Bit by bit

I don't have a whole lot to contribute to the ALI world right now.  We're waiting.  And waiting.  I would guess that this is probably pretty close to the way it feels when you're pregnant and waiting for the baby to put in her appearance, it's also completely unreal, because I'm not pregnant, so the tangible part has to be taken on faith.

We're still working our way through money issues, because we are far from rich.  I've been calling daycares, and $650 a month is sounding like it's a good deal, the one I talked to yesterday was $50 a day, or more than $1000 a month.  Yikes.  Almost makes me want to consider making a Jakobe a stay-at-home dad.  But not quite, we need his health insurance - for him.  So, more searching, and I don't even have a clue about how you're supposed to look for one. 

I've washed lots and lots of baby clothes, and we still need to put together her dresser, but since we're not finishing her room until the egress window goes in (this week hopefully) It seems a little ahead of myself to set up the dresser - but where in the heck am I supposed to put her clothes in the meanwhile?  Dilemmas.

The bane-of-my-existance-carseat is in my car, and Jakobe's teddy bear from his childhood has been driving around with me for a week.  Thankfully, he's rear-facing, so H can't tell any tales of what an adventure it is to ride in the car with me.  While I'm on leave, Jakobe and I will mostly be switching cars, it doesn't make sense for me to have the Prius sitting in our driveway while Jakobe drives the Jetta to work, wasting massive amounts of gas the whole 5 miles.  I *so* want his commute.

We should pick up an infant carseat for the other car, but I'm now seriously considering buying a cheapish one and putting up with some of the inconvenient features becayse we probably will use it for less than a year.  I've been offered hand me down's but since thi original user is now more than 6 years old, it makes me nervous, and I think I'll be buying new.

No real progress on the breastfeeding front.  I bought the tubing an accessories for the hospital grade pump, and they also convert into a double manual pump.  I can actually get something using the pump now, but hand expression is still better, if almost nil.  End of this week I'll order the domperidone, and the rental pump, and then it's off to the moo-cow races.

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Caught in the Middle...

...between expectations and desires
...between my hisband and reality
...between fuck if I know

It's been a while since I updated all of you out here in the blogosphere about what's going on with us.  and that's mostly becasue a lot has been going on, and I've bbeen going crazy with trying to figure out how to put everything together and make this work.

The biggest hurdles right now are financial.  Why?  Becasue the expenses of this Adoption have ballooned to be almost twice what we were led to believe at the outset, and that's becasue they are our friends and are being nice, it could have ballooned even more.  This is some expensive shit.  Honestly though, it's not like I didn't know that were were going to be going into some major debt for this.  We didn't have any time to save, and we blew all of our savings on IVF last year.  So, as much as we're not really poor, we are very definately broke.  And - it sucks.

A bigger problem is communication, and getting blindsided with expenses at unexpected times. So after we talked about medical expenses earlier, and I thought we might have the start of a plan, we got a call from our lawyer today saying that he needed a check from us for $900.  Today. Aargh.  Anyway, it's done - taken care of.  And, although I had to use my grediut card, I got a pretty good deal on the interest rate - for now. 

In other news.  I now have a bunch of hand me down clothes and diapers and diaper covers that are currently being washed and then will be folded and put away.  and - I have some adorable new stuff that came in the mail as a present for *BLOG NAME NOT YET DETERMINED* - Thank you Foxy!

So, we're a lot closer.  We still need an infant carseat and a crib.  I was initially thinking about a co-sleeper, but I think we'll side car the crib instead.  But - We're not going to have a cold nekkid baby.  And we got this awesome room divider thing to use as a dresser.  We can set it on end right now so that it's easy for us to use, but then we can later put it on it's side so that all the drawers are easy for her to reach.  I love this idea!

I'm waiting for the accessory kit for the breastpump to get to me, and wondering why it take so long (and $10) to ship something 4 miles.  I'm also getting ready to order the domperidone, cause we're getting closer tio me starting to take that.  On the breastfeeding/milkmaking front I'm mostly where I was before.  IU've3 got some dribbles, but that's about it.  We'll see what happens when the dom and the breast pump make it into the mix.

We've also pretty much finalized out leave plans.  I'm going to take 6 weeks.  It'll use up all of my vacation and sick leave, but I can basically swing it.  Then Jakobe will take 2 weeks, and then, then it's daycare.  Any good tips on finding one?

So, I guess to tie it all up, we're broke, going for broker, and I'm sitting here winding down at the end of my day with a large glass of port.

on Sleep

I know I should be working on making sure that I am as well rested as I can be,  after all - I have the luxury (if you want to call it that) if not having to fight my pregnant body to be able to sleep.  And I feel like in some ways, I'm doing pretty well.  I'm certainly waking up better in the morning, even before I drink one of my two now-ritual daily cups of coffee.  But sleep is an elusive beast, never fully tamed, escaping the bars of it's cage and running far away.  Which is to say that I feel like I am having pregnancy dreams.  Or at least dreams that are trying to work out all of those things that are stressing me out.  Our unfinished bedroom/nursery, the phone call I need to make again to the daycare, figuring out how our finances will really work, and realizing that I can really only take 6 weeks off of work, because I can only eat about 2 weeks of unpaid time, and even that is going to be very hard, and finally - our lack of baby stuff.

We have:

• A convertible Carseat
• A hand-me-down pack in play (I like hand-me-downs)
• Two Onesies
• One Bib
• One bag of swag from the midwife (3 bottles of liquid formula)
• a Secretary desk I think I can use as a dresser/changing table

We are:  63 days from her expected due date, and I'm starting to feel very unprepared.  

But nothing compares to the dreams, the ones that highlight my every anxiety.  A couple of times now they've been about breastfeeding, and I wasn't making milk, and Jakobe kept feeding her fruit and not waking me up to feed her.  And - She was very irritated about the whole thing and told me all about it, whilst rearing up and trying to attach to my nipple like a cobra about to strike!  Yeah, fun.

Anyway, I assume that all of this is a good thing, and am happy to say that we have a wall put up in the soon to be Master & Nursery.  This weekend we need to texture, and try and move the guest furniture up to the "man cave" so that it can be stored there while the window goes in.  That and I want to have a date with my husband.  It'll all fit somehow.

Look at our new Wall: