded by people who ran away from Europe.

My OB visit was uneventful. I lost the two pounds I had gained last week, and Baby's heart rate is in the 130s. My blood pressure is still on the low end of normal range. Tomorrow I report to the hospital for some advance bloodwork and a consultation with the anaesthesiologist. Nice to have that chat ahead of time: "Hi, so you're going to insert a needle and catheter into my spinal column? Okay! And please don't give me any Percocet, that stuff gives me nightmares; you'll still remember this on Monday, right?"

In the meantime, my mother is laundering or vacuuming anything that will hold still long enough. She rearranged the living room furniture today. This baby had better show up soon, before Mom rebuilds the garage and resurfaces the roof. Thank God hurricane season is almost over, otherwise she'd probably be putting plywood over the windows "just in case". I am NOT complaining; just observing.

Nope, still no labor. Back to the OB tomorrow.

Epiphany du jour: I was leaning over to heft a laundry basket onto my hip, when the wait-I'm-pregnant! reflex kicked in. "You're not supposed to lift anything heavy," I said to myself. Then I said, "Hey, self, what's the worst that can happen?" Hmmm...we are now safely past Due Date. If my water breaks or I go into labor because I picked up a heavy basket, what's the big deal? So I picked up the basket without incident.
When I shared this little insight with my husband over dinner, his eyes bugged out of his head. "You did what?" Again, I asked, what's the worst that can happen?
"You throw your back out and have to spend the rest of your pregnancy in bed?!?!?"
All five and half remaining days, maximum?
"You fall and break a hip?"
I'm pregnant, I do not have osteoporosis. And I would have landed on the carpet. Not a likely scenario.
Worst case: he would have had to put the rest of the laundry away. I have faith that he could have handled that.

Today's Update: Mom got her filling redone (and an up-close and personal look at Island Time in action). I'm still home. It's still raining. I am drinking raspberry leaf tea in the hopes of getting something moving before Monday.

Stopped by the office today to drop off some paperwork (doctor's certificate for medical leave - as if I could be faking it to get maternity leave?!?!) and The Boss asked for my help: he'd misplaced his password for some of the accounting software, and could he use mine?

Possible responses:

a) what, you don't have it on a sticky note on the back of your badge with your safe combination?
b) I'm pregnant, not brain-damaged.
c) Sure, what's professional liability insurance for anyway?
d) [go rent the Terminator if you can't think of the snappy answer that goes here...I'm trying to keep this PG-13.]

Yeah, I don't think so. He was hoping to avoid loss of face by not having to admit to the techies that he couldn't remember his user ID and password. As if they don't get a million identical requests per month. As if you could lose face with people who have little to no regard for users anyway. As if you couldn't just e-mail them with "I must have typed something in wrong, I'm locked out, can you please reset my password?" As if they give a flying flip.

Nope, not missing the office at all.

Made it through one more day. Tomorrow's plans, should the Ineffable One allow it, are to take Mom to the dentist for a replacement filling. We called the "Emergency on-call Dentist" service for visitors to the island on Friday, and got an appointment for Tuesday. Island Time strikes again.

Fortunately, Mom says she is not in any pain, she just has to cut her food real small (or eat lots of soft things, like ice cream and cinnamon rolls). Of course, Mom would not likely admit to being in pain unless she had a noticable compound fracture; she'd rather be rearranging my garage or moving bookcases. You know the gag about how many Jewish mothers it takes to screw in a lightbulb (None, dahling, I'll just sit here in the dark...)? Yeah, you get the idea.

Due Date Today. It started off raining and crummy. For the past two nights, I haven't fallen asleep until after 2 a.m. For all my complaining about feeling like I have a bowling ball resting on my bladder, I am more upset at the fates for my other-brother-Darryl and his wife, who are not having a baby in April after all, it turns out. My husband's best friend is in the hospital, several hundred miles away, with a blood clot in his lung.
And yet, we are grateful.
Probably the only thing that kept me from going completely ballistic navigating island traffic in the rain this morning was having read this, courtesy of a reference from other-brother-Darryl's website, before leaving the house.
The sun is out now. I'm going to attempt to remain upright for a while longer, and maybe read something that doesn't have cartoon illustrations or a rhyme scheme.
There is nothing quite like the gift of perspective.

Quick! Before I lose the "lunatic cravings" excuse, I totally have to make these...

