Suzy Q Homemaker

You know, I kind of regret not having more (nice) belly shots during my pregnancies.  I never got my belly cast in plaster or had a magical blessing way ceremony where my stretch marks were painted with henna.  I didn’t make a placenta print.  In fact, I have a couple really horrible photos of me pregnant with Timothy from a few weeks before delivery and of me about six hours before delivery.  While I am writing this post, I’m considering posting them, but I don’t want to frighten you or make you wish you could UNSEE them.

Did I want any of these things?  Maybe.  I guess I just didn’t have enough hippie mom friends to invite over.  And it’s not like I could ask some random women from church.  “Hey do you want to come paint my stomach?  It could be fun!”  Honestly, I don’t know what happens in a blessing way ceremony.  I’ve heard OF them, but haven’t done any research otherwise.

Belly casting was something I considered in my early pregnancy but didn’t give another thought to until after the birth.  Obviously, it was too late by then.  I really don’t have anywhere where I could have hung a gigantic plaster replica of my belly, anyway.  I’m not saying “gigantic” to exaggerate.  I was HUGE.  Hey, I’m 5’3″ and my uterus was literally falling through the tear in my abdominal wall.

We weren’t really sure what we wanted to do with the placenta.  Since we had a home birth with Timothy, it was a little detail that we needed to take care of.  Obviously we couldn’t just toss it in the trash.  We have raccoons that come onto our front porch every night when Jamie doesn’t actually take the trash out TO the trash can.  I certainly didn’t want them to eat my body part.  I thought about getting it encapsulated and even had instructions to do so.  The burden of that fell to Jamie, though, and I think he just didn’t want to have to do it.  I’m terrible about taking my regular vitamins anyway, so remembering to take pills full of my ground-up placenta could easily have gone by the wayside.

In the end, we buried the placenta and planted a ginkgo tree on top.  It was most normal and practical thing to do at the time.  Jamie was uncomfortable with making a piece of art from my bloody placenta, so placenta prints were out.  I did get to look at it, though, and my midwife showed me where I had a slight previa that had gone completely undiagnosed.  See there!  Even with the ultrasounds, I had a complication that no one knew about.

So did you do anything special to memorialize your pregnancy and birth?  Did you do anything super crunchy like eat your placenta or make art work out of it?

You know you want to see these awful photos of me.  So, here you go.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

[View with PicLens]

One of the hardest things for me to do during pregnancy and breastfeeding is to eat right.  In a perfect world, I would cook every meal.  I would use fresh, homegrown produce and organic ingredients.  I would eat a balanced diet throughout the day, totally eliminate artificial ingredients, HFCS, and still have time to shave my legs, mop the kitchen, and fold five loads of laundry every day.

Oh man.  I just made myself laugh out loud. Read more…

Perhaps I can entice this baby to come out with these knitted goodies.  Come on baby!  I’m ready!

Sorry to report that we are still not in labor.  I’ve had some contractions, but not anything regular or even uncomfortable for that matter.  I’m usually pretty chill during early labor anyway, so unless I get “serious” with the contractions, no alarms will be sounded or phone calls made.

Too bad we don’t live near Atlanta where you can get a labor-inducing eggplant parmesan!  Luckily for us, they post the recipe on the website.  Guess what I’m having for dinner tomorrow?  We’d have it tonight, but it’s Wednesday and we have church.

So, while I sit here and wait for labor to start, you guys head over to my scrapbooking blog and join the Mystery Host blog party.  There are a couple giveaways going on and the chance to earn some awesome Creative Memories host rewards.

I’m getting down to the wire here.  I wish I could say that I’m in labor RIGHT NOW, so I won’t be posting for a day or two (maybe).

Thing is, with gestational diabetes, there are risks that I’m not willing to take.  My OB has “taken the liberty” of scheduling a hospital induction.  And my midwife (the one I’m seeing on the sly so I can have a Top Secret Homebirth (shhhh)), agrees that we should take any measure we can right now to get this show on the road.

I’ve been taking Evening Primrose Oil for the past couple weeks.  Then I started some homeopathic remedies on Sunday.  I’m also walking around with a makeshift maternity belt so I can get the baby into a better position.  I don’t think I mentioned that I have diastasis, which causes the baby to turn “sunny side up” and NOT put pressure on my cervix.

Who knew this would end up being so complicated?

Anyway, I’m going in for a “stretch & sweep” tomorrow.

Send me all your best labor-inducing vibes, gentle readers.  I really hate that we have to intervene like we do, but it really does need to be done.  And I’d rather not have to do the hospital induction.  Been there, done that, don’t want to do it again, thank you very much.