Farm Life

The past 2 days have been gloriously sunny, and we have been introduced to the various chores that go along with farm life.  Weeding, weeding and more weeding! My new arch nemesis: twitch grass.  Taz took a blow torch to the farm pasture to destroy the thistles and mom and I seeded 11 trays of flowers for the wedding.  So many purple flowers! Who knew?

Farms run on different schedules, I've found. The days start earlier around here.  We get up at 8 a.m. and mom and dad are usually already up and out the door.  The guy who puts his cows in our barn has already been and left, and the cattle are shoving each other around a feed station with fresh hay.

It might be being pregnant, or it might be the fresh air and physical activity, but by 10 p.m. I'm TIRED and can't even hold my eyes open to read a book for longer than 10 minutes.  I've been sleeping much better now that there aren't any crazies having shouting matches outside my window, and no traffic noises. I forgot how silent and noisy the country can be at the same time.  But unlike the city, its silent when you need it to be, and noisy when you need to get up.  A couple argumentative birds are building a nest outside the north facing window in our bedroom, and they start their squabbling earlier than mom and dad do.

Taz learning how to stoke the wood furnace that heats the house



Zeek gets a feel for rural living by rolling himself in some cow manure

This is all strange and new for Taz, and he is coping really well with living with my family, warts and all.  For me, even though I didn't grow up on this farm, moving here really feels like coming home.  There is familiar food for meals, familiar objects scattered around the house, and the same sense settled into the bones of the house that ours always had growing up.  Its a nice place to be for the summer.  Taz summed it up nicely when he said that this next five months will be the best part of his two year trip. 

Home, Home on the Range

Well, we made it to Belmore.  After 2 days of frantic packing, and a 6 hour drive that ended at 3 a.m., Taz, Zeek, Baby and I are settling into farm life. I have said goodbye to my city life, habits and wardrobe (scary pics of proof to come) and we are quick becoming country bumpkins.

  Packing Hell
Talk about a test of relationship strength! This move was even more difficult than last time because we had a year together to accumulate "us" stuff, and we had to go through it all to decide what we really could justify keeping, and what we could not.

Taz losing his mind at the mess

Morning #2



Getting ready to paint



painted!



Done!!!

Milestone: Last Exam!!

The day is finally here! This is the last ever time I will have to catch the number 3 bus from Queenmary Road, transfer at the college, then catch an identical bus labelled number 6 to Queens campus.  No more weird bus people! No more students! No more school stress! This is my last exam hopefully EVERRRRR!!

 Sidenote: I know that I will probably have to go back to school in Aus, but that's at least a year or two down the road, so for now, its nice to fool myself into thinking this is the end. Even just for a little while...

I have so much to write about, but I notice that the baby blogs I am drawn to are the ones covered in pictures, and I want mine to be the same. However, posting and uploading pics takes time, and that is one thing I do not have much of.   Today, my superintendent knocked on the door and told us that if we moved out a day or two early, her painters and cleaners would do up the apartment so we don't have to. I would love to do that, but it makes us even more time-crushed than usual.   Basically, once I finish my exam today at 5, we have 72 hours to be packed and moved if we want the free-paint-and-clean deal. 

Along the way, I'm going to try to post about:
1. The generosity of strangers
2. My super-sweet baby shower
3. The Saab fiasco #7 (or is it #8?  Sometimes I think that car has been pushed and towed more than its driven)
4. My super-human mom and why I hope to be like her someday

All complete with pictures yay!

I can not believe we will be at the farm in 6 days at the most! Maybe even less eeeeeh!

Ok, I'm off to cram.  By 5 tonight, I can stop thinking about school.  How awesome is that!?!

A whole wack of countdowns are on, folks!

I wrote this last night, but had to wait to post it until today, because we have no internet at home. I know, I know, we're so 1998 it isn't funny.

Getting close to the end of living on my own and the beginning of being under parents' roofs. At least 5 months at mom and dad's. Who knows how many with Wayne and Debbie...eek!  Amelia has gotten big enough to kick me in the bladder.  That's not a comfortable sensation.  We've had our first 2 pre-natal classes,and other than a few minor facts I had never thought about (well-water testing at the farm for example), its all stuff I've read and learned in the past 6 months.  Let's be honest, pregnancy blogs and books were a much more voraciously devoured subject material that Contested Constitutionalism, UBC Press, Toronto, 2009.  And they make for an excellent procrastination tool.  Much of the pre-natal class is painfully dull.  I'm a little better trained in the fine art of sitting through two hours of boring lecture combined with mildy amusing powerpoint slides than Taz is. I feel bad for him, but he hasn't complained yet, and I like having him there.  The majority of women have brought their partners so far. One woman brought her mom, and last class called the father of her child a bunch of mean names, so I'm assuming they aren't together. 

