Sleep when she sleeps....

....is some good advice. It's like a race against time! Like, "Oh sweet. She's asleep. I need to hurry now."

So, I'm tired. But that's okay.

Hey, remember this post?? I might break a lot of those promises. Not the one about wearing mom jeans or getting a mom haircut though. But I get it now. I guess I just had to have a baby to really understand. I think it's exciting when she does things. I am quite aware that a lot of people will not care that she sneezed or rolled over for the first time or [insert something she did here]. BUT, that being said, I know that all of my mom-friends will care, because they will understand because they have been there and when they were there, they also thought it was the best thing in the world. :) So, that being said, I make no promises anymore, other than I promise that people will probably hear WAY more about my daughter than they care to. I won't post a picture of her using the toilet for the first time though. I won't!! I may take a picture, but I will not post it on Facebook. Because that's just mean.

Sofia is an eater. I haven't figured out her pattern yet. I have figured out when she is hungry though. Aside from the fact that it seems like she's hungry whenever she's awake...she does give me cues. She tries to eat her hand and she smacks her lips and sticks her tongue out.

I know when she has dirtied her diaper. Her cry is different. It's like a shrieking cry. Almost as though she is disgusted with herself, and disgusted with me for not taking care of it immediately.

I can tell when she's content. Because she's not acting hungry or acting as though she dirtied her diaper. Haha!

I'm glad I'm breast feeding. With how much she eats, we wouldn't be able to afford formula. Good thing my boobs are enormous too. Which is another thing. They are huge. Huger than they have ever been. Is huger a word? It is now. I'm to the point where seriously need to invest in comfortable sleep bras because if I have no shirt on, I leak all over myself. It's pretty bad. I had no shirt on the other day and I was walking to the bathroom to take a shower, and my boobs dripped milk onto my feet.

Sofie poops a lot, and her farts are loud. She must take after Husband.

Sofie's hair is growing more and it's getting darker. Her eyes are a dark steel blue, which I am assuming will change color at some point. I wouldn't mind if they stayed that way though. It's a pretty color and looks nice with her dark hair.

OH! I lost 20 pounds! In a week! I know it's all fluid, but it still makes me feel good to see it.

My mom and dad brought over a pan of lasagna yesterday. I was having a sad morning and it made me feel better. I am not taking comfort in food - I was just really happy that my mom and dad thought of us and brought us food. It's nice since I'm not allowed to cook right now and I didn't want to have to eat something frozen.

Look at these funny faces.

I had a baby.

Here she is. :)


Which is why it seems like I have disappeared. I haven't. Just been focused on her. That, and I was in the hospital for nearly a week. So I'll start from the beginning. On a side note, I should probably be sleeping now, but I'm taking this opportunity to update my blog because Husband is napping with Sofia and it's a good time to do it. :)

I last posted a week ago Thursday. The next day I had an appointment with my midwife, during which it was discovered that my blood pressure was dangerously high. I think it was 148/100. At any rate, rather than send me home, she decided it'd be best to induce me since my due date was coming up soon anyway. I'll do my best to summarize, in chronological order. Pretty sure I can remember everything. But if some details are off, it's not like you'll know since you weren't there. :)

Friday, July 22

• 12:00pm: Checked into hospital
• 3:00pm: Membranes stripped, was dilated to 3cm, and pitocin started

Saturday, July 23

• 12:00am: Asked for pain medication for the contractions
• 12:15am: Midwife checked my cervix and there was no change at all.
• 12:16am: I cried.
• 12:20am: Pitocin stopped. Nap commenced.
• 7:00am: Prostaglandin given to help ripen my cervix and encourage dilation
• 11:00am: Cervix checked, was dilated to 4.5cm, pitocin started again.
• 11:00pm: Midwife broke my water
• 11:10pm: Painful contractions started so I tried sitting in the jacuzzi tub to relax.
• 11:20pm: The hot water wasn't helping so I asked for the epidural.
• 11:30pm: Got the epidural

Sunday, July 24

• 5:00am: The epidural failed so they upped the medication dosage.
• 7:00am: Still hurting, the epidural was useless. Felt like I had to poop and was crying with each contraction. They checked me again and I was complete, so they said I could start pushing.
• I pushed for 4 hours. She wouldn't come out. I thought I was going to die.
• Sometime between 11am and noon: Talked with the doctor on call and decided to have a cesarean because nobody knew why she wasn't coming out and I couldn't take it anymore. They prepped me for surgery. I continued screaming because it hurt so badly. Then for some stupid reason my PARENTS walked into the delivery room even though it had been discussed many times prior that they were not to do that. I yelled at them. They left. I don't remember what I said. I think my dad saw my vagina. I remember a nurse shaving me in an inappropriate area. I don't know if he saw that take place. I don't care.
  

