halloween baby belly

I'm nearing the 31 week mark. The third trimester exhaustion has definitely set in, as well as ligament pain and just plain old tired belly. Just over two months to go. I didn't make a jack-o-lantern face for my belly, but thought it was kind of fun to "dress up" in an orange shirt for halloween. It's not every day that you have a pumpkin belly on halloween.




And this was me a week ago Friday. I feel like little baby boy went through a growth spurt over the last week. I had so many people think I was about two months further along than I actually am. I feel like I look that big, too.

wildlife

There was a MOOSE in our back yard! Those things are HUGE!


This is, btw, not an everyday occurence and has caused much excitement and barking.

27 weeks

The pregnancy focus of the week is incredulity at having three more months to go. Pregnancy time is bizarre. Everybody else marvels at how fast it goes. Pregnancy is an extremely slow time for me.

I really enjoyed this book recently - a loaner from a friend. I think I need to get my own copy. Donna Eden's "Energy Medicine for Women" has a lot of cool pointers in it. I've said before that western medicine is still mystified about the female cycle. The main solutions are birth control pill and surgery, neither of which really address the cause. I guess many pharmaceuticals fall under that category. I'm not anti-western medicine by any means but I do acknowledge its limitations. Eden gives a lot of mini-exercises to do, mostly based in acupuncture, that can help with female symptoms - PMS, difficult periods, pregnancy, menopause.

The connection between the book and the way I experience pregnancy is that Eden writes about having very difficult PMS (though she was fortunate to have easy pregnancies) and how in some ways each month, she receives the gift of needing to go inward - PMS as a spiritual journey so to speak. I'm the opposite - my PMS symptoms are quite manageable (knock on wood) but pregnancy is a test, a huge test, of endurance and patience. So I guess pregnancy is a gift. The obvious is the baby at the end of the journey. The less obvious is the required slowing down, going inward. I'm forced to live each day in a very different way than I would have other wise. Isn't that some sort of spiritual journey?

monsters at bed time

This is either a terrible parenting moment that I'll deeply regret or a genius parenting moment which uses the power of the fairy tale in a magical and effective way.

Gemma (nearly four years old) has been resisting bed time with every ounce of her being. I've once before told her that monsters will come after bed time and check to make sure she's in bed. If she's in bed, they'll leave her alone. She brought the subject up again. She was refusing to change into her pajamas and said "will the monsters come?" I said, "Oh yes. Monsters come and check to make sure you have your pajamas on." (desperate parenting maneuver on my part.) The discussion continued about what the monsters will do, etc, etc. The end of the conversation was this:

Me: "The monsters come after Mommy and Daddy leave your room and they check to make sure that you're in bed and have your pajamas on. If you don't, they will scare you. If you're in bed and have your pajamas on, they leave you alone and go check the next little girl to make sure she's in bed."

My husband comes in the room and Gemma tells him, "Mommy said that monsters will come to make sure I'm in bed and have my pajamas on."

He says, "Oh, I'm sure she didn't say that. There's no monsters."

I said, "Well, um, yeah, I kind of did say that."

Miracle of miracles, Gemma and Oona were in bed by seven o'clock - light out and pajamas on. I'm sure the monsters were both disappointed they couldn't scare them and happy that they were being good little girls.

(And my apologies go out to friends if Gemma tells them that monsters come at bed time. What works for one little girl may completely backfire for another.)