Tag: third trimester

Balance, Pregnancy

Thoughts on Maternity Leave, Before Baby

olivia
Oh the memories. This picture reminds me of the tired excitement of those last weeks… And the walking every isle of Costco for exercise on a rainy February afternoon. Thanks, Husband.
Oh the memories. This picture reminds me of the tired excitement of those last weeks… And the walking every isle of Costco for exercise on a rainy February afternoon. Thanks, Husband.

As friends prepare for maternity leave, I cannot help but reflect on those two short weeks I spent at home before E. arrived. In some ways, they felt like an eternity, while in others they weren’t nearly long enough.

Every pregnancy is different, but here are the things I would go back and tell myself:

1. Don’t agonize over how much time to take from work before your due date. California offers four weeks of pregnancy disability, take the four weeks. I went into prodromal labor (a very long, slow labor) with E. three weeks early and had her 12 days before she was due. Originally, I had planned to work until two weeks before my due date. So glad I didn’t. There would have been no break and I was already exhausted in the classroom when I left.

2. Make your pre-baby maternity leave about you. After the baby is born, you won’t often have the luxury of slow showers, long mornings in bed, etc. Even if you are anxious for that little bundle to arrive, force yourself to spend time to yourself. Get your hair cut, indulge in a massage, do whatever you enjoy on your own.

3. Don’t forget your partner. Go on a couple dates, take long walks together, snuggle up on the couch and watch TV. After baby, you will have to work a lot harder to make those moments happen, (especially when you are also competing for time to yourself for basic things like showering and eating).

4. R-E-L-A-X. Watch TV, snack, and nap without guilt. There will be more than enough to do soon and you don’t know when you will need that burst of energy for labor. Get in every restful moment you can, even if it means sleeping during the day in your recliner in the living room.

5. Stop worrying about whether or not you have every item you need for baby. Believe it or not, Amazon will still be waiting for you with two-day delivery and there will (hopefully) be plenty of people in your life willing to run to the store if you need something sooner. Do have a speedy thermometer, though. That’s one thing you don’t want to have to rush to the store for when you have a sick baby and an advice nurse insisting on a rectal temperature.

6. Eat well. You are about to run a marathon. If you eat crap, you may feel like crap. Fuel up with food that makes you feel good. This may be easier said than done when the only thing that sounds good is a greasy pepperoni pizza, but find a way to complement those cravings with something healthy. Green smoothie, perhaps?

7. Getting antsy? Socialize. Schedule lunch dates with friends who work. Visit other moms with babies. Call your mom.

8. Can’t rest anymore and don’t feel like leaving the house? Start a project. Or three. I worked on a children’s book for E. I made a collage out of shower cards. I prepared intricate meals to keep in the freezer for after she was born. Releasing creative energy helps take the anxiety out of waiting for those contractions to get real.

9. Be willing to say no. I remember turning down a friend’s birthday party and cancelling a girl’s night and feeling really disappointed. In retrospect, I didn’t have the energy for those things and it turns out I was only days away from delivering, (I thought I had weeks left). Listen to your body. If you’re exhausted, don’t go out.

10. Above all, be kind to yourself. Let go of any expectations that you’re supposed to be doing any of the above. If you don’t feel like it, don’t, if you do, do. Sounds simple enough, but those last few weeks of waiting are one of the strangest stretches of life. Everything moves in slow motion. As annoying as it is to hear when all you want is that baby, make the most of it. There will be plenty of (wonderful) time with baby soon enough.

Anything I forgot to mention? What advice do you have for parents about to have their first baby?

Birth, Hopes, Pregnancy

37 Weeks: Almost Time.

olivia

I’m excited for little things, like day trips to Bodega Bay for fish and chips and walks on the beach, baby in her carrier, dogs on their leashes. A drive down the coast to the aquarium in Monterrey, where she’ll see another world underwater. I’m excited for long walks through our neighborhood, first in her stroller, later on a tricycle. Her first Christmas trip to San Francisco with our big, loud family.

I can’t wait to be able to lie on my back again when I sleep, to drink a whole glass of wine or a pint of beer, to go to yoga and bend my body any way I’d like. I can’t wait to move again, in a normal way. I fantasize about putting on my running shoes and running full force down the street, as though I ever liked to run in the first place. I can feel it though, the exhilaration of full exertion, the bounce of a good pair of shoes.

I’m curious about the sensations, the rushes or the pain, depending on who you ask or what you read. I want to know what it feels like. I’m expecting sleepless days and nights, exhaustion beyond anything I can imagine. I’m expecting the hardest thing I ever do, because that is how people describe it.

Mostly, though, I am imagining her in my arms, or beside me in the sleeper next to our bed, or sitting in the swing next to our television, or crawling across our floor with toys strewn everywhere. She is both real and imagined, all there is left to do is wait.

Each day of waiting is a strange balance of rest and preparation, a little writing mixed in for fun. Somehow middle grade fiction is pouring out of my fingers without the promise of enough time to finish before she is here. The change in genre is refreshing, the lower word count a goal I might be able to reach before everything changes. Each non-labor contraction brings it all back home again.

Change is near and I’m excited.

Even the dogs seem to know it is almost time.
Even the dogs seem to know it is almost time.
Pregnancy

36 Weeks: Now is About Now

olivia

Today is exactly four weeks from our due date. According to the hospital, this means we can expect our sweet baby in anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks. Apparently due dates are not very accurate. All this means is whoa, this is really happening!

