1 Month To Go

So today officially marks one month left until my due date.  It seems so far away!  LOL.  Anyway, I figured it was an excuse to blog as I have had some random things on my mind that I wanted to jot down. One thing related to the fact that I was reading a Facebook status update that Vanessa posted about how much weight she has lost already since having the baby last week and some of the comments that followed led me to something I had never thought about.  Two of our mutual friends that also happened to be nurses were swearing by belly binding and losing the post-pregnancy belly.  One particularly swore of its effectiveness on getting her separated abdominal muscles back together.  It's something I never thought about because I figured their only purpose was to act as a girdle to hide the postpartum belly and that there was no actual physical benefit to it.  I started researching it a little tonight to see if there was any hard proof behind it, but didn't necessarily find hard scientific facts about it.  I was particularly interested about the rejoining of the muscles as my doctor said it was possible that mine never rejoined after the last pregnancy.  I was troubled that after all the weight I lost, I still didn't have a nice, flat stomach.  I may just try it after this pregnancy because at our Christmas party, I walked away with the Slimaway, so it's not like I'd have to buy anything.

Well, with one month left to go we still have to get the crib set up.  It arrived last week and the mattress arrived today.  So we're hoping to get around to it this weekend, although it is already a busy weekend without that in the works.

A few random notes about Mei Li.  I think we're making progress on her naps.  She took 1.5 - 2.5 hour naps all weekend and today at daycare took a 2.25 hour nap.  The only bad news is that she won't do it in her classroom now that there are a lot of kids (there were 7 today vs. the 4 she is used to), so they had to take her to the office for her nap.  Mei Li's vocabulary is growing by the day.  Her current fascination is with airplanes and helicopters in the sky.  She'll say she sees them every time we're in the car, regardless of whether there are any in the sky.  When we're outside, she points them out and asks me for more when they've gone out of sight.  I try to explain to her that I have no control over how often and how many airplanes fly by our house.  She has added a new Spanish word to her vocabulary, frutas.  She goes back and forth about whether she says fruit or frutas, but I try to encourage both.  Tonight she also said something that sounded like nina (I don't know how to type the squiggly n), but there was no context, so I'm not sure if that was what she was trying to say.  As for her getting ready for the arrival of her baby brother, yesterday she correctly responded to my questions when I pointed to my belly and asked her what it was (baby) and then when I asked her what the baby's name was (Jack).  So I was excited to see that progress.  She also felt the baby move yesterday, which I'm not sure what her thoughts were on that.  Now that we're catching up on some of her sleep, she's had a lot of energy.  I have been playing the toddler station on Pandora for her and the Mahna Mahna Muppets song came on and she danced like crazy to it.  Then tonight after picking her up from daycare, she was literally running and spinning in circles around the house.

I better sign off because I actually have the opportunity to get to bed at a decent hour.  Sleep has become a challenge for me lately so I feel pretty tired a lot of the time as I wake up not feeling rested.  I have started to have to wedge my body pillow underneath my belly to get some comfort for my hips and back, and I never had to do that with Mei Li.  I realized that I need to be careful about my weight now not because I'm worried about the weight gain number itself, but I should be conscientious of it for the weight of the baby and my chances of a VBAC.  So today I resisted a really delicious looking donut in the cafeteria at lunch and got a fruit salad instead.  It's tough to do as I've been feeling really hungry these days, so I find myself eating more snacks.  Here's to hoping I have the willpower to make it through to the end.