Still Pregnant

I am still pregnant.

Plans for today include putting Moxa on my toe . . . this is a Chinese Medicinal herb practice in which a coal made of Moxa is lit and then the hot coal is put near an acupuncture point (and/or injury) to increase qi-flow to that area.

So there's this one point on the pinky toe of either foot that is connected to stimulating labor. We're doing that now--ie, I am sitting here writing this blog while James is holding the Moxa coal near my toe.

Other plans for the day include finishing raking the leaves in our yard (I'm so glad we are almost done, geez we have a lot of trees!), and then I'm going to mow the lawn on our riding mower (ie, take a long ride down a bumpy road, LOL). It has been broken for months and we just got it back and fixed, so I'll do the final mow of the season, which will also include blowing the final "spread out leaves" into piles so James can haul them into the tiny strip of woods we have that separates our yard from the neighbor's.

So those are all my "trying to get labor started" plans for the day.

And last but not least we'll go to buy a fishnet in case I give birth in the water and we need to skim the birth pool (LOL). We've been meaning to do this for ages but keep forgetting when we are out of the house.

In other news, it's been like 5 days now since I printed out the checklist and hung it on the fridge and it has definitely helped me be more productive--though I think I had a shift in the productive direction to have even typed it up and printed it in the first place, so maybe I was just ready to start being productive again, anyway.

But along with me using the list, I have also been trying to train James to use it--he responds really well to to-do lists but I want to make it more ingrained as a daily-use tool, so that when we are home for a month with a baby it will help him stay more focused and productive while I'm spending the majority of the time feeding the baby. Ideally, instead of me having to tell him what to do, he'll be able to look at the list and see what needs to be done. So I figure the more practice we can get in with it before Little James is born, the better off we'll be!

Finally, I have another "labor induction" acupuncture appointment on Tuesday--if I haven't gone into labor on my own by then. So, hopefully we'll have a baby by Thursday at the latest. Stay tuned!

Renewed Patience and Energy

So after being SO DONE and fed up with being pregnant for the last two weeks, starting yesterday I had a renewed level of patience and energy.

For the last two weeks I have been completely exhausted no matter how much I slept, which was generally for at least 11 hours each night, and I was totally unmotivated to do ANYTHING and was spending 95% of my awake time on my couch, watching TV and being online, and for most of the rest of the time I was in the shower or taking a bath to ease my sore freaking body.

But a couple days ago (I guess, after my acupuncture appointment), I suddenly woke up motivated and energetic. I mean, at least with a normal amount of motivation and energy compared to the absolute slug I had been. After neglecting my to-do list for probably the last month, I electronified it, and printed it out and hung it on my fridge and started to check off some basic things like: "Load the dishwasher" and "clean the kitchen".

Honestly, I haven't been THAT productive yet today but compared to two weeks ago I would practically still be in bed. So the day is still early and I hope to get a few more things done.

Along with this new energy, I also have a new sense of patience about when the baby will arrive. I have been out of my mind with feeling so done and like he just needed to be BORN ALREADY. But now that I realistically have another week at the most that I will be pregnant, it's almost like I have a new-found appreciation for the ability to get a few things done around the house and sleep through the night. I guess with it being this close, I just realize that I could have him any day, and is tomorrow that much worse than today? Most days I think, "No tomorrow would be totally fine--or even the next day . . ."

I mean would it really hurt if I had one more day to potentially even clean my bathrooms before that becomes a way more challenging affair? Or even this weekend--if James and I had one more weekend to rake leaves and get things done before he got here, would that be so bad? No! So suddenly I am patient again, and grateful for it because the impatience was driving me insane.

But hey if I get to my due date on Tuesday, we'll talk again and see where I'm at.

Checklist Update

So I had written before about my checklist that was working for me really well. Well I am happy to report, 2 weeks since that writing, that it is STILL working really well.

Now, we WERE on vacation for one of those weeks, but amazingly, some of the lessons involved actually stuck with me. Most notably, I was much better about cleaning up after dinner, and generally helping to keep the kitchen tidy--normally while on vacation with my Mom and Grandma, they would just do that stuff.

And now that I'm home I am once again excited to do the checklist every day. I have even added a few things to it. Most notably: The last couple days I have been evolving a list of chores that need to be done weekly (instead of daily) such as vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms, etc, and last night I broke all of these chores down and assigned one or two to each day of the week, and then I added "weekly chores" to the checklist. I can check off each weekly chore on a separate part of the list, and if I do them all, I can check them off on the main list.

I am pretty excited for next week, which will be the first official run of the weekly chores part of the list.

Another good thing is that James and I have continued to take a walk each night after dinner. This has been SO good for both of us and really changes the tone of our evening. Yay!!

Maybe this isn't interesting to anyone but me, but I have always struggled to be motivated to accomplish basic tasks on a daily basis, so it is pretty exciting to find something that is working well. :-)

Okay, off to do some stuff now!