40 weeks 4 days

I had already started this post and walked away for a minute when my yoga ball rolled off the chair and hit the nice fresh cup of tea I’d just made. It, of course, spilled all over my laptop. I have no idea if my laptop will be ok but it’s currently turned off, opened and turned upside down to “dry” per google’s advice.

Apparently the post I’d started didn’t save though. Rar. Not exactly the way I wanted to start the day or the month. Oh well, nothing I can do about it now.

My fresh cup of tea is made and I am now in the office on the desktop instead of my cute little laptop.

I’d say a good 80% of the time when I sit down to write a post I don’t actually want to write. I don’t have something pressing on my mind I need to process. I’m always happy to go back at a later time and remember where I was at that day. It’s a good reminder of what was. That’s why I’m writing today. I know I will want an accounting of how I was feeling physically and emotionally the last few days before baby Ellie arrives.

So how do I feel physically? The last few weeks I’ve really started to get swollen and puffy. My hands and feet especially. My fingers hurt almost like arthritis and I attribute at least some of that to how swollen they are. My feet hurt pretty badly in the middle of the night when I get up to pee, but after walking around for a bit in the morning they’re better. Another odd thing that’s been happening is that I’ve developed cysts or swollen lymph nodes or something in my left arm pit. They kind of come and go. The irritating thing is that when they are developing and for the first day or so they actually really hurt. I asked my doctor about it and she seemed unconcerned.

Sleep is getting worse and worse. I have trouble falling and staying asleep. Last night was especially rough.

Other then those symptoms, honestly I feel really good physically. I am still taking Xion on daily walks and doing my other daily activities. I definitely find bending over difficult (like to put my shoes on), but thankfully I have some great slip on shoes.

How do I feel emotionally? I’m reaching the tipping point of ready to be done being pregnant. Like I’m not done done yet, but I can feel myself getting close to that. There are a few people I know who were pregnant and due many weeks after me who have already had their babies and I felt a little twinge of envy when I heard about it. It was the first time in awhile I’d felt that particular feeling.

There were a few things that I wanted to get done before she arrived and as of 9:30 this morning they will all be done so then I think I’ll be really ready for her to arrive. What were the things? Glad you asked! In the last two days I’ve pitched for the same amount of business that we did all of 2023. It was a pretty big week honestly. Even if we don’t win the business (which I’m confident we will), just having a shot at that is HUGE! The other thing that needed to happen is we needed to get to February. Drew really wants Ellie to be officially part of the February birthday club with my family. Unless something goes drastically wrong she will be!

Now, every day that goes by is one less day to process her birth certificate, SSN and passport…so she needs to come soon so that she can be an international traveler in June.

What are the things we are doing to start labor? Eating dates was recommended, bouncing on a yoga ball and eating spicy food. The other more intimate things that are probably a lot more effective are nipple stimulation (using a breast pump) which helps your body make oxytocin which is the hormone needed to start contractions, and sex. Seaman has a hormone in it called Prostaglandin which helps to ripen the cervix (gross I know). I don’t know how fast all those methods work so we didn’t really start truly trying to start labor until last night (I had to get through my big client meetings!). If I’m being honest though, I’m not convinced that sex is going to work for us. It sure didn’t work to get her in there, why would it work to get her out? And the idea of forcing intimacy feels like infertility all over again. It’s not about fun or pleasure, it’s about accomplishing a task and that’s zero fun at all. So I don’t know about that method for us.

I keep having conversations with Ellie, telling her that the outside world really isn’t that bad. She doesn’t have to pay taxes for at least 15 years (to which Drew replied that he plans for her to be a child actress and make millions so her tax journey will start much earlier), she can meet Xion (to which Drew replied in an “Ellie” voice “I don’t know what a Xion is”), there’s sunshine out here and lots of friends. She seems very unmotivated by any of those things though.

It’s also worth noting that one year ago today I underwent the egg retrieval process. It was the first time I’d been under general anesthesia in a very long time and I was anxious about how it was going to effect me. I was worried about how many eggs we would get, how many would be mature and how many would fertilize and survive until day 5 when they would be biopsied for genetic testing and then frozen. The whole IVF journey had been a lot at that point and it felt like a big test to see how well I’d done. Fast forward one year and we are now waiting for baby Ellie to arrive. WOW!

Well that’s where I am at today. We shall see what the day brings!