Overdue :-)

Which is not really a surprise, and actually a kind of a nice gift from my baby, having some extra time to prepare. Guess I am just as much of a procrastinator as he is :-)

Today, I have been planting more potatoes, so I am all set with them now. I also planted some seedlings I got at the nursery, acorn and butternut squash, eggplant, and cherry tomatoes. Erik helped me by watering exactly one of the planted potatoes LOL. I planted some more annuals in containers on the deck, only a few more containers to fill.

We have decided to have Tara's birthday party early, on Saturday, instead of after the baby is born, which is when her real birthday is. I figured it would be easier to do the party without a few days/weeks old baby in my arms. We will do our family celebration on her real birthday, but get her party out of the way this weekend. She likes the idea of having an early party and was excited about all the preparations we will have to do in a few days now. Tonight, we went out together to get at least part of the things we need.

She wants a 'Swan Lake Cake', basically an oval cake with blueberry topping and meringue swans on top. I know the extent of my artistic skills and realized that the meringue swans might be a bit beyond them. So I told her that we would look for plastic swans instead. We tried two party stores and both didn't even have any swans! But we were in luck at the dollar store, where we found perfect swans in the kitsch section. I think they are supposed to be flower pots for small plants, but they will work just fine on the cake. Especially since they were only $1 a piece :-) I might put some violets from the garden in them, which would go well with the blueberries. Tara had decided that if we couldn't find swans, we could do flamingoes, which are water birds too. Then we would have had a Flamingo Lake Cake ;-)

We also needed oval cake pans, but no luck on those. So I'll just improvise by using a square pan and a circle pan, custom making my own oval. I am glad that I will be able to do this before the baby is here, it would have been much harder freshly post partum.

Walked for an hour tonight, and yet again, a grand total of zero contractions. I think this baby just feels not ready to come out yet. And now that we have decided on Tara's birthday party, it would be nice if he waited till after Saturday. But I do want him out before my mother and mother-in-law come :-) Geez, maybe I should have done the scheduled c-section, so that I could have picked the birth date. Although I am pretty sure that they would have wanted an earlier date than this, so I would most likely have had this baby already. Glad that I declined!

Talking about scheduled c-sections, reading about more and more hospitals that don't 'allow' VBACs anymore makes me slightly sick and very sad. Today I read yet another article where hospitals just don't give women a choice about having a VBAC or not. Not even if they have had successful vaginal births after their c-section. It's ridiculous!

And they describe a VBAC as an 'elective procedure'. Since when is giving birth vaginally an elective procedure???? I noticed that one of those hospitals has an almost 30 % c-section rate, and now all those women will have to have a c-section again for all their future kids? Even although that increases risks for scary complications like placenta percreta and such. And increases stillbirth risk for future babies. I really wonder about the birthing culture here in the US.