Apart from that I've mostly been working from home since the semester ended around 3 weeks ago, trying to finish up a bunch of research projects and get things out to editors before the baby comes.I've also been going to a few meetups (through meetup.com) with a group of "new and expecting moms" who live in the area. On Wednesday me and one of the moms who lives right near me went for a walk at the park/greenway near my house- in addition to around the mile we walked together, I walked to the park and back (around a mile round trip) and around an hour after I got home my pelvis started feeling like it was falling apart, and it hurt for 2 days afterwards. I should really walk more often so that my body is somewhat in shape for giving birth..I've been doing one long walk per week but it would probably be better to do several shorter walks. Last week the mom group went on a walk by this bog garden place in my town and we saw this barred owl couple that live there (in the wild, it's not like a zoo type place), which was really cool! The week before that B and I went to walk around the local arboretum with our dogs for our 4 year wedding anniversary (we also went to a really fancy brunch which was awesome).
I had a baby shower a few weeks ago, thrown by my department. It was a joint baby shower with another professor in my department who is due in a week or two. I got a ton of stuff, including way too many newborn-sized outfits (like 11) considering those only go up to 8 pounds and some babies (like B) are born bigger than that. We didn't even register for any clothing, people just bought it for us. Word to the wise to anyone buying things for a baby shower: Don't buy newborn sized clothing! It would probably be better to buy like 3-6 month clothes or even 6+ month clothes since they will need that a lot more. Right now we have like 11 newborn size outfits and maybe 10 0-3 month size (which will also fit newborns), it's ridiculousness.
My parents came to my baby shower. They never stay more than one day here, so they flew down that day, got here around 12:30, came to our house for a couple of hours until we drove to where the baby shower was at 3pm, and they left the shower at around 5:30 to go catch their flight home. The visit went well (This is now the third time they have met B) and my mom gasped less around the dogs. They brought us some bagels and lox (which I'm not really supposed to eat cause I'm pregnant but I had some anyway) and some "Mazal tov" chocolates for the baby shower.
At the baby shower itself I didn't hang out with them too much once it got started cause I was circulating and talking to everyone there, but apparently a lot of my colleagues went over to them and told them how awesome I am. One of my (Female) colleagues also gave both my parents a big hug which I think took them aback a little bit, but they were gracious about it. My mom also spent a lot of time talking to one of my friends about project runway (which they both love apparently), and talked a lot about her work as a fabric designer (which she did before my brother was born like 30 years ago). It was kinda bizzare seeing my parents interact with all my colleagues, I don't think I've ever really seen them interact with people who weren't orthodox jewish. The whole thing was somewhat surreal, but went off without a hitch.
Then yesterday it was my birthday (31! Why does that seem so much older than 30? I think it's cause I'm *in my 30s* now). My parents called and I actually ended up talking to both of them for about 2 hours in total. I asked my mom all about how her births went because I hear that a lot of people have similar births to their mothers. Apparently I was born a few days late, my next brother was born a few weeks early, and my youngest brother was born right on his due date. My mom was in labor with me for around 25 hours. She claims she only had contractions like "every 10 minutes" until her water broke and then "She pushed twice and I was out." She said for all 3 babies her water broke right before the baby was born. My dad remembers things differently, he says the water broke an hour or two before we were born and she definitely didn't push only twice, they were in the hospital for around 10 hours before that, and her contractions were more than every 10 minutes.
I kinda trust my dad more, and I suppose this was 31-25 years ago for both of them (depending on the kid), plus I'm sure since my mom didn't have epidurals for any of her kids she might be remembering things weirdly or blocking out some of it. If my mom's story is true it makes me nervous because she said she had far apart contractions until her water broke and then the babies came right out- and my doctor has told me to wait to go to the hospital until I've been having contractions 5 minutes apart for at least two hours. I don't want to go to the hospital too early and be sent home again because each time I go to the hospital my insurance charges me $233. But I also don't want to wait too long and give birth at home or something crazy! Luckily the hospital is only a mile from my house and we can get there in literally around 3 minutes.
