Empathy and nagging

A's working on empathy now at school. This translates into a small boy saying, "Oh, Mommy, I have empathy for you," when I hurt myself in some way.

This has been the week of the nagging: the phone calls and emails from people saying, "Say, have you had that baby yet?"

No. No baby yet. Don't antagonize the pregnant woman. It's not even my due date yet. It's not even within a week of my due date. And the due date isn't going to change now.

I know there's pregnant people who go in and find out how effaced and dilated they are every week, or get ultrasounds to estimate size, but my health care providers see a lot of that as pointless for a normal pregnancy. I go in; they check my urine and blood pressure, listen to the baby's heartbeat and say, "Sounds great," and off we go. No guestimates given. (okay, ranting off.)

I'm two weeks out from the H1N1 vaccine, have suffered no side effects, and the baby's still fine. A and C are also doing well and don't seem to be suffering any side effects either.

A got a head cold a week afterward, but since none of the symptoms he had were H1N1 flu symptoms, I'm assuming it was a head cold. And it passed, although he had a couple days where we pushed the bronchiodilators since a bad head cold can trigger an asthma attack. (And I don't ever want him to get hospitalized again, but I really don't want him to be hospitalized when I could go into labor at any time. There be dragons, you know?)

Other baby news: I tested positive for GBS, which stinks because that means I have to have antibiotics via IV at the birth, but since I already had to have an IV as a VBAC mom, it's not that big a deal. I've got some muscle separation going on, which means that I've been told not to lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk. There are many things in the world heavier than a gallon of milk, including my preschooler.

But! We're on the cusp of Friday. My doctors are happy with me, as is my monitrice, and we're in the home stretch. I'm going to make it to the last 3-minute prose open mic of the year. Maybe this weekend we'll get a Christmas tree and finish the last of the small baby-related issues. Then we can start dealing with the optional things, like Christmas cards and dec-o-housing.