Bed Rest Days 15 & 16

Day 15 - July 20, 2014
34 Weeks 1 Day Pregnant
41 days until Due Date

Pop quiz hot shot: What's the fastest way to enrage an extremely pregnant woman?  Answer: Crank up the temperature to 99+ degrees and force her to sit in a house that has no central AC, cross breeze, or tree shade to speak of for the entire duration of the day. Thanks universe - totally appreciate this heat wave.

Basically, I am cranky. So cranky. The heat cranks up all of my symptoms to a 12. My heartburn gets worse, I swell uncontrollably, and with the 5 pound space heater strapped to my stomach, there is no chance of cooling off once I start sweating. My body has also decided that it's allergic to my sweat, or hair follicles, or something, and I get this recurring heat rash under my arms that feels like I had a too-aggressive acid peel.

On Friday, day 15 of 21, midst my heat rage, I didn't accomplish very much. I:

• Thought about the fact that my whole team was on a booze cruise in San Francisco Bay without me. I love a booze cruise. I have missed every single social event since I started at Box due to pregnancy. It's not even Fear of Missing Out at this point, it's just Expectation of Missing Out. Lame.
• Started my maternity leave process. One would think I'd be on top of this. But it's confusing, and I'm easily frustrated right now, and I have been avoiding it like the plague. I'll be covered by three separate sources - Federal Leave, State Disability, and Box Benefits, which is administered by a third party company, and I am just overwhelmed by the paperwork.
• Made the ill advised decision to watch part of that twilight movie on TV with the vampire birth scene. In summary: young Bella is knocked up by her vampire husband Edward, and no one knew this was possible. Her vampire baby is sucking the life out of her from the inside, and the only thing that helps her feel stronger is drinking human blood. She wastes away to nothing (and I even googled how they did the makeup for this, because it was pretty good) and then the baby breaks her in half whilst trying to escape and then they save her by turning her into a vampire after she expels the vampire baby. Watching this was a poor decision. The birth class birth videos were already traumatizing enough. But based on how I've been feeling, this vampire baby scenario doesn't seem that far off.
• Cleansed my mental palate with a little Hunger Games marathon. Yeah, yeah - kids fighting to the death is not uplifting. But I love Katniss and I always will, and I harbor a secret belief that I'm a bad ass like her. My old boss told me that in his mental casting of the Hunger Games, I was Katniss, and it was basically the greatest compliment anyone has ever given me.
• Harry and I are watching Orphan Black. Holy. Schnikes. No spoilers for anyone, but we saw an episode involving a tail. And I don't think we'll ever be the same. For those who haven't watched it - it's awesome! And Season 1 is free streaming on Amazon Prime.

 Bonus Dog Pics:

 Day 16 - July 21, 2014
34 Weeks 2 Day Pregnant
40 days until Due Date

Still pregnant! This whole cycle of going to a routine check up, seeing a doctor's face looking slightly wide eyed and/or panicked, being sent to the hospital for "rescue" treatment, followed by several days of internal panic and then... nothing - it's getting a little old.

This is the third cycle of the process. Don't get me wrong - I'm glad that baby is still safely in my tummy and getting stronger every day. But it's getting really mentally tough to care about anything when we have been riding this roller coaster for a full year. I joked with Harrison yesterday that "it's going to be just hilarious when I go over my due date after all this," and he was in agreement - at this point that would NOT be funny. We have been on high alert for so long that we just aren't able to concentrate on much else.

I guess this is why you have family. My whole family has been tag teaming our prep for the baby, and my mom and sister came yesterday to help clean out the baby's room. We:

• Cleaned out the closet and got a huge load of stuff to go to goodwill.
• We finally transferred our files to the file boxes I purchased like.... 10 weeks ago.  One of Harrison's favorite stories about me is the time that I bought a filing cabinet from Ikea, assembled the middle drawer upside down in a non-reversible way, and lived with the filing cabinet sans middle-drawer for like 5 years. I believe that when it happened, he took a picture and sent it to all his friends to show off the household prowess of his live in girlfriend. This was before camera phones were prevalent, so this took a lot of effort. Well, the open-concept filing cabinet is no more. Huge milestone.
• Put away and sorted baby clothes. Ahh! We have a single outfit that will fit a baby under seven pounds, because we laughed about how big this guy would be. If he does come early - we may be making some quick trips to baby Gap from the hospital.
• I know my sister loves me, because she went to the pharmacy and bought me a pack of depends for postpartum use (all the internets are doing it). My hospital bag is just about packed!  Just waiting on the rubber flip flops and to throw in some clothes for Harry.
• Annie used her Rainman-like organizational skills to clean out and organize my crafts stockpile. I'm going to make her come back and do my whole closet.
• Harry and I were too hot to cook, too hot to be hungry, and too hot to be interested in much, so we ordered pizza and stayed up a bit late watching Orphan Black. Exciting life.