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I seem to have hit some sort of writer’s block lately. I’ve had a recurrent headache for over a week now (it goes away for a few hours, then comes back), so I’m sure that isn’t helping me as far as being creative. It’s hard to think of something funny or interesting to write about when all I want to do is take a couple of tylenol and lie down.

Oh, and please don’t remind me that headaches are a warning sign of pre-eclampsia. I know that, but my blood pressure is fine - spectacular, even - so I don’t think that’s the problem. I think it’s just my history of headaches, only I can’t take the good drugs for fear of harming Baby Girl somehow. So instead, I suffer. Woe is me.

So, here’s a regular ol’ boring pregnancy update, because that’s about the best I can come up with:

* I am apparently now officially in my third trimester. Of course, this depends on your definition of trimesters, since one book seems to think that the third begins at 24 weeks, and others say 26 or even 28 weeks. Whatever. I’m in my 27th week, so we’re calling it my third trimester. Officially.

* Besides the headaches, I also seem to have a chronic case of runny nose, which I hear is common in pregnancy. And might I add? Annoying as all get out.

* If I seem particularly cranky, it’s probably because I’m not sleeping well. Every evening, I get a horrible case of dry mouth, so I drink a lot of water. Then I’m awake every two hours because Baby Girl seems to think that my bladder is her own personal soccer ball. I’ve tried spacing it out and drinking more water consistently throughout the day, to see if that prevents me from being so thirsty at night, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference.

I have apparently reached the phase where my feelings about pregnancy and impending-motherhood can best be summed up with the word “ambivalent.” Yes, I know that we’re going to have a pweshus widdle bay-beee, and we’ll fall in love with her the minute that she arrives in the world, but that feels like it’s ages away in the future. Like it’s some sort of nebulous dreamworld that I can’t quite reach or even see clearly.

So for now, this whole pregnancy thing just gets on my nerves. I’m tired of feeling winded every time I walk up a flight of stairs, I’m irritated that my favorite cozy winter sweaters don’t fit, I hate that it’s so difficult to squat down and pet one of the cats when they rub against my legs for attention, and I would really, really love to drink something with vodka in it.

Even things that I think I should love irritate me, like when the baby gets hiccups. I know a lot of women think it’s fantastic, and it makes them feel more connected to this little life that’s growing inside them. But to me, baby hiccups feel like involuntary eyelid twitches. They don’t hurt, but they’re impossible to ignore, and there isn’t really anything you can do about them.

Of course, the fact that I feel like telling the baby, “Enough already, chill out down there,” makes me worry that I must not be as maternal as I once thought I was. And then all of those fears about being a horrible mother creep in. Which is strange, because being a bad mother was never something that I even considered before I got pregnant. I have an awesome mom, so I figured that all I had to do was repeat what she did, and everything would be great. That seems easy enough, right?

And at the same time, I have a very dear friend who’s about to start undergoing fertility testing because she and her husband have been trying to get pregnant for quite a while with no success, and that makes me feel guilty for my little cloud of negativity. Like I should just shut up and be grateful to be pregnant at all, when so many other people would trade places with me in a heartbeat. But I also know that all of this stems from sleep-deprivation and headaches, and it will (hopefully) all pass in the next couple of weeks.

In the meantime, please accept my sincerest apologies for this and all future b*tching and moaning.

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Ok, that only took ALL FREAKIN’ DAY LONG. Yeesh. (I’m not exaggerating. I started working on it around noon, and I just finished at 10 p.m. I took a break for dinner, but that’s about it.)

If any of you clicked over here and saw that really annoying blank white page today, I’m sorry. I should be all done now, though.

Moral of the story: having Fridays off is not necessarily a good thing, because even though I have very noble intentions of getting out of the house and running errands, I tend to waste my day off getting sucked into some silly project. And all because I wanted the porn-related comment spam to finally stop, already.

And now, I think I’m going to go do some yoga before my hips decide to revolt after sitting my big pregnant butt in a really uncomfortable chair for the last ten hours. Either that or I’m going to go crawl in bed until sometime around midday tomorrow. I can’t decide.

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I’ve been having some blog maintenance issues lately, so I’m going to try to upgrade the version of WordPress that I’m using. This should be totally invisible to all of you.

Which, of course, means that I will probably crash my website to pieces and spend the rest of my weekend trying to rebuild it. Wish me luck.

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I really have almost nothing to write about this week. I worry that my blog content is getting too baby-focused lately, and I don’t want to bore you guys with stupid little details, like:

* I don’t have gestational diabetes. Which, I suppose, means that I drank that nasty orange syrup for nothing. Hmph.

* I had my first experience with baby hiccups (little spasms every few seconds), and I thought they were cool, although I imagine that the novelty will wear off quickly when they start happening at 3 a.m.

Aaaand, that’s about it. See? Boring.

