They'll tell me what to do, in stead of suggesting, they'll give me limited information to manipulate me to do what they want me to do. They'll tell me what I absolutely have to do so the baby won't die except they are simply getting me to do what they find most convenient. That's what happened last time. Hard to name all the lies I was told during labor, but the most serious one is that baby's vital signs can't be monitored during pushing phase and if I don't push the baby out ASAP, it will probably suffer from oxygen deprivation. 
Oh how I'd like to meet that midwife now and give her a piece of my mind. I'd probably be able to do it in a way that she'll feel insecure about her profession for years, and she'd deserve it. Lying to patients is simply monumentally unethical.
But I have found an individual midwife, wrote a new birth plan and I have told Erkki my preferences (poor guy!
) so he can help me fight off manipulating and lying hospital staff who are likely to treat him with much more respect than a woman giving birth. Come to think of it, no one would stereo-typically take that seriously. That's like the ultimate two-in-one: woman and giving birth. A drunk guy would be taken more seriously. 
Anyway, I finished Twilight. The fourth book is CRAZY!!!
I kept reading and gasping in horror, trying to imagine anyone making a movie out of it and serving it to 13-year old girls. Good luck with that! And then I saw the trailer! They actually did it. The trailer makes it look like a sequel to a soap opera or something. The fourth movie really seems so cute and sparkly, especially compared to the blood and gore in the book. Or maybe I just imagined it worse than it was written. If you've read it (which I doubt, considering the people who read this blog), you understand why it was shocking for me. 
The first three movies of Twilight were okay. Initially I really hated the casting, because I imagined Edward to be handsome and the actor's version of Edward looks quite pathetic. The actor is trying to portray a tough guy who is having a hard time with his craving for blood but it looks somehow weak and insecure - not holding eye contact, having wobbly body language in some critical scenes, and so on. The entire Cullen family looks all wrong. There isn't even one whom I'd consider sexy, but they were all supposed to look inhumanly alluring.
The female main character Bella keeps pouting and bitching and looking so unsure of everything. At first I couldn't see any beauty behind all that teenager complex ("no one understands me, I'm so different") but she actually gets more pretty with every movie. In the last one she could become a model. Overall, the Twilight movies were well written and horribly directed. The script is good, and the actors seem to fit their roles well, but somehow it still ends up looking like a low-budget B-movie or even a school play.
Siiri's been ill for a few days.
Fever has gone near or above 39.0 Celsius for four days in a row already. At first I thought it means Siiri's immune system isn't nearly as good as I had imagined, but then I read up on what she has - adenovirus (diagnosed by the doctor) - and found out most kids have it much worse. The list of possible symptoms is really long but Siiri only has fever so far. It seems the illness is already subsiding and I get the feeling she's just really enjoying having me around for several full days in a row. 
I've gone to maternity leave now, starting with Siiri's illness, and I'm already starting to feel the different life rhythm. Today I made bread for the first time. It wasn't sour bread with rye (very popular in Estonia). It was whole wheat "healthy bread" with yeast which tasted somewhat too healthy for my preference. It was surprisingly good for bread with no butter, oil or milk in the dough, but next time I'll make it sweeter and perhaps also add some butter to the recipe. The home life really is different though. Today I started thinking about washing the curtains. It's a rental apartment for crying out loud. I wouldn't be thinking about it if I wasn't so eager to do something useful. I wish I could just work on my computer but that really isn't possible lately.
My head is just filled with pink fog and I keep having very pregnant thoughts - like how big my belly is and I'm hungry again.
The baby is moving around a lot. Mostly stretching and making me feel even more round. I have no idea how I can be this pregnant with over a month of pregnancy ahead of me. I wish the weight gain had gone to areas other than my stomach because it really is at it's limit. I keep thinking the belly will just pop and burst open and the baby will feel really triumphant, thinking "Freedom!".
I can't even tell how much of the weigh gain is justified by the pregnancy. I guess I'll find out later. I have a feeling it won't be good news but I really don't feel like going on a diet right now. Damn I've gone much more lazy compared to my last pregnancy, which I started on a low-carb diet. If I get fat it will be all my fault. I know it and I'm still thinking about food full of carbohydrates. Hopefully I'll feel more determined after the baby is born.
Maybe I'm feeling less afraid of child birth because it beats the Aliens version of birth and lately the direct route to baby's freedom seems all too possible.
