A boring post

I have been lagging in my posting mostly because I’ve been super busy with work, but also because absolutely nothing exciting has happened.  I feel like I’m in a bit of a pregnancy lull, just waiting it out patiently until things pick up a bit.  I also caught a light cold, so I’ve been valiantly fighting it off with lemon tea, throat drops, and sleep.  Can I just say that I miss being able to take drugs - or even Zicam, for heaven’s sake - when things are not going well health-wise?  I know this probably seems contradictory to the fact that I want to labor med-free, but I promise that it all makes sense in my head :)

As promised, husband and I went to our local mom-to-mom sale (way to go, husband, for being one of like three Y chromosomes there!) to pick up really cheap clothes for the baby.  It was a reasonable success, I think!  We spent $100 total, and we got literally dozens of outfits in assorted sizes from true newborn through 6 months.  We still need a few other things (more bibs for drooling, more pants with feet - which seem to be curiously absent from everyone’s collection, although the idea of trying to keep socks on a baby’s feet makes me want to cry), but we’ve got most of the bases covered.  We also got two fuzzy “snowsuits,” although I expect that they’ll both be quite big on her unless she’s huge.  Well, at least she’ll be warm!  The best score of the day was a little hand-knit hat that husband found that looks like an eggplant - ADORABLE.  Here are some photos:

Husband carrying way too many baby clothes in a high school gymnasium.  We got castigated by the checkout lady for buying any "boy" things for a girl baby - rock on, blue dinosaurs!!

A big chunk of the stash, plus a few things from Grandma Judy!

Other than that, I went to an additional third trimester birth class at the hospital that was an unfortunate waste of my time.  I was especially antsy because I was giving a talk later that day for the vet program, and I really wanted to go practice it if I wasn’t going to actually learn anything from the class.  Unfortunately, it ended up being kind of like “Pregnancy for High Schoolers.”  One woman actually asked what an umbilical cord was.  Several questions of this ilk from multiple women made me seriously sad for the state of science education and literacy in this country, since such questions are answered in any basic pregnancy book (including the one they gave us for free at our first appointment) and should have been addressed by a doctor long before the third trimester.  Since I was the only woman in the entire room (not exaggerating!) with a bunch of things already worked out (a birth plan, a pediatrician, etc.), they made me(?!) talk a lot about how I made these choices.  And, might I add, there were a lot of women there who were MUCH further along in their pregnancies than I was.  However, the nurse leading the class covered specific hospital admission procedures and paperwork last - the part I really needed to know - so I stuck it out, but the whole thing just made me really, really sad.

At my next appointment (soon!), I get to get my pertussis and flu vaccinations - husband has taken care of both now, too!  I did a bunch of lit searching and concluded that weeks 30-32 are the best for maternal immunization if you want to maximize antibody transfer efficiency across the placenta.  I am *ready* to become a veritable antibody factory!