Random funny: A friend sent me this link about bad baby names today, which I’ve seen before - heck, I’ve probably linked to it here before. But the site has been updated since the last time I saw it, so I was crying from laughing again. This person takes legitimate baby names, either ones that she digs up on baby-naming bulletin board sites, or names that people send her, and then she makes her own snarky comments under them. Example:

I once met a lady named Rodana. I think she runs a successful internet business.

In her spare time she destroys Tokyo.

You get the idea. I’m pretty sure that none of our top 10 names are on that site, which is a relief. (We aren’t 100% settled on a name yet, but most of our top choices are a bit on the traditional side. I don’t think we’ll be having a little McKynzy or Kayleigh on our hands anytime soon.) But man, reading through that site, you just have to wonder about some of these people. The parents, I mean, not the kids. You just feel sorry for the kids.

Other stuff: There are a few things happening at work that I could talk about (office moves, new bosses, etc.), but I’ve sort of hit the point where I realize that I’m only going to be there for another five weeks, so… meh. There isn’t much about my job that really phases me at this point. It’s fine, no big complaints, blah blah yawn.

The one weird thing about work is that I’m pretty sure this is the first time in my adult life that I know exactly when my job is ending (very soon), and I’m not frantically scrambling around, updating my resume and searching for a new job before the current one ends. That’s kind of a weird feeling.

And who knows, next summer I might be scrambling to get the resume up and out again. I have no idea how that’ll play out, and I’m still determined to not make any decisions about it now. Dave and I will figure it all out when the time comes. (I hope.)

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Friday was my 24-week OB appointment. Which is a little off since I’m actually 25 weeks pregnant, but I don’t think anyone is really keeping track of those minor technicalities except me. This was the appointment where I had to drink the nasty glucose stuff ahead of time to test for gestational diabetes. Mmm, yummy orange syrup. Gag. It was quite gross, and I won’t know the results of the test until sometime next week.

And then, just in case that glucose stuff didn’t make me quite nauseated enough, I also got a flu shot. Because apparently it’s very, very bad for pregnant women to get the flu. And I understand that, but my arm (where I got the shot) has been aching and my stomach has been upset for the past two days, so I’m not sure if it was really worth it.

Also noteworthy: at my monthly weigh-in, I found out that I’ve only gained two pounds since my last appointment. That means that I’ve gained a grand total of 12.5 pounds since I first got pregnant. Now, call me kooky, but doesn’t it look like I’m hauling around a bit more than twelve measly pounds? It certainly feels like it. Every time I have to walk up the stairs at our house and it completely winds me, it feels more like I’m carrying an extra fifty.

Not that I’m complaining. Twelve pounds is good. And I noticed recently that I seem to have less cellulite on my butt and thighs, so maybe those prenatal workout DVD’s are doing some good after all. Although honestly, it’s sort of hard to tell if my legs are really getting more toned, or if it just looks like it when compared to my ginormous belly. Who knows, it could all be an optical illusion.

Other weekend stuff: Saturday night, I went to dinner with some of my girl friends, which was great. Other than Kris, it had been weeks (if not longer) since I’d seen any of them, so it was really good to sit around a table for a few hours and catch up. And they’re such a funny group, I realized as I left the restaurant that my face ached from laughing so much. I love it when that happens.

Sunday is kind of our non-official lazy day, so Dave and I hit the grocery store, and I’m trying out a new crock pot recipe. I’ve also cleaned the kitchen, cleaned our bathroom, and done a few loads of laundry, so I’m feeling pretty good about the state of our house overall.

Oh, and today I learned something about Dave that I didn’t already know: apparently he is even more scared of snakes than I am. We found a little garter snake in our front hall, which I’m guessing one of the cats brought inside. The poor little guy was moving very slowly, it seemed like he had been injured. Anyway, Dave and I both sort of freaked out over it, and then I was the one who ended up using a curtain rod (random, I know, but it was nearby) to shoo the snake into a box, so I could carry it outside.

It’s just funny because Dave is the guy who will pick up the biggest, hairiest, nastiest spider in his bare hands to carry it outside rather than kill it. But a little garter snake - which I’m pretty sure doesn’t even have fangs - totally squicks him out. Go figure.

Oh well, as long as he keeps taking care of the mice and other critters that the cats bring inside, he’s still my hero.

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I’m not exactly sure how to describe my first hypnobirthing class, or how odd the whole thing struck me once we got there. I was so sure that I was going to be really into this - because, after all (and I don’t know if I’ve ever talked about this on the blog before), hypnosis is what cured me of panic attacks when I was in my mid-20’s. So I know from first-hand experience that it can work, at least as a method of relaxation. But hypnobirthing is very different than anything I had ever experienced before.

For one, Dave had a project that was due this morning, so he was a bit cranky about losing two hours’ worth of work time, which I understand. I felt bad about dragging him away from work when he really needed to be concentrating on finishing his presentation. And when he’s jittery and anxious, it tends to rub off on me, so I don’t think either one of us was exactly in the mode to take deep, cleansing breaths and try to relax. (In fact, 20 minutes into it, I remembered what my mom used to do for us in church when we were little, and I gave him a pen and a piece of paper so he could doodle. Worked like a charm.)

