Gestational logorrhea, 35 weeks

Experimenting with a new way to post: using the kitchen timer that's set for the cookies I'm baking. I'll type half the post, turn the cookies around, then the next half.

Two weeks to full term, and we're dealing with a honeydew in size (and shape, to look at me). Movement is not quite as frequent as I imagine quarters are getting close in there. Do babies in utero ever get muscle cramps from being stuck in a certain position? God knows I've been getting foot cramps, sore butt muscles, backaches. But so far, no swollen feet. I am PRAYING for no swollen feet. Last time my legs from shins down looked like canned hams. I read somewhere that during a second pregnancy you don't retain as much water. Let this be so!

This past Sunday I was a wreck - tired, bitchy, fed up. Then, a three-hour bright spot in the day - a workshop on yoga for labor and delivery. Josh's parents came over to play with Jonah, and we got to spend the first chunk of time ever thinking only about this baby and how it's going to get out. We took the same workshop before Jonah was born, but I'm so glad we did it over as I couldn't have gleaned nearly as much from just reading a book. The poster the teacher had with a diagram of cervical dilation rendered in actual size was pretty impressive. Ten centimeters is the size of a pita, and not a mini-pita. It's about the size of a coffee can, and not a gourmet imported one. It is larger than any other orifice in the body ever could hope to be. It's how the baby will get out.

[Timer rings. Cookies spun around. Part two.]

Jonah is on a heightened state of alert - orange, possibly creeping into red. He's gotten up in the middle of the night a couple of times (though he goes back to bed easily when he realizes it's not morning), he's resisting bedtime, and this morning he freaked out quite a bit because the piano room (off the living room) is suddenly overtaken with the contents of a closet that we are trying to get organized before the weekend. He plays in that room, and all of a sudden it's not available. I know he needs to get used to disruptions like this and even more major ones, but I still feel for him. It's not for nothing that he's been asking to watch this about 12 times a day, and has internalized the story's text and recites it and asks if we're going to take his high chair for the baby. Luckily the chair he uses is one we just bought for him, and it feels good to be able to tell him that it's his chair, now and forever, and it won't ever get painted pink.

Preparing for labor I found and downloaded a couple of mp3s of writers reading pieces that mean a lot to me. I'm wondering, though, if music is going to be more important, and particularly music I can sing along to. Singing during contractions strikes me as a good way to relax my jaw, make sure I don't strain my face muscles, and possibly entertain those in the room...