Week: 32.5
Weight: 139
Belly: 40"
Next appointment: June 13
School ended officially on May 30 but because of my maternity leave, curriculum mapping, and a literacy workshop, I still haven't been able to sleep in.
The past few days have been particularly stressful because I am running this workshop for 19 teachers. I have been getting some decent feedback from the participants (mostly teachers from my high school) so that feels good. Something that I noticed that both my sister and I do is we *shred* our performances in our own minds when most everyone else thinks that we did an okay job. Perhaps this comes from years of critiques from Amma, Papa, and each other of various music and dance performances. There is always room to improve and we will always focus on that. I remember sitting in the car ride home after a show and we would dissect every part of our performances. It never felt like I was being broken down but it certainly didn't build me up either. It is something that I have struggled with as a teacher because I constantly have people in my class observing me. There have been post-observations when I am tearing up when I think of my performance when my observer thinks that I did great. I don't know why I have such a hard time being just satisfied with how things went. I guess this is what makes me a good teacher but sometimes I wish that I could just sit back and enjoy success instead of always criticizing myself.
Anyway, when I first got pregnant people would tell me that my dreams would become much more vivid. I have always had very vivid dreams so I wondered how much more they could be. So far I have had several dreams about the pregnancy and most of them seemed very real.
The first one that I had was back at the end of February before we took our Great Expectations - Labor and Delivery class. In the dream, I went into labor early and I had to deliver the baby. As I was checking in to the hospital, I realized that I had never signed up for the tour and I didn't know anything about what to do. Despite this initial panic, I was relatively calm. There weren't enough beds so they were delivering babies in the hallways! They put me in a room because of my high-risk status. One of my co-workers in the English Department was moonlighting in L&D as an OB. She told me that it would probably be a while. Meanwhile, RC was no where to be found but I wasn't looking for him either. I was perfectly content there by myself. I got bored laying around so I started to walk around. I found this cube-like elevator that you had to scrunch down to get into. I took it to the top of Prentiss (my hospital) and there was a small roller coaster through an outdoor park. I sat in the little cart (think: cart from Gringotts) in my backless gown and felt the cool wind in my face. After I got off the cart, I noticed that my oral surgeon, Dr. Schwarz was in the lobby. I then spent the next part of my dream trying to convince him that he should deliver my baby since I loved his care when he removed my sublingual cyst the year before. He didn't think it was a good idea.
Ya. Vivid.
Then after my Great Expectations class, I had another dream that I was in labor. I drove myself to the hospital since RC was at work. He joined me later but the baby (boy) came in the early morning. The doctor tried to wake up him up for the delivery but he was sleeping and said, "O - she's doing fine. I am not worried. She can handle it" and went back to sleep. The next day, when people were visiting, I was up and moving around. I remember thinking in the dream, "Wow, the recovery process for this delivery is a piece of cake!" Rishi was a BIG baby with tons of curly hair and a drooly smile. Again, very little anxiety associated with any of it.
A short time later, I had a dream that I was actually performing Ceseareans - in my bedroom. And I wasn't grossed out at all. This from the girl that had to watch the CGI video on C-section through my fingers.
I also had a dream that again the baby was born early but it was in stable condition. It was really small and bald with HUGE RC kind of eyes. It was also Caucasian. The baby wasn't noisy either. It was just laying there looking around and looking around, assessing everything. I tried to feed the baby and it hurt - A LOT.
As you know, we don't know the gender of our baby. As the day grows closer, this is becoming more and more a source of concern for me. I have always said that it really doesn't matter what I am going to have as long as it is healthy. We have six nephews so I think it would be fun if it is a boy because they could all play together - not to mention the hand-me-downs. But if it is a girl - well - Princess Q. would have everything she could ever want. In a dream I had last week, I went for an ultrasound and found out it was a boy. In the dream, I was so disappointed that we were having (another) boy in the family. I was really shocked my reaction in the dream because maybe I do care after all. But in all the dreams I have had, the baby is always a boy.
Finally, last night I had a dream that kind of disturbed me. We brought the baby home and the baby didn't want to feed initially. So I didn't feed it. Then I got so caught up with other stuff that I totally forgot to feed the baby entirely - for a full day! RC thought I was feeding it and he thought that I was was feeding it. When we finally realized it and I went to try to feed him, he was so mad at me and wouldn't even look at me. I had failed him as a mother and he didn't want to have anything to do with me anymore. I was so depressed.
So what do all of these things mean? I am not sure. I should ask my psychiatrist friend to analyze them. I think one thing that I am gleaning is that I really do think that I am carrying a boy. Also, I think when the time comes to deliver this baby, my subconcious thinks I have some inner strength that will kick in. And finally, I think RC is an absentee father. hee hee. No. I am just kidding. I have no idea what his role in all of these dreams are. What do you think?
