35 weeks

The crib saga continued this week. We were able to return the second crib and then ordered crib #3, which seemed promising at first, since it was made out of "real" wood and we had high hopes that the quality would be much better than the softwood cribs we had been trying before. Except Ryan got stuck at step one, since the screws wouldn't go in on this crib either. So now we're waiting to hear back from the crib manufacturer to see if they'll send us replacement parts/a new crib.

At least one thing that went well was the car seat installation. We put the base in my car this weekend, and it took about 5 minutes. It was very anti-climactic. And today was the last day our county is offering the car seat inspection program, so I brought my car over to the fire station this afternoon to get it checked out. They basically laughed and asked me what I wanted them to do, because Ryan had installed it nearly perfectly. Apparently Ryan standing on the base and wrenching the buckles as tight as they would go did the trick :) We still have to install a base in Ryan's car too, which may be a little trickier since his car doesn't have the same latching system as mine, but I got some tips from the fire department and I suspect we'll do just fine.

We've now been to the hospital twice in the last couple of weeks - once for the hospital tour and once for a newborn care class. The hospital tour was more perfunctory than I was expecting - instead of a Q&A session, it was more just looking at a Labor & Delivery room, Post-partum room, and the NICU. It still worked out well, though, since we feel more comfortable about where we'll be going and what to expect (for example, I thought it was going to be much bigger and more impersonal than it is, so it made me feel better to see how much cozier it actually was), and I was able to get most of my "hospital" questions answered by the midwives instead. Then we had a marathon 3-hour+ newborn care class after work on Tuesday, which I was a little nervous would be a little too much "common sense" type stuff and we wouldn't get much out of it. Turns out it probably was "common sense" information for someone who's had children before or been around newborns a lot, but we both picked up a lot of good information and so we were happy that we went.

In other news, the mid-afternoon fatigue has definitely settled back in now. The edema has been a lot better the last few days since I've been able to keep my feet up more, but I'm sure that will end tomorrow once I go back to work. I think I've finally been able to definitively pick out a baby body part too. A few times this week my abdomen got very tight so that I thought I was having Braxton-Hicks contractions, only to realize it was really only one section that had gotten uncomfortably tight: the top of my belly, where a lump was sticking out that seemed suspiciously like a baby butt. The baby still has enough room in there where I can gently reposition it, so I was able to push the butt back down and restore my belly to a more normal shape, much like I do when there's feet/legs sticking out of my side too :)