Other than my mindset, though, there were just some things about the class that I didn’t understand:
* Women who talk about wanting to have natural childbirth because they want “a positive birth experience.” This makes no sense to me. I know that life is supposed to be all about the journey and not the destination, but in the case of childbirth, isn’t it the end result that counts? When it’s all said and done, if you have a healthy baby in your arms, wasn’t that a “positive” experience? Does it really matter how the baby got here, whether it was with or without pain medication, or maybe even (gasp, god forbid) via C-section?

* The renaming of all terminology that has to do with childbirth. For example, instead of labor, you say “birthing”; contractions are now called “surges,” etc. I guess the idea is to trick your brain into thinking about childbirth with new names that don’t necessarily have painful associations, but I don’t know if I buy it. However, one exception that I fully embrace: they have renamed the mucous plug, which I have always thought was the most disgusting term ever. So from now on, I shall call it a “uterine seal” just like the other hypnobirthers. Doesn’t that sound nicer?

* I got the distinct impression that there is an underlying mistrust of doctors, nurses, and the medical profession in general. I understand their argument: that women have been having babies since the beginning of time, so why does it have to be treated like a medical condition when it’s just something natural that women’s bodies know how to do? And I totally get that. But isn’t there also a reason why (in this country at least) you almost never hear phrases like “died in childbirth” anymore? Aren’t medical advances the reason why both maternal and infant mortality rates have dropped so much in the last hundred years or so?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not criticizing women who choose to have a home birth. I think that if you live within a reasonable commute of a hospital (in case of emergencies) and you have some sort of a backup “Plan B,” more power to you. I just don’t understand why, in order to have the “natural birth experience” that some women want, there has to be a feeling of suspicion raised toward those in the medical community. I know that doesn’t apply to everyone who wants a natural or home birth, it was just a vibe I got from a few people (including the instructor), and for some reason it really bothered me.

Oh, and if there were other women in the room who were planning to combine hypnobirthing with pain medication, no one admitted to it. Not that I did either, everyone in the room seemed very against the idea of using drugs of any kind. The whole thing felt very judgmental, and about halfway through it, I was feeling like I wanted to cry because clearly, these women were all stronger souls than I. And I’m pretty sure that developing an inferiority complex was not the point of the class.

So. I guess that about sums it up. I’m calling it one very expensive class (as opposed to five not-so-expensive classes), and we won’t be going back. I got the book and a couple of relaxation CD’s, and I’ll go through those to see what I can take from them, and what I should leave behind. I do think there’s some value to the concept of hypnobirthing, but as a whole, I don’t think it’s very “me.”

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Tomorrow evening is my first hypnobirthing class. (Btw, that link is worth clicking just to check out their source - an obstetrician named Dick-Read? Are they joking??)

Generally, hypnobirthing takes the place of pain medication during childbirth. I’m not planning to use it for that, I’m thinking of it more as a technique to manage the fear of childbirth - which, for me, is huge - in combination with drugs. I’m actually a very big fan of artificial substances. Heck, if they could put vodka in my IV, I’d be all for it.

Both my obstetrician and Dave seem to think that the hypnobirthing classes aren’t really necessary. My OB says that she’s “pretty liberal” with the pain medication, so if I’m feeling discomfort during labor, all I have to do is speak up and they’ll give me more drugs. Which is great, I admit. (Have I mentioned that I love my OB? Because I do. She’s fantastic.) Dave is against the idea of the classes because, as my “birthing partner,” he has to go to the classes with me, and he’s a little cranky about the idea of taking two hours out of his day for the next five Wednesdays. I think he’s also afraid that they’re going to make him do something embarassing, even though I’ve explained that he’ll probably just be expected to rub my back and act supportive.

Honestly, the only reason why I decided to go ahead with the classes, even after my OB said they aren’t necessary, is because I am absolutely terrified of giving birth. And the fear has only gotten worse since I got pregnant, it’s almost an irrational phobia at this point. I think about how uncomfortable I am during a regular routine pap smear, and then try to multiply that times a thousand, and… good god. How do women do this?

I’m almost wishing for just one teeny-tiny complication - nothing that could endanger me or the baby in any way - but something that’s just enough to warrant a C-section. I’ve had abdominal surgery before, I’m not scared of that at all. See? Like I said, irrational.

So, since the main point of hypnobirthing is to calm the mother and ease her fears and anxieties, it makes sense (to me) to go ahead with the classes. Even though I’m pretty sure that I’m going against their basic philosophy by planning to combine the relaxation techniques with pain medication. Oh well, we can’t all be perfect.

From my point of view, the main problem with this hypnobirthing class is that the first one is tomorrow from 7 to 9 p.m., which means I’ll miss the season finale of “Project Runway.” I’m planning to DVR it, of course, I’ll just have to be very careful not to read any spoilers on Thursday until I’ve had a chance to catch up.

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