33 weeks and counting

Made it through another week!  I am really starting to count down the weeks.  And I am feeling alot more pregnant these days (heavy, slow and tired).  There was a music/arts festival in Oxford (Double Decker Festival) yesterday and I walked up to the square with my mom to check it out for a couple of hours and it totally zapped me for the rest of the day.  Unfortunately, I did not have the energy to go back in the evening and hear the headlining music (the Meters and Mavis Staples).   There were babies and pregnant ladies coming out of the woodworks and I distinctly remember in walking around the festival last year feeling anxious and bombarded by the fertiles of the world with their strollers and bumps.  Now I am seemingly a normal pregnant woman and it still feels a little strange.

While some part of me feels like I've had the world's longest gestation, another part of me feels sad to think that in a month and a half it will be over.  The latter part of the second trimester and the third trimester has been a magical and special time in my life.  I still never tire of feeling the baby move around even if it wakes me up at 5 in the morning.

My sleep is becoming more and more disjointed.  Last night I went to bed at 10 pm and woke up at 1:45 am with hunger.  Ate a half of an almond butter and jelly sandwich with milk and went back to sleep.  Woke up at 6 am.  I have never been an early morning person, but am consistently waking up between 5 and 6 am every day regardless of what time I go to bed.  I will usually stay up for 1 hour and then fall back asleep for an hour.  I am getting up 2 or 3 times to pee a night. I feel like this is all getting me ready for sleepless nights and early morning waking with baby.

I am currently reading "Bringing up Bebe" which I am sure most of you have heard about - it's an living abroad American mom's observations on French parenting.  Apparantly French babies start sleeping through the night at 3-4 months and they wean them off night time feedings pretty early.  This is in stark contrast the to book I read earlier this week called "Beyond the Sling" which is about Mayim Bialik's  (Blossom) experience with attachment parenting.   I have to say having your baby be able to sleep through the night by 4 months is very appealing to me, because I am a mess of a person when I am sleep deprived.   My plan is to be nursing on demand and co-sleep (with Arm's reach mini-cosleeper) for the first 3 months and then get him into his own crib by the fourth month.  We'll see how it goes.

On Friday, I got in a huge shipment of baby gear!  All my cloth diapers (ordered from Cotton Babies and Diapers.com), BOB stroller from REI (purchased with dividend and my REI credit card refund), breast pump (ended up going with the Ameda Purely Yours).  and Beco gemini carrier.  On some level, I feel like I am tempting fate by ordering all these big ticket items for a baby who is not actually in my arms, but I have to act "as if" and believe that everything is going be fine - our baby is going to come into this world healthy and alive.

 Hope all of you had a wonderful, restorative weekend and I look foward to reading your updates this week!