The final countdown

I'm off work. Grandma is here, entertaining Henry and whipping the house into shape. We're down to the last 48 hours before the arrival of Baby Deuce, and preparations have kicked into gear. Thursday is the Big Day. My body's not showing any signs that I'll be going into labor spontaneously before then, so a "c-birth" (as the hospital literature calls it) seems inevitable. I'm disappointed, but, oh well. Given how badly the whole labor and delivery went with Henry, I don't see any point in waiting around another week, hoping for a better outcome this time. It's time to stop being pregnant and have this baby!

Stay tuned for the big announcement!

Whoa, Belly!

A glimpse inside the belly

I had an ultrasound yesterday to check the position of the placenta, which had been low earlier in my pregnancy. Everything's fine on that front, which is good news (it can cause problems during delivery if it's low). Tom and I decided to bring Henry along for a glimpse at the new baby, in the hopes that it would help him make a stronger connection between our baby talk and baby reality. Henry was very positive about the whole experience, but I have to say, it wasn't much of a show. Occasionally you can discern a distinct body part within the squishy image, but for the most part, an ultrasound at 37 weeks is more like a Rorschach Test than a baby viewing ("I see a foot. What do you see?" "That looks like the nose to me." Hmmm.). Since Henry is so into dinosaur fossils right now, he was excited to view the baby's spine and femur. Not exactly the "a-ha!" moment we were looking for, but it was still worthwhile to bring him along.

I really enjoyed everyone's comments about how older kids react to a new sibling. We've been pumping up the "you'll be such a great big brother" angle and using the "what a lucky baby" line to good effect. I still assume we'll experience some rocky moments, but Henry's talk about the baby has become a bit more positive of late. It's been several weeks since he's said anything about eating the baby, which came up a few times in the past. That has to count as progress.

Reality bites

While I reserve the right to get *extremely irritated* with people who point it out to me, I will say it myself: Hot damn am I ever huge.

Four weeks to go, four weeks to go. . .

Happy Canada Day

Crowds and noise aren't Henry's thing, so we skipped the big party on Parliament Hill and went to the Agriculture Museum, a.k.a. Experimental Farm, instead. The weather was a bit chilly, but we still had a good time. Strangely enough, this was the third weekend in a row that H. and I took a ride on a horse-drawn wagon. I guess it's a popular summer activity in Ottawa. Henry will happily approach the Clydesdales and stroke them on the nose, but he won't even enter the barn with the milk cows at the farm. He's even a little afraid of the baby calves.

Doesn't he look like he would fit right in on his great-grandparents' homestead in Saskatchewan? What an iconic young Canadian (we'll set aside his Dixie birth for the moment, along with the whole "fear of farm animals" issue)!

Yes, I did dress him up like this deliberately.