Tag Archives: pregnancy

Rolling toward the finish

Biking to lunch at 37 weeks

I hit the 37 week mark on Friday and breathed a huge sigh of relief.  From here on out, I am within the window for a home birth 🙂  Despite general increasing discomfort for me, the more time baby spends growing inside, the better, but it’s nice to know that if baby decided to come today, we could go ahead as planned with the birth at home.  (If I had gone into labor prior to 37 weeks, that would have been automatic cause to head to the hospital.)

I spent a good portion of Friday and Saturday doing some serious nesting, though, as with the kitchen, my cleaning efforts on the apartment as a whole seem to degrade quickly.  Oh well.  In general, things are pretty well set for baby’s arrival.

On Sunday, I helped Matthew as he showcased our garden in the Sustainable Backyard Tour.  He did an amazing job, giving inspiring tours to the more than 50 people who visited our garden over the course of the afternoon.  More on the garden to come later.

The consequences of eating watermelon seeds

It should be illegal to sell watermelon without some kind of warning label.

WARNING: Consumption of watermelon seeds may cause extreme abdominal swelling and numerous other side effects.

Baby prep — Freezer meals

Making freezer meals to have on hand for the postpartum period was one of our homework assignments for Naturally Prepared (our childbirth class).

Ironically, we didn’t get around to any freezer meals until the last night of class, when Matthew started a huge pot of ribollita (i.e., Tuscan bread soup, recipe here) that finished cooking just in time for us to leave for class without getting to eat any.  We ate some for lunch the next day, and froze at least two meals-worth.

Apparently, that jump started things, because two nights later, we made a batch of Snobby Joes for dinner, and froze the leftovers.

Still to Come
Our instructor (who just so happens to be Greek) shared her falafel recipe, which apparently freezes well, so that is on our “to make and freeze” list.  Most veggie burgers also freeze well, and I’ve been scoping out a few new recipes from 101 Cookbooks:

We’ve talked about making spanakopita, which freezes well, but it’s a bit labor and time intensive — we’ll have to see whether or not that happens.  If we make it, I want to try a version with Swiss chard instead of spinach, as we have tons of chard coming in from the garden at the moment.

I’d love more freezer-friendly vegetarian ideas — please share!

Right back where I started from

Saltine crackers, nice noodles, and lots of bonding time with the couch.  35 weeks is looking a lot like 7 weeks, though I suspect it’s not entirely pregnancy related.  Rather than nausea, I’ve been experiencing lots of GI cramping, so I’m guessing I picked up some kind of stomach bug at some point last weekend (I have a couple of suspicions as to the source — let’s just say that buffets and salad bars are notorious sources of food poisoning).

My normal healthy, high fiber diet keeps my GI tract in pretty good shape.  I like to think that things move through so quickly that the microbes that might normally create stomach problems never have a chance to get established 🙂

But whatever I have now is established and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.  Matthew’s pushing for a doctor’s visit, and I finally agreed to call on Monday if I’m not feeling better by then.  If I break my promise, I have to give him my first-born child 😉

We have zee sheet

If you walked through our backyard yesterday afternoon, you would have seen a pretty set of blue patterned sheets drying rapidly on the line.

To justify driving the car to a Le Leche League meeting yesterday morning, I tossed in a couple of bags of clothing and home goods that were waiting to be donated and swung by Goodwill after the meeting.  The stop provided the perfect opportunity to look for a spare set of old sheets and some old towels — supplies for our home birth.

Other than being a bit threadbare, the sheets are really quite lovely, and one of the four “old” towels I bought there is nicer than some of the towels in our current regular rotation.

Between those purchases (yay for thrift stores!), and the arrival of our “home birth kit,” we are almost set.  The home birth kit contains all of the disposable supplies for the birth.  I knew that when I ordered it but was still rather horrified when I opened the box and saw all of the [soon-to-be] trash.  However, it is a relatively small box, and Matthew reassured me that it will be massively less waste compared to an average hospital birth.

In other green baby prep news, I received a cloth diaper donation from a friend.  While we will most likely still need more in the way of diapers, I want to hold off somewhat and see how the whole Elimination Communication/Diaper-free Baby thing works before going out and buying a bunch of new or used cloth diapers.

While cloth diapering is certainly better than disposable, it is not without environmental costs itself, so I would like to have an idea of the number of diapers we will need to avoid excess, especially if we’re buying new.