Hard won battles.

Fenner Evelyn Louise Gemmill, October 25th 1:47 am. This picture was taken at 2:45 am.

For once the camera got the right shade of pink. We are so in love.

So, we went on strike today.

We were supposed to meet with yet another doc at Mt. Sinai this morning when my midwife called me at 7:00 am and said: "You're not really into another round of induction are you?" to which my stubborn, bruised cervix assertively replied "No."

After meeting our midwife at her office for a non stress test (which showed once again that our baby is not under any stress), we took the rest of the day off to recover....at the Mac store....where we were almost woo'd by the land of Apple.

Dear lord, women this pregnant should not be allowed to play around with iPhoto and Photoshop. I can't be sure but there may be a picture of my enormous belly with my stretchmarks photoshopped to say "Bite Me!" left on one of the MacBooks - if you find the picture I'll give you my first born!

Nor should we be allowed to play with new shiny, pretty new 8 Gig Nanos...

Thank you all for the lovely thoughts. We're doing fine, the bubsy is great and our midwife is rocking our world. It's the rest of the world that we have to answer to that seem to be freaking out - there is one great OB that we worked with that is totally onside with us, we're trying to find out when he's on the floor again before we "re-engage".

It takes a lot of our very limited energy to cope with the hospital,stay positive and strong. The past day and a half have been spent replenishing both of our stores of patience, energy and faith in ourselves. It's been fabulous.

Forty Two and Four

This is the third time I've tried to write an update post for y'all. The other attempts came off as crazy....which is exactly where I am at.

Our baby is extremely well and firmly ensconsced in my extremely healthy uterus. It is not being bullied out before it's ready and quite frankly I truly respect it's ability to ignore the any and all peer pressure to leave the party.

Scorpio indeed.

Jason and I are exhausted and I'm a little too close to the crazy line for my own comfort but that's a result of being confined to a hospital for three days (more on that when it's not so fresh)

I have some tea and some cashmere that need attending to. Will let you know when/if le Pork Bun arrives.

Hot enough fer ya?

How about this weather eh?

Thanks so much for all the comments. I have to say that all of my hopes and wishes are coming true - Jason and I are having a little person with it's own mind and it's own agenda. I understand that the parenting of such people can be very difficult what with the questioning of authority, critical thinking and need for independance. Guess this is just a warm up for what's to come. Tough decisions and conversations.

Clearly, our baby will not be susceptable to peer pressure and other people's agendas. There is a little bit of sarcasm in this post but that's just due to being a little irritated with other grown ups.

We're going out for lunch with my parents and am looking forward to being a daughter not a mother one last time - I plan on being very demanding about snuggles and being mothered. Tonight Jason and I will be seeing Death at a Funeral (it was superseded by the castor oil) then we're going to a swanky wine bar for wine...mmm delicious wine!

It's a grown up night. See y'all on the flipside!

She's a pounder that one

I placed a lot of importance on a lot of unimportant skillsets when I was growing up. One of the skills I had that I thought was super awesome was my ability to drink enormous quantities of both beer and hard liquor.

This sad superpower was made stronger by the year I spent living in Belgium where learning how to drink responsibly consisted of learning how to pour a proper draft at voetball fundraising events for the village team I played on. Let me just say that I could drink an out of work miner under the table when I got back to the land of Molson.

In retrospect, this was not so much a skill as an indication of an addictive personality and I'm certainly not proud of a lot the behaviours that I engaged in when I was 19. We're all lucky that I had great parents without whom I would not have gotten through those years as healthy as I am today.

Having said all that, I just did two shots of Fierce Grape Gatorade/ Castor Oil (recipe my own) with 2 ounce chasers of Diet Coke and didn't taste a thing. But *boy* do I feel fierce now!

I have compiled a list of all of the negotiating tools J and I have used to convince le Pork Bun to come out. Castor Oil is the Pitocin of the home birth world. I'm not super excited that it's come to this and have seriously debated it for the past week with Jason. I'll write more about my thoughts when I'm not a ticking time bomb of laxative.

Oopy.

Hey Laura;

It was great seeing you at the store today. Thanks for holding the sale bin bright orange Misty Alpaca yarn for me for the past couple of days. It's going to make a great baby sized pumpkin bunting bag that I plan on dressing le Pork Bun in on Halloween this year.

I didn't get the chance to tell you about the awesome Shiatsu massage I'd just had at the Shiatsu School of Canada. One of the negotiating tactics my midwife had recommended and our "big" induction project for the day (we have a couple every day). It was pretty amazing because at very specific pressure points the pork bun got very antsy and there was definitely resulting contractions...but not really enough to convince le Pork Bun to get a move on.

