operonscript.com

Well this wraps up my first week off on maternity leave. It was interesting and rather productive. In lieu of working, here is what I did:

• Worked on a document about qPCR, responded to emails re same
• Fought with computer to access network drives at work
• Several grocery shopping trips
• Unsuccessful search for wooden baby brush with natural bristles
• Made will
• Filed taxes
• Uploaded photos from a Sunday afternoon at the Botanical Gardens (from February).
• Doctor’s appointment
• Went swimming (good), stretched my swim suit (bad)
• Worked on estate docs and am currently trying to choose a suitable memorial
• Cleaned mouse cage
• Laundry
• Diaper service lady came to our place and explained how it worked
• Cooking
• Updated cookbook
• Naps!
• And now I can also say … blog

Dan’s mom arrived today and we picked her up from the airport. We had the worst taxi ride ever coming back. The guy was a real smart Aleck, charged us the flat rate for central Montreal ($10 more than if he used the meter) and smoked in the van. Yes, he saw I was pregnant. I did not tip. Anyway, not sure what the plan will be for today.

At my last check up everything was still the same (except I have gained another pound). The doctor said that it’s time to convince her she should come out, but so far everything I have tried hasn’t worked. I’m really hoping not to be induced.

If you want to see what the skin on my poor tummy looks like, then I refer you to this picture. It’s a fairly accurate representation…

As requested by several family members … photos of my humongous tummy are here.

I am officially off work now. Unfortunately for one of the projects we are going through a rather critical troubleshooting time so I need to be in touch via email a bit more than I originally planned, but it should be ok. I brought my work computer home and easily manged to get the network stuff set up with Dan’s help. We also had a nice game of Warcraft last night using the PC, since my iBook was far too slow to play the game.

It’s quite strange, but at 38 weeks I feel great. For the past month or so I have felt very good. It must be the hormones. I don’t really have much back or hip pain, my legs are not swollen, I am sleeping relatively well and I don’t feel as tired as I thought I would be. I think the yoga and the massages really helped. Attending the yoga has helped me to be more aware of my posture as well which prevents a lot of the back pain.

I just can’t get over how active and strong Kicky is. It’s like having a chiropractor living inside my abdomen. My impression was that newborns are kind of floppy and passive, but if she acts anything like the way she is acting now she will be very squirmy. I just hope she doesn’t use her superhuman strength to resist coming out when it’s time. I get the impression that she’s a bit cranky about being so cramped so hopefully she will enjoy being able to move around like she used to!

Spring is here and it feels great. It’s my favourite season and I am going to enjoy every minute I have off. By the time we’re home from the hospital and I have enough energy, the park down the street should be all thawed and clean so I intend to spend a lot of time there.

Dan and I went out for lunch today to a Veitnamese restaurant in CDN. I checked a few reviews and specifically went for something that offered more than “Pho” (Vietnamese rice vermiceli soup). Now don’t get me wrong, Pho is great, but it seems like 9 out of 10 Vietnamese restaurants in Montreal specialize in Pho, which makes it a bit frustrating if that’s not what you’re in the mood for. So anyway we ended up having our non-soupy vermicelli dishes as we hoped. Mine was a bit odd since it was a “roll your own” rice paper deal but I think I managed to do it right. We also split an iced coffee with condensed milk - haven’t had that in years. Very good.

We also had success finding a Brita tap filter at the small Rona on Cote des Neiges. I figured it might be out of the way enough that it wasn’t rushed during the pipe scare a few weeks ago.

I cleaned Miette’s cage and she was climbing on the roof again (this is fairly common for her) so I took a picture.

I finally found a crib toy that I think is sufficiently entertaining for Kicky without being annoyingly flashy. The butterfly has a rattle in it and the blue thing has a mirror. The one in the middle is springy and can be pulled on. I think it should be a lot of fun to play with!

Also see here for the picture of the stroller, which folds up into something about the same size as a hankercheif.

This Tuesday will be week 37 of 40, at which point fetuses are considered full term. Most women give birth within 2 weeks of their due date (before or after) and mine is April 10th. We will see what happens - I get the feeling she will be early but I hope it will be after the 29th at least, as I have quite a few things lined up after I stop work on the 23rd.

Sad to say I have some stretch marks. Already. Given that they are right around by belly button and Kicky is quite insistent that this is her favourite toy, I can’t help but wonder if they came from her stretching her legs and arms so much! Now things are quite cramped for her and she can’t stretch her legs out like she used to, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t trying.

It’s been quite chaotic trying to prepare things at work since both our major projects hit a snag a week or so ago. It makes it somewhat hard to leave instructions when the results from the next few weeks could change the way we approach things. What I can say without a doubt is that qPCR is the most difficult thing I have ever tried to do and it has a wicked learning curve.

My co-workers had a little party for me on Friday featuring a homemade carrot cake, tortilla chips & salsa (my favourite snack), muffins and probiotic juice. They pooled to get me a very useful gift - a gift certificate to my favourite clothing store, so I can get some T-shirts after, since my existing shirts have been stretched somewhat.