I saw husband putting on scrubs. The anesthesiologist put some different medication in my epidural catheter to numb me. Oh and yes, the nurse shaved me. I knew I should have just gotten waxed beforehand. At least I had gotten a pedicure and shaved my legs the day before. I don't know if anyone noticed. I did get compliments on my toes though. They took me to the OR. I saw a sign that said "c-section" on the door. How interesting that they had a special room just for that. There were like 20-something people in there and they all looked the same. They strapped me to a table. They strapped my arms and legs down and hung up a blue sheet so I couldn't see what they were doing to me. The anesthesiologist stood by my head and asked me a bunch of questions about some things. They were poking me in different areas on my belly asking me if I could feel it. Each time I said yes, they'd give me some more medication in my IV. One of the nurses had a bandanna on. There were a ton of lights above me. It reminded me of those movies when people get abducted by aliens and have procedures done on them. Only these people at least talked to me and were nice to me. I felt them slice me open. I felt them move my muscles to the side and I felt them suctioning stuff. I could hear it, too. I felt them cauterize things and I could hear it. I couldn't smell anything though. Husband sat by my head. He talked to me and told me I was doing a good job. I didn't think I was really doing anything other than laying there in a drug-induced semi-coma. The only reason I was doing fine was because of all the narcotics they gave me. I think if I had been more alert, I would have been hysterical. I realize that c-sections are routine and done quite often, but I wasn't prepared for this and didn't plan on it, and it was really scary.

12:19pm:

• I heard the baby cry and I saw them lift her up.

She was all wiggly. I saw them take her over to the side to clean her up and I told Husband to go and be with her. I didn't get to see what they did. He said he got to cut the cord, and that made me happy. He brought her over to see me. She had a HUGE cone head. I didn't understand why since she wasn't delivered vaginally. Seriously, biggest cone head ever. Apparently, it was indicative of how hard I tried to get her out. The problem was that she was face-up and my pelvic area was too small for her to fit. She wasn't a big baby either. She was 7 pounds, 6 ounces. I'll never be able to have a natural birth because of the way my bone structure is. If I ever do this again, it's going to have to be another c-section. When Husband brought her over, she was crying. She stopped crying when I started talking to her. It made me feel good. But I was still so out of it from all the pain medicine that I didn't get to really enjoy the moment the way most people would. I don't remember a whole lot. I just remember her cone head and her really big, dark eyes. I also remember her sticking her tongue in and out of her mouth because she was hungry. I felt bad that I couldn't nurse her right away.



I felt them staple me up and then I was taken back to our room. They bathed her in the room and put her on my chest and let me feed her. She took to it just fine. So if anyone says having a c-section will prevent you from nursing and bonding with your baby, they are totally wrong.


I stayed in the hospital until Wednesday. I could have stayed until Thursday but I didn't want to. I got tired of being alone. Husband works during the day and couldn't stay with me overnight because of having to care of our pets at home and having to be to work early, so I only saw him for a couple of hours each evening. There are a lot of other reasons why I wanted to go home too, but mainly just because I wanted to sleep in my own bed. I'm still sore from the surgery. I have all these restrictions for the next two weeks - no cooking, cleaning, driving, or lifting anything heavier than my baby. I have a follow-up with the doctor on August 9th to see how my incision is healing and stuff, and then I have a 6-week follow-up with my midwife sometime later in August. I don't know when I will be able to go back to work - I think it will be the 2nd week of September, which is only one week after my original return-to-work date. Not sure though.

Here are some pictures from the hospital. I'll be posting an update on life at home so far with baby, either today or tomorrow. :)

The birthing suite I was in before my surgery was super nice.



The bathroom was great.


