Moving right along

...in the pregnancy, that is.

Approaching 30 weeks now, and I've been using my time to make a baby to-do list, and then start to get things checked off of it.

Like...choosing a daycare! Unfortunately, there's just no way around it - Mr. Citysaur and I will have to send our son to daycare full time, from the time he's about 8 weeks old. Such is the nature of our lives, where we can't afford to live off only one salary, and I'm only able to cobble together 8 weeks of maternity leave.

Yes, as a counterpoint to Bibliosaur's post about maternity leave, I am on the other end of the spectrum. My company, a mid-size nonprofit in the US, has virtually no maternity leave to speak of. I guess I'm lucky that we're at least large enough that I'm covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), but all that really does is protect my job for up to 12 weeks of maternity leave - without pay. I'm required by my employer to use all available sick and vacation leave, then I get one week of paid leave per year of service on top of that, per my company's short term disability policy. Since I haven't yet hit my 2-year anniversary with the company, and won't until July, that means 1 week. I have purchased an additional short term disability policy, and I'll get a tad more than two weeks worth of pay from that. With all of this, I'll have about 7 weeks of paid time, and I'm saving up money now so that I can afford that eighth week.

Anyway, back to daycare...

We toured a facility just a few blocks from our apartment, the only one in our downtown area that's not church-affiliated, back in November. We both loved it but it was just a tad on the expensive side. It took a while, but we figured out the finances, and at the end of the year, we put down our deposit! I'm excited to have a place I feel comfortable with to send my son to when the time comes.

What else have we done? Well, we chose a pediatrician!

This decision was actually even easier. After reading in several different places about how we should interview pediatricians, and ask all these questions, and see if our philosophies matched up, I was getting really stressed out about the decision. We already had a frontrunner - the consulting physician for our birth center. A co-worker also chose her for their son. I got myself so worked up over the decision that I called my mom a bit frantic the other day, wondering what I should do. She calmed me down and told me not to worry about all that consultation stuff. She said that it sounded like my decision was already made anyway, and that we should just go with the doctor we had the recommendations for, and if we really didn't like her after a visit or two, we could worry about finding someone else then. It made sense, and took all the stress out of the decision. So, we have a pediatrician!

In other pregnancy news, my weight seems to be holding steady, and my second one-hour glucose test came back in the clear, so that was good news! I'm continuing on my diet plan and exercising - doing all I can to hopefully steer clear of preeclampsia, which runs in my family. I have another check-up on Wednesday - every two weeks now!