Stubborn...

We are still waiting. Doesn't he understand that if he doesn't come by himself tonight that they are going to force him out? Sorry, Julie, haven't posted because I've been spending time with my mom. We get a few phone calls everyday asking if there is any news, and so far there isn't any. There have been twinges, but that's it. At my NST on Wednesday, it was obvious that the little guy has grown and is running out of room. There was less fluid and less pockets of fluid to measure (but still within the safe range). Also, the machine recorded that I was having small uterine contractions during the test, so my body is showing signs of getting ready. But it's like it hasn't figured out yet how to start it for real.

My MIL said that I can blame Werty because his grandfather came out to see him when he was due to be born, but Werty waited until after his grandfather had to fly back home to actually arrive. My mother has changed her flight from Monday to Wednesday, so that she will at least get to see the baby before she has to leave.

Tomorrow we will leave church early to go to the hospital and start the preparations for an induction.

It struck me yesterday how hard this must be for Werty. Werty hasn't been able to do much this week except hang around and wait. He doesn't want to go too far away in case I go into labor. He hasn't gone to SLC in a few weeks to work either, since the studio has no phone where I can reach him. So, while I can at least feel the baby and stuff, he has to patiently wait and wait.

7 Hours of Painful Nothing

Last night I had a repeat of the night before, except this time when I laid down, the contraction and back pain didn't go away. Instead, I had contractions that were coming and going...and when they were 6 minutes apart, Werty was timing them. Finally, contractions that come and go like they are supposed to! And it went on for hours, surely this wasn't just false labor. This whole thing started just before 10pm. Around 12:45am we started thinking this is it, we are going to the hospital tonight. So, around 2am the contractions were coming less than 4 minutes apart and off we went. We were thinking that we were going to have this baby on the actual due date, strange as it sounds.

We checked in and the nurse on duty was really nice. It took a while for her to find the baby's heartbeat, so she asked another nurse to come in and check to see if the baby's head was still down or if he had turned. The sonogram machine showed his head was still down. His heartbeat was so high because he hadn't dropped. (Either that or my baby has his heartbeat in his tush...) After an hour I had only progressed a half cm and the contractions weren't getting stronger. The monitor showed that I was having them, over and over, but they started getting less regular, sometimes every 1-2 minutes and then sometimes 6-7 minutes during the second hour - which was really hour 6 for me. With the baby not engaging (he was moving all over the place, kicking against the contractions) and me not progressing to harder contractions, the nurse called my doctor and then sent me home around 4:30am. Booger. Seven hours of painful back labor - but false labor.

I wish I could just get rid of the back pain, that way I could gauge better how intense the regular contractions are for next time. The back always hurts worse and makes it difficult.

Going back home, I walked enough to get the contractions going just in time to be in too much pain to lay down and breathe deeply enough to sleep when I got home. I started thinking about how both that night and the night before the first contraction had started when I was late getting something together to eat for dinner. I didn't eat until I was already feeling sick from lack of eating. Could that be causing the false labor? I thought maybe I needed something in my stomach to get things to calm down, so I forced myself to eat some celery. Werty finally gave me a blessing for the contractions to stop so I could get some sleep. I started being able to breathe deeply and quickly the pain lessened and I fell asleep. It was a little strange to wake up hours later as if it was any other normal day, the pain all gone. I got up and had breakfast at one point because I hadn't eaten in 11+ hours (celery doesn't count) and I'm not supposed to go over 10 hours on this diet. Then I went back to bed until about 2pm. (So I didn't end up going to work to teach the IB class today.) I guess the baby just isn't ready yet.

My mom arrived this evening. We joked about whether or not she is going to get to see the baby before she leaves at this point.

Still here

I had more false labor last night. I made stuffed shells - half for dinner, and half went in to the freezer for later, and I over did it. My back seized up and caused me to have a contraction for over 30 minutes. This time the contraction feeling spread a little farther down, went away, and came back, but then nothing. I'm not overly anxious, but it's these false pains get me wondering, and then disappoint. It's possible that I bring them on when I over do it, since they start in my back. Meanwhile, my mother is coming tomorrow. Tuesday we go back to the doctor to see if there has been any progress and discuss induction possibilities. I would really rather the baby came on his own, of course, and so does the doctor. I am thinking that if it's still status quo on Monday, I might go to work to teach the IB class. I usually do a 'stay in the IB program' pep talk at the beginning of the year. Word on the street is that the program is "just too hard," so I give them my observations from someone who survived it and saw its benefits in college.

