Yesterday I had my regularly scheduled monthly prenatal appointment, with the artist known in my birth story posts as Calming Older Midwife. That name for her is slightly misleading — she is calming, but she is also a spitfire!

My weight is up 10 lbs so far, which is — shockingly — on the low end of the normal range at this stage of pregnancy. Proof positive that no 2 pregnancies are the same!

Odds are that I will gain about another 15 or so lbs, roughly a pound/week but tapering off at the end. That puts me again towards the low end of that 25-35 lb weight gain range most of the books and docs recommend. Will wonders never cease? That’s HALF the total amount of weight I gained with Noah.

I also told the midwife about the extremely irritating conversation I had with the insurance company’s well baby program nurse.

They interrogate pregos about all their health habits and try to “encourage” us to take care of ourselves and go to our prenatal appointments. A fine idea, with room for improvement in the execution. So she calls and goes through her list of questions. At that point, I was up 7 lbs, which made Insurance Nurse very happy. She liked most of my eating habits, but told me that I should cut back from having sugary treats from “a few times per week” to more like just once/week.

My initial reaction was, which I didn’t say out loud on the phone, was “You have got to be fucking kidding me.” I mean really. I’ve given up alcohol, lunch meat, and soft cheese. My caffeine is down at least 50% from pre-pregnancy levels (1-2 cups of coffee/day). My weight gain is fabulous. I’m eating fruit and vegetables. You don’t want me to have any fucking SUGAR???

I am pretty sure I ate candy, cookies, or ice cream every day for the week after I talked to her, and every single time, I had the thought, “I’m eating sugar! I’m eating sugar! Fuck you BCBS!”

Anyway, I told Calming Older Midwife this story, with fewer details. Before I even got to my own cursing, she shook her head and said, “Fuck that. You aren’t doing crack cocaine!”

And she agreed that she probably would have done the same thing, with regard to defiantly eating sugar.

The we discussed the actual plan for having this baby. She generally agreed that a scheduled c/s was probably the best bet for me, but I got the feeling that she was more open to the idea of a VBAC than Young Midwife had been. We talked dates, and she basically said, “one week before EDD.” Apparently that’s the ACOG and other medical professional’s standard — earlier than that and you risk the baby’s lungs being too immature.

That’s the Tuesday after Labor Day, and now apparently, the last day I’m likely to have this little one. Of course she might take it upon herself to make an appearance earlier. :)

Speaking of the anticipated baby!

Little Blur, who I have begun calling Esmerelda Freugenspeigel in my mind, is also doing very well. She’s moving around frequently, if still invisibly outside of my body. And she’s measuring right on track, with a healthy heartbeat.

(Esmerelda Freugenspeigel is a joke character my dad used to tease my sister and I with when we were kids. But it suits better than Blur, I think.)

Jill and I are still actively vetoing most of each other’s name suggestions. I think that Esmerelda, like Noah, will not have a name until pretty shortly before she comes out into the world. Also like her big brother, we won’t be disclosing the name to anyone at all until she’s here.

So tell me, how did you figure out this whole baby name thing?

Fruit & Veg Count, 5/1: 1 large banana