Friday, August 25, 2006

Good Heavens!

So, last night I suddenly realized that I was in week 35. I had been very happy with week 33. I was ready to hang with 33 for several more weeks. 33 and I, we're like that. In the early 30's, the pregnancy books were clearly at a loss for what to tell you. It was all summed up as, you know that stuff that sort of sucked last week? Well, this week it will suck slightly more. I am now wandering into the parts of the books where they begin to discuss things like how to tell if you're in labor and begin issuing dire warnings about packing bags and such. They all seem to also include a section about what to do if you wind up delivering at work. I'm not clear who these women are who manage to sail through the first 12 hours of labor and suddenly look up from a pleasant IM chat only to realize the baby is crowning. Nor am I clear why these women cart various pregnancy books with them to work. However, the gist seems to be that birth is messy so they offer various strategies for saving the office furniture and that you should not cut the cord.

We took our hospital tour last night. You could tell that I was the one who worked in early intervention as I was the only one asking detailed questions about level of NICU care available and wanting to know exactly how long it takes to get from our hospital to the one with the Level 3 care. There are definite advantages to delivering a small, regional hospital but a part of me longs for impersonality, hordes of residents, and incomprehensible layouts if it means my baby never will ride in an ambulance to get to the NICU. I keep telling myself that the chances that my baby will need that sort of care are infinitesimal, but we can add that to the list of irrational ideas that I can't shake, which includes the idea that my baby will be sitting on a rock in the wilderness (or at least the cow pasture out behind the hospital) until I personally have the baby in my arms. Ah, motherhood...

We are in the process of getting water. The town engineer, in what I suspect was divine intervention, apparently failed to realize that we didn't have an easement until the water guys had already laid the pipe. So, it looks like we will have water late next week (I sincerely hope since I'm waiting on the water to wash the baby stuff which needs to happen before I can pack the bag and the books are really freaking me out about the lack of bag packing thus far). But, we will have to pay for a survey which will wind up being rather expensive. Apparently, there is quite the tangle over the road and which parcels which of it goes with. Once they have figured out who owns the part of the road that the town used as an easement, we will have to convince that person to sign off on the easement. We're a little worried that it will wind up being the crazy guy on our street but the fact remains that the pipes are there so, he won't gain much by not agreeing to sign the paper. We're hoping that he will demand that we buy a couple of loads of gravel (he's a former ER doctor turned bulldozer/dumptruck operator...we don't get it either) so that he can regravel the road or something like that.

In news of the weird, my mother-in-law is completely convinced that Penny is going to drag the baby out of the cradle while the baby is sleeping. Motivation for Penny to decide to do this is still unknown and the fact that Penny is still fairly afraid of the cradle (or anything that rocks- the glider is highly worrisome for her as well we haven't put batteries in the swing yet but expect that to be quite the event) doesn't seem to mitigate her concern.

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