And so now it is October, the month I will turn into a mommy. And I am scared to death.
I’m scared of the delivery. I’m scared you won’t be healthy. I’m scared of the pain. I’m scared I won’t be able to cope with everything and everyone, I’m already so tired.
I hate not knowing when you will come. I hate not knowing what is about to happen. I feel so much pressure.
I’m scared you or I will have to stay in the hospital.

I go to the bathroom 10 times a night and when I’m asleep I dream about looking for the bathroom, but I can never find one I can use, the ones I do find are either too dirty, occupied or they have no walls.

Next monday the gynecologist is going to check if my cervix has started to dilate yet.

Today.. tomorrow.. in two weeks.. in five.. ANY day now.. Yesterday we were exactly 37 weeks pregnant, which means you are technically ready to be born! I’m glad we’ve made it this far. I’ve read it’s normal to feel less movement at this stage because there is little space left in there, but you don’t seem to be bothered by that at all, you’re still kicking and grinding as ever.
There are still a couple of things left to do for me and your dad, so I hope you can stay put for a little longer. We still have to pick out the announcement cards we will send out once you’re born and we still haven’t decided on your second name yet! Plus your mommy would love to be able to clean out her closet before the nurse comes to help us take care of you.

I don’t like to go out by myself anymore. In fact, I don’t like to go out at all anymore. The last week and a half I’ve been having periods where it’s hard to breathe and it really freaks me out. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, but it started the same time I started using those medicines for my bloodpressure. I mentioned it at the gynecologist last monday, but he hardly seemed to take notice. So I just sit around at the house all day. And lounge around, because when I sit upright my legs tend to object within half and hour!

I feel like I’m this-close to a depression. I feel completely worn out. For the first time in my life I’m having trouble sleeping, every night I’m waiting for dawn to break and then during the day I have too little energy to do anything of concequence. I never understood sleeplessness, sleeping was something I could do endlessly, heck, I still don’t understand it, but I know it’s a pain in the ass.
I feel like I’m running behind. My maternity leave was going to be dedicated to leasure, to hobbies, to making the last arrangments for the arrival of the baby. I was sure I would be able to get enough rest. To catch up.
Tomorrow I’ll be 36 weeks pregnant and I still need to do so many things and I don’t know how I’m going to get anything done. I feel like I’m constantly failing M. and my family. I feel like I’m asking too much from them and don’t thank them enough.

Today I had another check up at the clinic. Not surprizingly my bloodpressure was too high once again. So they forwarded me to the gynecologist at the hospital once more. The urine- and bloodtests came back normal, like before but now I’ve been given medication to lower my bloodpressure.
I feel like I need another week to recover from today. I could not control my emotions when the midwife told me I needed to go to hospital again; I had so hoped to get back to bed once I got home and now she bascially told me that I had another long day ahead of me. I cried all the way to my parents house and then some. I felt like running away but knew I couldn’t.
You have no idea how happy I am that that’s all behind me again. And you have no idea how guilty I feel for not being able to wash the dishes and iron the clothes today. I had planned to let Elmo out of his cage, I had planned to make up with Dixie who I had to take to the vet yesterday. I had planned to cook a nice dinner..

I’m sorry that I’m neglecting everyone, I’m sorry for not keeping in touch. I just cannot deal with everything right now.

Being in expectation of a baby is one of the most social enterprises I have ever undertaken. By now, exactly eight months in, I am so tired of it. I wish I could just sit it out without doctors, midwives and family members interfearing. I know they all mean well and it’s just me an my nerves that opposes them. I should be thankful for so much support, considering other womens situations, but right now, I just wish to be by myself. I literally cannot wait for the day when the little one has been presented to all the friends and family and I can be alone with him and M. to enjoy parenthood. My worries about whether or not I will be a good parent have disappeared; I just want the baby born now.

Why this change? Well, the pregnancy went from flawless to flawed. I could live with the belly, the sleeplessness, the kicking in my side, the tiredness, the no smoking and no drinking, but now my bloodpressure is getting too high. And with the high bloodpressure, which I’m convinced is mostly caused by stress, come more doctor visits and examinations that are only causing me to have even more stress and get even more tired. I feel like I’m stuck in a vicious circle and other than M. no one really seems to understand this. I can’t explain what exactly makes me nervous about meeting people, doctors, friends, family and strangers, I just know that it has always been this way.

Today M.’s mother (I’m sorry to say it, but that’s another stress factor right there) is driving me to hospital so I can have my urine and blood tested for the third time this week, they can hook me up to a machine to keep track of the baby’s heartrate and my bloodpressure for another hour or so and I can feel completely worn out again by the end of the day.

Believe it or not but I haven’t been here in almost a month! Somehow I just kept putting off blogging, causing me to get even more behind. The baby sweater I mentioned in my previous post has been finished for a long time now and it turned out a lot easier to knit than I had expected. I even completed a second, cabled panel for it.

