Falling in love again

I'm ready. I'm ready to meet this baby and fall in love with him. In my imagination, he is cute, with perfect tiny parts and a sweet face with full cheeks. I can't wait to snuggle him on my chest and smell his hair.

I can't believe how old my other kids are. And I'm still in love with them, after all these years. It is amazing our capacity to love. In families, love only multiplies, never subtracts.

Locked and loaded...

...and ready to go! The baby is now in the proper final birthing position. He is head down and his body is lying on the left. And he has been stuck there for at least 1 full week now. For the prior couple of weeks before that, he was head down but his body swiveled from left to right, depending on which side I slept on. And before that he was flipping head up/head down. He is right on time, compared to my other children. They were all birthed from that same position. It is great that he is being so cooperative. I don't want to need a cesarean section for my 6th birth, and almost no docs will deliver a breech baby any way except a c/section.

I read something online yesterday that made me think. This gal had given birth and she had taken her heparin shot that morning, not knowing she was about to start real labor. So she was not allowed to have an epidural. That makes sense. Bleeding into the spinal area could be bad. Nobody had mentioned that yet. Good thing I read around a lot. I was planning on doing it without an epidural anyway, but that is one more thing to take into consideration if I don't get much warning of the labor.

My bag is finally packed. And I have a list of last minute items to throw in. I'm beginning to feel more organized. I even picked up extra cam-corder tapes. I love birth videos. We have a nice one of our youngest right after he came into the world. It is so precious to see his first moments again.

Today is officially 4 weeks to go. 28 days. I expect to deliver between 3 and 4 weeks from now. Time is getting close.

Struggling in the muck

My pool is finally getting cleaner. There is a layer of silt along the bottom of the pool now, but the 3-inch deep pile of leaves is gone. I figured I would have to do this all by myself. The pool man came today, I caught up with him as he was on his way out. I asked him if he vacuumed the pool and he said no. There were too many leaves. Just keep emptying the bag from the Polaris and eventually the leaves would be gone. OK, I had removed most of them by hand using the net and pole the past few days anyway, so whatever. I asked him if he shocked the pool with chemicals as well and he said yes. He says he has too many pools all in the same bad condition to spend all day vacuuming a few. I think I have emptied that mucky Polaris bag about 15 times in the past few days. Not to mention untangling it in the first place from the concrete-anchored basketball hoop that had been blown into the pool. This is the second time I have had to fish that horribly heavy contraption out of the pool. And I know I was in the second or third trimester of pregnancy the last time too. Good thing I only have 31 days to go with this pregnancy. If all this strenuous activity brings on labor things should be fine.

Oh, you ask, why is my husband not doing all this? Well, he hurt his back putting topper on our lawn a month ago. And he works from dawn till dark so forget it. Also, if the pool becomes too much of a problem, he might decide to drain the thing and be done with it. He doesn't really like the pool. But the kids and I do, so I try to take care of it so he doesn't have to think about it.

I'm looking longingly at those piccies at the bottom of this blog of the pool from June and August. I wonder how long it takes to get all the silt filtered out of the water? The Polaris is usually only running 1 hour per day. I have it on all day now and I am checking the bag every hour or 2. Also, I think by running it, it kicks up the silt into the water so the filter can get rid of it. I just finished using a house broom to sweep the silt off of the steps into the center of the pool because I don't think the Polaris reaches over there too well.

Now I just need to get the gardener to cut down the tree branch that's hanging half into the water of the Jacuzzi. It's no hurry, I guess, since the water quality is not up to par right now. But I'm determined to get my pool back by next weekend.