Baby Prep and Summer Soundtrack

Well, we´re hanging in there at the end of the summer, doing our best to survive the heat and get things ready for the little baby who´s coming. We´ve invested in a few excellent heat-surviving tools, one being awnings ("toldos" in Spanish) for the balcony and the terrace, and the other being an air-conditioning unit for the living room. While they are kind of expensive for just the last few days of this summer, we consider them a huge investment for the rest of our lives lived at this residence. Even so, they are especially great as I wait out these last weeks of pregnancy in the hot month of August!

The pregnancy has been surprisingly easy so far, except for the 3 months of constant nausea and vomiting. When I was in the midst of it I thought I was going to die. Now, those moments of running for the bathroom and hugging the toilet seat are a faint memory.

I am hoping that the pain and trauma of delivery will be that way too! Of course, I´d like to try to deliver without anestesia, but I´m not sure if that will be possible. We´ll just wait and see how it goes.


He keeps moving around in there. As the due date grows closer I am more aware of every stretch and kick, not because it hurts but because I´m trying to distinguish them from contractions. If I´ve had any contractions, false or real, I haven´t noticed them yet. They say that´s more typical for a first-time pregnancy.

Up until this week I´ve been walking almost every day. This week I´ve gotten lazier because Ruben is working now during our regularly scheduled walks. I don´t have as much interest in going out alone as I do when he´s around, but I´ll try to go today and maybe I´ll take a few photos as I go.

We visited the mid-wife at the hospital this week. The way things work in Spain is that a local mid-wife tracks your progress and visits you every two months. During the other month there is an ob/gyn that you visit. They write down all the facts about your progress BUT neither of these will be there during your delivery. During the last month of your pregnancy you´re assigned a mid-wife at the hospital. On the day that the baby comes, whatever team of mid-wives and delivery doctors that are on call will be the ones to deliver the baby. I´m actually not sure if the mid-wife I met will be with me on delievery day or not. Nice.

So, while this system assures that SOMEONE will be there, it´s almost for sure that I will not have laid eyes on them before, nor will their eyes have been laid on me. So, it´s just one more way that flexibility comes in handy during the labor and delivery process. The good thing is that every appointment from the moment we discovered the pregnancy up through labor/delivery and after are all included in the social security system. So, we don´t pay anything additional out of our pockets.

Last night Ruben had a dream that we were at the doctor´s office and in the early days of discovering about the baby. He said that the doctor said, "Yes, there´s one baby in there...oh, wait a minute, no there are two. Hold on, there are three....no, wait....there are ten!"

It was funny when he was telling me this morning as I drove the car to the pool, 8 months pregnant with my belly touching the steering wheel. "I´m so grateful there´s just one right now. I can´t imagine my belly with 2, let alone 10!" I told him.

We´ve finally got a name picked out, but I´ll wait to publish it here for when he´s born.

So, for our one little one we´ve got the essential things ready for his room:


*fresh coat of paint in his room!
*a crib and its sheets and bumper pads, etc;










*a baby tub and the accompanying baby soap, sponge, etc. although we know that he won´t need those things for the first few weeks;








*LOTS of baby clothes for the first few months from the grandparents, aunts and uncles and dear friends.










*all-terrain stroller...okay, this was probably more of a luxury for mom and dad but we can´t wait to try it out! In fact, when we picked it up from the store, we did a practice run down by the river near our house just to make sure that those inflatable wheels could handle a little off-roading. Of course, it looked strange that I still had a big belly and it was my purse in the stroller but somethings just can´t be explained. At least it made a few people smile. :-)

The last thing (for the moment) that we´ve got and need to set up is a changing table that we bought from Ikea but it´s still in the box. That is one of the jobs I will attempt this week. Don´t worry....I won´t overexert myself, just looking for ways to use this time wisely and get last-minute things done.

So, to use this time wisely what am I doing right now? Nothing that really has to do with anything. I´m creating a 2009 summer soundtrack! Enjoy!
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If this summer of pregnancy and waiting had a soundtrack, the following are a few songs that would be included in ours:


"Moving" by Macaco (who´s from Barcelona, I think) I changed the words to the chorus to say:
"Moving, my little baby´s moving. One move....for just one dream."



*"Donde caben dos caben tres" (Where there´s room for two, there´s room for three.)
This is the latest jingle for Ikea based on an old Spanish song that says "donde comen dos comen tres." (Where there´s food for two, there´s food for three.) Our little apartment is so small we weren´t sure if converting the guestroom/office/storage room into a nursery would really be possible...but this song is a good reminder that where there´s a will there´s a way.

This is actually an excellent commercial to lighten up the dark reality of the worldwide financial crisis that´s affected Spain on all fronts.

The translation from the video are as follows:
"Dad, I think I´m going to have to move back home.
Dad: Well, where there´s room for two, there´s room for three.
Grandad: And if there´s room for three, there´s room for you too.
Grandad: My house is your house and vice versa.
Long live the independent republic of my house!"


*"Disco Inferno" by the Trammps due to the elevated number of brush fires that we´ve had in Spain this summer.


*"They Don´t Care About Us" by Michael Jackson
This is Jackson´s last rehearsal before his death on June 25th.


*"Blame It On The Boogie" Jackson 5
Okay, one more just to show Michael Jackson´s talent from such an early age. Regardless of the controversy surrounding his personal life, he really was an amazingly gifted person.



*"I´m so tired" by the Beatles. I´ve only heard the song once but it seemed so appropriate for those months when I was so sleepy, not to mention the months that are coming of round-the-clock feedings.


*"Summercat" or as more popularly known, "I wanna be with you tonight" by Billie The Vision and the Dancers. This is this summer´s jingle/theme song for the Spanish beer Estrella Damm. It doesn´t have much to do with babies but it reminds me of this summer.