Being a woman pregnant with a daughter (and having another daughter) is depressing this week. Because of current politics, I mean. Otherwise, it's pretty cool. My late pregnancy is pretty mellow so far, other than a pinching pain that the midwife says may be the baby's head pressing against my nerves or may just be general tendon/muscle aches. Either way, it could go and I wouldn't mind.
Also, the hiccups. Our pregnancy book says that babies don't mind hiccups. That does not appear to be true with this baby. She's had hiccups several times today, and she's been particularly active. She's a very squirmy fetus to start with, but today's particularly bad. At my last checkup the midwife confirmed that she's head-down, but I already knew that; the hiccups tend to reverberate in my hips and pelvis and thighs. Hiccups are actually more annoying down there than when you've got them in your airway, it turns out.
I've been doing a little research into how to avoid another OP (face-up) labor, since I'm pretty confident that was the major source of my troubles last time. What I've read says that OP babies are more prevalent in modern times because women have more opportunity to lean back and lie down. Hmmph. So the advice is not to lean back in my chair or lie around with my feet up, but to stand straight and do exercises on my hands and knees. It's also not terribly confidence-inspiring in general. Oh well; I dealt with it before, I can probably do it again. Especially if I get more sleep this time around.
In the meantime, I'm keeping up the gentle reminders to Chloë that there's a baby in my belly, and that it will come out and live with us in a while. She repeats "baby baey" obediently, pointing to my belly (or sometimes kissing it, which is adorable beyond words), though I don't know what she really thinks about that. She does seem to be happy to leave the nursery behind, though. She told me last night she had a dirty diaper, and I carried her into the nursery to change it. "Nooooo!" she screamed, and pointed to the door.
"Do you want to be changed in your room?" I said, and she nodded. We've been changing her on the bed, so I grabbed one of the waterproof pads we inherited before she was born and have never used and brought it along to change her on her bed. I'm so glad she likes the new room, and isn't clinging to the old. We'll see how it goes when a new baby moves in. With luck she'll have forgotten, or won't care, that that used to be her old room. She seems happy with the little reading corner we've got on her bed, and the way she can jump on it, and the moon light and the box of blocks, and the dozen or so stuffed toys that can stay with her on the bed. The other day she took delight in stacking them, carefully, beside the bed rail until they reached their angle of repose and started tumbling down. Then she started sitting on her sock monkey and saying "Munky! Hide!" Then she jumped up and down. Then she made her monkey and her dolls jump. Ah, my little girl and her puppet minions.
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