Fig's month

As soon as I flipped the calendar over to August, I thought, well, this is Fig’s month. I suppose there’s a slight chance that it could happen during the very early days of September, but more than likely, it will be August. Really, from any day now to the end.

My yoga teacher is out of town for the next two weeks and when I found out she would be gone, I had a brief moment of panic. Over these past several months I’ve realized how much she knows about getting your mind and body ready for birth and labor and how much I've benefited from the class. We’ll have a substitute teacher while she is gone, but it won’t be the same. After class last Thursday, she hugged me and wished me the best just in case I had the baby before she got back. But she doesn’t think it’s going to happen while she’s gone. She predicts that Fig will be born on August 25 and that he will be a boy. We’ll see.

On Saturday, we had another baby shower. This was mainly a family shower that my mother in law put together, and it was great! I had felt really sick the morning of the shower, to the point of freaking out about whether or not I was even going to be able to go, but I eventually got my second wind. My mother in law had gone to so much work organizing everything and making it really nice. And there were so many presents. But afterwards, really, we have just about everything Fig could possibly need. It took me forever to organize, sort, wash and fold little clothes and blankets, but I am finally starting to feel like we might be somewhat ready.

With the grandmothers

37 weeks

A very cute book from Auntie

The guys congregated at Rob's parents' house and showered Rob with gifts as well.

Our Nausea was starting to act up again towards the end, and even "Proud Dad" was getting a bit tired.

It will be a race to the finish to see which will happen first—will I finish my dissertation or will Fig be born? As of today, I’ve got a 260-page, 60,186 word draft of the entire thing (excluding references and random front-matter). All the other drafts I’ve completed have been lacking a conclusion chapter, but I’ve finally gotten that put together, so I went ahead and threw it in and then sent it off to SL in the vain hope that he’ll read it. I have no idea how close it is to being finished. My NSF proposal took 10 full drafts before it was defensible. I’ve lost count of what draft this is for my dissertation, but technically, I’m still calling it draft 2. SL has looked at most of the chapters at least one time, and this version consists of my revisions based on his comments. If it takes 10 drafts before this thing is ready to go, that could end up taking another 10 years. Though I suppose they would kick me out of the department before then, and SL might be close to retiring by that time. So hopefully it won’t come to that. Keeping my fingers crossed that I can get all major revisions taken care of before Fig is born and still defend it this semester.

Thanks for reading.