I am 33 weeks along now – nicely plump, but oddly still sorta tiny for what I expected I’d be sized at this point.  Sometimes I’ll look in the mirror and say to myself “wow, but you don’t look pregnant!” (mind you – from straight on), and then… I turn to the side and BOOM! There it is!  Zee bump!  I am, as they say, “all baby”.

The other night I attended my first child/birth-related class of any nature – it was a breastfeeding course at Cayuga Medical Center.  (Breastfeeding Plan for Success)  It seemed like I was doing things out of order – I mean, they offer other maternity-related courses there as well, including a basic Expectant Parent Workshop, which seems like the one I would have obviously taken first… alas by the time I called (read also: procrastinated) I had already missed the February course, and my next option was one coming up at the beginning of March (for which I ended up signing up).  Procrastinate any longer, and I would have ended up just giving birth without any class prep!  Scary thought.

I’m SO glad I went.  Wow, what a reassuring course!  Ya know, it’s one thing to cram and read all the baby books, surf all the motherhood websites, post on all the baby boards… but no matter how many terms you verse yourself in, it really doesn’t quite seem real or even legitimate until you’re sitting in a room with other first-time expectant moms (and partners) who have the same fears and questions that you do.  Fears and questions which are quelled by a soft-demeanored professional who reassures  you that you AREN’T the first person to ever worry about that.  [Insert collective sigh of relief here].

I won’t get into the politics and personal preferences involved in breastfeeding (a topic I now find infinitely fascinating), and the fact that Anthony couldn’t make the class that evening (which, he may have had a case of the giggles during the videos – I won’t lie… I almost did. The two of us together would be a snickering ball of immaturity in the back of the room).  But I’m looking forward to the next parenting seminar presented at Cayuga Med, considering the first one did so much to get me in the right (and calm) mindset!  We’re also taking a couples birth yoga workshop elsewhere on Sunday.

That said – Panic Mode has started to set in – realizing, again, that I’m 33 weeks out of a potential 40 into this thing called “pregnancy”, and knowing that this thing called a “baby” somehow has to get out of my body.  It’s a cliche that you hear from everyone, but it’s dawning on me that it’s true – there’s never enough time to get everything done, there are inevitably things that WON’T get done, and yet the list keeps growing of things you’d like to get done.  You realize at a certain point that the dishes are always gonna pile up, the piles of donated baby items are gonna remain stacked in the corner for a while after Bebe arrives, and you just have to be cool with all that… because when all is said and labor is done, Bebe is not going care if you overloaded the dishwasher or you’re wearing the same spit-up-stained sweatshirt for 3 days in a row.  What matters is that you attempt to find your Happy Place of Reasonably Calm Acceptance and create that space of “Hell-Yeah-We-Done-Good!”  in your home in which to welcome that little monkey-ninja.