Hee-Hee-Hee-Hee-Hoooooo!

This is going to be the last post for a few days. We have to be out of temp. housing by 11am tomorrow and the internet shouldn't be set up at our house until Thursday night at the latest. Bummer, I know. I won't have cable either. This means that we are going to miss the most important stages of the entire Tour de France - The Alps. Total suckage.

We bought a fridge today. Funny thing is that it is almost exactly the same model as the fridge that we had in our house back east. We picked a different color though to try to match the hodge-podge of appliances in our new kitchen. Our dishwasher is brand new and a "bisque" (off-white) color, our super-old stove is black and silver, our equally old cabinet mounted microwave is black. Sooooo, we ended up picking "Ultra Satin" color. "Ultra Satin" looks like stainless steel, but you can stick magnets to it. It also doesn't fingerprint as easily, or so they say. We'll see about that. I think I still need to get special cleaning fluid to get fingerprints off. According to the guy at Sears, they are supposed to deliver it to our house tomorrow. I haven't gotten a phone call with a time yet. I'm not going to hold my breath.

Saturday, was our "Fast Track Birth" class. Huzbend thoroughly enjoyed the class. No, I'm not kidding. He really did. The part that he didn't like was the uber-smelly guy that sat next to him. He smelled so bad that I could smell him too. It was a double knock-out: bad breath and B.O.

The class went over all the stages of labor, pros and cons of medications, potential complications and interventions, ceasareans and postpartum information. Because it was in a one day format, we didn't get to practice the positions, the breathing and relaxation. I have to say that it was a good thing that I bought those prenatal yoga and strenth training DVDs. Not only do they both have a section on relaxation/meditation, but they encourage you to hold positions for extended periods of time. For example, in my prenatal yoga dvd, you have to do a squat that takes your butt almost all the way to the ground. You have to hold this squat for a minute or two. It turns out that this position is good to use during labor as it spreads your pelvis further to let baby come flying out.

Huzbend thought the best part was when they talked about methods that he could use to help me deal with the pain, like massage techniques. There's this, for lack of a better word, "move" called the "Double Hip Squeeze". You can use it when the baby is head down but is facing toward the front of the mom (they are supposed to face towards the back). When the baby is in this position its head causes the ligaments of the pelvis to spread further than normal. The head also pushes hard against your sacrum. The partner can put his/her hands on each of the laboring partners hips and squeeze inwards to "push" the pelvis back together. This takes a lot of shoulder strength. Perfect for huzbend. I think he sees this as a chance to get in a small workout. Fine with me. It feels great.

We did have to watch two videos. One was a non-medicated birth and the other was a ceasarean birth. Huzbend thought that he was not going to be able to watch. Turns out he watched both with no trouble. As soon as the babies made their appearances in the videos, all the prego women started sniffling. I admit, I teared up a bit. I couldn't help it. Even though the babies looked like little purple Golem's, darnit if they didn't evoke that "Awwwwww, isn't that cute" feeling.

We're as ready as we'll ever be, I guess. I've read about 4 or 5 entire books, huzbend has read one, we've both taken classes. What else can we do, but wait for baby to decide its time. I admit, I'm still anxious about the whole thing. Just thinking about the prospect of giving birth gives me a sick feeling. It's almost like the feelings you get prior to competition. Like the tummy butterflies that you'll get before stepping on the mat for a judo match, before taking those first steps of a half or whole marathon or starting to pedal your bike for your first century ride. You think back to all the time that you spent preparing for this moment. You've only got ONE shot at it. These nine months have been training.

Put me in coach. I'm ready.