I have had a long and exhausing day, and I am totally wiped out!  (It doesn’t help that I had a terrible night’s sleep last night – which came from trying to go to bed earlier than usual and tossing and turning all night long.)  My day started with a 7 am visit with my midwife.  I really appreciate that she does home visits; it simplifies my life so much.  I asked her about her thoughts on group B strep and will try to share her response when I’m not so tired, but basically she’s not concerned that it’s an issue for me.  She also was able to tell me that the baby is no longer in a posterior position, which is nice to know since though babies come in all different ways, generally a posterior labor tends to be harder and longer.   

Then I did my monthly shopping – I haven’t been for 7 weeks, and I’m so glad to now be stocked up before giving birth.  My wonderful dh rearranged his work schedule so he could come with me – he knew I was a little apprehensive about being so far from home with the kids so close to my due date, and it gave me a lot of peace of mind that he was there just in case (and you know how once you’re prepared for a situation, then what you were prepared for never ends up happening? :)). This was the first time that my dh has ever gone with us, though I’ve been doing bulk shopping like this for a very long time now, and I appreciated that he got a sense of what’s involved in doing this.   

I keep passing personal mental milestones – first was getting past the three weeks early mark when the last baby was born, then 2 weeks from another baby, then today was 10 days (yet another baby) – and I’ve gotten through all of the guests that I invited for yom tov and Shabbos and just have to make it to a couple of bar mitzvas (or at least the one tomorrow night), and then I’m home free.  🙂  At this point I actually think I could make it to my due date or even past it, something I could only hope for a few weeks ago!  Tonight someone called about coming for dinner Friday night, and as much as I hated to say no, I really want to be able to relax and not worry about if I go into labor or not.  I’m not in a rush one way or another – as one of my kids who has been very excited about a new baby said to me yesterday, ‘when it was further away it was harder to wait, but now that we’re so close to the due date, you know it will be sometime soon so it doesn’t matter so much if the baby is born this week or next’. 

We had a really nice day – lots of food shopping, which isn’t majorly exciting, but my kids are pretty unspoiled and I generally get them some kind of treat while they’re out (today I said they could each spend .50 on whatever they wanted – big spender, aren’t I?  lol – but it goes far enough in discount grocery stores for them to enjoy it).  On the way home we stopped at a living history museum.  We didn’t spend long there because it was so close to closing time, but it was enough time for everyone to run around for a while, feed some horses, climb around the playground – maybe an hour or so.  My two littlest ones stayed with their grandparents, which was a nice break for the rest of us (my 19 month old literally doesn’t stop moving from one thing to another all day long, and constantly needs to be watched – he takes a tremendous amount of energy to keep up with).  But absence makes the heart grow fonder, and after a few hours away, they were both cuter to us all then ever! 

Tomorrow we’ll hopefully get the bulk foods put away in their places and then we’ll be set.  My kids are hoping that I’ll take them to a park, and if they can get their academic work done and finish up with the unpacking before the day gets too late, then I’ll be happy to do that!

Avivah