Twinges

Everything was still the same at my doctor's appointment today as last week. My sugars and everything have been so good that my doctor isn't worrying about inducing me or anything yet. I see her again on Tuesday. The last half hour or so I have been having twinges, so let's see if it turns into anything. Go go contractions!

Nothing to report...

I am exhausted from all the running around at work. It keeps my blood sugars low, but the warm classroom made my feet swell up. (I don't usually have sweaty feet - but it seems to be one more fun thing that comes with pregnancy.) The ESL classroom looks nicer, since it's in the part of the school that was renovated, but it has NO ventilation or windows, but it does have a large recessed skylight that warms up the room from the sun. Eventually I will get into the groove of having two classrooms, but for now, I did a lot of going back and forth the last few days because my stuff is spread out between them. And what happened to all those files that we made copies of at the end of the year last year? I spent all those hours going through her files and picking out copies of what I wanted - and I think she mistakenly packed them up and took those with her along with the originals and the rest of her stuff. A lot of the stuff I looked for today was nowhere to be found. And I KNOW I had copies of them. Booger.

NST today showed my fluid level is good. Usually I go in the morning, but now I have to go in the afternoon. Besides having different nurses, the baby is more active in the morning and the evening. And being on my feet and running around the school all day, the baby wasn't as active as the nurse wanted him to be. He was moving around at the beginning of the test, but at one point the nurse came in and said, "He needs to wake up. When's the last time you ate anyway?" I had my eyes closed (I am only getting 3-4 hours of sleep at night) and was taken completely by surprise when she used the zapper thing on me to make the baby jump. I don't know if she was even done asking her question when she did it. Hello, some warning please? They have never had to use that before, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. Yeah, my protective husband was very perturbed at the lack of warning. It happened so fast he didn't see it coming either, just saw me jump. He asked me if it was just noise, and when I told him it's actually a low shock, he got really perturbed. And I had JUST eaten between work and driving over to the NST, not like I had time to answer her before she shocked me. Poor baby. He jumped so hard. She shocked me on the side that hardly has any fluid. (He still favors curling up on the right side). I know that this is normal practice to wake up a fetus, but let the mom know before you jam something into her side please! I liked the morning nurses better.

Today I discovered that the registrar had made a big mistake with the ESL schedule - the low level kids are supposed to be registered for both 1st and 2nd period, so they have English instruction everyday. (We have an even/odd schedule) Instead they put kids in either 1st or 2nd, so the two classes have completely different kids in them. That means the counseling center will have to redo schedules for all the kids in those classes.

Tomorrow my sub will be there. I didn't cancel him from coming, even though the baby is not here yet. It could still happen in the next 24 hours, right? Tomorrow we have classes for half the usual time so that we can have all 8 periods and meet all of our students. Wouldn't it be good for the students to meet both their regular teacher and their long term sub? Admin might not go for that, since they have to pay the sub, so it will count against me. So, what do I do? Start my maternity leave as of tomorrow and hope the baby comes really soon? I wish I had some idea of when the baby is coming.

False Labor

So THAT'S what a contraction feels like. I was a little confused at first, because it started in my back and I was trying to figure out how I had managed to set off such a large spasm. I had also just eaten a snack, so there was bad nausea. Either I was sick from something I ate or....could it be a contraction? When the contraction finally worked it's way around to the front, so it felt like I had this wide band of pain all the way around the top of my torso, I felt more confident about the possibility. Oh, crap, am I ready? This was Saturday evening. Werty had said that he was hoping the baby would wait until after Saturday morning because he was REALLY excited about going to see the new Miyasaki film with his family (for his brother's birthday). So, it could be okay for him for the baby to come. But aren't contractions supposed to come and go? Ebb and flow and all that jazz? This was just staying. So, I drank some water and lay down on my side to see if it would go away. Then I called Sue and asked her if the nausea was normal. Had I just eaten? Yes. Then it's normal. O-kay. In the end, there was only the one really long contraction, so it was a false alarm.

