T-1 month!

Next week I will be 36 weeks into my pregnancy - which means that I only have one more month to go! I've decided, after much prayer, that once I get to 37 weeks (when the baby is fully developed) that I will use everything in God's disposal to help move this pregnancy along. I will eat avocados, I will drink aloe vera juice and cod liver oil, I will have wild and crazy sex, and I will do exotic and challenging yoga poses to help open up my pelvis and encourage Teddy to give a good kick to my uterus so that we can get this party started.

Okay, I'm actually just kidding but I am really over this pregnancy thing. As I look back over the past eight months, I thank God for blessing me with a non-complicated blessed pregnancy. I suspect that God, knowing me better than I know myself, knew that the changing physicality of my body would be enough for me to wrap my mind around and blessed me with a little baby that would take it easy on me.

So I'm grateful to God and I don't want to complain... yet I'm wondering how much more my body can take. I can't imagine how much larger my belly can grow and I'm not quite sure how much longer my spirit can go without a drink.

At times my nerves get so bad that I think I'm about to cry for no reason, but luckily I tell myself that its my hormones before I am inclined to kick Pat and Capone out of the house.

I deep clean my house about 2-3 times a week and I don't know if Capone knows that if he pees one more time on my fern plant that I am going to take him to get euthanized. I've shampooed the carpet in our apartment four times in the past two weeks and like clock-work, by day three Capone will come wagging his tail in front of me, pause, pee in my face, and run into his cage knowing that he has destroyed my sense of a bacteria-free home. He just doesn't know how close he is to becoming a bar of doggie soap.

Although I can't stop cleaning, I have stopped cooking and if Pat doesn't feel like feeding us then I have no problem fixing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for the night. In fact, I LOVE TOASTED PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY SANDWICHES now and would kinda prefer if that's all I ate until the baby came regardless of what anyone thinks about it!

My pregnancy brain has made me a complete fool. I forget everything! On several occasions when I've gone to the doctor and had to pee in a cup, I go into the bathroom, pee in the toilet and don't realize until I wash my hands and see the plastic cup on the mirror that I've forgotten to do the most simple task that a pregnant woman could be asked to do.

I'm still losing my car in the parking lot every time I go shopping and now my vocabulary is suffering so bad that in meetings I commonly refer to sayings like, " I guess the...uhm, I guess, the doggies have come home to bark." My current state of affairs is just sad.

I know I sound crazy. I'm sleep deprived, big as an elephant, and unphotographable. I'm just tired so pray that I make it through the rest of this pregnancy in one piece.

Just a vacancy...Sleep don't live here anymore...

I don't sleep anymore.

Well, I guess to be more accurate, I only sleep for about 4-5 hours a night. While this may not seem like a big deal to many of my "night owl" friends, you gotta understand that prior to becoming pregnant, I slept for 8-9 hours a night religiously...since I was about 18 years old.

Initially, I could still sleep in the bed. I would just have to climb over Pat 3-5 times a night to go to the bathroom.

Then, I couldn't lie down directly on my back while in the bed, so I had to use 6-7 pillows to prop me up so I could sleep directly sitting up. I would turn the air conditioner down to 50 degrees and on "high"...and my previously warm and cozy bedroom would turn into "THE NEST" as my husband began to refer to it.

Getting out of the bed for pee breaks became especially cumbersome, so I would end up throwing several pillows on Patrick's head while he slept, and would have to roll over his body, and waddle to the bathroom as fast as I could when Teddy would decide to kick my bladder 3-4 times throughout the night.

Now, I've just given up on the bed. I rest in my one-person lounge chair with my body pillow, my king size pillow, and my fluffy 10 year old head pillow every night. And while it's not perfect setup for a sound night of sleep, at least I can ensure that I will at least be able to get to the bathroom a little faster without waking Pat and Capone up.

But when my stomach and bladder aren't keeping me awake...my mind steps in as the next culprit. I've began to have recurring nightmares that the baby will come and I loose him on bus stops and inside of cabs or random cars, or that I go into labor while I'm sleep and after delivering the baby I freak out because the only place that he can sleep is in Capone's bed.

I don't know what else to say...in fact, I'm writing this very entry because I can't sleep. I would wake my husband up to give me a dose of some "sleep juice" but I'm too afraid that I'd kill him from the weight of my stomach.

Oh well, I guess hot chocolate will have to do for now...

Goodbye Second Trimester, Hello Finish Line!

Praise Jesus, from whom all blessings flow!

