Zrich is still pitch-black at 7AM. And still almost a month 'til the solstice!

Still... I love early morning. The quiet stillness of the air, moved only by little fresh breezes, the muted twittering of birds, the way the sky lightens over the dark silhouette of the hills, the last pale stars hanging in the deep blue. For the weather has finally got nice, after weeks of horribleness.

I guess it's a good thing I love early morning -- something tells me I'm going to be seeing a lot of them, very soon!

I forgot to vote like a good citizen. Last day for it was yesterday. (Why are there so many voting times? Didn't I just vote recently??) Now they shall never know my opinion on the minarets... will they fine me or something, I wonder?

It is one week exactly to when this baby is due. I can't really believe it. I also don't know how I'm going to get through another week, or more like two, or more! And then I wonder: am I simply doing this to myself? Am I being a hypochondriac or something? Am I making up imagined pains to make pregnancy even more miserable than it need be? Because it doesn't make sense to me, that it is this hard...

I'm a tough girl. I can put up with a fair bit of discomfort and just brush it off with minimal complaining. I always have. I'm strong, and healthy, and capable. And while I'm not a big girl, I'm certainly not a small girl either. So why is this pregnancy so tough? I went into it thinking it would be annoying and uncomfortable, but assuming I wouldn't have any issues, that the strength and healthiness I'm used to would pull through as ever. And it has, from many standpoints... I'm still, at 39 weeks, perfectly capable of walking faster than most non-pregnant people, carrying more, functioning on less sleep; I haven't been sick or *very* exhausted; there have been no issues with pre-eclampsia or bad glucose levels or baby being distressed or anything else (except the stupid excessive Braxton-Hicks contractions).

But I wasn't expecting this kind of pain, constantly. I wasn't expecting the sciatica which makes it impossible to be comfortable in *any* position at this point, and randomly deactivates my right leg whenever I need it most. I wasn't expecting to wake up every single night with stabs of agony in my stomach. And I wasn't expecting my entire skeletal system to feel like it is breaking. That is almost the worst. All of my central skeletal system - spine, ribs, hips - feel like they are being constantly wrenched apart, and it hurts like anything.

Woke up this morning at 4am with so bad pain in my abdomen I couldn't stand up straight. Went to pee, went back to bed. Couldn't lie on either side because my hips hurt so much: tried lying on my back but could barely breathe with the elephant sitting on me. What is this baby made of that she weighs so much? Gold? Fell asleep again but had the most horrible dreams of suffocating -- could hear myself gasping for air even in my sleep -- so woke up again at 6ish and just got up. My ribs ached so horribly, and I was having another horrible stabbing pain in my lungs whenever I inhaled, so I took a very hot shower for a long time which seemed to kind of ease it up. Though lately my showers have involved me kind of slumping in the bathtub (thank goodness for detachable shower heads!) because it hurts my back/tailbone too much to stand up straight.

Surely it can't be like this for everybody? IS it just all in my head??

So a couple weeks ago, when V. was visiting (actually, she's still visiting, but is currently in London, and will return just for this Saturday before heading back to Oz), we bit the bullet and took a ride on the Zrich Fondue Tram.

It was fantastic!

The tram was adorably cute: small, all white, with a raised carved fondue pot on the front of it. Inside it was cheerily decorated with little cheese models hanging on the walls, and lights, and greenery. The fondue forks are all marked as owned by the Zrich Transit Authority. Heh.

There weren't 5 kinds of fondue as I had thought there would be (that's only if you rent the entire tram for yourself/your party) but what there was was delicious. And they came along and added things to it periodically (paprika, fresh crushed garlic). We finished up one pot lickety split and then they gave us another one! Only Zaubi managed to contribute much effort to the second pot: V. and I were absolutely stuffed.

Moreover, they also supplied an appetizer of cold meat -- very good -- and ridiculously tasty dessert (mousse or fruit) and excellent espresso.

See photos

I'd love to do it again...

Why did Sierra On-Line have to die, anyway?

But, there are still people out there who loved their games as much as I did -- well, more, actually.

Creators of sites such as sarien.net where you can play old Sierra games online!

Imagine that!!

Rewind 15, 16 years.

