Birthday, 2nd Acupuncture Treatment, and Doctor's Appt.

I celebrated my first birthday in Germany on the 15th. Despite being away from family and my closest friends I had a really nice birthday. Thank you to everyone who called and emailed me. Collin spoiled me this year and bought me a netbook, flowers, a new watch, and took me out for a nice dinner at Knossos (a Greek restaurant we hadn't been to in a while). We had a nice time talking and relaxing. Collin is the best husband! Our waiter brought us a dessert for the baby after our meal. He didn't know it was my birthday but I was appreciative of the dessert and thought if being pregnant gets you a free dessert at a Greek restaurant than I'm not going to say anything. Collin also bought me an ice cream cake that we had when we got home. I love ice cream cake!

Tuesday I went in for my second acupuncture treatment. The midwife stuck each leg with 4 needles but changed the location on a few. It was somewhat painful this week. Both little toes were stuck with a needle. The midwife said it would feel like an ant bite. Yeah, a 20+ minute ant bite, ouch! Since this is my first pregnancy it may be hard to tell how helpful these treatments are. One of my friends who is having her second baby is getting this done and she didn't get it done the first pregnancy. Once she has her baby I will find out if she thought it helped. I asked one of the ladies sitting there if this really worked. She looked at me somewhat strangely and sarcastically said, "well, if you believe it will work it will work." Did she think I was joking with my question? Then I thought, great, what kind of treatments am I getting? I missed my chatty neighbor from last week but I hope she's already had her baby. She was due last week.

I'd like to share one frustrating thing about being pregnant. I don't know why people insist on making negative comments about a pregnant woman's body. I mean pregnant women already know under other circumstances that it's not natural to put on this much weight in so little time but thankfully it's for a good cause. That doesn't mean, however, that we like strangers poking us or touching our stomachs and making rude comments about our weight gain. If you want to say something to a pregnant woman then say something nice such as "you look great!" I went to the store the other day and the cashier asked me if I was past my due date. I mean was that really necessary? I told her no, I have a little less than two weeks left! She said, "well you look like you've dropped." I told her that I dropped two weeks ago.

The doctor's appointment went well on Wednesday. I'm dilated at 1 cm, I have 9 cm more to go! I asked my doctor about the benefits of acupuncture and she said one of the doctors at a university nearby did some extensive research and found that women who have it done dilate faster but it doesn't help shorten the pushing phase of labor. Since dilating is what takes the longest I hope this helps make it go a little faster. My doctor said there's other benefits too if you are not healthy but she said since I'm a healthy young woman I shouldn't have any problems. Overall she said it was good that I'm getting this done. Collin and I have finished our birthing classes and feel ready to go. The doctor said our son is approximately 3925 grams which is around 8.65 lbs. He's a good size baby! It really could be any day now. We can hardly wait!!

Here are a few pictures:

Ice Cream Cake - YUM!!

Beautiful birthday flowers - this was taken in our backyard

Free dessert at Greek restaurant

Collin and I at Knossos