My top 5 prego flix picks

What better way to spend 9 (Its really more like 10) pregnant months anticipating your new bundle than kicking back to some great movies! Particularly funny pregnancy movies. Here are the flix that have kept me rolling in belly laughs lately. In no particular order:

Away We Go

This is the “Juno” for the 30′s crowd. Absolutely hilarious while still maintaining a poignant charm. This is on my “buy” list and will soon be in my collection once it is released Sept 29th.

Knocked Up

I’m pretty sure I have watched this at least 50 times during my pregnancy alone (I’m not even counting the hundred times I watched it since it’s release). Pregnant or not this movie kills me every time with it’s great dialogue, and of course Seth Rogan.

Juno

I LOVE Ellen Page. Seriously, she may be about the best actress out there right now, and this film is just another feather in her awesome cap. Even if you haven’t seen it yet I bet you unknowingly have heard a one liner or two from its original and punk flavored dialogue (Diablo Cody your a frackin genious). So seriously, go see this flick, it’s totally boss. Honest to blog!

Waitress

Firstly, let’s honor a great female director who was brutally murdered before she even got to enjoy seeing her last film released. Secondly, anything with Nathon Fallion is tops with me and after this movie Kerri Russel definitely gets some post felicity props. Funny and sweet although a bit less jolly than some of the others, this is worth the watch. And be warned, don’t watch it hungry, her pies look delicious…

Baby Mamma

Seriously, Tina Fey had me in tears with her Palin skit, but this movie is a rib cracker. These two polar opposites bring home the cake with this great prego flick about surrogate mothers and a whole lotta babby mamma drama!

So how DO you spell “gynormous”?

Ok, so today was Dr. day including our last ultrasound before the main event. “Little” Kahlan was estimated last month at a whopping 5lb 13oz (for those new to pregnancy the average weight gain in the last month or two is roughly 1/2 lb a week or about 1 oz a day) so we knew then, we were looking at a good sized baby. Already in the 90th percentile for her gestational age. How the frack did I manage to lose weight through all this giant baby production (Yes it’s true but I will save that for another post)?

New estimate today?

7 lb 11 oz

We still have 2 weeks and some change left until our due date so the math makes her about 9.5 lbs at birth. Let’s have some perspective here folks, I was 7 lbs 11 oz once too…. at BIRTH.

Dr. says “Don’t worry, we don’t MAKE you go cesarean until they are double that size.” Thanks Doc, I’ll keep that in mind while I pump this GYNORMOUS baby out… with NO drugs. Go Team!

The baby whisperer…

A co-worker lent us this video to watch and I must say, this Dr. Karp is like a frackin baby whisperer! It seems to good to be true the way he repeatedly calms these crying fussy babies with his “5 S’s” technique.

Swaddle

Side Position

Swing

Shhhhhh

Suck

We had been shown some clips of this in the birth prep class we took at the hospital too, but it is really worth watching the entire video. Sickly, we are kind of looking forward to her crying a bit so we can try our hand at this crazy magical baby whisperer thing. I’ll post our results when the time comes

Day 260 (Mommy says 20 days “to go”)

I think I am a peanut. What is a peanut? I don’t know, but the mommy voice used to say this a lot… now I hear more talk of watermelons. What are watermelons? They must not be as good as peanuts because mommy sounds less jolly about the watermelons. I must not really be a watermelon though, mommy says she loves me, much much more than watermelons. I’m pretty sure I’m still a peanut.

My quest to identify the warm vibrating thing continues. It returned last night while the universe was sideways. It did the slow kneading bumpies on the edges of my space then plopped on my top and commenced the warm vibratiness. It feels nice though, so maybe I will like it when I find it. I like sideways time. The daddy voice talks to me more then and bumps the edges of space. He feels much closer lately, I can reach out and try to find him but still can’t quite make contact. But he bumps back when I bump and this makes me happy so I bump more. The mommy voice giggles when I bump a lot, then I try to stay still to hear better but she stops giggling too. It is very frustrating to be a peanut.

As nature intended…

Before the age of video game all nighters and SAT scores, humans tested thier mettle against nature. It was a rite of passage for a warrior to head off into the unknown with little more than a loincloth and flint spear. Yet this and other tests of ones self have all but faded from our culture. Sure there are adrenaline junkies out there who wrestle gators and climb Everest, but how many people get that chance?

Women have an innate ability to give birth. This has been the core test of womans self throughout human history. Ours and ours alone. The purest and most primal incarnation of woman in all her glory and strength, yet we as a culture have striped this power and medicalized the event. Taking it away from woman and handing it to the “experts” presumably for our own good. Really?

Some think I’m crazy, others think maybe just unrealistic. I want my birth to be MINE. No drugs, no artificial time-clocks, this baby is comin out when she feels like it in her own sweet time and Mommy isn’t drugging her first moments in the world. This isn’t a lecture, I know every woman has a different experience of birth and if that includes medicine for pain or other interventions for convenience and/or comfort, more power to you if that’s really what you wanted. But much too often women don’t know what they want, or that they have a choice. We are conditioned to fear birth and the pain of labor and rely on modern medicine to see us safely through. You can have the safety net of the Dr. and hospital without sacrificing your power or your birth. Yes it’s a bit more work, you definitely need to research the pro’s and con’s of every “routine” procedure and know where you stand, and then have the huevos to advocate your want’s to your birth team.

So if you want to try to birth “the old fashioned way” without augmentation, intervention, or sedation then I highly recommend two things. Read Birthing from Within, and anything else you can get your hands on that seeks to encourage and empower pregnant women, and then think about hiring a Doula. There is plenty of hard evidence and research out there backing up the benifits of natural birth and how having a support system, such as a doula, to help you through this amazing time not only gives you a greater satisfaction with your birth outcome but also gives your baby a huge headstart in the world. In all the industrialized nations we rank 28th for maternal mortality, nearly the highest death rate even though 90% of births are in the “safety” of a hospital. We also have the most epidurals, cesarean and medical interventions. This is why I’m planning on going natural. I know things unexpectedly change in birth, things which really do require medical intervention, but the statistics are much more in my favor giving natural a shot…

I’ll keep you posted on how successful I am at this endeavor

Daddy’s photo excursion..

There are some great photographers out there that specialize in maternity photos that capture this special time of socially acceptable roundness. Unfortunately, they cost more than a month of daycare so Daddy, in his ever generous quest to keep the belly happy, decided to surprise me with a photo shoot day! We went all over Lake Oswego to his favorite spots in nature  capturing the magnificent belly in it’s natural environment including this beloved park where he proposed to me 5 years ago (really that long ago?)…

I have come to love my lucky Buddha belly and am having a hard time imagining it’s loss in 3 short weeks. The novelty of it’s perky convexity and Kahlan’s constant acrobatics will be sorely missed. I fully understand why women go through postpartum depression, I hope I don’t sink under it’s weight but I can see why women go through this sense of loss. I mean, look at that belly, how could you not miss carrying that around?

The universe is shrinking…

Day 257

I’ve come to realize the universe is, in fact, shrinking. The vast comforting darkness within which I first became aware, has now grown tight. Where once I occasionally bumped the far reaches of space, I am now constantly in contact with the ends of the universe. In every direction. And whats more, it now shrinks around me with force before releasing me. This is happening more frequently. I’m not sure what happens once the universe shrinks to where I no longer fit. The voice I’ve come to call “mommy” says this is normal and she sings more often now to help me stay cozy. The “daddy” voice also seems closer now. Perhaps I will be able to finally finish my research and identify the strange warmness that vibrates and the deep and squeaky “woofs”…