I'm 15 years old, going to high school in Boston. Every free moment of time I have -- recess, lunch, after school, and more than a few study halls I conveniently disappeared from -- has me creeping, up, up, up to the top of the school where the Science department is, walking stealthily down the quiet hallway, speeding past lit doorways... my destination, the Physics room. Bated breath, fingers crossed. Will it be empty? Or will there be a class going on, so I will have to turn around, heart heavy with disappointment? The room is dark: my soul leaps within me. I creep in, glancing nervously about. Cross the room to the back, sit down at one of the black-topped lab benches and turn on one of the computers that languish here, wincing against the beeps and squawks of startup, so loud in the empty room.

Why am I here, you ask?

I am here because I have been struck hard with an obsession... an obsession for the coolest physics game ever: The Incredible Machine, made by that greatest ever of game companies, now lost in the fogs of history, Sierra On-Line.

I don't know why it was loaded on those computers -- hardly used, as they were -- for just a few short months of that one year of my high school life. I don't remember how I discovered it, I don't remember when it went away: I remember only the crushing disappointment when I realized that my game was no more. (I think I'd won all the levels by that point anyway.)

Life went on, and I forgot the name of the game, and I moved onto Real Life and Bigger and Better Things... yet over the passing years, flashbacks of the game would come back to me and I would think of it, a little sadly, certain I would never find it again. I used to tell Zaubi about this great physics game I used to play, and he'd nod and smile, and then it would pass from my memory again. And thus passed half my lifetime.

But then yesterday, Zaubi came home from work, and told me his work mate C. had discovered a really cool old physics DOS game, and at that moment, I knew. I didn't say much of anything, but I could feel that funny tingle going through me -- that sudden undeniable prescience. And I went straight away and looked it up, and downloaded dosbox, and spent the rest of the evening playing The Incredible Machine.

Three cheers for C., who has inadvertently breathed life into a lost era. Three cheers for everyone out there who loves old games. And three cheers for Sierra On-Line, the greatest game company in the history of the world.

I've always loved molasses.

Since I was a tiny child, I used to drench my oatmeal with it; when it snowed molasses taffy was always reason for great excitement; homemade cookies that are very heavy on the molasses side have ever been my favorite; in recent years I even mix it with hot milk as a morning or bedtime drink. I have been known to eat it straight out of the jar, in fact.

Yes, I love molasses!

Of course, moving to Australia caused me some trouble as molasses is really not eaten there -- they only use it for cattle fodder/supplements. I spent some fruitless months looking around the supermarkets, asking, and getting the response "you want what? ...that's only for cows, isn't it...?" until finally discovering a health-food store which stocks small quantities of the stuff in a hard-to-see place (the same health food store that sells

Then I moved to Switzerland, and have had the same problem... except they don't even seem to use it for cattle fodder here! But again, I found a health food store (or "Reformhaus") that sells it, and since then I have reveled in molasses happiness.

One day a month or so ago, I read the nutritional content on my jar of molasses. Now granted, the stuff I have here is pretty high quality -- reine, schwarze Melasse, ausschliesslich aus Zuckerrohr gewonnen, nicht raffiniert. Auf kontrolliert-biologischem Anbau.

Nevertheless, I was startled and amazed to see what high percentages of important minerals this stuff packs. Just a couple teaspons of it gives you:
806mg Calcium (20%)
600mg Phosphorus (15%)
35mg Iron (50%)
283mg Magnesium (19%)
485mg Potassium (25%)

Dang! Of course, I'm sure it's not the same in the sweet & processed Grandma's variety (I'm sure you have to get blackstrap, but I don't care 'cause I like blackstrap) but still! 2 teaspoons!

I love it when foods I love are validated.

So! There are less than 3 weeks to go until this baby is supposed to be born. (!!!) She is now full-term, which means she's fully mature and ready to come out at any time.

I feel ridiculous. This baby-basketball module I am wearing looks ridiculous! My stomach goes out in front literally at a right angle to the rest of my body, from top and bottom. It is totally bizarre.

Once upon a time I thought that being pregnant would be like being fat. Just kind of larger and heavier and out of breath. But it doesn't feel like that at all. Granted, I am 30 pounds heavier, but I still have perfectly good balance and feel light on my feet -- I can speed walk as normal, and scamper around, and even still run, in fact, WHEN the Braxton-Hicks contractions aren't taking over.