Nope, still not in labor. Tomorrow is officially Due Date. Considering that Gigi was two weeks late and a compulsory C-section (showed no signs of any interest in coming out) I'm a bit skeptical about the Due Date notion. In order to avoid a repeat of the two weeks of melodrama we went through two years ago, we've got an OR booked for a week from tomorrow, just in case. So no more than a week left of pregnancy, one way or the other.

Not much else going on here. I had another "Duck Day" - spent mostly horizontal and semiconscious. The highlight was a walk with my mom down to the gas station so she could spend nearly eight bucks on a Sunday New York Times for the crosswords. Woo hoo, I left the house! For my next amazing feat, I may attempt some shopping tomorrow. Or maybe tackle my mending pile. Ah, the hedonism of maternity leave before the baby actually shows up.

Made it through one more day without going into labor. I have also made through the day without a nap, which is even more remarkable.
Instead of a nap, I went to a matinee of the new Bond movie with my husband. It didn't suck, but it has several moments of lameness which are unworthy of the Bond franchise. (I am a purist when it comes to Bond movies. Yes, that means Connery is the best one. Don't even attempt to argue with me.) Judi Dench is brilliant. I will give Daniel Craig some credit: he's better than George Lazenby and Timothy Dalton. And I enjoyed this more than, oh, say, License To Kill. And it was a movie in a theatre, and this time the projector didn't eat the film. So as cinematic experiences go, this was probably the high point of the last several months.
Now if they could somehow, for the next movie, pair up Judi Dench's "M" with either Connery or Brosnan... Yeah, dream on, Mugs.

Today, we visited the maternity ward. JUST VISITING!!! We took the tour and saw the kind of room I'll be in for labor, assuming that "Halley" decides to take the conventional path - rather than the Roman road - out.
The only thing I really wish now is that I'd read this article before we went. I want to know if I can get an IV of Valrhona hooked up.

Blame it on the switch to NewBlogger Beta. That's my plan. Apologies to anyone who was having trouble loading the blog. The transition appears to have been successful, though.

The timing of this switchover really stinks, though. If I hadn't been able to adapt to the new system, and couldn't post, I'd start getting frantic e-mails from folks on the mainland wondering about the baby.

Oh yeah, that happens anyway. Carry on.

Since I can't figure out a way to put this on my Amazon Wish List, it goes here. I promise to share.

OB visit went just fine. I will spare you gory details, let it suffice to say that everything is within normal ranges for this period of gestation. I've gained two pounds, my blood pressure is fine, and Halley's heart rate was in the 150's. Tomorrow, we tour the maternity ward. I go back to the doctor in another week, unless we see her sooner in the delivery room.
No more than 11 days left to be pregnant. "Due date" in four days.

Technical difficulties? My sister-in-law wrote to say that the blog had been down for two days. It's been looking okay to me, so I don't know what the problem may be. Blogger.com can be tetchy sometimes. When in doubt, hit "refresh" or its equivalent on your browser.

God Loves Me. How much does God love me? Here's my next birthday present.

Nope, still not in labor. Going to the OB tomorrow. Due date is still five days away.

Edible Duct Tape. I'm getting that patented right now.
I know that demographically, I'm supposed to be a stressed-out Guilty Mom for whatever reason society is inflicting on us this week. (See the link at the lower right to Judith Warner's "Perfect Madness", currently on my bedside table.) But I will not go gentle into that good night. I'm very particular about my guilt.
You see, I have never liked being typecast. In college, I would walk up to people wearing "Question Authority" pins and say, "Oh yeah, why should I?" So when society is telling me on every magazine cover that as a working mother I'm supposed to be stewing in guilt all the time, I tell society to go [Cheney] itself.
I can't avoid guilt altogether. I was raised by a preternatural worrier and an ex-Catholic in a suburb with a large Jewish population. It was like fluoride in the water, I'm sure. But I can control what I feel guilty about and to what degree. I think of myself as a guilt connoisseur.
Which leads me, logically, to edible duct tape. Work with me here:
Most, but not all, school days, I send my daughter to pre-pre-school with a lovingly packed lunch including a classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The bread is usually whole-wheat, never white; the peanut butter is my childhood brand; and for variety, I switch jelly flavors throughout the week.
"Oh my Goddess," I hear the Mommy Police Neighborhood Watch committee moan, "You mean it's not organic? And a steady diet of peanut butter?"
Yes, and I'll tell you why: because whenever I pack her a sandwich with lunchmeat and cheese, Gigi will take it apart, eat the filling, and leave most of the bread. And when bread costs anywhere between 3 and 7 bucks for a one-pound loaf - if you want anything with any nutritional value - I will be damned if I'm gonna let her take it to school every day and NOT eat it. So my choice is to give something that sticks together, or find a way to keep the filling in her sandwiches. To the guilt-floggers, I say either hook me up with a venture capitalist and some food scientists, or get out of my face.