Dan’s off on March break this week so it looks like he will be working on a composition (for his composition class), some troubleshooting to get two pieces of electronics to talk to each other, and helping me out with groceries and cooking. Dan’s mom will be arriving the 31st of March, so I will have plenty of help getting things ready here.

The provincial election isn’t very far away and I really don’t know who I am voting for yet. I looked at the platforms of the 3 main parties and ruled out the PQ already (”Bien sûr, notre objectif fondamental est de réaliser la souveraineté nationale du Québec. Nous en réitérons ici la nécessité. Ce grand objectif, qui transcende tous les autres, permettra au Québec, nous en sommes profondément convaincus, de réaliser des progrès plus substantiels et plus rapides.”). Hmm. The ADQ are running on the “adequiste” plantform which insists that Quebec is a nation inside Canada and that is very important to “defend Quebec’s borders” from the policies of Ottawa. It’s hard to believe that Quebec could be any more different than the rest of the country than it already is. I’m not sure what to think about that one. In the end, I will likely vote for the Liberal party even though everyone seems to complain that they didn’t do much of anything this last term. With respect to personalities, some the PQ and ADQ candidates seem to be experts at making fools out of themselves and can’t seem to understand that making racist, sexist or homophobic comments is not a good idea during campaign time.

We have had absolutely no luck finding tap filters in Montreal - everywhere that sells them is sold out!

I just finished reading The man who was Thursday yesterday. Quite an amazing book - I’m not sure what to think yet. We also watched Star Trek III (the Search for Spock) on Friday and enjoyed it as much now as back when it first came out.

Testing out the car seat…

We got an email from our friend Wentworth (who we know through Lisa, who has since fled to the warmer climes of Vancouver) that there was a public lecture by none other than Dr. Marvin Minksky Thursday. I have prenatal yoga classes on Thursday but finally decided it was better to skip and attend this once-in-a-lifetime lecture. After we met up in the metro we went to the building only to find that the lecture hall had just filled up. But no problem, there was a second room where there would be a video broadcast of the lecture. Even that room filled up very quickly. The first 5 minutes of the lecture went well and then we started having video problems. After 15 minutes, the organizers gave up and everyone left (including, eventually, us). The ironic thing about this was that this lecture was organized and hosted by the computing science and engineering department. Worse, they were running the video off an external web server on a Windows machine. Once the video started to cut out, they were incabable of fixing it. Maybe it’s just me, but I think something like this shouldn’t be happening in this department. Needless to say, we were all disappointed and it was too late to go to my yoga class.

Last weekend I succeeded in buying two nursing bras after much difficulty. I went to the maternity clothing store and tried every type of bra they had. Unfortunately I have always been on the lower edge of available bra sizes (except when I went to France, as I discovered an entire size smaller that is not available in North America!) and aparently, despite the tremendous growth involved in the process of having a child, bra makers have assumed that nobody who is nursing has breasts smaller than a 36C. I tried on the bras there and immediately noticed two major problems. First, at this stage there should be some extra space in the bra since there will be quite a bit of growth during the first few weeks. This itself is fine, but the bra makers decided most of this growth would occur around the nipples. Needless to say, I don’t think this is where the milk will be stored nor do I think an extra couple of inch of textile in that particular spot is useful or becoming. The second problem was that the cups were so huge that they could be seen on my chest sticking out of the top of my shirt. The worst part about this was how frustrating the sales lady was since she insisted this was normal and her attempt to solve the problem was to try and find a shirt with a higher neckline (they were all insufficient in the end, I did try them). Even if they tripled in size it wouldn’t have been enough to pull the cups down to where they should be. Not only was this incredibly ugly, but it was also very uncomfortable. I have never felt like I was being choked by a bra before. Despite the pressure I received, I decided these bras would not be sufficient and decided I would try my luck elsewhere. Next I tried the Bay. The Bay on St. Catherine has 8 floors of merchandise, including an entire floor for women’s pyjamas and underclothing. Eventually I did find what I was looking for and I have to say the ones I bought there were much nicer than the ones at the maternity clothing store too.

We watched Stranger than Fiction last week. It was very good.

Finally this past weekend I didn’t have to go out anywhere and was able to take care of a few important things at home. I even started donig the taxes.

Well Montreal has announced that some houses in our neighbourhood may have lead pipes. Apparently because we live in abuilding that has more than 8 units in it, it probably does not have a lead pipe. Oh, but just to be sure, pregnant women should be drinking filtered water. Thanks for telling me now, you *****rds. How about 8 months ago, or a year ago, or maybe 20 years ago? Actually come to think of it, how the heck did this ever become an issue anyway? Surely the dangers of lead poisoning were known when these building were built. We do have a filter jug at home, but what about water we use for cooking and making juice? I guess I will put everything through the filter from now on. What about eating out at restaurants? Is the water there safe? I will call our landlord next week to see if she has checked out pipe yet. This is so typical of Montreal. The building standards here are so lax it’s amazing some buildings are still holding together. I am sure if inspections were conducted across the city most apartment buildings would fail to meet today’s basic building codes.

Today we have to get on the list of electors to be eligible to vote. I don’t know who I am voting for yet.