It's really good to know that if I need a cab quick you can pull a number out of your brain, dial it and have it arrive without any fuss or muss. It's also very handy to know that a cab from the store to my house is a mere 20 minutes and $15.00 away. You'd be a great first aider - not an ounce of panic!

I'm not sure if you realize this yet but no, I was not in labour - you got a brief look into what life has been like for the last 3 or 4 days for my husband though. Apparently the smaller my bladder get the more confusing sensations like water breakage can be.

While it would seem that there has been progress (labour in innumberable easy installments!!) there won't be a baby tonight. I really really wish I had though - what a great story that could have been!!!

Anyhoo, thanks again for the help and hopefully I won't see you tomorrow night.

Cheers,

Jen

Breathing...just breathing

Random thoughts:

1. If you're going to make a diet of spicy food eating out with equally crazy girlfriends makes your mouth hurt less. I had some big plans to start taking pictures of the random things we're doing to try and convince el buno to arrive. Dim Sum at King's Noodles, though delicious, did not help me produce my own little pork bun.

2. If you *must* do a walk in ultrasound every 72 hours - go as early as possible to ensure a less than 2 hour wait. We got Olga the crazy Russian ultrasound technician again this morning I did actually get in her grill about the accuracy of ultrasound estimated birth weights and the fact she thinks I have a "lazy" baby. I believe the words - it's not lazy it's independant came from my mouth.

3. I must have sleep without it, the crazy gets really difficult to reign in.

4. Midwives rock. I called them from the ultrasound lab desperate with fatigue and frustration and they met me a half an hour later at the office to talk about what we could do to gently persuade the pork bun to jump on the dim sum cart of life. Joyce was a little too happy that I was on the verge of tears just talking about about how healthy and comfy the baby is - I guess that this level of desperation is a good sign.

5. Permission to take Gravol. I got it. Just for the nights that there is no way sleep is coming and just one. Praise all that is holy and life preserving I just woke up from a five hour recovery sleep.

6. Knitting. Am doing a lot of really simple knitting. Tonight I will embark on finishing clue 4 of the Mystery Stole Project and at least one repeat of fair isle on my sisters birthday endpaper gloves. HAH!!!

7. Hanging out at Lettuce Knit is always good though getting difficult to tuck into out of the way corners I have no problem overstaying my welcome. I also picked up my retail therapy bag and all the fixin's to make the pork bun's first halloween costume.

I'm not losing my shit....I swear it.

Have just had brunch with close girlfriend and am feeling a little bit more civilized. Jason has gone out book shopping and for what I suspect might be some independant man time. We are planning to go to a birthday party tonight...mayhaps we can get him very very drunk - he deserves some goofing off time.

As I'm sure you've deduced, am still very pregnant. We had our weekly date with our midwife yesterday who insisted that we have an ultrasound prior to our meeting. The problem with that was that we didn't have enough notice to make an appointment so had to do a walk in.

THREE HOURS later we had an ultrasound upon which we scored 8/8 on all things placenta/baby/amniotic fluid which was good. I'm nominally annoyed that I'm still pregnant but from what I can understand this is part and parcel of being due not necessarily overdue. October 5th was the 40 week date from the first day after my last period. Not necessarily the day that I conceived.

I have to remind myself that our schedule and the bun's schedule are not the same thing. Especially when it is so healthy. The placenta is not passed it's prime (amnio fluid volume es muy bueno), fetal movements are great (while distinctly uncomfortable) and muscle tone, heart rate and breathing movements are all great.

Keep in mind I've been having contractions from around 7:00 or 8:00 pm to about midnight every night.

So, every morning after a night of sleeping like a feather, waking up every 1.5 hours to the feeling of soft and encouraging contractions - I wake up feeling much like Elaine from the previous post. If you haven't watched the clip do that right now. It makes me laugh because I swear to god it's what happens in my mind every fucking morning.

Jason is doing great under the pressure. Once he talks me down from the cliff of insanity we actually enjoy this honeymoon phase of our relationship it's been a great break from work and parenting and in 16 years I look forward to looking back at this time longingly.

But until then.....I really do feel like I'm about to reenact that scene from Aliens my belly is so tight.

Want to know how I am?

And in other news...

Little Napoleon continues to dictate that he/she will not be joining us for another day. Instead of bringing you a beautiful baby I spent the day voting and delivering my ROE's to the HRDC to ensure that I have some semblance of an income in a few weeks. Yay, Income!!!

Jason and I enjoyed the Edward Gorey exhibit at the Lilith A Smith Library. I guess celebrating an author whose entire body of work would rival Edgar Allan Poe for dark comedy may not be the best way to convince our new bun to come....it was satisfying nonetheless.