Oh, joy. Amelia has moved from kicking me in the bladder, to tapdancing on it as I write.  This is somewhere far from the Joys of Pregnancy.  Hmmmm...I wish Taz was here to complain to. He's working his second-last "shitty-okie" tonight, and won't be home until 3 a.m.  That makes this a quiet night for me. Zeek and I played fetch, and I got to watch a full movie with the commentary on (its my thing) with no eye-rolling.

Wedding planning is soon to ramp up.  The invitations were all sent on Wednesday, and people are starting to let me know they've received them.  That's pretty exciting!  Two close friends are arranging a baby shower for me in 9 days, and it seems like around 15 people are coming!  Should be an interesting mix of family and school friends who don't know each other at all!

Also, we found out yesterday that we have to paint this whole goddamn apartment before we move out. Is primer bad for pregnant women? I could wait until Wednesday and ask the nurse who leads our classes, or I could look it up here on the net.  Honestly, if these classes don't pick it up, its pretty much going to be a waste of money for me. I don't want to talk about nutrition and how smoking is unsafe. I want to practice labour positions, breathing techniques, massage, etc. I want to talk about pain medication, and hospital practices.  Labour is creeping ever closer, and as it does its becoming a very real, likely unpleasant ordeal and I would like some advance prep!

I'm tired this week. I've been really laggin energy-wise. But considering Amelia is like, quadrupling in weight these next 7-8 weeks, waddya expect, I guess. 
Third trimester in 6 days.  As Taz would say, "Holy Shitballs."

Oh, also, (this is funny). We had mundane to-do's accomplished today. A big long list of them! One of my jobs was to clean out the 8 month old wine bottles and beer bottles and cooler bottles and cans (you get the picture) that were piling up in our water-heater closet, a nasty little taunt from my younger, wilder, pre-pregnant days.  I finally got around to taking those to the recycling bins outside our unit.  Pregnant ladies out there: ever empty 5 big bags of booze bottles out carefully into a big blue recycling bin, at 61/2 months pregnant, in front of 3 strangers  I wondered what they were thinking the. entire. time. 

Its still mostly cold out, but not below freezing anymore.  Today was sunny enough that Taz did his jog while shirtless.  I miss jogging. I really miss biking.  I miss doing lots of physical activity, all day, every day without pain.  At least the end is in sight now.  Not much longer...

....right?

Milestone: End of classes!

Woohoo!!!  This is the official end of my lecture and seminar and tutorial experience here at Queens! I have just 2 assignments to finish off, and 3 exams, and then I can officially stop describing myself primarily as a university student.
How do I feel?
Being a student is great in so many ways.  It gives you an excuse to sit around a lot and bounce abstract ideas back and forth off of each other while everyone ignores the white elephant in the room, which is growing OSAP debt.  You read things you wouldn't ordinarily read, and you spend a lot of time thinking about very. specific. ideas. that most people don't.  When people ask you what you do, and you say
"I go to Queens" and they say "Ohhh..." in an impressed tone, it makes you feel good about yourself.  You feel smarter just by being here.
But at the same time, you spend about FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS / YEAR to feel this way.  That gets hard to ignore after awhile.
Also, this semester in particular, I have felt increasingly disconnected from my fellow students.  We just don't have the same life-altering events looming in the upcomming summer, and my mind is somewhere far far away from keggers and ghetto life.  (Student ghetto - very different from most other ghettos. There's a proliferation of garbage, sure, but here no one is going to jump you for your wallet.)
In short, I haven't felt like a student. My motivation has dwindled away to nothing, and most of the assignment I have handed in lately have been rushed and last minute. (And guess what: I got better marks on those than the ones I slaved over. Go figure.)
I just wanted it to be over, and now it is! Hoooray!  Taz and I might celebrate tomorrow with a lovely Easter dinner.  Chocolate everything, anyone?

Our first pre-natal class

Yesterday was pretty baby focussed.  A bit of school, then I was off downtown for my next doctor's appointment.  I don't know...I have a feeling these should maybe be longer. I'm in and out of that office in 10 minutes flat.  Blood pressure, measure my uterus, listen to baby's hearbeat (always my favourite part - this time I got to hear what it sounds like when she kicks too.  Kind of....swooshy.) Then, a couple general questions. Am I eating right? Avoiding alcohol? etc. etc.  Blood requisition form to test for gestational diabetes, and thats it! I'm out the door again.  Maybe I should be relieved because if it was a complicated pregnancy I would be in there longer discussing grave, unhappy issues.  At the same time, it is over so fast that I always forget at least one question, and end up smacking my head as I remember it later, halfway home.  Next time, I'm going in with a list!

Then, at 6:30, we had our first prenatal class at the Portsmouth Health Clinic.  Know what I love about that place? They provide detachable lumbar support cushions for their plastic chairs.  I haven't been that comfortable sitting for two hours in a plastic chair in months!

