Baby size: About 19 in and 6lbs. Close to being ready for birth. For reference Lyra was born at 20.5 inches and 7 lb 4 oz
Food cravings/aversions: I want pizza. Like really quality home cooked pizza, not Dominos or something. And also cheese stuffed bacon wrapped dates. Handy as apparantly dates are good for things like cervical ripening and likelihood of needing pitocin and shorter labor. Small studies but it's enough excuse for me to make delicious food. And apple juice. Which gives me heartburn but I still want it.
Other symptoms: Same things as per usual really. Typical 3rd trimester with a side of severe allergies, wildfire smoke, and irritable uterus. Not as irritable as with Lyra though, I don't think. It is hard to tell. I might just be busier and/or less stressed about it now that my placenta moved. I did get a virus a couple weeks ago. So did Lyra. She had a fever the first non smoky day we had in like 2 weeks. Then I got a sinus infection which was extra fun. I pulled a muscle in my side and now it hurts anytime I sneeze, blow my nose, or cough. Which is approximately every 30 seconds soooooo that's not fun. My hips are really sore too. Also different from my experience with Lyra. My heartburn is less extreme so maybe this baby will have less hair.
I also had the most ridiculous morning sickness experience of all the pregnancies. I had a morning where I went from 100% normal and feeling fine to "absolutely going to vomit, right now" in under a minute. And upon throwing up, had a similarly shocking speedy recovery and was back to feeling 100% normal and great in under 3 minutes. Besides hysterical laughter because I was so surprised and I half pulled a muscle moving too fast.
Sleep: Still shitty. The newest thing this last week was waking up with a crazy dry mouth, super uncomfortable. Blasting a couple humidifiers all night seems to help.
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Mood: I'm so done, I have no more patience. We're trying to get our car fixed, Travis hit an antelope, and it is taking far too long on the insurance company's part. It happened almost a month ago and we still haven't been able to schedule it somewhere to be fixed. It currently has no AC which means it's a horrible car for Nevada in the summer. The insurance company finally came through though so now we can finally get it scheduled. It's basically going to take like 6 to 8 weeks total and we'll be pushing it right up to when I deliver to get it done.Also I have the worst hair luck, EVER. I go through these cycles. First I move somewhere new, I'll go to Great Clips or Fantastic Sam's or something for a while and be low key frustrated with weird hair issues, for example, an inch or so section of hair that's an inch longer than the rest of my hair but only 75% of the time. Or someone who dyes my hair red and darker instead of blonde like I wanted and tries to talk me into it, "No, it is the lighting, it's definitely blonder." Seriously. Then I find someone who I think will be really good or is really good but I stop going for some unlucky reason or another or we move again.
More backstory, probably taking the cake for the worst story was when Lyra was about 4 months old and I decided to use the first several hour break I'd ever had away from her to go get my hair dyed and cut. So it had been like 6 months since I'd done anything with it, I was excited for my first taste of freedom. Then I'm chatting with my stylist I'd used before a few times and trusted enough to dye my hair. She asks how my hair has been doing postpartum and I explain I'm having some of the usual expected hair loss and my scalp seems a little more dry and itchy since having a baby but nothing too drastic or crazy. This is where everything goes downhill. She tells me I have lice. I freak out because if I have lice, so does my 6 month old who sleeps with us, and our house requires decontamination. I'm also super disappointed my first day out post baby is ruined and I'm embarrassed. I held it together until I left but basically went home and cried and made Travis go out for de lousing things. And we spend the next couple hours hardcore searching for lice just to find no lice. None. No lice anywhere, on anyone. Good thing Travis is a skeptic and is like, let's research before you just put all this on your head. Upon inspection Travis is like, "Ehhh I mean, your scalp is a little dry but not even extreme...." I still do some intense moisturizing treatment to be sure and after a couple hours my hair is essentially back to pre baby normal. I debated going to get a doctors note to make a point but I didn't want to spend the $30 copay, especially after spending the same on unnecessary de-lousing products. So I never went back to that hair stylist again. It is kind of a funny anecdote in hindsight but at the time it was awful.