Husband was so happy. Then there's me in the background, strapped to the table. Chopped up and forgotten.....LOL!!

grammatical side notes

I'm sorry, but these things annoy me to no end. I've been wasting a lot of time on the Babycenter message boards and I can't get over how annoying it is to read something when people don't know how to spell or use proper grammar. I see this on Facebook too, and I am constantly dying to correct people, but I know they'd just get offended and unfriend me.

The improper use of "lose" vs. "loose."

• Example: When did you loose all that weight?
• Correction: When did you lose all that weight?

The improper forms of there, their, and they're.

• There refers to a place or a pronoun. Let's go there. There is no hope.
• Their is a plural possessive pronoun. Their babies.
• They're is a contraction for "they are." They're stupid.

There is no "A" in the word tomorrow.

• It is spelled tomorrow, not tomarrow.

It's castor oil, not castrol oil or castro oil.

• Castor oil is an oil obtained from the vegetable, the castor bean. It has many uses, one being its controversial use to self-induce labor.
• Castrol oil is a brand of industrial and automotive lubricants which is applied to a large range of oils, greases, and similar products for lubrication. I would hope that if you are going to self-induce, you would not choose to drink this. Because, you would probably poison yourself and die.
• Castro is a Cuban revolutionary and politician. It's also a neighborhood in the Eureka Valley in San Francisco, and is renown as one of America's finest and best known gay neighborhoods.

Your vs. you're.

• This one murders my soul. And it happens ALL the time. "Your" is a possessive pronoun, as in "your face" or "your baby." "You're" is a contraction for "you are," as in "You're screwing up your writing by using your when you really mean you are.

It's vs. its.

• It's is a contraction for "it is" or "it has."
• Its is a possessive pronoun as in "that baby has crapped its diaper."

Affect vs Effect.

• Affect is a verb. As in, "Your ability to communicate clearly will affect our friendship."
• Effect is a noun. As in, "The effect of your poor grammar makes me hate you."

5 days....

...until my due date!

Are you enjoying this countdown? I'm not, really. I would like to have her. But this makes it interesting for a few minutes each day.

This post is chock full of TMI so if you don't want to hear about things that might gross you out, then I suggest you leave and come back tomorrow.

I woke up this morning feeling alright. Kind of sluggish, but still had enough energy to want to go and get a pedicure. My friend Jenna picked me up a little after 9 and we got to the place around 9:30. I have lavender colored toes now with sparkly flowers and jewels. I took a picture, but it didn't look as nice in the picture. The camera picks up every little thing and as nice as my feet look, they looked freaky on camera. Plus, nobody really likes looking at pictures of feet. Unless you're some sort of freak with a foot fetish, and if that's the case and you are reading my blog, that's creepy.

After the pedicure, we stopped at Starbucks and I got my iced venti soy chai, and then Jenna dropped me off back at home. I waddled inside, and that's when it started. The uncomfortableness. I still don't know if I'm going to be able to explain it well because I don't fully understand it. All I know is that the pelvic pressure I was having was super uncomfortable. I went to the bathroom which usually helps (because it sort of hurts if I have to pee and I don't go pee), but that didn't help this time. So I took off my clothes because they felt tight, and I tried to lay down. I couldn't get comfortable. So I sat on the bouncy ball for a while, which seemed to help a little, and then I tried to lay down again. But then I couldn't get comfortable, so I went back on the ball. This back and forth from the bed to the ball went on pretty much all day and I started to get upset. I was tired and wanted to take a nap but it's hard to do that when you can't get comfortable. I was also having these lightning bolts of pain hitting me in the sides of my belly and in other unmentionable areas. AND, I kept feeling like I had to go poop but every time I'd go sit on the toilet, the feeling would go away and of course there was no pooping to be had.

My mother-in-law stopped by for a little while since she was in town. Then she left. OH, I did put clothes on before she came over. After she left, I went back upstairs, and was feeling worse. Now I was feeling as though something was going to fall out of me. The only way I can describe it, is that it felt as if my water bag was bulging out of my cervix. Like something was stuck up there. Like when you put a tampon in but you mess up and it doesn't go in all the way. Gross, right? So, I sat on the ball again. Then I tried to lay down around 3:30, and was actually able to get comfortable and get a short nap in before Husband got home. When I woke up, I still had that heavy feeling but that weird bulging feeling has since subsided. I also had an appetite, which was good, because Husband brought me some potato oles from Taco Johns. Sweet.