There were about 12 other couples in the room with Taz and I.  As far as age and progression of pregnancy went, we were somewhere in the middle.  It made me secretly relieved to note that we weren't the youngest there.  A teenage couple sat towards the back, neither of whom looked old enough to purchase a lottery ticket.  The boy (absolutely can NOT think of him as a man yet) reminded me of my little brother with his flipped fringe poking out from under a baseball cap, and his oversized white sneakers, and that slouchy male teenage walk. 

There was an older lady there, taking the class alone in preparation to be a labour coach for her daughter who lives in another city.  That strikes me as very sweet.  I don't think my mother is going to be in the room during my labour.  Much as I love her, she is very much like me in the way we both have opinions on absolutely everything, and it would probably drive me nuts mid-childbirth process.  That, and she had six babies naturally, is pretty anti-epidural, and I don't want that kind of pressure hanging over me.

We spent much of the first class discussing nutrition. A lot of stuff I knew already, and a lot of the practices they recommended to me have been habit my entire life.

Then came the birth videos.  You know what? Overall, not bad.  Not super up-close graphic, more like a white-washed, edit-out-all-the-screams kind of approach.  I think Taz and I handled it pretty well.  A couple things surprised me though: 1) The babies were all, without exception, blue on arrival.  Blue all over, like little Avatar spawn.  and worse, 2) The blood! I don't do well with blood. I can't watch House without cringing at least once each episode.  My best friend is a nurse-in-training, and she has to edit the details or I get queasy. I knew there were a lot of fluids and yucks involved with childbirth.  Mucus, amniotic fluid, poop, pee, spittle.  If not exactly thrilled, I'd come to accept it. But the blood? Why?  One blue baby sort of...slithered out of a woman who was on her hands and knees, and a built-up wash of blood SPURTED out after her. SOMUCHOFITWHY!?!?!

Later that night, as Taz was snoring serenely beside me, I lay there feeling very sorry for myself.  Not only was it going to hurt, I was evidently going to spout blood like a fountain.  None of the birth stories or books I'd read mentioned the fountain bit, so if I hadn't seen it on the film I wouldn't have known it was coming, and chances are that at that moment in my own experience, I wouldn't have noticed it at all. But now its on my mind.

Now, when people ask me if I'm nervous about childbirth, (#1 newest pet peeve, by the way), I'm going to say yes.  Not because of the pain. They have medication for that if need be.  What I'm nervous about is red, gushing, and apparantly unavoidable. 

Did I mention I don't do well with blood?

My Awkward Belly Moments Survival Plan

Until recently, the only thing I was worried about regarding my belly was making sure to remind hubby to rub moisturizing cream into my skin every night. I know, I know, most common sense sources say this doesn't prevent stretchmarks but still, you know, just in case.
But now, with a more prominent bump, there has been a steep increase in the amount of hands extended my way. I decided early on to be stoic about it. I mean, most people might rub my buddah belly for a second or two, but that's basically it.
What gets to me though, is how many people want to feel her kick.  I mean, its not like I have any control over that phenomenon - she is very much her own independent person in that respect. No amount of prodding at my belly on my own part can convince her to respond with a jab. (I know this, because I tried it once when the little bean hadn't kicked much in 12 hours and my worry-mode was starting to hype up the "what-ifs")  In fact, she seems to know when its someone else's hand on my tummy, and she goes completely still.
And there I am, with a person's hand lingering on my belly....waiting....both of us looking anywhere but at each other.....crickets chirping....seconds ticking by....
Yuck. Ew. No.

And then I came up with the perfect response when people ask "oooh! Can you feel her kick with your hands now?" (ALWAYS a precursor to laying of hands on mah belly)
I say, "Yes, but she isn't really kicking right now" and look dolefully down at my tummy.  I say this even if right at that second, there is a kickboxing practice taking place down there.

I figure its justified. If I added up all the minutes  I have spent and will continue to spend in awkward positions as a result of this pregnancy (think: on back, legs spread, no pants, light aimed directly at crotch, plethora of metal tools flashing in front of me), I have waved goodbye to most of my dignity already.  I want the tattered remnants, dammit!

24 weeks :D

Another milestone this week, one that makes me a very happy girl indeed!  In my mind, this pregnancy isn't broken down into trimesters so much as into my own life's landmarks along the way.  I haven't really followed the timester rules so far as symptoms anyway.
So, we had 12 weeks - This was the pot-committed, no turning back point for me and our decision
Then, we had 19 weeks - gender test via ultrasound
Then, the marvelous halfway point.  I celebrated with a particularly fiesty day of heartburn.
Now we are at 24 weeks.  Basically in my mind this is "baby survival cutoff" point. I know that sounds morbid, but premature birth is something that scares me and weighs heavily on my mind in the dark hours of the night, and dark hours of boring lectures too.
What's the next milestone? I really don't know for sure. Maybe the day I wake up with balloon hands and feet. I hear that could start anytime soon.