Besides the imaginary lice incident, there was the Justin Bieber haircut debacle. That started out as an edgy assymetrical pixie/bob type haircut I had done somewhere I trusted. Then I believe we moved or I couldn't travel to Spokane all the time for a haircut, something like that. So I got it trimmed locally. And it wasn't as awesome anymore but it wasn't terrible. But the next time was. And so then I was like, let's just do a pixie. And then that made me look like a weird cross between Justin Bieber and my baby brother before he hit puberty and if he was white. I mean my brother isn't bad looking, we look eerily like opposite gender, different color twins. I just didn't want to look like his twin brother. I was working on the slope at the time and the company man literally called me to his office once because he was worried he made me feel bad with teasing about my haircut. I still have to laugh because my true feelings were more embarrassed for anyone who didn't realize that I realized my haircut was something out of a horror story. I gave myself the Justin Bieber nickname because sometimes you just have to laugh. The poor stylist I found in Anchorage to help fix the worst of it clearly was a little taken aback by it. That was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. I was coming off nightshift and quite tired and probably had a beer first. I told him, just do something with it to try and improve it for growing it out. I know there's not much to work with and I will be legitimately impressed if you can make it worse than it is, so have some free reign and know I won't be mad. That's how I ended up with my first pink and purple hair ("Maybe some bright colors to just...distract...from the rest of it...."). And that pixie from hell haunted me quite literally up until the imaginary lice incident, that was the last of growing that out.
So anyway, cut to now. I have a stylist who does my hair well, but is so unreliable about scheduling that I just couldn't anymore. I'm talking 5 out of 7 appointments cancelled and/or rescheduled. So I found a new place, scheduled a few weeks in advance and verbally explained what my hair looked like and what I wanted. And I'm not dumb at this point, I sent in photos and gave myself a week before I really wanted it done (for maternity pictures) in case something happened. And 48 hours before my appointment my hair stylist emails to say she can't do it and refers me to someone else. So here we are. I'm unsure when and how and if I will get my hair done somewhere around here again. I had Travis help me mostly dye it back to my naturalish color with 4 dollar Walmart dye. A frightening gamble but it mostly worked. We're probably giving it a round 2 and hoping for the best. Travis has had to help try and fix or manage so many of my hair disasters at this point that he says he's going to open up his own business. Something like, Travis' Mediocre Hair. So that's my long winded story about why the last of my patience is gone and why I'm a brunette again. With a few weird patchy spots but, oh welllllll.
On the plus side I found a birth photographer I really like and I'm not stressed about not having one anymore. She's worked with my midwife and doula a lot before and has birth experience as a nurse too. I also found out my mom will still be able to make it out here as planned as well. So maybe now I can have the last 6 weeks of pregnancy calm and planned as much as possible??
I have everything almost as set up as I can have it before baby gets here. The nursery is done, our bedroom is prepped with a birth space and baby sleeping space, breastfeeding/pumping stations are set up, some meals are frozen. I still need to do a few more freezer meals and stock a couple last minute homebirth items but we're good to go other than that.
Names: My vote is still Oswin Finley. Travis is still Finley Oswin.
Lyra stats: She is 3 now! She's started soccer which is adorable and funny. While "Baby Shark" is still an all time favorite song, a new favorite is "6 Cats," this random YouTube video that is both obnoxious and really catchy. Horrible combo, really. She has a new weird (for a toddler) food she likes, blue cheese. Her tastes alternate between sophisticated and hating traditional toddler food, and super typical toddler preferences. She won't touch ketchup but she loves edamame. Still obsessed with sushi
She briefly went through a napping phase again but I think that was a growth spurt and she's coming out of it again. She gained 2 lbs for the first time in like a year though. Watching her growth patterns has been interesting. When she was exclusively breastfed, she was on the high end of the growth chart, around 80th percentile. Once she switched to solid food and picky eating, she dropped quite a bit and now she's definitely on the petite side, around 15th percentile. I haven't worried as she's clearly grown mentally and I think she has grown a bit in height, but it was weird. She was in 2T clothes by around 18 month and she still hasn't outgrown it all.
Best moment this week: I got out of jury duty! I was figuring they wouldn't want me as a juror seeing as I was basically full term, but I don't even have to go at all.
Other stuff: I took maternity pictures and I love them! Lyra cooperated beautifully. I also had to take some rainbow baby photos with rainbow scarves. Because there is no better time to climb around in your underwear on rocks in the middle of the desert than when you're 8 months pregnant. Here's my absolute favorites.
Looking forward to: Getting this kid to 37 weeks, that feels like one of the last few milestones and then he can show up whenever.
