Okay, so I’m still pregnant. I get occasional lower abdominal cramps and occasional lower back pain, but that’s about it. The discomfort level is mild at its worst, and I’m still having the finger joint pains upon waking in the morning or after long periods of inactivity with my hands. My feet will bloat a little when I’m on them all day, but the bloating goes away once I elevate the feet for a few minutes. Generally, I’d still classify my pregnancy condition as comfortable. TOO comfortable. Yesterday morning I took a side-belly pic of me on the cell phone and sent it to neonatal nurse Jordan (who’d been asking me for such a pic) along with the text message “Why is she still in here?!”
Jordan texted back, “Because it’s comfy and warm and she loves you!” Then I felt all bad.
I knew I shouldn’t have had those cookies. Now Allie’s like, “Hmm, yummy cookies…or just milk if I come out? I think I’ll stay in longer.”

I’m calling today Strip Thursday. My OB had offered last week to strip my membranes at today’s appointment (4pm!) if I haven’t delivered. I’m leaning toward taking him up on that. I honestly had never expected to keep this appointment. I’m as surprised as anybody that Allie’s still contentedly bopping around inside right now.

It’s been a learning experience with the Family Leave Act…we’ve learned that bureaucracy practically nullifies the law. Work basically says, “Sure, you can take time off under FMLA, but you’ll have to jump through THESE hoops we’ve designed first! Muahahaha!” and the hoops are impossible. I’m pretty sure on my end, things have been figured out, and I just have to call our human resources dept to let someone know the actual date of birth so they know how to account for my time off. Apparently I’m not allowed to be on FMLA until the birth, because they calculate how many days I get (6 weeks if vaginal, 8 weeks if Caesarian) commencing from the date of delivery. So I’m not sure what kind of time I’m using now, sitting around waiting for Her Majesty to decide when to grace us with her presence. Hopefully plain ol’ “sick” days, because I’ve got plenty of those. Mr. W is a different story. His work wants him to fill out THEIR special form and have the treating physician sign off on THEIR form to prove I’m pregnant and they refused to accept a standard work status note that our OB printed and gave us (which my work accepted without question). Due to Kaiser’s own bureaucracy, my OB won’t sign off on Mr. W’s work form (foreign form, and Mr. W is not his patient) and could only forward it to Kaiser’s Disability Department to process. So Mr. W and I drove down to Kaiser’s Disability Dept near Disneyland to speed the process up. After 2 weeks, we just got the forms back in the mail with a letter of rejection saying they can’t process Mr. W’s forms without a written order from my doctor saying it is necessary to my care to have Mr. W care for me. Well, if we could GET a written anything from my OB for Mr. W, we wouldn’t BE in this run-around. I’ve never heard such a long stream of dollar-value profanity from Mr. W as the other day when he opened this rejection letter, even when he banged his head on cabinets and stuff. So right now, he’s off work (he already was under the presumption that the hoops would be jumped thru during his leave), but without FMLA granted now. He’s gonna try to just join all his available vacation and sick personal days together to stick around home with me (his work won’t let him use regular “sick” days even on FMLA, which he has plenty of, because he’s not the one pregnant). So since he’s burning an already-limited number of days for nothing right now, he’s very eager for Allie to debut.

Yesterday morning, Mr. W patted my distended stomach and said, “Nothing, huh?” Nope, nothing. He pouted, putting his ear against my stomach to hear what Allie’s up to. Allie’s response was to immediately smack him on his face. “Don’t RUSH me, dad!”

On the mom front, my mom’s still calling and/or emailing every day to accuse me of having given birth behind her back, even tho I keep telling her Allie’s due date is next Monday. Yesterday’s email, with the subject line of “Well?,” was “How’s going? Feel cramps? Water broke?”
Irritably, I wrote back to her, “It’s safe to say that if you didn’t get a phone call, it’s because nothing happened.”
She responded by emailing me a YouTube clip of babies making faces while eating lemons.