Pre-natal class with the daddies

Yesterday the boys finally got to come and sit with us on our paper-thin exercise mats on the hardwood (emphasis on HARD) floor for two hours. The first thing they all did was take a pillow, or a hunk of wall to lean up against-- their fussing cracked me up while the rest of the bellies looked so comfortable (except for me) just sitting cross-legged in the middle of their mats.

The happiest dad in the room was, you guessed it, Sugar's. When it was his turn to introduce himself, while the others were like "yeah, like my name is Fred and well, that's about it..." he said his name, that this was his first child and that he was very curious to know EVERYTHING there was to learn in this class. And boy, was he ever. He asked LOTS of questions, and took notes. So did the dad next to us. BTW, the wife, whose name is MITA and is in one of the pictures of when we went to visit the hospital (girl on the left in the first picture) immediately recognized Sweetie by HIS NOSE. She doesn't remember ever meeting him, but realized that they were probably (and are) distant cousins because of his unmistakable honker.

So sweetie got the lo-down on water breaking, back massaging, bathing the b.o.j., etc. I asked him afterwards what his favorite part of the class was, and his answer was "EVERYTHING!"

It's Official: Sweetie is Nesting

...which makes one of us.

The clothes line is full of teeny tiny socks with ducks on them, hats, bibs, onesies, an I heart NY  t-shirt, a St. Louis Zoo shirt, two hooded towels, and a little blanket.

There are brand new stacking plastic boxes full of what looks to me from here as baby gear, and from what I understood over dinner (out!), Sweetie has auto-cadded Sugar's room (my office?!) and input three different IKEA furniture solutions for me to choose from.  There is also a new load of hand-me-down baby styuff from his sister's house stacked neatly inside the crib awaiting inspection.

He did this all today, after 3pm.

Well, Sugar, we're getting close, baby! Just give us another couple of weeks and we may even have a place for you to sleep...

Prognosis: Tired

I'm drinking my Polase as I write this hoping that it's a potassium/magnesium deficiency since I'm already taking LOTS of IRON, which seemed to really help last week. I guess now that we're getting down to the wire it's about time I started feeling and bahaving like a pregnant person. Therefore I am waddling like a duck, getting winded after about 3 minutes of walking, holding my belly up from the bottom in the evenings when I get off my lazy butt to retrieve something from the kitchen (can of tuna, hot water with lemon, or bittersweet chocolate, my three loves of the moment), and, the number one tell-tale sign that you are really, indeedy super pregnant: buckling the MATERNITY OVERALLS which have been let out to their maximum capacity on the sides (thank you, Elena for the hand-me-down, these bibs are on their third pregnancy).

Now I have to go to my doctor and get the paperwork for my last (hopefully) set of blood tests to do next week. The thought of walking downstairs to the bus makes me feel tired, until I remember that I don't have any more bus tickets and therefore have to walk a good three blocks to buy some new ones.

As for Sugar, she's great! Hiccuping in my lower abdomen several times a day, sticking her rump under my ribs just to say hi, that sort of thing. Then she does this little trick where she sticks her elbow out or something pointy and I can see it and I say to Sweety, hey check out Sugar's elbow, or touch this right here, or feel this, and when he does she has cleverly tucked it back in to make me look like a jerk! Then of course only I can hear her bubbly laugh in my lower belly...I've decided not to say anything anymore, and if someone sees the belly jump, well then they got a glimpse of the sugarbaby. Otherwise I just keep it to myself. The world will get enough of her later, on the outside, I'm sure.

We're off to our friend Nadia's birthday party in Treviso this weekend. She's turning 40. I am in charge of games, so I have to get on that today while I'm waiting for my very busy doctor to do my paperwork if he doesn't close like five minutes before I get there (it's happened before).

More later!

Tomorrow is Pre-natal class 3

The second went so well I can't remember what the hell we even talked about. All I can tell you is that we had to sit on the floor on an exercise mat for two hours and I took a pillow from the big pile of pillows and took turns using it under my butt (when sitting) and under my belly when laying on my side because I couldn't take sitting on my butt anymore. Raquel says I should have done yoga or something, that I have lousy flexibility. I don't know how the other girls could do it. Even sitting here to type this the bones in my butt are telling me to get up and walk around.

Man! Have I got the HEARTBURN!

In case you wanted to know...

The Bellies go on a Field Trip!

Every third Saturday of the month, the children's hospital in Trieste, Burlo, lets bellies and their partners from my district (distretto 3) come and take a look at where we will be laboring and giving birth. We had a really nice doctor give us the tour. Two out of four rooms have big tubs in them if you want to labor in the water (birthing happens outside the tubs). The staff seems pretty cool and very flexible about how things get done. They give you suggestions, but you do what you need to do: stand up, squat, tub it, lie on your side, whatever. They let us ask whatever we wanted and they gave us good, honest answers to to what we wanted to know. 

LIKE WHAT THE DEAL IS WITH THE MOON! 

According to this doctor, you need to look at the day of conception and what kind of change in the moon it's closest to, and count the next ten changes that are exactly like that and that's when you'll probably give birth. If you conceive near a full moon, count ten of them and then you have it. Sugar's conception was right before the waxing moon (that's when it gets bigger, right?), so 10 of those and we're at October 30, which means Sugar could very well turn out to be a Halloween baby (which means we'll have to get him or her one of these). I was hoping for the previous full moon, which would be October 23. We'll see how it all works out. 

I got a couple of the bellies to pose for the field trip picture. A few of the bellies left right after the tour and missed their photo op. 

In the first two we may even be in order of due date. The first girl is due on October 22, then me on October 26, then, I think the next girl is October 28, then November 1st. 

We are the three foreign gals in the prenatal class. The girl on the left is from Moscow, then me, then Raquel from Australia. 

Prenatal class for suckers

Before eating sushi (the grand event) with Raqel yesterday, we went to a baby course at Pre-Natal, which is one of those baby stores that sells everything you could possibly ever need (for real) or think you need pre and post birth. I was expecting it to be like a tupperware party where they immediately give you an order form and shake you down to buy self-warming baby bottles and the like, but it wasn't like that at all. They did make you fill out a form to get their card, which is like your standard grocery store card for discounts and things, but I suppose that's normal. The woman who made me fill out the form couldn't BELIEVE that I checked the box that said not to send me or email me any of their info or sales stuff. She was so surprised that she took a minute to explain to me what I was going to be missing out on (spam and junk mail).

Obviously the Pre-natal marketing people are MUCH smarter than I thought. They actually have an intelligent and personable woman with some training (as in University classes, not just Pre-natal training)  who goes around to all of their stores teaching a 2 hour class on various things like safety during baby transport, baby massage, baby psychology, renting breast pumps, etc. It was pretty interesting.

But 2 hours is a long time to sit without a potty break, and there was no good way to get up in the middle of the talk and go find the bathroom, so the 15 or so bellies were getting fidgety towards the end, then when it was finally over, we all made a bee-line for the (one) bathroom downstairs.

By the time we finished (I actually opted to go at the place we had lunch just because I felt the need to get out of there after Raqel, the last person in line, was done) the store closed for lunch, so I don't think any of the girls bought anything.

But the experience was pretty good, so I'm sure Pre-natal will get its money's worth anyway when we return with our husbands to buy all of those creams and thermal bags and baby backpacks and all the other stuff we learned that we won't be able to live without...