Baby Update: Week 36-ish

Aside from the lovely swelling that has reached max capacity in my ankles and feet, everything else is baby cooking as usual. Sleeping just doesn’t happen anymore for reasons I cannot fully explain because I am not up choking on acid reflux or reeling from night terrors and the gravitational pull that I have seems to continue to pull anything and everything into its wake… or at least onto the floor.

Speaking of floor, we completed the two baby classes that I scheduled for us as well, the longest class (six freaking hours) which was primarily focused on easing labor pain and required me to be on the floor quite a bit. Nothing like trying to make a room full of 8-9 months pregnant gals get up and down off the floor a bunch of times. I know they are all well-meaning and that most women will have to deal with the pain and discomfort of contractions for quite some time before they are close enough to be able to leave for the hospital and not get turned away, but that was some bullshit. Knowing that the marvels of modern medicine will be there to greet me when I arrive at the hospital doors is good enough for me thankyouverymuch. Had I known the class was going to be mostly focused on that stuff I probably wouldn’t have bothered signing up. But alas, another baby related crapshoot reality check.

After the six hours up and down off the floor, the neighbor girls threw a baby shower on game night for us a day or so later and got us some great new clothes and toys and bath time necessities that we were lacking. We also got tons of diapers and advice. Lots and lots of doom and gloom advice. I can totally appreciate the very real world advice of how things are going to be pretty much awful for a while and in no way am I under any sort of delusion that my kid will somehow be easier than their tiny babies. It does not make for an easy last few weeks in the brain of soon to be parents though.

So much so that I had a mini grouch attack yesterday when we were discussing the “what the hell did we get ourselves into” discussion. He seems pretty accepting of the fact that it’s going to be pretty sleepless and grumpy for a while and that we probably won’t even feel like we super like the kid for the first few weeks. His other main concern? He won’t be able to get outside and do his mountain biking and hiking and scouting without getting a ration of shit from me because I’ll have been home with the kid 24/7. Umm…. I realize that I’m not the most independent person with wanting to get outside and hike and do things like that on my own HOWEVER I certainly am going to want to get out and away and I think that is fair. More than fair. He didn’t argue and said that as long as we both make sure that we give each other time away for ourselves then we should be fine. My concern is that, once again, he thought of himself and his needs first. It’s no secret he is TERRIBLE at putting himself in other peoples shoes and it isn’t as though I haven’t made that lovely character flaw abundantly known to him. I think it urked me so badly because he can’t think of what I’ll want to do because I don’t generally want to get out and do things like hiking and being outdoorsy alone. I have no idea what I’ll do and there are plenty of times where I can see that I’ll want to be pretty much living in Elk Meadows to get some aggression/frustration/baby weight annoyance off but that seems like it will end up being just another part of a routine and nothing that is sort of a treat for myself. Who knows. Maybe it will end up being a treat for me.

Then I started telling him how I feel like we have seriously decided to limit our lives now. There’s no more picking up and spending a week in Oregon or Washington after a work trip and we now have to worry more than just about if we have a place to put the dogs when we want to get out of town for a long weekend. He’ll have his yearly hunting trips and what will I have? He then made the grave mistake of saying that I’ll be away all the time because of how much I travel for work. Umm…. Not even close to the same thing, pal. Not even close. You get to spend a week away cut off from any and all work related crap and more than likely home stuff because of the limits of modern cellular technology in the Rocky Mountains and you want to try and tell me that traveling with people from work that I really don’t care for is the same treat? Negative. I think I’m going to need to make sure I take long weekends for myself away with my pals once a year or so.

I realize that all of this is putting the cart way before the horse, but I’m told this is pretty normal “holy shit what did we do” the end is near stuff. I am fully aware that life will be drastically different and in many of those different ways much cooler. I’m just scared. There, I said it.