The problem is that the Braxton-Hicks contractions are going on about 75% of the time and when they are doing their thing I cannot run, or scamper, or walk or even stand up straight. Moreover, now I seem to have developed sciatica and can't even sit for moderate periods of time and I keep losing my right leg at random and inconvenient moments (like when trying to grocery shop).

Another thing is, I think if I were just fat, the fat would squish. The baby module does not squish even slightly. Especially given the constant contractions, this huge tensed up ball of water & baby sticking out my front has NO give. So when you bend over to tie your shoes, it's not like things shift around or you can squash the mass down or push it to the side or something. You have to bend the rest of you *over and around* this massive, completely solid ball which has zero squish factor. Gah! I can only tie my shoes now if a) I hold my breath and turn my feet kind of sideways over my knee or b) Zaubi does it for me.

Had an appt last week and the midwife told me what position the baby is in. There is this big round thing right in front just below my ribs and that is her ass. There are two feet that stick out my right side (it *really* looks weird when they move around) scooting about anywhere from hip level to all the way under my ribs. Yesterday she actually kicked up high so hard that I heard, yes, I heard my left ribs make a cracking sound! Yuk! And then there's a weird other thing that is constantly jabbing me in the back of the bellybutton. A fist? An elbow? I don't know. When she gets her hiccups now I can feel them vibrating against my tailbone, and if I push the ass part of her in different directions I can feel her head crushing my bladder, or make her feet stick out my side, and so forth. It's truly bizarre. Definitely having this baby inside me is the weirdest physical sensation I've ever experienced.

Man, this whole pregnancy thing has been such an eye-opener. I went into it thinking it would be bad, but not *that* bad. Now I'm at the other end: could I ever do it again, knowing now what it's like? I just don't know. And I haven't even given birth yet or gotten through the first crazy weeks! Man, oh man.

Come on, baby, let's get a move on...

How cool is this? Man, I would soooooooooo love to do that.

The season starts Dec 13. Baby should be born by then. I wonder how a newborn would take to sledging. They like being bounced, right?

:-D :-D

So last week I made eggnog from a recipe I found off the internet. At least, I tried. Generally I cook pretty well (unless Zaubi is helping me, in which case everything seems to go wrong) but this was not one of my stellar moments. Ended up with a chunky brown mixture that looked of vomit and reeked of Jack Daniels.

Don't ask.

Anyway, for some reason I had, folded into my trusty little recipe book, a recipe for eggnog that I got free from an egg carton about 10 years ago. It's been sitting in there ever since, and I have never made it. I glanced it over the other day, and I'm a bit apprehensive about it honestly...

It claims to be from the wife of (the late) Senator John Cooper. And it's safe for Democrats as well as Republicans, it says. Here it is:

12 eggs, separated
1 cup extra fine sugar
1 quart heavy cream
1 quart light cream
3 cups bourbon whisky
2 cups white rum
2 cups brandy

At least 3 days before serving, beat yolks with sugar until thick & lemon colored. Beat heavy cream til thick. Add booze, stirring frequently. Beat egg whites until almost firm. Fold egg whites into the mixture of cream, sugar, egg yolk & booze. Pour into containers and refrigerate for up to a week. Shake well before serving, and top with grated nutmeg.

I'm kind of afraid to make that one. All cream & booze! I don't know what kind of Christmas parties the late Senator John Cooper had, but you can't have felt very good the next morning...

I really do not like soprano saxophones. Why do they exist??

Next weekend when N. is here visiting, we are going to experience the great excitement of the Zürich Fondue Tram. A city tram that bumps about downtown Zürich for a couple hours while you eat all the fondue you can possibly put away.

There is actually a Fondue Ship as well, but I heard about the tram first so signed up for that. Ah well, something for another year.

One of Zaubi's workmates has a wife who had her baby due on the same due date as mine -- but she had her baby over this past weekend. I know I should be glad that my kid is still holding out, but my heart says NOT FAIR! That lucky woman!! Skipped out of a whole month!

That's totally the wrong attitude. But I can't help thinking it anyway.

