Preparing for birth

Week 28 - I'm now in my final trimester and growing impatient to meet our little boy. The weeks continue to slowly tick by and my belly slowly grows bigger and more and more like an alien movie as the baby moves around more.  The novelty of pregnancy is starting to wear off, the rib pain is growing worse and the tiredness from the first trimester is slowly creeping back.

I'm running out of things to do to prepare for baby and help the time to pass so I've begun researching about birth and writing my birth plan.  One of the first things I read was that giving birth takes about as much effort as running a marathon. Oh dear - I'm sooo not in shape for a marathon!!  So then I started reading up on what kind of training regime I need to get me ready.  I found this really useful article on Pregnancy exercises like pelvic floor exercises.  So, I have my fitness regime planned:

Step 1: Do pelvic floor exercises daily
(Step 0.5: Work out where pelvic floor muscles are!)
Step 2: Sit cross legged a lot

Doesn't sound too strenuous to me.  12 weeks is long enough to train for a marathon right? Or perhaps I should have thought about this sooner?!

Next up I found this article on labour tools which had some great simple ideas that made my husband and I laugh (tennis balls? rolling pin?).

Finally, I got to the main topic of concern during childbirth - PAIN! As I read it became clear that for a lot of women their main aim in labour is to feel as little pain as possible. And there was me thinking the main aim is to give birth to a healthy child! Now the big question is do I want an epidural.  Though I'm really not a fan of excruciating pain, I'm not sure I like the idea of being numb from the waist down either.  How am I supposed to feel what's going on or know when to push if I can't feel anything? How will I know if I'm tearing or doing other damage to myself without the help of pain to alert me? 

It got me thinking about how we view pain, not just in child birth but in life generally. Most people view pain as a bad thing to be avoided at all costs.  But is pain really always a bad thing? Doesn't pain let us know when something is wrong? Doesn't it let us know we're alive? Surely feeling pain is preferable to feeling nothing at all?!

Beer Bread

Today I made two new discoveries:

1) My belly is now so big that when I'm sat at my desk at work my belly is actually sat on my lap!
2) Beer bread......

Baking bread is one of those things I've always wanted to try but it sounded like a lot of effort and I wasn't sure if my culinary skills were up to it.  Then a friend gave me a recipe for beer bread. It's so insanely easy and yummy I thought I'd share it with you all. Just a few simple ingredients involved and zero skill. Best of all, as it's an America recipe the measurements are in cups so I can still make it when the batteries in my kitchen scales are dead (digital scales seemed like such a good idea when we got them - not sure I fully thought it through).  For those of you that don't have measuring cups don't worry as I'll include ml measurements too so you can just use a measuring jug (yes that's right use a measuring jug to measure out flour - I know, Americans bake funny, but I kinda like it).

What you need:
3 cups/700ml self raising flour
1 cup/230ml sugar
1 bottle Newcastle Brown Ale or similar
1/4 cup/60ml melted butter

Mix together the flour, sugar and beer and pour it into a buttered loaf tin.  It'll be runny like cake mix but don't let that worry you.  Put it in the oven at 350F (that's 180C) for 40 mins.  Pour the melted butter over the top and put back in the oven for another 10 minutes.  I found mine was still a little doughy in the middle and needed a little longer but I'm not convinced by the accuracy of my oven thermostat so yours may turn out just fine.

It tastes sooooo good - I can see it's not gonna last long!  I hope you enjoy it too. Happy baking :)

Pregnancy Update

I'm still enjoying this journey of discovery that is pregnancy.  Discoveries for this week include discovering I can no longer see my feet and that the swollen ankles (or 'cankles' as Josh likes to call them) have now set in.  Also discovered that now I can not only feel the baby move but can see it.  We were watching TV the other day and then started to see my belly jump around as the baby kicked and rolled around  - what a great new party trick!

As time goes by the baby feels less like indigestion and more like a little personality who responds to the world around him (like dancing along to 'Street Dance' the movie or kicking the midwife when she tries to measure his heartbeat or responding to the sound of his daddys voice as he reads Bible stories at bed time).

I'm beginning to see how lucky I am to have a great husband to share this journey with - someone to share my excitement with when I discover new things, someone to point out symptoms I hadn't noticed ('look babe - you've got stretch marks'......'ooo your belly button is nearly an outy!'.....etc), someone to take photos to help us remember forever, someone to browse 'toys r us' with, someone to help me work out how to use the baby carrier....

The other day I came home to find Josh sat on the floor surrounded by pushchair parts trying to work out how to put the cover back on the car seat and put the whole 'travel system' together.  He was loving getting the hang of all the buttons, perfecting his technique of switching it from one mode to another and giving me lessons in how it all works haha. I love how involved he's been in my pregnancy and know the journey wouldn't be as much fun without him. I thank God everyday that I have such good support and that our baby has a daddy who's already so in love with him and wanting to be involved in his life.