In honor of the Olympic Games some members of Ravelry organized the Ravelympics. The idea is to cast on a project during the opening ceremony of the Olympics and be finished with the chosen project(s) before the Games end. I challenged myself to do the Presto Chango, a baby sweater. I’ve never attempted anything of the sort before plus I wanted to use a sport weight yarn instead of the worsted recommended. So I had to swatch and measure and use mathematics to find out how many stitches to cast on and which needles to use. It wasn’t that hard to figure out, but it did took some patience, something I just don’t have when it comes to crafting. Ideally I just print out the pattern and get going. Luckily for me however, this pattern is now flying off the (4mm) needles. I’m about halfway through already and it looks pretty much baby size. So far so good! All I’m worrying about now is if I can find suitable buttons for it on time.

Oh and to everyone takes any interest in crochet or knitting at all and hasn’t done so yet: Go over to Ravelry and sign up for an account! It is really one of the most inspiring places on the web. I spend nearly all my online time there nowadays.

Last month, during our vacation after we got back from France, M. and I visited Sea Life in Scheveningen. Here’s a picture impression. For more pictures, please have a look at my Zoo Flickr Set.
After the visit to Sea Life, we bought herring on a bun. One of the seaguls promtly stole my herring just at the moment I was taking my second bite! And all I was left with was an empty bun, so watch your herring while you’re at the beach in Scheveningen!

I’m in the process of making my own Gabu army. So far I have two. I’m using a 3.5mm hook instead of the 5.0mm recommended. With crocheting I always run into gauge issues. I wonder if this is a common problem. It keeps me from doing project that need to be a certain size, like clothes. I hardly ever have this problem with knitting.
But anyway, back to the Gabu’s! There is a pattern for a Gabu Nest as well and I really want to make my own Gabu Traffic Light some time soon.

My previously solitary cupcake made a friend! CupcakeNumber2 has the reverse colorscheme of CupcakeNumber1; a white cake with brown frosting. He doesn’t have buttons, because they were so dreadful to sew on since I don’t have a needle that fits through the holes in those tiny buttons comfortably. They are here displayed on a piece of fabric that came with a set of sheets for the baby. We’re absolutely clueless what exactly this fabric is supposed to be used for, as it is smaller than the sheets. We’ve even asked our moms and they had no idea either. I suppose I can always use it for something whimsical, like for lining some knitted item!!

My first afghan square! I have a lot, and I mean A LOT of acrylic in my stash that I have no use for. So I’ve decided to make an afghan. It’s a big project but at the same time a small one. I can knit up a square every once in a while, call it an FO and in the end, I will have a nice big afghan to prove that I can finish a big object. I kind of ruined this square with my iron though, so I’m not sure if I will actually use it for the afghan.

And last but not least: My new earflap hat! I knit this up last week, before I knew that I wouldn’t be working my job again this winter. I wanted to be prepared for the snow and cold and keep my ears warm for once, because I’ve ran into that same problem every year since ‘03. Every year I go out and buy another hat or headband that promisses to keep my ears warm, but they never really seem to do the trick.
Oh well.. at least I won’t have to worry about a cold head and ears while walking the baby.. I didn’t use a pattern for this and just improvised. Same goes for the embroidery. It was my first real go at embellishing a knitted garment with embroidery. I think it looks okay, though a bit primitive. But I will definatly try it again as I had lots of fun doing it.

June 26
We had no set plans after Paris and so on our last night there we picked a random spot to visit next. We ended up driving towards the Lac d’Orient, which was about half a days drive, since we still took only the smaller roads. There was a little beach at the lake where we spent the rest of the day. The water of the lake was very clear and there were millions of little fish. Near the beach was a campsite, called L’Epine Aux Moines (pdf), where we put up our tent for the night. It was a quiet site and we were the only “younger” people there. After putting up the tent we went to look for a nice place to eat. Unfortunatly we didn’t find anything to our tastes, maybe because neither of us was much in the mood for dining out again. So instead we did some groceries and munched on those while chilling by our tent.

Now since I’m pregnant, I need to use the ladiesroom a lot, something which wasn’t much of a problem during the day, but was a whole nother story during the night, because of the quiet and dark campsite. M. and I had agreed that I could wake him up if I needed to go. But he was sleeping so adorably (Haha, it’s a good thing he doesn’t read this!) that I felt sorry for him and decided to pop out by myself and find a spot behind the tent, instead of walking all the way to the toilets. So as I’m doing my thing, suddenly I get really scared. So I’m looking around and I see a fat man standing about 20 metres away from me. I started freaking out, pulled up my pants and ran back to the tent entrance. I looked in the direction where I saw him once more as I’m entering the tent and see him now standing on the spot where I just peed. Convinced we’re about to get slaughtered by the fat guy, I dive back in bed, in my sleeping bag. M. is now awake and he asks me what’s wrong. I tell him what I saw and he laughs it off and falls asleep again. I lay awake for another hour, waiting to get murdered.
No such thing happened, of course, and whether there actually was a guy or a ghost or whether it was just my imagination, we’ll never know.