These final-month mood swings are hitting me, I think. It didn't occur to me before that I might get mood swings -- I never believed in PMS mood swings and so forth, and I'm such a capricious grumpy person often anyways, I feel like blaming moodniness on hormones is a total cop-out -- but I think this is not quite normal. So maybe there *is* something to it after all.

I was reading a Laura Ingalls Wilder book today and I cried, I actually cried when her dog died. What the? I didn't cry over that dog the other 50 times I've read that book since age 6: come to think of it, i don't cry over books, or movies, or anything of the sort, full stop.

And then at dinner I found myself suddenly completely incensed and threw a fork across the room, and then burst into tears. Now, throwing things has definitely been part of my modus operandus in the past; however, generally not suddenly and randomly. I usually know a while in advance before I throw something. It doesn't just kind of come out of the blue. And I don't cry afterwards.

Ugh, this is horrible. When will I feel like myself again?

Why won't this stupid soprano sax go away?????

Insurance issues sorted. Whew. That had me worried.

Baby is full-term in less than 2 weeks! Nuts. Of course, her due date isn't for 4.5 weeks -- but maybe I can convince her to come early. As soon as possible after the full-term mark sounds good to me. ;-) She is all knees and elbows and other pointy, unidentifyable body parts.

The 3 Australians left last night. We had a lovely time with them -- pretty restful, which was good, as I am fit for approximately nothing at this point what with the contractions and dizzy spells, and also, one of them had hurt his ankle a couple weeks ago while wrestling a tiny man on the Mongolian plains.

Interesting.

But we ate a lot of yummy food, and took a trip up Mt. Rigi on the one nice day (most days at this point are pea-soup fog of such thickness that you can't see 50 feet in front of you), walked around the city, went to an ice hockey game and altogether just chilled out. It was great to see them, and good for them to have a bit of a rest halfway through their massive journey -- they've been taking a world trip from Oz to China, Mongolia, Russia, here, Israel, Jordon, England, and the USA to name a few!

This Friday Zaubi's dad comes for a day or two while en route to elsewhere in Europe. Then on Sunday we're going to spend the day with Zaubi's old uni friend & family, who is in Switzerland for a few weeks, and then on Tuesday N. arrives from Australia to hang out for a couple weeks! Maybe she can help me pep-talk the kid unto making an early appearance...

Busy, busy. I should really finish up doing some work before the next folks arrive! Really what I want to do is lie on my face, though. So tired.

Arrrrrrg, the Swiss hospital is continually calling me up and telling me that I have no insurance and therefore will have to pay over 20,000 CHF out-of-pocket when my baby is born.

I *do* have insurance. It covers 100% of hospital etc. costs. But for some reason it can't seem to get synced up with the Swiss people.

The hospital says they need a guarantee of payment in writing from the insurance company. Fair enough. About 3 months ago we called the insurance company and talked to them about it and shortly thereafter they told us (when we called again, since they never called back) they had set it up.

But apparently, they lied.

Zaubi has ben calling them lately ever few days and they say they've been talking to their Geneva office, they've got all their conversations down on record, and they are setting it all up (what happened to the "it's been done!" of three months ago??)

But I went to their website and they don't *have* a Geneva office. They have a Zürich office. So who in the heck are they talking to?!

And the hospital called again today and said they've never heard hide nor hair of this company so they couldn't be talking to them.

In all the times we have called them, they have never even ONCE called back, even though they always say they will look such-and-such up and call us back in 2 hours, or on Monday, or whatever.

And this is an insurance company sponsored by Zaubi's workplace, which is the largest government organization in Australia!

What to do? Less than 5 weeks to go and I don't have 20,000 CHF...

Exactly 5 weeks to go! In two hours that is, and only if she isn't late. Which I desperately hope and pray she will not be. But she probably will, because aren't all first babies late?

The Australians are here now. Ol' mrtee headed back to the USA a week ago, loaded down with Ovalmaltine products and good intentions as to how his life will change in the near future. He forgot to take a plush roast chicken, though. 