So, I'm sitting on my bed now after having spent some more time on the ball to relieve some more lower back and pelvic pain, but I'm still having these shooting pains in a bad area. I'm also having pain in the sides of my belly. I've had some mild painless contractions today, and the only reason I noticed them was because I had my hands on my belly when they were happening. Nothing regular though.

Know what? This sucks.

I was talking to my friend Nicole on the phone and explained that, it's not that I just want to push this baby out for selfish reasons. I have this sense of anxiety that if she's in there too long, something bad will happen - like the placenta will die or she'll poop or something and get really sick. Nicole reminded me that things like that only happen if I'm really overdue, like 43 weeks, and my midwife won't allow me to go that far anyway. I'm not even DUE yet. But I think that's where a lot of this frustration is stemming from - the anxiety I am having. I'm also starting to have anxiety off and on about the whole labor process. It's scary to think about. I'm paranoid that she's going to get stuck and we're both going to die or something. I'm sure it's perfectly normal to feel this way, but I really don't like it, and I need to just stop worrying about it. I'm sure that if my midwife was concerned about complications during birth, they would have been addressed by this time. I don't know what's wrong with me.

I'm going to try and get comfortable and see if I'm able to take a nap. Maybe I'll wake up with contractions and the countdown will end and tomorrow I can say I have a baby.

6 days........

....until my due date!

Yesterday after my blog entry, my friend Jenna texted me and had some free time, so she came and picked me up and took me shopping. I got the ring sling I wanted, and also treated myself to some expensive shampoo and conditioner. Husband got home and saw how much it cost and he asked me if it had gold flakes in it. I told him that it did. It doesn't. Sure smells great though! I also went to work and visited some of my co-workers and had lunch with Husband. It was a nice way to break up my afternoon. I thought the moving around would be good for me, too. And I think it was. Although I haven't had my baby yet, there are some noticeable changes!

My belly has dropped some. Here is a picture of me on Monday:


And here is me today, at 39 weeks.


I wish she would migrate down a bit more now! Like, out of my body. :)

OH! So Husband tested out the ring sling baby carrier tonight. It works!

At first Monster wasn't sure...


But then she liked it.


She stayed in there for a while. It was hilarious!

I had some really mild false labor today. One of my contractions made it hard to breathe and it actually hurt. But it was just one. And then it was gone.

7 days.....

.....until my due date!

I'm bored as hell. This morning I actually feel really good physically and have the motivation to go out and do something. But, I can't, because it's Florida outside and the heat index is dangerous, and I'll probably end up getting sick. At 5am this morning, the windows were fogged up on the outside. If they weren't fogged up, they were so drenched in condensation that it looked as though it had rained. It didn't rain. Nasty. So, staying in the house. I wish it were nice out. I really want to go and get some things for baby. One, being a carrier. I have a Moby Wrap but I want something else to use and wear Sofia while it's hot out and I don't have anything. Moby Wraps are great but I hear they get warm so it's better to use those when the weather is cooler. Maybe this weekend Husband will take me shopping. Then I don't have to figure out how to fit behind the wheel and drive safely. I can't fit very well.

I forgot to mention in my last entry.... this past Friday there was a full moon. Another old wives tail says that the lunar effect can cause you to go into labor if you're near your due date. Something about our bodies being 80% water, and if the moon can control the tides, it can affect us as well. How? I don't know, break our water? The pull is supposed to last for 3 days. Well, for the record, I want to mention that it didn't work for me. But I think if you've been reading, that goes without saying.

So get this. I've been on modified bed rest for.....nearly 6 weeks now. And just LAST NIGHT did Husband (and myself) realize that we could bring the Nintendo Wii up to our room, hook it up, and have Netflix available for me. We have it downstairs through our Bluray player; we used our Wii prior to getting the Bluray. In any case, it would have been nice had we thought of it 6 weeks ago. I feel like I could have watched so much more up to this point other than daytime television. Wow.

