Sorry for the lengthy delay. I've been super busy this past week, so will try to condense. The biggest happening, I suppose, was our first childbirth class! When we first arrived, I took a scan of the other mamas and wondered if I had jumped the gun on starting a course, as everyone in there looked well ahead of me in belly size. During our introductions, though, it was all I could do to not sit there with my mouth gaped open, because these girls were due in September- one even in October! There are exactly two girls who are due before me- one by only 5 days- and she is
huge. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I at least am starting to understand why everyone feels the need to remark on how relatively small I am, because these girls in this class are absolutely massive. What's odd, though, is I feel pretty proportionate relative to the two dozen or so girls in my prenatal yoga class. One of whom commented that I had the cutest, roundest little belly she'd ever seen. This compliment is at least doubly meaningful coming from another preggo. I think, at least. Updates pics of the super cute belly coming later today or tomorrow.
Anyway, so the class so far is okay. So far it's mostly the anatomy and basic stages of labor, which Gerard and I kinda get already. Our main interest in the class was its supposed influence of natural childbirth methods and techniques for a medication-free birth. Which we didn't really address on the first class, but I suppose we'll get to. The teacher hasn't impressed me yet. She seems kinda flaky, and doesn't address people's questions directly. For example, one poor guy in the class asked at least 5 times, in pretty direct ways, what constituted the definition of 'labor' when she quoted that first labors take an average of 15 hours, since most women feel some sort of contractions for days leading up to the actual birth- so when did she consider the "starting point" for this 15 hour time frame? When the contractions have a consistent schedule, when a woman starts dilating or effacing, what? Anyway, the woman's answers basically just continued to say that every woman was different, this was an average, blah blah. Things any jackass knows, and not at all what he was asking. She also spoke at length about how we chose this hospital to give birth at (and repeated this wording several times) when the guy next to me and I both chirped that insurance had a hell of a lot more to do with it than preference. Which she also didn't seem to quite follow. Anyway, I'm trying to give her the benefit of the doubt and go to the next class with an open mind about her abilities and qualifications...
Otherwise in our lives, we're in the process of converting our study into a nursery/storage area. With possible emphasis on the storage. Right now it's a quarter nursery, quarter storage, quarter study and quarter mess. But I have high hopes. A simultaneous project is trying to decrease the temperature in the room, as it's too hot for boo boo. But with no AC, no windows in the room, and no heating vents (to exhaust a portable AC), our options are somewhat limited. Fun stuff, guys. Fun stuff.