Today was a work day. I had to walk around most of the time - it took a few hours for me to finally locate the 12 desks they had removed during summer school from my hour, plus my overhead, overhead cart, and my personal speakers. Werty came to do all the moving and lifting, and it was so nice to have his company. We moved some stuff from the bulletin boards in one room to fill the bulletin boards in the ESL room. I have almost 10 different keys now for work - with two classrooms and a testing room, and some closets, it's going to take a while before I remember which key is which...and my keys are now twice the size and weight they were before. Well, I need to go finish revising my disclosure doc for the IB class. I have to take stuff out of the course outline to make room for the new IB topics, etc. I hope the baby comes this week so that I don't have to cancel the sub and have to make it through a full day of teaching - I don't sleep that well and it would be exhausting. We'll see.

Tag from Ddonn

The BBC believes most people will have only read six of the 100 books in this list (mixture of popular books, kids books, and "literature"). How do your reading habits stack up? Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an 'X' after those you have read. Tag other "Book Nerds".

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X

Total: 6

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X (I can't remember if I finished reading it or not - I had it checked out from the elementary school library and had to return it during summer and check it out again in the Fall.)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (I started it once)
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

Total: 2 (8)

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky X (shudder)
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

Total: 2 (10)

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma-Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen X
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

Total: 2 (12)

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

Total: 3 (15)

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Se
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafo
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Total: 1 (16)

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas X (Although it was abridged for ESL)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Total: 1 (17)

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

Total: 1 (18)

80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

Total: 1 (19)

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X (not abridged, but still with ESL students)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Total: 3 (22)

Both Kathy (23) and Ddonn (33) beat me. Werty had 16. I noticed a lot of Jane Austin, but there were many great authors overlooked, like Lloyd Alexander, Madeline L'Engle, Ayn Rand or Zilpha Keatley Snyder. (What about all those African novels we read in HS? :P) I have had to accept the fact that doing the IB program meant that I read very different books than most HS students, and that I missed out on some of the European classics, which I have begun reading as an adult, such as Jane Austin. If I counted movies I have seen based on the other books on the list I would have 19 more. But I guess the point is that you have to actually read the original story.

Btw - we had two of the six students earn their IB diplomas from last year's cohort. All six of them received at least a 4 in History, so that makes me feel good.

Update on the baby: still not dialated any further and only 75% effaced. The good news is that the doctor won't worry about inducing me unless I go a week over the due date, so long as the baby continues to check out fine at my NSTs. (Hmmm, about the time my mom will be flying BACK home...maybe Ddonn was right and she'll miss it). While the baby has been head down for over a month, he is still floating and is not engaged enough to start things happening. I had noticed that I was feeling less pain and pressure instead of more the last couple of weeks - and that's why. Baby needs to get more serious if he wants to start Kindergarten on time in 5 years. :P

Nursery Pics

Werty putting together the crib.

The finished nursery.


Closeup of the pretty combo dresser. The crib and dresser are cherry finish, even though it's hard to tell in these pics.

The new recliner/rocker. It's dark brown - but it looks almost black. It comes in two colors, black and brown, but the swatches looked almost identical.

The nursery is assembled!

We were originally supposed to buy the furniture for the nursery on Saturday, but then my FIL offered us the old crib that all of the kids from Ged on down, minus the youngest, used. It was top of the line in 1976, so it survived 8-9 kids. However, the rails were now warped, and it was missing some hardware, and would require some work to substitute some of it. But it was free. So we thought about it over the weekend. Even though we decided to buy a new crib, one that will last through all of our children, I think it was providencial that we waited until Monday to buy it because on Sunday I had a realization. We had planned to buy the crib at one store, and the dresser at another. But the first store was offering 25% off additional nursery furniture with the purchase of a crib. I realized that 25% off of a more expensive, better quality dresser at the first store might be cheaper than paying full price at the second store. So we bought the Savannah crib and then a BabyEuropa combo dresser that is probably the nicest piece of furniture we own - solid wood, matches the crib beautifully, and spent $75 less than we would have on Saturday. I took pics, but I will have to post them tomorrow.

