A perfect little Baby Peach arrived at 9.31pm PST last night, 8 lb and 20 inches.

Mummy, Daddy and Oliver are all doing very well and can’t wait to get back home to Chester Kitten

Although my official due date is today, we actually had the 40 week check yesterday as there’s one midwife in particular to whom I show much favouritism for a very special reason. Of all the places in all of the world, would you believe that she comes from the same little part in England as me (her village was 10 minutes down the road from where I grew up), and she spent a good chunk of time delivering babies in the big hospital in the town, which means that she most definitely delivered the brothers and sisters of a lot of my schoolfriends. They all turned out very nicely indeed, so I feel extremely safe in her care. She’s lovely and I really look forward to my weekly visits. And to hear another British accent, hee hee.

Anywho, everything looks good still so now it’s just a question of being patient. All the systems are continuing to move in the right direction, but depending upon how much longer Baby Peach wants to ripen for he might need a little help off the tree if it goes on for too much longer. Hopefully it won’t get to that stage though. I already think he’s plump and juicy enough.

One of the things my midwife suggested was doing acupuncture as apparently this can greatly help move things along as she’s not keen for me to be induced either. Baby Peach needs to come out on his own if at all possible. There is a very nice and highly regarded Chinese lady down the road who does this and she knew *exactly* what was required: not needles as they wouldn’t do anything apparently, but instead I needed applied pressure and a special blend of herbs to be burnt over a specific acupressure point near my ankles. Unfortunately the herbs make a rather lot of smoke and there wasn’t enough ventilation so she couldn’t do it, but there was another lady at the same place who does a special therapeutic acupressure pregnancy massage which I went to this morning which she considered would do a similar thing. Ho my goodness how lovely do I feel right now. This was a proper theraputic rehabilitation-style massage (as opposed to the fancy spa and scented candles type) and I am considerably more comfortable now. She managed to release a huge amount of tension that I didn’t realise I was holding, particularly in my pelvis and back, so now when the time comes it should be much, much easier to relax and breath through the contractions so that I can work with them and help the baby out, rather than have that pent-up tension make me want to clench everything up further and fight against what my body is doing which will make the whole thing last longer not to mention create unnecessary pain. Plus she also did a lot of stimulation of that acupressure point on my ankles, which she stressed to me is only safe to touch at 40 weeks for the very reason that it’s known to bring on labour. I’m a strong advocate of ‘Eastern methods’, always have been. So let’s see what happens. Come on Baby Peach, I’m just trying to help. Mummy’s just that little bit too uncomfortable now to be smiley and happy.

I suppose I should probably also post this picture of my mahoooosive self at 40 weeks minus one day. So here we go… Baby Peach is looking very plump indeed now.

Hopefully the next picture will be of me posing in my post-partum self, but who knows. That may still be a whole two weeks away.
But hopefully not.

Now the other day, my my sweet flickr/Blythe friend Jennifer informed me in the comments section of this post about a Bay Area ‘pregnancy pizza’. It seems that local legend in these parts talks of this here pizza (with 13 toppings plus extra onion and garlic) which practically guarantees to send you into labour, often within hours. Heavily pregnant women drive desperately from all parts the Bay Area to indulge, and her neighbour is among those who swear by it. I was not about to let this one pass.

Earlier this evening, DrMrNin and I climbed into the car and journeyed out there to order a LARGE one. We managed to eat half, the remainder of which is now sitting in the fridge so I can ‘top up’ tomorrow, if required . But if the legend holds true, I should be in labour within a matter of hours… Fingers crossed, eh?!

**** UPDATE ****
Zip. Zilch. Nada.
Still experiencing moderate, cumulative discomfort as opposed to intermittent throbs of intense pain. Humph. Grrr. And booooo.

Yes, I’m still pregnant. Ugh.

Toward the end of yesterday, angry-looking grey clouds started pouring over the hills from San Francisco and sure enough a couple of hours after being rolled getting into bed, the heavens opened and we were treated to the most spectacular light show. Fork lightning was shooting down literally every 20-30 seconds, it was amazing. The weather report this morning suggested that the chance of thunderstorms and showers remains through the weekend which threw me into a bit of a quandry as I’ve been planning to spend every waking hour of the next few days walking the streets to get this baby out, and said baby has made it so that none of my conventional rain gear fits me. But luckily this morning as I was unpacking a box looking for something completely different, I came upon my Cath Kidston cowboy print poncho that I bought a couple of years ago. I *love* this thing, it’s great for camping as you can sit on a chair and make your own little snuggly tent and you can throw it on really quickly over a camera and stuff like that. Not the most flattering of silhouettes given my current state, but it will definitely serve its purpose should the weather require it. Function before style, as they say. And anything to get this baby out…

Crocs are like little buoyancy aids for your feet! Well, it was interesting to me

Little update:
39 weeks today, but still no *news* to speak of. Apparently his head is nicely engaged though. Surely it can’t be that much longer…

The other day, DrMrNin and I suddenly realised that in the whole 39 weeks that I’ve been cooking, we’ve completely forgotten to take any photographs of the two of us together, pregnant. The only one we have is from back in March, and that wasn’t even really a proper shot of us as a couple either. Cue mad scramble for the camera tripod, a LOT of bleatings of persuasion directed toward the father-to-be (he’s not a fan of having his picture taken) and at last we have one. Not only that, but it’s the classic ‘expectant parents shot’ too where I’m standing to the side and he’s got his hands on my belly. Cheesy I know, but definitely one for the memory book.