The Thai food last night was great! We ended up not going to the restaurant because Husband thought it was too hot out and didn't want me sitting in a hot stuffy restaurant. This place is really a hole in the wall, but those are the places with the best food. They have air conditioning, but it's kind of worthless. In any case, I called in our order and he picked it up after work. It was so good. Didn't put me into labor though. I'm still pregnant. Good news is, I have leftovers that I can eat for lunch. I could seriously eat this stuff every single day. It's not even 9am and I'm tempted to eat it now. I'll wait until lunch time. Maybe.

I think I might go back to sleep for a while. I make it a point to get up in the morning with Husband so I can make him breakfast and pack his lunch, and have some time with him before he leaves. No, I don't have to make his breakfast or his lunch, but I like doing it. I think he secretly likes it when I do it, too. So we sit at the table and stare at each other, eat breakfast, talk about what to make for dinner... then he leaves for work, and then I go back to sleep for a while. Once the baby comes it'll change a bit - and then when I go back to work, we'll be on the same schedule and will leave for work together. This is nice right now.

I think the rest of my day will consist of checking Facebook, playing Words With Friends on my iPod, watching HLN continuously speculate where Casey Anthony is, and maybe watch some streaming Netflix. Oh, I should probably bounce on my exercise ball. I wish it had a handle so I could bounce around the house rather than just in one spot. Do you remember those things from the 80s? I can't remember what they are called, but I want one.

Oh, in more pregnancy developments, it's FINALLY uncomfortable to sleep/lay on my back. Seriously, even as of last week, sleeping on my back was the most comfortable for me, and I was mad because you aren't supposed to do that. Something about restricting blood flow or having your spine being pressed on by your enormous uterus - I forget. Either way, it sucked, because that was the most comfortable position for me, and I constantly had to force myself to not lay on my back, but lay on my side instead. I'd fall asleep on my side and wake up on my back and this wave of fear would come over me and I'd wonder if I had somehow hurt the baby by doing that. Well now, when I lay on my back, it's really not comfortable, and it's hard to breathe. I easily wake up on my side and that makes me feel better.

I'm just blabbing now. I'm lonely being home by myself, so typing on this thing makes me feel like I'm having an actual conversation with someone.

I should just be patient

But it's hard. Anyone who knows me knows that the word "patience" isn't in my vocabulary. Ugh. What's annoying to me are the people who have due dates AFTER mine and they have already had their babies. Stupid.

This is me last week, at 38 weeks.


Today, I am actually larger, but have not taken a picture. I will be 39 weeks on Wednesday. We'll take a picture at that time.

Having sex hasn't sped anything up. I have sex all the time and nothing has changed with the pregnancy. I am still pregnant. And Husband feels like a piece of meat.

Spicy food just makes my butt hurt the next day. So I'm not going to torture myself anymore thinking that spicy food will push her out. I will have spicy food tonight though. I'm craving Panang Chicken from this great Thai place here in town - not to induce labor, but just to eat. I'm excited. Husband is going to pick up food on the way home from work since the place is just down the road from our office!!

An old wive's tale says that eating eggplant parmesan will induce labor. Well, I had some the other day and I'm still pregnant.

Bouncing on the exercise ball is supposed to encourage the baby to move down and help progress. I bounce all day long, and nothing. If anything, any cramps or pains I had have gone away as a result. Guess that's nice.

I refuse to try castor oil. I don't need to drink some nasty oily crap that tastes like melted chapstick. My midwife says that the only reason it works is because it gives you diarrhea, which can cause contractions. And even so, it won't work unless your body is ready, so if baby isn't ready to come out, you get to have diarrhea and that's it. No thanks.

I've drank the raspberry leaf tea and nothing has happened. It's pretty good tea though!

So, what have I learned from this?