I can't believe I made it to my last trimester! How was 2010 everyone? Was it a great year? Since my pregnancy will have gone from January - October, I feel like when I look back on things, 2010 will seem like a dream to me, a dream that was filled with lots of hot turkey sandwiches, plenty of salty chips, gassy nights, and swollen tits. Yet, most importantly, a year where my beautiful sweet son grew from a mustard seed to a watermelon, until he decides to make his big debut in October!

As I enter into my last trimester, I feel like going outside to sing "WOOP, THERE IT IS!" to all my neighbors in my building. While I'm sure that soon enough the anxiety of being a new parent will begin to set in, for now, I am just proud of myself for making it through something that has been both physically and mentally taxing.

It seems like just yesterday when I saw the first sonogram of my little Teddy Graham. With no identifiable body parts outside of his head, tummy, arms, and feet -- there me and Pat saw him floating on top of his lake of amniotic fluid.

Now, 8 months later, I imagine him completely formed, swimming in my belly, kicking his umbilical cord when he doesn't like his meal, and snapping his fingers when we're listening to a song that he particularly approves of.

So my days now are filled with anticipation. I still have so much to do before he arrives but my heart is already completely open to receive him with more love than I have ever known.

Pregnancy Survival Kit

First and foremost, despite all of my jive talking, I recognize that I have had a wonderful, blessed, and low drama pregnancy. The changes that my body have endured are likely not substantially different from 99% of women across the world who have given birth and for that I am grateful.

Yet...let the record show that out of all of the women that I have known to "cross these burning sands" into motherhood -- I'm a little ticked off that none of them have kept it real and said,

"Girrrrl -- pregnancy is beautiful but it will make your feet grow a shoe size, make your breast feel like heavy african watermelons, make you loose your a**, take away your sex drive, give you gas, give you heartburn, give you carpal tunnel syndrome, give you vaginal headaches, give you charlie horsesin the middle of the night, make you forget where you live, drive you to consider murdering people, will leave you out of breath even after just thinking about exercising, and in the toughest scenarios will give you diabetes, high blood pressure, low blood pressure, anemia, constipation, hemorroids, or an urinary tract infection."

So while I celebrate the wonder and beauty of life growing inside of me, I also want to say that carrying a child is the beginning of a life of sacrifice that you cant fathom until you go through it. And while sacrifice is certainly the name of the game for 9 months -- there are somethings that every woman can do to equip herself to get through this time with your sanity, spirit, and body in sound shape.

1.) Pregnancy massages - with all of the aches, stretching, and growing that your body will endure, you owe it to yourself to have some big, muscular, Black/White/asian/latino/eskimo man to stand over your body and rub those knots out of you. Carrying a baby plus a set of overweight twins (your breasts), and swollen feet will take a toil on your body in ways that you can't imagine -- so trust me, this is certainly a treat that you don't want to skip.

My recommendation: BLISS SPA at the W: Great Expectations Massage every three months

2.) A body pillow - if you sleep in anything larger than a twin size bed then you have the space for a body pillow. Around your 6 month of pregnancy, your growing tummy will make it difficult to get comfortable sleeping. And because you can only sleep in certain ways to preserve optimal blood flow to your baby, you will begin to have many sleep deprived nights. But with a body pillow, you will be able to support the four most problematic areas of your body(your back, in between your legs, under your stomach, and your neck) at one time without having to take all of the other pillows from your husband.

My recommendation: The Boppy Body Pillow

3.) Sports Bras - Trust me...Underwires and large breasts + fluid retention DO NOT mix.

My recommendation: Any sport bra made of breathable material...Stinky sweaty boobs are not cute!

4.) TUMS - Gas and Indigestion are REAL.

My recommendation: Chewables! They will begin to taste like candy after a while.

5.) Comfortable Shoes - With swollen and growing feet and increasing weight on your legs...a good pair of comfortable shoes are a must.

My recommendation: Shoes that will allow your growing feet to stretch and breath.

6.) A favorite meal to give you something to look forward to at work.

My suggestions: A chicken TBM melt from COSI (add the onions) or a melted Turkey and Cheese Sandwich on an Everything Bagel from Au Bon Pain (add the lettuce, onions, honey and dijon mustard). Plus salt and vinegar chips. Plus Lemonade and Peach Ice Tea (mixed). Plus chocolate chip cookies. Thanks.

7.) A mind distracting hobby - Writing, Reading, and Reality TV watching were my activities of choice during the work week.

8.) A scripture to rebuke the hormone devils that will surely push you close to homocide.

My recommedation: Romans 8: 28-39

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, whohave been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

31 What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:
"For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.