Week twenty-seven

The skin, she keeps on stretching. I now have two rather gnarly stretch marks forming angry parentheses on my belly. They snuck up on me, for sure. I bought the obligatory bottle of cocoa butter lotion to rub the scars away around week 12 or so, but never used it, because my skin never felt stretched or itchy. Ooops. Oh well. I hold no illusions that the stuff is going to make my skin like new again; part of pregnancy is getting used to the idea of your body being reappropriated for uses you hadn’t expected, and it’s going to get dinged and dented and dimpled and damaged in the service of getting this kid here in good shape. On good days I look at myself and I am grateful that I have a body capable of such insanely complicated stuff set on auto-pilot. On bad days I look at myself and I think DEAR GOD WILL THEY EVEN LET JABBA THE HUT GET A GYM MEMBERSHIP?! Because, you know, getting fatter is the worst thing in the world that can ever happen to a gal. We’ve all read the cultural pamphlets and seen the headless bodies waddling past news cameras beneath stacked, white-lettered statistics.

This week the baby has bloomed into a lovely little cauliflower, weighing in at two pounds or so. My pelvic region is achy as a mothertrucker and I still feel like my guts are going to fall right out over my waistband. Then I think about what this lady must be feeling like and I reel in the pity party. Lord, lord.

This kid is moving all the time now, in all different directions. Sometimes the movements will be more like little concentrated shudders, and I wonder if those are the hiccups I hear so much about.

Tuesday I get to find out what every preggo loves to fret about — whether I have gestational diabetes. I am fortunate in that my midwife doesn’t do the crazy sugar drink screening that everyone hates so much; I get to eat a normal breakfast and come in to check my levels, and if they’re elevated, then I think I have to do it again another time before I actually have to do the yucky sugar drink test. So if I fail the first round, I am going to feel like a total dolt. So I will not be having my usual breakfast of Sugar Smacks with sugar cubes floating in the liquid sugar. Kidding! I totally will.

Monday night we had our first childbirth class with Sarah Stockwell of Birth Memphis. She’s a sweetheart and I’m looking forward to learning all kinds of stuff in the class. We have a textbook (see fig. A) and a workbook, and a big binder with lots of room for handouts. And homework! It’s actually nice being assigned time to sit and think and talk about labor/delivery/postpartum/parenting plans, and to focus on relaxation techniques and working as a team. Ray’s ears perked up when Sarah said the partners would be the coaches, and he said he’s going to get a whistle and some tiny striped shorts.

Last night I put some money down on a big stash of FuzziBunz one-size pocket diapers. I’ve been doing lots of research and lots of soul-searching on cloth diapering and decided to just go for it. Yes, the initial cost seems like a punch in the ribs but the math really does work out over time, and I love the idea of not throwing a literal ton of diapers into a landfill. I got a great package deal from the FuzziBunz store, which I ultimately decided to pounce on since they allow you to do interest-free layaway payments. Score. Also, they’re based in Cleveland, Tenn., and I think that’s swell.

I figure it will work out that we’ll be gifted plenty of disposable diapers at first, which we can use to get used to the whole cleaning another human’s constant stream of waste thing. And then once those disposables run out (and baby boy is a little bit heftier than he was when he was born), we can transition him into the cloth diapers fairly easily. At least that’s my thinking. I need to consult my washer and dryer to make sure they are on board with this plan.