Spent half the day in the ER near Zaubi's work because one of the Aussies did something to his ankle two weeks ago while wrestling a tiny man in Mongolia (!!!), and it is still all swollen and painful. We were there from about 10.30: two of us left at about 3.15, while the guy and his wife didn't get finished up til almost 6pm. Can you say, insane?! And I thought waiting rooms in America were bad. 

The leader of our band here recently friended me on Facebook, and I was just terribly amused by a post he wrote. It says: "Nöd gwüsst dass mer sich während em Dirigierä chan schniidä! Als Bandleader läbt mer gföhrlich, vor allem mit denä Musikgspändli won ich han LooL :-p"

Why do the Swiss spell things SO funnily??! I can never get over it. 

Yesterday we bought a baby carriage, the Maclaren Techno XT. I had not intended to buy one, because I hate baby carriages. I hate that they are enormous, and ALWAYS in the way, and these women drag them through supermarkets and busses and clothing shops and just lurch about expecting you to get out of their way. I had fully intended to just get an Ergo and carry the baby around all the time. Well I still intend that, but we figured a carriage might come in useful especially doing all the travel we will be doing shortly after she is born, so we bought the smallest carriage possible. It's highly rated, good quality, has lots of clever features, cost less than half as much as the average giant stupid SUV carriage, and, best of all, is scarcely larger than the average stroller. Even though you can lay it flat for a newborn. Yeah man.

Moreover, we got a little baby tote bed thing to go with it which we can also use as an infant bed til we get back to Australia -- no point in buying one for only 5 weeks here, and I was afraid the midwife might arrest me if I put her to sleep in the bureau drawer ;-)

Tomorrow we're going to an ice hockey game. Yeah!

Today I had my first fight with my baby.

And she isn't even born yet!

Generally I have been finding it cute when she kicks her little feet, or knees, or whatever they are on my insides. It's an indication that she's there, and healthy, and strong, and growing like she should, and gives her a bit of personality.

But in the past few weeks she's taken to taking her pointy body parts and pushing it *hard* against somewhere, and it hurts. Every day it hurts more. Especially when she lines it up with the back part of my bellybutton, because my bellybutton has a lot of scarring from the laporoscopic endometriosis operations.

So today, she was doing this constantly, and it was really uncomfortable and painful, and the only way I could ease it up was by pressing very firmly on her little body part, pushing them back down, whenever she stuck them up.

But she kept doing it. And it hurt. And it was making me mad. So I pushed firmly on her whatever and said, STOP! She immediately pushed up the little thing again. I gave it a *very* firm and decisive push back down. Then there was a pause. A deliberate, thoughtful pause. And then the little thing actually booted me! Instead of just pressing like she was doing before. She cocked back her little arm/leg/knee/foot and gave me a decisive, deliberate, boot. In exactly the same place. Hard.

This baby is defying me and she isn't even born yet baaaaaaarrrrrrggggggh.

Aaaaaaragh this Fall weather is less than satisfying. last week when viacimo was here, she was kind enough to give me a nasty cold :-( Worse yet, the nasty cold has turned into bronchitis, which I *never* get, and is not going away, despite my concerted efforts to a) pretend it doesn't exist and b) even when I can't pretend it doesn't exist, act like it doesn't exist.

Moreover, I can't walk 10 feet without wanting to double over from the damn contractions. Why?? I took a walk with mrtee yesterday and it nearly killed me. Just standing up straight took massive willpower. And it was only, like 2km long walk over flat ground. Baaaaaaaaaaaargh.

Anyway, this is mrtee 's last weekend in Zürich :-( so we have rented a car all weekend to take some Swiss road trips. Things aren't getting off to a great start:

1) Zaubi (and I, too, though I hadn't planned to be one of the drivers) forgot his driver's license and mrtee forgot his passport -- only realized this when we were standing at the Hertz counter at the airport to pick up our car: but they were nice enough to take a combination of Zaubi's Swiss identity card & mrtee 's license :)

2) The weather, dare I say it? sucks. We wanted to go down around Lucerne, where there are a lot of beautiful mountains, etc., and take the bahn up Mt Rigi, but this is what Mt Rigi looks like this fine morning: live at 9AM. Charming, eh? What a killer view!

All of a sudden, Fall has come.

