Hot Hot Hot

Here I am on maternity leave and all I want to do is be back at work, in the air conditioning!!! We are having a severe heat wave this week with temperatures near 100 degrees in our area, in which very few homes have air conditioning. I've been driving in my air conditioned car from one air conditioned store to the next. Monday I went dress shopping with my mom and yesterday I went to Natalie's swim lesson and then picked up a few last items for the baby at Lullaby Lane. Today I went to the mall and walked, and walked, and walked. They say walking and eating pineapple are both labor inducers so I've been doing a lot of both.

I had my weekly doctor's appointment with Dr. Powar yesterday where he confirmed that he could feel the baby's head but still no changes to the cervix. My Strep B culture came back negative which means I won't need antibiotics in the hospital - yeah! I told him about my itchiness and he says it is completely normal in late pregnancy due to a build up of bile in my system. I started taking probiotics because it's supposed to help avoid thrush and studies show it can help with infant ezcema and a number of other things.

Angela gave me a book called 'Breastfeeding Made Simple' that she found helpful when Natalie was a newborn. I've read over half of it so far and have learned a lot about the proper latch, milk supply, breastfeeding in other cultures, etc. I'm hoping to be as prepared as possible, although I still hear that most mothers have trouble for at least the first couple weeks.

His nursery is all done and I think we have everything else we could possibly need for his first year of life, except bottles because I am still researching the options. The hospital bag is packed so now we are just waiting and trying to enjoy life as much as possible in this heat.