Grandma arrived safely, and all is right with the world. Today was my "I Mean It This Time, I'm Really Out Of Here" Last Day. Had to go in and do one last check with the Alpha Geek and transfer some accounting stuff blah blah blah but I am now officially stick-a-fork-in-me DONE.
Mom and I celebrated over ginger beer at the brew pub at the bottom of the hill in our neighborhood. Then we came home, Mom cleaned a few things and I read the first chapter of the new Bob Woodward book before zonking out. When I got up, Daddy and Grandma had already gone to get Gigi from school. I'd feel guilty about zonking out while everyone else is being busy if I weren't due in less than a week.
I might feel a twinge of guilt for being on leave for three months in an island paradise. But not likely. On the one hand, the company spent a lot of money to get me here and to pay my rent and utlities, so if I'm not actually working, do I look like some sort of freeloader? On the other hand, it's only three months -- one fifth of what I took with Gigi -- and half of that is unpaid. Island Paradise is an expensive place. And it's not as though I'm going to be sitting on my butt eating bonbons and reading novels at the beach. I'm going to be tending to an infant 24-7, recovering from birth, and wrangling a toddler. Is it an office? No. But is it "work"? Oh yes.
And in 12 more weeks, I'm probably going to be just as tired and back at the office full time. Oh, I can hardly wait... What does it say about me, that I haven't even given birth and I'm already dreading going back to work?

Feeling Better Now. When I posted earlier, I was a wee bit tired and cranky, so I kept it short. But now, upon reflection, I've had a very good day today, despite having gone into the office.

Yes, I know, most people who go on leave actually stay away from work. I've been slipping back in after hours, walking through a difficult systems upgrade with our new Alpha Geek, who is having an extra challenge with our proprietary software. Fortunately, it only took us an hour to work out the glitches today. While he was taking care of that, I went through a few more stray in-box items. Going in on the weekends really stinks, but I'll tell you, I've gotten more done in the off-hours than I had in the entire previous week. It's amazing how much more productive I am without the constant parade of people past my desk.

Yesterday I had what's known in my family as a "Duck Day". The phenomenon gets its name from a vacation my father and stepmom took in Duck, North Carolina a while back. Both Dad and Stepmom are very hard-working professionals who frequently work hours that would probably kill me. But they both love what they do so one can hardly fault them. Anyway, they got to Duck that afternoon, set down their bags and said to themselves, a nap before dinner would be a nice thing. They woke up 18 hours later.

So I had a Duck Day yesterday. Today, I got up before both husband and toddler, had a luxurious warm shower (lather, rinse, and repeat, whoo hoo), nuked a frozen croissant, and sat on my balcony overlooking the ocean, drinking coffee and reading a book before everyone else got up. It doesn't matter that it was a cloudy day; the view was still very pleasant. And that set me up for a nice productive day getting ready for my mom's visit. Don't worry Mom, I still left you plenty to do. But now your bedroom looks like someplace to sleep, not a warehouse; and the rest of the house doesn't look like a dumpster/laundry hamper.

My sister-in-law keeps telling me that I should be relaxing and revelling in these last few pre-baby days. (And she is wise in the ways of the force: she also has two kids, about two years apart.) Yeah, yeah, I know - but I don't relax well when I'm up to my ribcage in laundry baskets.

And on that note, I'm off to bed. A bed with fresh linens. And one that I don't have to get out of at the crack of dawn tomorrow. Good night, all.

No, I'm not in labor, and I'm not at the hospital. We're now at the stage where, if I don't post to the blog at least every 24 hours, I start getting phone calls.
Nope, still here at home, just very tired. Mom arrives tomorrow. Deep sigh of relief. Once she's here, "Halley" can show anytime. I have a maximum of two weeks left to be pregnant.