My dad was still trying to pressure me to give the baby a "jewish name" and have a "jewish naming ceremony" when we were talking yesterday, and he was even like "She can get a catholic name from your mother in law too" and I was basically like "Ummm, no on both counts." He was like "that way she can have the choice to be jewish" and it's like...she can choose to be jewish whether she has a jewish name or not, and if she wants some rabbi to give her a jewish naming ceremony, it's not like it has to be done when she's born- she can have the choice to have a jewish naming ceremony if she ever cares, which I doubt she will.
They also don't like the name Lilith because "It's a demon name" and I told them for non-orthodox jews Lilith is actually somewhat of a feminist jewish icon because she refused to submit to Adam. My mom also didn't like the first name we chose. But whatever, it's not her kid and I don't think she has much of a right to criticize what I name my kid considering the extent to which she has not been a part of my life the last few years (and I don't want to hear criticism from you internet people either!). I should have never told them either name and just told them after she's born and it's on the birth certificate. Oh well.
My parents are going to israel for vacation next week and my dad was like "We'll put a kvitlach(Message) In the kotel (wailing wall) for you." I somehow ended up telling him the story of how when we were in Turkey for our honeymoon we went to the supposed house of the virgin mary (one of our stops on a tour that went to Ephesus) and there was a wall there full of little messages just like the Kotel. And apparently my dad had no idea I had ever been to Turkey, or Greece, or Italy- basically he had no idea that I had gone on my honeymoon, so I ended up telling him all about that trip and suggested he should take a kosher cruise to visit Europe sometime. My parents have been to Israel like 10-15 times, but have never been to any other country (except Canada at Niagra Falls).
In other news, the cloth diapers I wanted were on sale so I bought 24 for around $350. I also bought around 300 disposable diapers for the first month or so (size newborn/1) since the cloth diapers don't work until the baby is around 10 pounds. But the cost of those disposables made me feel a lot better about my cloth diapers purchase- they were around $55 for 300, AFTER I used two coupons that came out to $20 off. I didn't get the cheapest diapers because the coupons were for pampers/huggies, but still, that's ridiculousness- if I was going to pay $50 a month for disposables I just saved around $200 for the first year and $600 for the second year.
Meanwhile we have bought almost everything we need for the baby. My parents got us a crib/changing table which we have set up already. My brother got us an infant car seat and a stroller frame thing that it clicks into, so we will be good on that until around 6 months when we'll need to get a new car seat and stroller. I found a good deal on an Ergo carrier, and we got a pack n play with an attached changing table that we set up in our bedroom for the first couple of months when she is waking up every 2-3 hours or whatever, and once she only wakes up once or less in the middle of the night we will start putting her to sleep overnight in her room (until then I don't want to have to walk to the front of the house a million times in the middle of the night). She'll also be taking naps during the day in her room so she gets used to sleeping in the crib, and also because her room is right next to the sunroom where I have my home office set up now (It used to be set up in the baby's room) since once she is a couple of months old I will be working from home on research stuff. I had to use my 'research sabbatical' to get the entire Fall semester off- our paid maternity leave only covers half a semester but I'm due 3 weeks before the semester starts and no way was I going in to teach my '1.5' classes 3 weeks after giving birth, especially if she is late like first babies often are- so I will have "research leave" in the Fall (we actually planned this baby around my research leave) and "maternity leave" in the spring and teach 1 class in the spring + do some extra service work (writing long boring reports from home- I already wrote the first one- 28 pages- a couple of weeks ago) to make up for the other half class. Since I'm technically only entitled to 2 months paid leave I'm going to use that as my guideline for when to start doing research from home, becasue I don't want to use up my entire research leave doing no research and only baby stuff.
Only things left to buy at this point that we need right away are some sheets for the crib (We already got sheets for the pack n play when they were on sale- waiting for my baby registry to send us discounts on everything left which should happen in the next few weeks according to them), and a glider (last major huge thing and I definitely want a comfy one). My mother in law might actually be getting us the glider (think she's getting us either that or a stroller for when we outgrow the first one) but if she doesn't I have a savings bond that is set to expire in about half a month (they stop collecting interest after 30 years- I got this one from my grandparents when I was 1 year old) that I'm going to cash in and use that money to buy it.
