Bam! Third trimester. I checked my pregnancy app multiple times per day when I was pregnant with Cub. I knew what fruit he was, I knew how pregnant I was up to the day. Just now, in order to title this blog post, I opened my app to discover I was in my third trimester! I suspect this is pretty normal for a second pregnancy with a toddler in tow.
So if you’ve been following along, you’ll know that we’ve settled well in Calgary. We are still living in our temporary apartment downtown, and though it might seem like an inconvenience… it’s actually pretty gosh-darn convenient:
- There’s an elevator.
- The office accepts all my mail and a cheerful gentleman brings it up to me every day. I am sure he is wondering what the heck I keep receiving in all those packages… especially those marked “fluff mail.”
- There’s a lovely housekeeper who comes by once a week and changes all the linens and does a general clean. (I have never in my life had a housekeeper, and this is amazing to me.)
- The apartment is located right next to beautiful Prince’s Island Park, and is a 5-minute walk to my husband’s office.
The only reason I’m in any rush at all to leave our temporary digs is because I don’t want to be in the middle of moving to a permanent location and then go into labour. The good news is, we bought a townhouse! It’s been a whirlwind house-shopping adventure, and we fell in love with the third property we visited. We will be settling in July (hopefully a couple weeks before baby comes) in a super community-oriented, trendy and walkable ‘hood in the south west of the city called Marda Loop. The only downside of the townhouse is that we will not have a backyard; something I had originally listed as a non-negotiable when I was imagining our future home. We’re coming from an 800 sq. foot condo in Montreal, so we didn’t have a private yard there either. It basically came down to living 40 minutes from downtown in a more car-reliant, suburban neighbourhood but having a yard, or foregoing the yard in order to be more centrally located in a neighbourhood that I feel is a perfect fit for our family.
One of the main motivations for moving to Calgary was better working conditions for my husband. Ever since we’ve been together, and even more so since we’ve become parents, his job has required long hours and 24/7 availability. He had his cell phone and lap top with him at my bedside when I was in labour! This past weekend we went on what feels like our first family day-trip, ever: to Banff!
In pregnancy news, last night we visited the Arbour Birth Centre, where I’ll be delivering under the care of my midwife. Unlike in Quebec, birth centre births are not currently covered by provincial health care. However, we are willing to incur the expense of just over $500 because we fell in love with the idea of delivering in a birth centre before we left Montreal. Besides that, I’ve spent the past couple of days trying to imagine not knowing I was pregnant and delivering a surprise baby. This was a recent news story, with a Canadian woman delivering on a flight to Japan. It’s certainly not the first time I’ve heard of such a thing- I know an entire reality show revolves around the concept! With my giant belly and the raging party that goes on in there every evening as I try to get to sleep, it’s totally inconceivable to me that a woman could simply not know a baby was inside her. That said, I know it happens, and almost everyone seems to at least know a friend of a friend to whom it has happened!
On Mother’s Day my parents arrived to visit us from BC. They are so excited to have us so much closer to them: a one-hour plane ride and one-hour time change is a huge improvement over the five-hour flight to Montreal and three-hour time difference. Plus, they don’t get nervous about not speaking French! Cub has been absolutely thrilled to have his Popo and Pop Pops around. They’ll be here for another week, and back when the new baby comes!
Here’s my mother looking like she’s my son’s teenage babysitter:
And my Dad and I looking our actual respective ages:
So, to my pregnant readers out there, where do you plan to deliver? And to everyone else, what do your children call their grandparents?
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