I'm due in 8 days and there is no sign of impending labor. Which means Sofia isn't ready yet. She's going to come when she's darn well ready, and it will be a surprise, on her terms, not mine. She's already calling the shots. But I knew this would happen.

progression

I haven't been diligent in taking week by week pictures of my ever expanding waistline. But I've taken a few. And let me just say.... I will never complain about being fat again. Well, I probably will, but looking at these pictures, I will be less inclined to. I know I should be fine with this. After all, there's Sofia in there! That's what Husband keeps reminding me of. And I know that. But the difference between my 17 week baby belly and my 37 week baby belly is huge. Literally, huge. Oh well. It's worth it, I know. And my stretch marks aren't as bad as they could be. And I know after I have her, my belly will go down. Eventually. I'm not going to be hard on myself. It took 9 months to get like this and will take even longer to get little. I'm going to give myself a good 18 months to get down to a healthy weight and I think that's totally doable. :)

8 weeks


Fast forward to 17 weeks


29 weeks


30 weeks


35 weeks


And here we are at 37 weeks, 2 days


I'm really round. Like a planet, or a beach ball, or a circle, or a...........pregnant lady!

I've decided I miss the way I looked when I was 8 weeks. I don't even remember looking like that. I've always been kind of pudgy anyway, but that picture up there looks like a different person.

On another note, I bought whipped cream the other day (in the can!!). I love that stuff and was craving it. So I went to open it and have some today with some ice cream, only to find that the can was defective and there was none of that gas in it which makes it come out fluffy. No matter how much I shook it, it just poured out like soup. I burst into tears. It ruined my afternoon for a while. These hormones really suck sometimes. But a couple more weeks and this will be done. Granted, I'll probably still be hormonal for a bit until things get back to normal, and I know that takes a few weeks, but I'm still optimistic. And I'm really excited about meeting Sofie.

I'm going to do some things this weekend. Husband has Air Force training so he isn't around. I'm going to move some furniture, maybe drink some raspberry leaf tea, in hopes of getting things going. But I really don't want to go into labor while he's gone. But I really want to go into labor. But I know I should be patient. But it's hard. It's hard when I can't see my feet. In fact, this is what I see when I look down.


HAHAHAHA!!!!!

Chunky

Look at my chubby tater-tot! I love how ultrasounds can show so much. She has chubby cheeks and the funniest pug nose ever! HAHAHA!!!



Well, now that the Casey Anthony trial is over, Husband will be happy that I have the TV on a different channel other than HLN. I think he was getting sick of seeing that woman with the weird hair. And Nancy Grace's helmet hair. And Casey Anthony's monkey face. I need to find something else to occupy my time now. I'm pretty disgusted with how things turned out, but whatever. I think that's probably how 99% of the population feels, and chances are, media bias has played a huge part in that. Everyone hates her. She's unlikeable. And regardless of what anyone thinks, nobody really knows for sure if she did it. I guess. I don't know. I hate how reasonable doubt results in a 'not guilty' verdict. I wish there was some gray area, but that's not realistic. What a load. If my child disappeared, I sure wouldn't party for 31 days, get a stupid tattoo, and then mislead law enforcement when they question me. Furthermore, she didn't even report anything, if I remember right, her parents did. I wonder how long she was going to let things go. She must think people are stupid. "Responses to grief may vary, but responses to guilt are oh-so predictable. Guilty people lie. They avoid. They run. They mislead. They divert attention from themselves, and they act like nothing is wrong." But that's not enough. The jury's job is to find reasonable doubt, and unfortunately, what's reasonable to one person may not be reasonable to another person. I also think that the reason many people are so upset is because there still aren't any concrete answers. Nobody will ever know for sure what happened to that little girl. I get sick thinking about it. I'm going to stop talking about it.

I took Husband to Old Navy today to get him some new clothes for work. Lucky we're business casual so he can wear jeans. I just wanted him to have some jeans without holes in them. So now he has some! And some shirts.

I'm officially full term in my pregnancy. So she can come anytime now. I haven't been able to see my feet for a while except for when I lean forward or lay down. I love that my feet haven't swollen. One more point for bed rest! I'm excited. But when I really start thinking about going into labor, I get nervous. I had a dream last night that I was giving birth. All that came out was a cone head type thing without a face. Like a lawn gnome or something. I know women have been giving birth for thousands of years, but even if my cervix is dilated to 10 centimeters, I still don't see how I'm going to be able to push her out of my you-know-what without ripping in half. I'm seriously terrified of developing some huge gaping hole. Be grossed out if you want, but it is what it is.

Nothing else to say today. :)

Pineapple! Upside-down! CAKE!!

YUM. I made this. Husband helped.