Yesterday was my last day of work before maternity leave. As I stood and watched two of my coworkers have a dance off to “What Does the Fox Say” in front of the entire school, it hit me that my life is about to change and I am going to miss my work more than I realized. There are things about my job I absolutely love, like the spontaneity and joy manifested by my coworkers, adult and child alike.

Choreographed dance numbers just happen to top my list.

Students who normally show me little affection hugged me yesterday. I ended my afternoon with sweet applause from twenty-nine little sets of hands. My class submitted hundreds of baby names to my back table. My team of teachers decorated the staff room, made the baby personalized onesies, and presented an elaborate table of treats. Gifts appeared on my desk all day.

Every time I said good-bye and got a sad look from a child, I reminded him or her I would be back, a strangely reassuring statement for myself, too. While I am planning to return to work, I also know the future is unpredictable. The coming months will bring a lot of choices. These last few weeks of teaching have been extra hard. I am hopeful my patience is hiding somewhere underneath the aches and hormones of pregnancy.

After all, teaching has become part of my identity over the last four years. Then again, my identity is about to change, and underneath all the layers is also a desire to write, to teach yoga, to… As these thoughts surface, I have to quiet them. Now is not about June or even September. Now is about now, a funny thought given all the hubbub about living in the present. Shouldn’t now always be about the present? Somehow my impending transformation makes this concept more real than ever before.

For me, the coming weeks mean crawling back into the quiet of my mind and finding those spaces of calm so that I can use them both in labor and those first few weeks of parenting. I have everything I need today, a thought that has brought me peace on many occasions in the last few months. Contentment in the moment, how novel. Now if only I can make it last…

A favorite student question, "What are you going to name the baby?" To which I reply, "Not sure, because we want to see her first." Yesterday they decided to take matters into their own hands and help us out.
A favorite student question, “What are you going to name the baby?” To which I reply, “Not sure, because we want to see her first.” Yesterday they decided to take matters into their own hands and help us out.
My team of teachers is amazing. These onesies will keep me laughing through some exhausted newborn days, I am sure.
My team of teachers is amazing. These onesies will keep me laughing through some exhausted newborn days, I am sure.
All the love we have received from students, coworkers, friends, and family has surpassed anything we have ever experienced. It is amazing how people come together to celebrate new life, my heart is truly touched. Now all there is left to do is be present and wait.
All the love we have received from students, coworkers, friends, and family has surpassed anything we have ever experienced. It is amazing how people come together to celebrate new life, my heart is truly touched. Now all there is left to do is be present.
Pregnancy

You Know You are in Your Third Trimester When…

olivia

1. You awaken at 6:45 on Saturday morning to eat pupusas, cabbage salad, salsa, refried beans, and rice because you have just had two back-to-back dreams about eating at two different Mexican restaurants. These are the leftovers from the dinner your husband courageously picked up solo from the El Salvadoran place down the street that shuns gringos and is best visited with a Spanish-speaking wife, (and which was all done so you could sit on the couch in your jammies at 7PM on a Friday and watch reruns of Downton Abbey without moving).

2. Your idea of evening exercise after work sometimes includes eating organic peanut butter cups while rocking side to side on the balance ball because eating and moving somehow tie in the priority book.

3. You find yourself singing non-sensical songs and doing strange-looking dances while making dinner after a long day of work because this is the only way you can stop your shoulders and lower back from hurting and is still more comfortable than sitting on the couch. The bonus, you supply your husband with endless entertainment in your adaptation of familiar song lyrics, even if he has yet to catch the Elaine-style dance moves that accompany them.

4. You start counting yourself in the next week of pregnancy at half-way through the prior week, so that even if today is the first day of week 31, you’ve considered yourself 31 weeks pregnant since Wednesday so the number of remaining weeks left at work seems more manageable.

5. You find yourself the center of attention among small children who do not know you but are now brave enough to ask, “Is there a baby in your belly?” You respond, “What do you think?” because you forget that only older children find your smart-ass humor appealing.

6. You allow people you barely know to touch your belly because they seem so happy when you let them. You also endure countless remarks about how small you look for being (insert number) weeks pregnant, even though you do not feel small and are proud of how much your body has managed to adapt.

7. You catch most people, including the children in your classroom, looking at your belly before your face.

8. Your dogs suddenly think you are the messiah and accompany you wherever you move throughout the house. They also sniff, lick, and use your belly as a pillow.

9. You spend at least an hour a day staring at your belly in order to catch a glimpse of the Lock Ness Monster surfacing across your skin, (affectionately named, of course). You also force anyone in your vicinity on the couch to touch your belly and watch with you, (even close friends who typically avoid hugs).

10. The women in your life have finally started to tell you the truth about late pregnancy and those early post-partum days. Thanks ladies. No, really, I mean it. How else would I know that purchasing a supply of adult diapers is not some kind of cruel joke?

11. It is 7:32 AM, you ate 32 minutes ago, but you have been thinking about what to eat next since you ate that last mouthful of pupusas.

12. You have not blogged in months because the effort required to work, socialize, sleep, eat, educate yourself about babies and childbirth, and exercise makes writing random posts seem trivial compared to researching which diaper pail you really ought to buy and debating whether the bulge on the left side of your stomach is the baby’s head or butt. However, you know you’ll return to the world of writing soon enough, that all these experiences are just adding to the texture of what you will share after this huge transformation unfolds.

Happy Saturday, time to eat my second breakfast.

While you may not get the scope of my belly, this is a typical evening on our couch, three hands on deck in anticipation of kicks: a dog's, mine, and my husband's.
While this picture does not do the size of my belly justice, this is a typical evening on our couch, three hands on deck in anticipation of kicks: a dog’s, mine, and my husband’s.