Tuesday, May 24, 2011

When it Comes to Mothering, I'm a Slacker

Clearly, I am a slacker. My last post was over a month ago. I honestly do think about stuff to write about all the time, it's actually sitting down and writing the posts that seems to get away from me.

Most recently my slacker ways were pointed out by my children. SB and QT are very excited about soon having a baby brother (no, we do not know the sex yet but they are convinced it will be a little boy) and so they are constantly wanting to look at pictures of themselves from when they were babies. When SB was about to turn three I made a photo book for him of pictures from the first year of his life. My intention was to make one each year, and of course, to do the same for QT. But, being the incredible slacker that I am, I only ever made the one. SB is obsessed with looking at it and can describe exactly what is going on in each picture. Poor QT just stands there and looks at me asking where her book is. Ugh!

So, what's a slacker mom to do? Get busy making QT a photo book, obviously. Easier said than done though as when I started to put it together I realized that I don't have nearly as many photos of her as I have of SB from his first year. In fact, I don't have a single photo of her first Easter and although I have pictures from her baptism they are all of before or after the mass and none of her actually being baptized. I'm sure that somewhere, someone else in my family has pictures of the actual baptism, and that they probably provided those to me but do you think I have any idea where "real" photos would be? I deal much better in electronic media.

On the baby front things are progressing. I am measuring a week ahead but feel as though it's more like four or five weeks ahead. I can feel a lot of pressure when I walk which is uncomfortable but manageable. I'm 29 weeks and realized this morning that I only have 8 or 9 weeks to go. How time flies. All of my blood work has come back good and at this point I'll be seeing my ob/gyn more frequently. He is trying to decide how closely he wants to monitor the baby as we move forward and I am trying to decide how I want to handle scheduling the induction. Right now I am leaning towards having an amnio done at 37 weeks to check for lung maturity and scheduling the induction as soon as the test show that the lungs are mature. However, I'm scared that the procedure will put me into labor and then if the lungs aren't mature we could be facing another NICU experience and, if I go into labor on my own it sort of defeats the whole purpose of having an induction which is to allow me time to be off of the blood thinners and be able to get an epidural. Decisions, decisions.

I have at least one more visit to see Dr. Coulam. She will do more blood work as well as an ultrasound in another two weeks to check in and see how the baby is doing. I'm excited to get to see the baby again.

Since I am running out of time and it's been basically proven that I am a slacker, here are a few things I need to get done pre-baby:

1. Figure out how we are fitting three car seats into our cars.
2. Schedule a tour of the birthing center as we are trying out a new hospital (not my choice).
3. Make test runs to said new hospital as it is further away from our home and had we tried to go there when QT was born I would have given birth to her in the car.
4. Clean out the bassinet so the baby has somewhere to sleep.
5. Buy new bottles so the baby has something to eat out of.
6. Potty train QT.

I'm certain there is far more but those seem to be the most pressing. In composing the list I have finally come up with an area which I haven't been slacking in - buying clothes for the baby! I have accumulated quite a stockpile of cute clothes which can be worn by a boy or a girl. Having said that, I have to add another thing to the list:

7. Drag old baby clothes up from the basement, sort through them for what we may need and what should be given away and then wash all of it.............or maybe that can wait until after we have the baby and I know which set of clothes I need, boy or girl. Being a slacker, I don't want to have to sort through both sets!