my "new" life at home

My last day of work - last Thursday - has been pretty... well, unspectacular. I started the day by going to my appointment with that orthopedist, looking very much foward to some help concerning my back, or at least some good pointers. Let me tell you, it's been really bad, and it's taking a turn for the worst. At times I am rendered completely immobile by now, and even simple things like turning from one side to the other in bed, or even lifting my legs up have become close to impossible - or at least not doable without a considerable amount of tear-jerking pain. This orthopedist is among the top 10 orthopedists in Austria, but he's also an acquaintance of my Dad. Let me just put an end to this fruitless story by saying that he spent more time doing the familiar small talk with me than to actually LISTEN to what I had to say, he cracked my back in three spots, kind of just to "do something at all while I was there", which felt great, but didn't help my problem at all, and in the end just kind of put me off as a hypochondriac pregnoid, who is just complaining about a little normal pregnancy-induced back ache - without so many words. "Just make sure you move a lot for the remainder of your pregnancy." was his great advice.

I left frustrated and unsatisfied, hurting just as much as I was before, and feeling quite stupid and put down for going in the first place. Talk about a literal application of "adding insult to injury"...

Alas - I still had my very last day of work to look forward to! I got there around noon, and by the time I left at 4:30PM I did some more work, instructed my replacement a little more, cleaned out my desk, deleted all my internet history and passwords, and then just kind of left without much ado.

Tell you the truth, the idea still hasn't really sunk in. It feels like I am just on vacation, and that I will have to be back at work sooner or later. Maybe in a week or two. The two upcoming years of maternity leave are unfathomable right now, it's one of them most surreal things that ever happened to me. I can be home during the day and don't have to be sick at the same time! I am home, yet I am not unemployed, and under the pressure of having to look for work, and I am still getting paid! How 'bout that? :)

I have been pretty much on the run ever since I am out of work for good. I bought some baby stuff (bottles, pacifiers, a baby brush, a bathtub thermometer... little things like those), I organized our nursery furniture with my friend, we picked out bedroom furniture, I finalized our kitchen with the kitchen studio, I had an appointment with a dermatologist... but most of all... and greatest of all, we:

a) bought ourselves 2 Mac Book Pros including an A5 Wacom Intuos graphic tablet each, and

b) we went to the second installment of the 3d-babywatching, and actually got good results this time!

As you can probably imagine (knowing me for the geek that I am), the Mac Book Pro has been keeping me busy ever since it entered my life yesterday. It's the most beautiful machinery ever to be in my posession, and I will finally be able to retire my old and crappy PC. Nevermind my old (und very uneducated opinion) on Apple computers... but it really is true: once you go Mac, you never go back. It's just the more sophisticated machine to have, more powerful, more stable, more secure, and just SO much better looking... aside from the fact that a graphic designer without a Mac is like a gangsta without bling-bling.

So from now on, everything you see typed here comes out of the beautiful keyboard of a Mac Book Pro! Gawk in awe.

Baby has been making us really happy as well. We still had a lot of hand-before-face action going, but this time it was cooperative enough to at least let us get some good shots of its face. Not a single one without hand and arm, but at least we got a very good look at our child. :) The experience was certainly worth the money it cost us, such a once in lifetime opportunity, and it certainly increases the anticipation we feel already.

Nothing much else to report on the pregnancy front this time, baby's kicks are getting stronger and more visible almost by the day, and it already weighs 1.3 kilos right now.

Oh, yes. A blogger, who was only a week and a half ahead of me in her pregnancy, and whose pregnancy I followed almost from the beginning, has delivered her quads(!) a few days ago, at 30 weeks. The babies are doing well... but the news of their birth and their first photos in the NICU amazed me to the core of my being - considering that I am not much behind her in weeks, and seeing this just kind of puts the thought in my head that theoretically my baby could be delivered very soon, and actually survive outside of me! It just adds that extra touch of imminence and urgency onto my pregnancy, and my need to get things ready has increased greatly since I read about the quads. 6 more weeks until our new apartment and the nursery! But for the meantime head over to Suzanne, and check out her quad babies!