Then to stitch and bitch for a little bit of low cal knitting in the outside world. Good for the headspace. I don't think there's anything better than hooking up with the ladies outside of the house with a delicious Ideal Latte fondling the silk/alpaca blends. Mayhaps spicy dimsum

I finished the never ending Denmark Socks out of Opal superwash from Knitting On the Road. These were never. ending.

So now the Denmark socks are done, I've dealt with my maternity leave bureaucracy and we've voted. I expect Napoleon to show up any minute now.

Meanwhile inside the fibre trunk....

Since Lorraine was able to get me up and running on my new/old, as yet unnamed wheel, I decided to take the opportunity to look at blending and combing using the remnants of a bunch of different fleece artist merino fleeces. Then spinning it up on the new wheel. What better way to distract myself from other unfinished objects....

These came my way via thrummed mitten kits and from friends that had started handspindling them. The green is some Corriedale I'd picked up from Romni. The rest is a combo of merino and blue faces leicester fleece from Fleece Artist. I chose the pink purple, the bruise purple and the bright pink to play with. I had the image of a sunset fading to dark in my mind but having rarely spent time with combs never mind blending, I entered into the experience with no expectations.
It took a couple of goes before I got any semblance of a rhythmn down and I'm still trying to get the art of even blending down. The Joy of Handspinning website is a boon for folks like me who need visual teaching aids. I found the section on rolags particularly helpful. Once I finish about 6 rolags I spin them up since I'm doing them in groups of six with no real recipe for getting the colourways, there is quite a variation from rolag to rolag once they're spun up. Having said that, the overall colour scheme really does make me think of the last of a sunset in Northern Ontario.The wheel itself took a bit of getting used to but I'm amazed at how quickly she and I built up an understanding. I treadle slowly and she will still send twist my way at an astonishing rate. Lorraine explained it to me but most of the information seemed to escape me....something about wheel to flyer ratio??

No matter, I'm getting quite a bit of fluff prep and spinning done in the morning. I've been dreaming about doing a yoke sweater. With the sunset blend and some beautiful prizewinning Icelandic Ewe fleece I need to prep from last year's Royal Winter Fair. I haven't picked the design yet there's a lot out there....any suggestions?

On the topic of other tardy topics. Look what the generous and talented Jacquie gave us for the offspring. Am looking forward to doing a reprise of this picture...for her.

40 weeks 2 days

The squatter seems to have become quite comfortable in the temporary home of my body and thusly is the first bun in the last 5 babies I know that is going to be late. I remind myself that this is not my schedule to control. We are at peace with this infernal waiting....I swear!

In the meantime, I met Zoe on Wednesday and what a beautiful little baby! The baker, Joyce is a powerhouse and is setting the bar pretty high for new moms everywhere. We've been inundated with unbelievable baby showers here at casa de overdue buns. My family, knowing that we have no space and tons of hand me downs started an RESP fund for our little one and generously threw a surprise party on our behalf.

My foodie Aunt and Uncle brought us frozen food (garden fresh pesto and tomatoes). I have a large and passionate family - there was much laughing, eating and hugging. We were rendered speechless and comatose by the generosity and smooches.

The entrance of J's parents rendered me a pile of overwhelmed mushiness and tears. We didn't think that we'd be seeing them before the baby came (if he/she ever does...hint hint hint) and Debbie in true knitterly glory, outdid herself.The family shower was followed the next day by a baby shower thrown for us by our urban family. More food, beautiful clothes, toys and, because Aviva recently had her second, she was able to give us a care package of all of those post-partum tools you need for one or two days and no more. Our plans to hunker down and recover won't be interrupted by trips to Shoppers for these items now.

Some of the other beautiful handknits came from Jill who made this beautiful baby jacket and though she is a bit bitter about the stripes. We love them. I too have been knitting - I just finished this baby hat based on this fun Knitty pattern. Nerdy and warm! Also, I finally finished a sister for Squarey, Irma, she's the good egg. She will be going to reside at my close friend Carolyn's home where she will be loved and adored.
I'm finding that my stamina at this stage is truly stinted and usually need a short nap or rest every 2 to 3 hours. After a long 9 hour day out and about I came home exhausted to find this scene waiting for me:

A gliding rocking chair that J and I saw almost a month ago and some wonderful books. We didn't buy the chair then because it just seemed crazy but neither of us has really stopped thinking about it. J rolled up all the change in our change jar and took a generous gift certificate my coworkers gave us and was able to buy the chair without dipping into our savings!

What a guy, eh?

In other news, in an effort to keep ourselves from going stir crazy we're celebrating Thanksgiving tonight - cooking and baking. Lorraine came over and my new wheel is good to go so I'll be combing and prepping some fibre and will be embarking on some fleece handpainting this week.

Must. Keep. Busy.