On Tuesday Werty put everything together and managed to get the dresser to fit inside the doorway. (It took three people to move the dresser from the van into our condo - and then he moved it into the room by himself - my big strong man!). The furniture is all in place and it looks wonderful! It is a relief for me to have that done, since I return to work tomorrow morning. I really needed to have the nursery ready before I could concentrate on work. I am sad that my summer is over - it was nice for Werty and I to have this time together before the baby comes. Werty came to every doctor appointment and most of the NSTs, and who knows if he will be able to do that for our future pregnancies. It was great that I was able to have the summer off so I could go to doctor appointments and follow my diet without a bell schedule screwing it up.

Update from the NST today: my fluid level was good and the nurse took some extra time on the ultrasound so Werty could see. His bum is more in the middle now, and the solid bump off on the right side is where he has his ankles crossed. This makes sense, since I can tell when he uncrosses his feet because he sticks his foot up into my rib at that spot. Some nurses just measure the fluid and take only a minute, but this nurse actually shows you stuff in between taking measurements, which we really enjoyed. My blood pressure and the baby's heartbeat continue to be great. I am carrying the weight more up and down lengthwise than sticking out like a watermelon - so people keep commenting to me and telling me that I look good for being 9 months.

Angel's Landing

When I was checking the news, I was shocked to see that a hiker died this weekend from falling off Angel's Landing. Angel's Landing is one of my favorite hikes, but is also the scariest. (It was scarier than the Girl Scouts trip to Mt Rainier when our leader got lost and we wandered all day because she couldn't find the trail - the park was blasting and had covered the trail in boulders.) You see, the last half mile of the hike is along a narrow ledge with drop offs on both sides. You have to walk single file and be careful. I remember thinking that if my mother knew I was on this trail, she would be SO mad because it was so dangerous. Then I thought about how I am not the type of person who does dangerous things, so logically, I must not really be there on that trail...so that meant I was safe because I wasn't really there - my mind protected itself from fear for a few moments by trying to convince itself it was having an out of body experience. My mind was there, but my body was safe down in the parking lot. (What does that mean, Rena?) The best part of the hike is when you get to the top and you are rewarded with a beautiful view from a large flat area at the top of the mountain. Angel's Landing is one of the highest elevations in the park, so you can see the whole valley around you. This news story got me thinking about how grateful I am for my college roommate who loved the outdoors and planned these trips to the national parks, so that I could experience places like Angel's Landing before I became too busy or too scared. (Rena would say it was before I had a fully developed frontal lobe.) I had always planned to hike Angel's Landing again, and maybe it's because I am waddling around in my 9th month of pregnancy right now, but I wonder if that will ever happen. And maybe someday I will be telling my kids that if they want to hike Angel's Landing, they shouldn't tell me about it ahead of time, but tell me after they get back and I know they are safe. :P

Personal Mottos

While cleaning and organizing, I ran across this inspirational poem that I used to keep up on my wall in high school and college. It has meant a lot to me, so I thought I would share.

"The Choice Is Mine"

I choose to live by choice,
not by chance.
I choose to make changes,
not excuses.
I choose to be motivated,
not manipulated.
I choose to be useful,
not used.
I choose self-esteem,
not self-pity.
I choose to excel,
not compete.
I choose to listen to the Inner Voice,
not the random opinions of crowds.

- by A. Starr

Another motto I adopted when I was a teen was:
"Give the world the best you have, and the best will come back to you."

Do you have a personal motto, and what is it?

NST, Purging, Potpourri

Fluid level was back up to 21, now that I am over my cold. Fetal heartbeat was good, blood pressure still good. We filled the nursery closet already - not with baby stuff, just stuff. Except it's less dangerous stuff now, like our Christmas tree and decorations, instead of saws and tools. I had such high hopes for putting baby stuff in there, but oh well. Werty still has a few bins that didn't fit in the office, so they will be stacked in the corner or something ugly like that. I pulled out four boxes that I identified as my stuff that I haven't sorted since the move - one of which had my lesson materials from when I taught ESL English two summers ago - which I had been looking for. Also found all the thank you notes from our wedding that we couldn't find the addresses for. Some of them even had stamps on them. I wrote thank you notes for everything, people just never received some of them. Oops. Speaking of which, I still have a few thank notes that I need to mail from the baby shower...and my dad's father's day card. Yeah. I don't actually know where the outgoing mail slot is for our condos, so we usually just drop them by the post office. How pathetic is that? Anyway, we are throwing away the wedding thank you notes and ridding ourselves of feeling guilty about them ever again.