I was actually surprised that it stayed warm so long here. But, just up through last week, the sun was hot and it was warm and late-summer-like... even too warm sometimes! The weather was beautiful: it really didn't rain at all for close to a month. But then, last weekend, there were a couple days of gray and rain, and since then, though the sun and blue skies have come back, the temperature has dropped dramatically.

Zaubi actually wore a scarf to work yesterday and all the people on the street are going around in fleece jackets and whatnot.

Ah well, my summer in Switzerland was beautiful. And I've always loved Fall as well, to be fair. The crisp chill to the air after the hot of summer is really livening. I used to go slightly crazy with it in days past -- well, not as crazy as I would go when the smell of spring finally flavored the air after a long horrid Boston winter, of course -- but I used to love  putting on my coat for the first time and scuffing along the sidewalk decorated with brightly colored falltime leaves. Of course, they don't change so nicely here as they did in New England...

When viacimo was here, last week, we took a long tram ride waaaaaaaay up, up, up to the Zoo in Zürich and went to find James Joyce's grave. We found it after a while in the most beautifully landscaped secluded little graveyard. It was reminiscent of Mt. Auburn Cemetery just in the beauty of the landscaping, though on a much smaller scale, of course. And I remembered just how much I used to love going to Mt Auburn in the fall, climbing up the tower there, browsing amongst the crumbling graves. The beauty of the landscaping and the changing leaves always awed me a bit.

Now mrtee is here and we have been bumping around a bit. Went to Reichenbach Falls a week and a half ago (on the last day the funicular was running for the season!), when viacimo was still here, to ooh and ahh over the place, marked with a white star, where Sherlock Holmes and his nemesis Dr Moriarty fell over that crazy tall waterfall. Of course, they are imaginary people, so I found that rather amusing, and slightly disappointing, because since it is the end of the season, there is very little water in the falls. It would be truley impressive in the spring, I'm sure.

I have to admit I'm a bit apprehensive about the winter weather. I haven't had a winter in about 4 years now, thanks to living in a subtropical climate! Everything I hear tells me that Zürich winters are fully as damp, cold, windy, snow-less, gray, and icy as Boston ones, and, well, there is a reason I fled Boston, after all! Still, winter in Boston even never bothered me until a bit after Christmas, and we will be leaving the country just 2 weeks into the new year and heading back to Oz via the USA. And Christmas here shoud be extremely beautiful, with lots of delicious things to eat and drink.

I hope this baby will be punctual. (I still don't buy the premature thing, honestly). I'm starting to give her pep talks now.

Well, whaddya know?

Chickens do have earlobes.

 Yesterday the current inhabitants of my flat (me, Zaubi, and mrtee ) were having a discussion on chickens and what color eggs they lay. Do brown chickens lay brown eggs, and white chickens white eggs? What about black chickens then? 

So this morning I wake up and mrtee has sent me a couple links on chicken egg production. here's a gem from http://www.ces.purdue.edu/extmedia/AS/AS-518.pdf. 

They have really awesome kid toys here in Zürich, and also in Germany (actually, embarrassingly enough, almost all the cool toys in the toyshops here, are German-made) and also when we were in Budapest they had stalls full of nice wooden playthings for kids. And they were clever things too, not just boring toys. 

Why can't they make cool wooden toys in the USA and Australia? Why do they have to make so many horrible cheap plastic things, that, to add insult to injury, talk, or make honking/beeping/ringing noises, or worst of all, sing stupid songs in babytalk voices?

I shall never buy my child such a thing: and if anyone ever gives me something of the sort I shall have Zaubi disable it. Or I'll just throw it out.

Anyway,  recently I've taken a lot of photos of neato cleaver wooden kid toys in different shops/stalls. When I get back to Australia, I intend to try my hand at some of them myself. The hardest part will just be finding appropriate pieces/sorts of wood. Pine ain't gonna cut it. I'm pretty good with tools and drawing up plans and construction. It should give me something to amuse myself since I will be a stay at home parent for at least 6 months (EEK!)

In any case it cannot be worse than sewing, and hopefully should be a lot more fun. 

 So I took almost a month off from the blasted terry cat, I was so depressed after the initial embroidery disaster.

