Gone fishin' at 40 weeks (& a wild-child update)

Someone once told me that stripes are slimming...

We have hit it!  We have finally hit D-Day!  And today (being one day over), I'm ready.  I feel more tired and more uncomfortable today (probably just mentally discouraged for not being further along).

An update on our first born.  In the last couple of weeks, here on the blog, I've really neglected to update everyone on how Finn's doing.  It's not because I'm ignoring her at home.  In fact, she refuses to let me ignore her (though I have tried in the last two weeks, girlfriend can try my patience as only she knows how and my patience hasn't been the strongest in my current state).

She has definitely entered into her "Finn the Frustrated" phase.  She has quite a large vocabulary and is beginning to speak in complete sentences.  But she still has a very difficult time, figuring out what words need to be said when we do something that she doesn't like (like telling her "no").  There is a lot of throwing down whatever is in her hand (girlfriend has even been known to throw down her chocolate!  What?!?!?  Must take after Daddy in this regard...) and she has also started flaying herself onto the floor as well.  Nothing out of the ordinary for a typical two-year-old.  But it is interesting to see how differently Mama & Daddy deal with these outbursts -- AND how completely different each deal with it depending on their mood and patience level.

Everyone tells me that she is going to be such a big help with Baby Fish.  I'll believe it when I see it.  Maybe in a couple of months, when she realizes that we are stuck with this little pooping & crying thing, she will come around.  But I'm preparing myself for a very rough couple of months -- with lots of tantrums and outbursts when she doesn't get her way because Baby Fish needs to eat or is sleeping or is just laying in Mama's arms.  I have already done the whole "watch-her-sleep-and-cry" knowing that her individual time with me is limited (now EXTREMELY limited).  It makes me sad to know that things are going to change.  But then I try to make myself realize that having a sibling is one of the best things that we could have done for her.  And that although the first years are going to be rough -- when they get older, they are going to be super-tight and love each other to the moon and back.

And little furry update as well:  Tuesday morning, E's mom found blood on the sheets that we laid over our couch (it's the couch that is known as Bishop's couch because that is her prime real estate in the living room, hence the sheets over it -- it's the one that we bought for $25 & I reupholstered for the pets to lay on).  E started giving her a daily baby aspirin over the weekend to help her with her arthritis and we think that might be thinning her blood too much.  I'm going to look into glucosamine instead for her joints.  Later that evening, she was discovered again with blood on the couch.  This time, the culprit was named.  She has a dangling tumor in her mouth that we first noticed over Christmas -- she must have jarred it and it started bleeding in her mouth.  I'm guessing that made her want to lick something and so she chose the couch?  I now need to make a vet appointment for her to get that sucker cut out, so I don't have to find huge spit/blood stains on the sheets that we lay over the couch.

The pregnancy fat face strikes again!

Some fishin' updates:

• There really hasn't been any change.  I'm still tired and I'm still pregnant.
• I saw my doctor yesterday on D-Day.  Briefly, I'm 3 cm dilated and 50% effaced.  The dilation isn't my concern -- you can be dilated to 6 and still sit for days if you aren't effaced (effacement is the measurement of how thinned out your cervix is).  I can't say that the 50% isn't disheartening, which is why I didn't want to get checked in the first place.  But at least, it isn't 0% and no one can say how quickly that last 50% will go (or how slowly).
• My doctor is on-call for 24 hours on Sunday beginning at 8:00am.  So I have a 24 hour window to get the date that I initially thought way back in the first trimester and my own doctor.  If not, I have an appointment set up for next Wednesday and he penciled me in for induction on next Friday.  He said I can cancel the induction on Wednesday if I decide that I would rather wait.  The only reason that we both wanted to pencil me in was because he would be on-call at the hospital again and would be able to deliver me.
• I think my final weight gain total is going to be 47 pounds, which is two more pounds than what I gained with Finn.  And I didn't get any stretch marks this time around either.
• Some days I have absolutely no pain and some days I'm waddling everywhere I go.  Occasionally, I'll have a shooting pain run through my hip as I'm walking because my pelvis is so off-balance.
• Nighttime is the worst.  There are nights were I think that I'm going to roll over and the pelvis isn't going to come with me.  I literally am frozen with fear when I try to roll over, thinking "is this the time that my pelvis gets stuck to one side and then I'm completely broken?"  The pain in rolling over is constant, despite whatever tactics and maneuvers I tried to use.
• Speaking of nighttime, funny thing is that although I think that he has dropped down -- my nighttime trips to the bathroom are actually DECREASING.  There were a couple of nights in the last 2-3 months where I counted five trips between 9:30 -- 6:00.  My usual was 2-3 times, but lately, I've only gotten up once.  Maybe I'm subconsciously trying to hold it longer, but I know the pain that it brings about trying to get out of bed and waddle to the bathroom.  Those first couple of steps are usually real doozies.
• I'm also really trying to relish these last couple of days.  These are the last days of my life that I'm ever going to be pregnant.  While it is proving difficult to feel sad that these days are going to end, I'm also not looking forward to the whole not-sleeping-for-months cycle to start up again.  These pregnancy hasn't been kind to me and I can't say that I'm wishing for myself to stay pregnant forever (as I was with Finn).  Once little Fish arrives, I know that I'm going to have pregnancy-longing-pangs.  But by that point, the memory of him swimming around in my tummy is going to start fading...