So, on a side note, I spent time today using familysearch.org and ancestral file to figure out that Werty and ElCid do have a common ancestor - the ancestors that originally joined the church. Werty and ElCid are descended from two different sons of that family. ElCid and Werty are 5th cousins once removed, and as Ddonn pointed out, that means that my children will be her kids' 6th cousins once removed. Coolness.

As of tomorrow, we will finally have unlimited long distance, so we can call people and tell them happy news, like when the baby comes. We will also have call waiting and voice mail - we don't have cell phones, but we have at least caught up to the 90's...yes, we know how pathetic we are.

And a side note to Nan - he may be single, but he's also middle-aged, so no. One of the ESL Aides at work, on the other hand, is single, my age, nice-looking, and has two BA degrees...but now that I am going to be his supervisor, I don't know if it appropriate to try to set him up anymore. Last year, I tried to set him up with Klari's sister, but her sister ran off to work in Germany before I had the chance to arrange anything. Speaking of set ups - my brother Ovaltine is attending a Singles Conference in Fresno this weekend with one of his mission companions. I think a trip will be good for him, something different to do. Ever think of attending one of those Nan?

Sub

I got a call this morning (early this morning - again, I did not choose a good profession for night owls) confirming that the school had received confirmation of a sub for my maternity leave. I have met this person before. He subbed for the teacher I team taught SpEd Modern History with last year. I remember that he got involved with the class discussion that day and that he said he loves to watch the History channel. He is also bilingual and a certified teacher. I think I saw him once at the church - so I think he is in another ward in the stake. The school admin was also pleased with the choice, so yay! I am down to my last week before I have to report back to work for contracted time. Maybe I could get out of it, but that would mean that my maternity leave would start before the baby is actually here, and somehow I think I will need that time more after the baby comes. Now if the baby actually comes next week, then that's that. But if not, I better be there so they don't cut my maternity leave short. It's like in Better Off Dead, but instead of "I want my $2," it's "I want my 6 weeks!"

Crib Update

Thanks for all the input. We went to the store - and they have extended the sale until the end of the month, so we didn't have to make a rush purchase today. (Today was the original end date - if you buy a crib, you get 25% additional furniture pieces) We went to Babies R Us also, and found an option or two to get a combo dresser that would match the Savannah crib, like Julie suggested. The Savannah crib is back to our number one choice. Thanks for the suggestions of using the changer for toys later - gives me something to think about since the changer will be used for changing mostly when the baby is still small. We also have a bookcase that is going in the baby's closet for organizing stuff (the tall one from the living room - we are moving the two dark bookcases from the office in to the living room instead). That will help divide the very wide closet into one side for the baby stuff and one side where Werty can keep the stuff he can't fit anywhere else (stuff that isn't sharp or dangerous). This weekend I did pick up a baby bath for the sink (the fold up kind like Ddonn suggested), bottle cooler for pumping at work (won't that be strange?), and nursing foundation wear (from the shopping trip with Sue and Soyjoy - my new nickname for GLump's wife). Meanwhile, I am reporting back to work in a week and a half, and I received my summons today in the mail telling we when and where we are having our training meetings. (When I decided to become a teacher, I didn't think about the fact that they do everything at 7am instead of 8am like the rest of the professional world). Let me tell you how much I am looking forward to walking across the UVU campus in the August heat in order to attend a full day of meetings when I'm 9 months pregnant. I don't know why, but none of the meetings are actually being held at the school, like last year. Unless, of course, I have already gone into labor...which is worse? Childbirth or boring meetings? Meanwhile, this head cold exploded today. I'm trying to avoid taking sudafed by using saline nasal spray to ease the pressure in my sinuses. I better not be sick going in to labor, that's all I have to say. I want to have enough energy to go the natural route. (Then again, I have been sick for a lot of important events - entering the MTC, attending the Nauvoo cornerstone ceremony...but I don't want to add becoming a mother to that list :P)