Let's talk about pineapples. Again. Because I've talked about them before... when I decided to grow one. For the record, the pineapple is still alive and well. He got a bit sunburned after I put him back outside on the first hot day of the year, and that's my fault. I should have put him under an umbrella or lathered him with sunscreen. But he's alright. Just kind of crispy in spots.

Pineapple has been on my mind for a couple of weeks now. Mainly because I'm nearing the end of my pregnancy and I keep hearing that eating pineapple will induce labor. I don't believe that. I believe Sofia will come when she's darn well ready, regardless of what I eat. Plus, I'm not a fan of home induction methods. One, some of them are ridiculous, and frankly, doing something to push the baby out before its ready is just a recipe for disaster. It can be bad for the baby and make you sick. I read about a girl on my birth board (because being on bed rest for weeks now allows me to watch the Casey Anthony murder trial and also spend countless hours on Babycenter.com) who ate like 7 pineapples over the course of two days. All she did was get a mouthful of canker sores and her baby was still 3 days overdue. Then there's the thing with people drinking castor oil. Seriously? Sorry, but I don't need to crap my brains out. It's my firm belief that the only reason that works on occasion is because it dehydrates you and if you do it close to your due date, it'll push you over the edge and out comes baby. But sometimes doing this to yourself can shock the baby, then the baby poops in the womb, and then you have meconium in the lungs....it's just not worth it. Be patient.

In any case, I'll eat pineapple in moderation just like any other food (except for Nutella, which I do not eat in moderation), and it will make no difference.

Today for lunch I made a pineapple grilled cheese sandwich. Don't knock it until you try it. It's really good and my grandma used to make them.

I also decided to make pineapple upside-down cake for July 4th. Some people seem to think that this cake is some sort of Hawaiian thing, but it's not. Not culturally anyway. It's purely American Housewife cake and it originated in the 1920s when the Hawaiian Pineapple Company asked people for unique recipes using pineapple. They received about 2500 recipes, many of which included different variations of this cake recipe. I'm pretty sure traditionally, you use a cast iron skillet (hence, also called 'skillet cake). You put the skillet on the stove, caramelize brown sugar and butter, put pineapple slices on it, then pour homemade butter cake mix over it and bake it, then flip it over onto a serving platter and have a mouth orgasm. I've had it that way and different ways and that's my favorite. But I don't have time for that. So I do it the way lots of other people do it. And that's with a cake pan.

On a side note, I need to emphasize that plain yellow cake baked in a sheet pan topped with pineapples is not pineapple upside down cake. It's yellow cake with pineapples on top of it, and calling that pineapple upside down cake is about as asinine as making lasagna using cottage cheese and calling it Italian. I've seen both of these things done at my church potlucks, and because I'm a Christian woman, I did not cause a scene. But I wanted to. Don't even get me started on this.

I am too lazy to make homemade cake mix, so I used a box of Betty Crocker Yellow cake mix. Sue me. I'm 9 months pregnant, it's July, and I don't have central air in my house.

Here is what I did today. Husband helped. :)

1 box yellow cake mix
2 sticks of butter
Brown sugar (enough to cover the bottom of the pan)
2 cans of pineapple rings (you won't use them all, but you will use most of them)
1 jar maraschino cherries

Prepare the cake mix as directed on the box, with one variation. It will call for 1 and 1/4 cup of water. First, drain the pineapple reserving the liquid. Use the pineapple juice from the can and top it off with water if necessary to have 1 and 1/4 cup of liquid. Put this in your cake mix instead of just plain water.

If you are using two round pans (or a round pan and a square pan like me, since I didn't have two matching round pans), melt two sticks of butter separately and put one in each of the pans. Sprinkle the butter with brown sugar. I didn't measure. I put a lot though because I wanted it to be extra caramelly. Put pineapple rings on top and place the cherries like so. Before you do the cherries, put them on a paper towel to drain most of the juice from them.




Equally divide the cake batter into each pan.


Bake at 325 degrees for 45 minutes.

Remove from the oven and run a knife around the edges.

After about 5-7 minutes or so, flip each over onto a serving platter. Like this!


You can eat this warm if you want....with ice cream or whipped cream... or let it cool and get all crunchy on the edges. Super good. I could eat this all by myself. Look how excited Husband is!!