bleh

Uncomfortable. Can't sit. Can't lay down. Everything gives me heartburn. My attention span is getting shorter by the day. Cranky. People annoy me.

It's hard to think or write in complete thoughts and sentences these days. Days that go a little something like this: *Alarm goes off at 7:30. Despite essentially being awake since 5 a.m. and the by now excruciating hip pain, stay in bed until about 8. Go to the bathroom. Guzzle a tall glass of water. Straighten up the living room from the night before, which included two to three hours of watching t.v. in as many different positions with as many different blankets and pillows. Open blinds and curtains. Make the bed. Decide which of three high-fiber cereals to have this morning, along with half a banana that will hopefully keep fingers from swelling into little sausages. Check e-mail. Surf the Internet for about an hour. Do the dishes. (This is tricky lately due to my enlarged abdomen. I stand in a slightly forward subtle squat position, just able to reach the faucet and twist from dirty dish to sink to drying rack. My lower back aches after 15 minutes.) Take a shower. Enjoy the sensation of hot water on my back for a few minutes before the shower curtain liner starts to billow inward, making it difficult to maneuver my belly in what is already the world's smallest tub. Scrub lower half of body in shifts, resting and catching breath in between. Try to wash feet. Repeat strategy during dry and lotion cycles. Put on "daytime comfy" clothes. Make lunch (it's 11). Finish getting ready and head out to run errands/interview pediatrician/go to a doctor's appointment/meet with single, childless friend. After three hours, manage to check one task off to-do list. Go home. Have snack while checking e-mail. Begin working on something on the computer but lay down for a nap instead after about a half-hour. Fall asleep for two hours, rolling over first time because my back hurts, second time because my hip hurts. Wake up to Baby G's hiccups. Check e-mail. Have dinner. Wash dishes...again. Settle in for primetime t.v. Take two or three tums. Perform yoga stretches and breathing during the 10 o'clock news. Go to bed around 11. Sleep soundly for about an hour and a half to two hours. Get up to go to the bathroom. Curse bedroom furniture as I waddle past and into it. Fall back asleep but wake up every half-hour thereafter to rotate. Wake up around 5 a.m. to go to the bathroom again. Have some water. Go back to bed but stay awake thinking about stuff. Scold cat for jumping into bassinet. Stay awake worrying about how cats will take to baby and vice versa. Eventually doze off. Begin again from * and repeat for about 13 more days.

How anybody works right up until their due date is beyond me. Besides going to work in sweatpants, between naps at my desk, I'd surely be snapping at my co-workers for no good reason. So I guess I shouldn't complain. And I do have good days, when I don't need an afternoon nap and I manage to get several things done. I was starting to feel impatient, reading about all these women on the message boards having their babies early, but then I read a little article about elective early inductions in the latest issue of Fit Pregnancy. Not surprisingly, turns out it's not such a great idea to induce before 39 weeks. I had no idea so many women were given the choice. I'm happy to let Baby G start his journey south when he's good and ready, so long as that doesn't take another 3-4 weeks. And at that point, induction won't really be elective.