But then I picked all the horrible embroidery out of the back of his head, and after much pondering and trembling, basted a rough nose/mouth/eyes onto the FRONT of his head: just basted with a few threads so that I could study the general effect.

After redoing it a couple times I got some basting I was generally happy with, and then tried to embroider over the basting, with the thick embroidery thread. 

DAMN what an effort. It still kinda sucks, but it approximately 2000% better than the original attempt. I still do not know how to embroider, how to use thread to fill in all the space (e.g. on his nose). But the mouth and eyes are okay even if the nose is sucking, and there is NO WAY I am picking the dratted thing out again. 

Now the final problem I have is to stitch the head to the body. The instructions say to close the hole in the head, and close the hole in the body, and then stitch the head to the body, but how am I supposed to do that?? There is not enough fabric, and if both holes are closed, how do I stitch it? it won't be overlapping or anything. This cat is going to have no neck. Besides, I don't know how to sew in a circle like that.

Gah. What possessed me to try to do this??

So my third and final ultrasound did not go as well. I was rather disappointed. This was the 7 month/31 week ultrasound. A mere 8-ish weeks to go!! 

First, they didn't do a 4D ultrasound, so I was a bit sad. I don't know if that just isn't standard practice here: maybe you have to ask/pay for them specifically: I dunno. Also they didn't check/verify her gender again so I suppose it is still somewhat possible that the little she is a he. 

Second, the baby was lying in an extremely obnoxious position: straight as a pencil, head way far down, feet way far up, her face pointing toward the sky. So the guy really struggled to get a measurement of her head -- he couldn't get the necessary side profile, as my hip bone was exactly in the way. And the obnoxious little thing just stayed there, stiff as a board, even though generally she is constantly moving about and will shift positions when I do, or if I poke her a bit. Nope. No doing this time. She is so active when it's just me and her, and then as soon as someone else wants to feel her kick etc. etc. she goes all coy and pretends that she isn't there. Grr. 

Third, she is so big now that you can't see all of her in one scan: so the ultrasound looked a lot more just like mush to me. He could only catch one part of her body with each scan so it just wasn't a coherent picture to my untrained eyes. 

Fourth, he was all freaked out because my uterus is already cramping so badly. I've been getting the "fakie" Braxton-Hicks contractions since about week 16, which is way early, and they are pretty much constant, which is also unusual. And really strong. Also unusual. You're generally only supposed to feel them in the 3rd trimester, maybe toward end of the second, and only rarely and not that strong. So every time I've gone before, they've been apprehensive about it, I've been taking loads of powdered magnesium for it, yuk, but they are just getting stronger and stronger.

I'd got used to it and just assumed this was the way it was, something to deal with, annoying as it is since I can't walk 10 feet without my entire stomach cramping into a horrible painful ball, but stable anyway. But he was upset about it, and did yet another extra ultrasound to measure dilation to see if it had changed (at my last normal appointment they also did an extra ultrasound to measure dilation). Happily, the numbers were the same, else he said they would have admitted me to hospital then and there! Gaaaaaaaaaah. That's the last thing I want.

So the long and short of it is, they are worried that I am going to go into premature labor, because these contractions are so bad, and they want me to take this drug to ease it, and I don't want to take it. The drug is called Adalat CR and is for high blood pressure (which I don't have) but I guess it relaxes your uterus in the same way it relaxes the muscles of your veins/arteries? I guess. Anyway, everything I read on it said "do not take this during pregnancy" and though I'm sure they would not recommend it if it were really dangerous, I am just not happy with the idea of taking a drug. It is classed "C" which means that it has not been tested it enough to have defined it for pregnancy as safe or unsafe. 

I feel instinctively that despite these horrid contractions, this is a stable situation. Not that I've even been a instinct-based person, but still, I have a strong feeling about not taking this drug. And even logically, I think I would rather chance the premature labor thing, than take a drug. If the purpose of this drug is to relax all muscles (side effects are weakness, light headedness, etc.) what is it going to do to the baby's muscles? Taking vitamins etc. is one thing. Taking drugs that are designed to change how your body is functioning is another.

So -- I didn't fill the prescription. And we will see how things are in two weeks, at my next appointment, when I suppose they will do yet another extra ultrasound to measure the dilation thing. 

Bah.