Week 37: Almost ready for baby

Weight: 145 lbs
Waist: 41.5 inches

Cravings: chocolate ice cream, big kosher dill pickles, water, ginger ale, grilled chicken sandwich, egg salad sandwich, salty foods, Reeses peanut butter cups.

Aches & Pains: The basic mobility problems which are getting worse. I could hardly walk the past four days and had to crawl up the basement stairs. I've been miserable and the sciatic pain is excruciating at times. But, then something helped. I asked my OBGYN if it was okay to use Lidocaine patches for the pain and she said yes.

The first night Doug put three patches on me and I had a good night's sleep. I could roll over without crying out in pain and I could get up to go to the bathroom without crawling. The change has been remarkable! I feel like a normal person.

Chronic pain is devastating, it affects all the people connected to the suffering individual. At home Doug has to do so much for me and at the office, Rachele has to bring everything to me and I can't do any photography because it's just too painful.
But now that I am using the patches, I can get some decent sleep and go about my day without being in agony while accomplishing simple tasks. Yesterday I almost had a pain-free day! The first time in about eight or nine months.

My business partner, Rachele, was amazed at me. I was so productive at the office. I created all of the marketing ads for the next six months and solidified the marketing calendar with our media outlets, made lots of phone calls and was happy all day. She asked me what happy pills I was taking. No pills, just pain reduction medication and now I feel like I can enjoy these last couple of weeks as much as a really pregnant woman can.

My hands are really swollen, go numb and they tingle a lot. Someone told me that's what carpel tunnel syndrome feels like. I had this experience with Finnegan and I know it's only temporary, but it difficult to grip things. At least typing is no problem.

Finn's adjustment: We are trying to get Finn used to sleeping in his own bed, but it's not easy. He'll fall asleep there, but then wakes up later and joins us in our bed. Since the new baby will be sleeping in the bed with us for several months yet, I guess it's okay for Finn to join us once in a while. We'll figure it out.

Names: We still haven't settled on a name yet, but I think we are getting closer. After all the preparations for a new baby, finding the name has taken more time than anything else. I just don't want to saddle a child with a weird name that they will hate. Or a name so common that they sit in a class with five other kids with the same name, but different spellings. (When I was in high school there were five Mikes in my English Literature class and we had to refer to them by last name.)