nesting

I've heard that preggers folks enter a so-called "nesting phase" right at the end. Getting those last, at times really wacky and overboard, preparations done before the baby arrives. Doing things like scrubbing bathroom tile on hands and knees, rearranging the garage; often it's stuff that the baby couldn't possibly appreciate, or need, once it got here.

I don't recall doing much nesting -- mostly just freaking out, probably -- before Lizzy's arrival. I did bang out a scrapbook that I'd been working on, the weekend before she came (five days late, so if she'd been on time, I wouldn't have accomplished even that).

This time around, it feels like we're more prepared. It helps greatly to have an actual extra room for baby stuff, instead of a "junior one-bedroom apartment" like last time (for which I was properly grateful at the time, it must be said). Still, I'm setting my goals low.

That's probably due at least in part to the fact that I'm utterly paranoid the baby will come at any second. Well, let me amend that to, its imminent arrival will be heralded at any second by my water breaking; the more dramatic the setting, the better.
I had a friend who said she'd carry a pickle jar with her on the metro during her late pregnancies. If her water broke, she thought the embarrassment would be lessened if she threw down the pickle jar, so any mess would be accounted for by broken glass and pickle juice. And pickles, I assume. I'm thinking that might even make things worse, but that was her theory. I'll just let random metro strangers think, hey, that hugely pregnant gal's water broke. And hope I'm not sitting on a seat next to anyone at that time. Because, ewwwwww.

Anyway, I'm not asking much of my weekends these days. I believe my goals for last weekend were roughly as follows:

Purchase a few receiving blankets. (I thought we had some, but Lizzy had confiscated them all long ago to use as dolly blankets.)
Wash receiving blankets.
Do a bit of other laundry.
Go to Costco; buy stupid food supplies for self-catered birth.

Yep, that was about it. But I accomplished all of those tasks! Yahoo.

My husband, on the other hand, has become near-maniacal in his quest for "productivity." Not for me, thank goodness! but for himself. The man pitched in on a manly, deck-building service project for church, cleaned the kitchen very thoroughly, then fretted the next day when I dragged him around town doing other errands. It didn't feel productive ENOUGH, you see, to be driving around.
So instead of seeing Wall-E that afternoon with Lizzy and me, he stayed home and ... steam-cleaned the shower stall in the master bathroom.
He is a man obsessed.

Yesterday, he said something about having blurry vision. "Maybe it's pre-eclampsia!" I said. (that's one of the symptoms the midwives always ask me about on my weekly visits.)
He was quite confused. I guess I'll have to slow down on those "spousal sympathy pains" jokes.

My goals for this coming weekend:

Return library books, which are due on Saturday.
Do more laundry. (this one's only a must because I have so few clothes that fit!)
If I'm feeling crazily ambitious, I might just crack out the bottle purifier and breast pump and re-familiarize myself with how they work, while I'm not quite so sleep-deprived ...

Yep, that's about the entirety of my list. Matt will probably build Rome in a day, or something.