OB Update: Visited the obstetrician again today. I've gained two pounds, fundal height is 38 cm, baby's heart rate is 150. The strep swab tests came back negative (that's good, trust me, you don't want to know more.) We're going back in another week, unless Elvis decides to leave the building sooner.
My "last day of work" was pretty uneventful - probably because I've been really tired and sat at my desk staring at the computer like a deer in the headlights.
I'll be perkier next post.

Dropping! Even I noticed it today. My co-workers have been saying for several days now, "You've dropped." But this morning, while I was brushing my teeth, I thought, "Hmmmm...something looks different..." When I got to the office, people kept it up: "WOW! You sure have dropped!" "Are you sure you're not going into labor?" "Good grief, you must be ready to pop!" At first it was cute. Now it's getting on my nerves. I think that the next time someone says something to me, I'll clutch my belly, lean on his or her desk, and moan something about water breaking.
Not that it'll shut anyone up, but I will get a certain visceral satisfaction out of it.
What else did I do today? I went to a rugby match. Having lived Down Under for two years, I absorbed a certain amount of appreciation for the game (and far be it from me to turn down corporate tickets in a tent with free food). Don't ask me to tell you the rules; for that, I'll tell you to ask my sister-in-law, who actually played the game at university. (When people ask me why someone as apparently sensible and bright as she is married my brother, I remind them that she played rugby, and they think, "Ah, head injury, poor dear.")(Just kidding, bro!!!)
But the real advantage of going to a rugby match when you're eight and a half months pregnant is knowing that no one in the crowd will look askance at the Guinness in your hand. Yankees would give you the Stinkeye, or try to have you arrested. Islanders will ask if you want a refill.

Two Weeks To Go. Three days left in the office. Six days till my mom gets here. No more than 21 days left of being pregnant. I'm still trying to grasp the concept that I'm going to have *two* children. There are days when one is enough of a handful. My two-year-old is capable of simple conversation, and that alone blows my mind. How did she get so big so fast? I don't want to lose sight of everything that she accomplishes in the next twelve months because I'm so absorbed in every burp and coo that comes out of the New Kid on the Block.
I'm just going to hook up a pull string in my back and give it a yank every time she starts fussing about all the attention The Baby is getting, so I don't get hoarse repeating, "When YOU were this little, we did all this for you, too..."

For my "Feel Better About Your Parenting Skills" File: This one and this one.
The former I can almost understand on some days.
The latter I will never understand in a million years. Scissors? Try them on yourself next time, Mister. In the meantime, I hope you get a special corner of the prison shower with a lot of slippery bar soap and rusty towel bars.

Maternity Leave Countdown: Six days left in the office. Only one of them is a Monday. Thank the Maker!
In other matters of perspective, it occurs to me that I have no more than 26 days left of being pregnant. You see, Player to Be Named Later is "due" (ha ha ha ha ha) November 20th, but if Elvis doesn't leave the building by the 27th, we're going in after him. I'm not repeating the scenario with Gigi where we waited two very anxious weeks in constant fear of losing her. (That, and I don't want to burn up my limited maternity leave without having an actual infant to take care of...) I'm not eager to have a repeat C-section, but I'd rather do that than wait around.
Besides, I suspect that we won't have to wait very long to see P2BNL. Some of my co-workers, seeing the size of me, didn't think I'd make it past Halloween. The new IT guy - who started this week, Praise Buddha - said he'd noticed that I'd "dropped" between the time he came in for his first interview and today. I think the new office pool is betting whether I make it all the way to next Thursday. Hey, as long as Baby waits until after Grandma arrives, I'm cool.

As Promised, The "Grandparents Special" Post on Gigi's pediatric visit: she is just fine and hunky-dory. Height: 32 1/2 inches; weight: 25 pounds; all vaccinations are up to date. We got her a flu shot, which she really did not appreciate one bit. (Truth be told, she cried like Nancy Kerrigan through most of the visit.) Doc says she's hitting all the right developmental targets, and unless she gets sick, he shouldn't need to check up on her again until her next birthday.
Wow. I'm totally used to this every 3-6 months business. The idea of not having to take her to the doctor is pretty heady. You mean I'm not going to get hauled off by the Bad Mommy Police if I don't take her in for a weight check and another random jab every 12 weeks? Wow. I guess she really isn't a baby anymore.
Of course, by the end of this month, we'll have another wee one who will have to come in for those visits. I don't want to think about the next cycle of immunizations. It's bad enough having to contemplate the notion of circumcision; who wants to think about making her child a pin cushion? Eeeek.