There is one bad side-effect though - I constantly feel a bit warmer than usual. It wasn't a problem until the outdoors temperature rose above 30 degrees Celsius and now I constantly feel too warm to think or move. Usually I like high temperature but now I mostly feel like drinking cold kvass (almost like root beer) all day long and putting my feet up.
if I try to reach anywhere near 5 fruits during that day. 
I'd understand if the best friend was a romantic rival but it's not exactly like that. It's really freaky to read that the girl really doesn't notice any of it. She's so blindly obsessed with him that she only wants to spend all her time with him 
and it's pretty famous. They even made movies about it! 
Ah the simple pleasures in life. 
She seemed really open to anything that could help me give birth in the most pleasant way possible, but she said some things that started haunting in my head. For example, she likes it when the husband also participates in the birth, because "if the woman isn't cooperating, the husband can help communicate with her and make her understand what needs to be done.". That makes perfect sense if it's something really stupid, like the woman turning purple from forgetting to breathe enough, but otherwise it sounds like she's planning to get Erkki to turn against me so they can all bully me when I'm at my weakest to do things that feel wrong. Why else would I not be cooperating? Maybe I'd have a good reason to tell her "I won't do that!".
Really.
I barely finished a few pages on iPod when it was no longer reasonably easy to tell her it STILL wasn't her turn to play with the 
Amazing that something so old can still be so captivating. The dialogue was really enjoyable and the characters so vivid. I finished the book and went on to download and watch two versions of it on screen. First being the movie 
) , one of them the most pleasant gentleman and his best best friend Mr Darcy who manages to make everyone hate him by not being neither sociable nor polite 
. Appearances can be deceiving and people start falling in love and so on. All the courting is done properly as it was customary for high society around 1813. No kissing before marriage and even spending any time alone with a partner was something to be very cautious about. Sex before marriage was a far worse fate than death. Although there are more than one marriage formed by the end of the book, it's really a story about Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, the second daughter of the Bennet family, who is very opinionated for a woman of that time but uses all her skill and wit to express her views in a polite and positive way.
However, she was just impolite and outspoken with no witty subtlety. 
They have maids for that!
Most of the people looked EXACTLY like they were supposed to look but it was so accurate that it was bordering on being a caricature of the roles. Mr and Mrs Bennet were the only people who were much better cast in the mini-series. The series was occasionally boring to watch and it had some extra dialogue that could have been left out. The movie, on the other hand, skipped some very nice dialogue because it didn't have time for it.
- an article about some women choosing cesarean because they simply are too afraid of giving birth. And then I read something I REALLY never-ever should have read - the comments to that article. Some people saying that childbirth was painful so they don't want to do it again, some people saying that cesarean was even worse and some people saying that regular birth was painful but seeing the baby made up for the horrible experience. Well yeah, I do seem to have a very high pain threshold - I didn't scream or curse and I didn't beg for an epidural. And still, as I was reading other people's experiences, my mind took me back to that day with all the horror and desperation of being helplessly alone and suffering. I've tried to gloss over it thinking that Siiri made up for it and that it became okay the moment I saw a healthy baby. Of course nearly passing out from exhaustion did feel so wonderfully heavenly at that moment. But then again, when I think back at the entire experience, I get butterflies in my stomach and the urge to hide under some blanket. 
Well, okay, I wouldn't panic. I'd simply get really defensive and spiteful in the birth department. 
I'd treat all the midviwes as potential enemies who just want to leave me alone with my contractions and everything. I keep reliving what I should have told them two years ago. I should have demanded a piece of paper to write my complaint on it. I should have told on them and accused them of endangering my life and Siiri's. They left me all alone - I could have died of a bleed in there! They didn't show me any emergency "call for help" button and even when I managed to tell some passing-by nurse to send someone to see me, it took an hour for that someone to arrive. Outrageous! 
Some people give birth in less than an hour. Should I have screamed for help? Should I have called the ambulance for some attention? I keep thinking that the least I could have done is to accuse them of neglecting me. If they told me I seemed perfectly healthy the moment they left me alone, then I would have just told them that I was giving birth and if giving birth is really so safe then I could have done it in some remote cave in the mountains. Why bother visiting THEIR hospital in the first place if it's as safe as giving birth in a remote cave...
I know they're the best hospital in the area and they simply made a small mistake. It was some student who took me to that birth room and she really thought I wasn't really giving birth and I was calmly sleeping in that bed. When she left, she dimmed the lights and nearly tried tucking me in. I guess she had never seen an active birth with irregular contractions and there's a first time for everything. On some level I don't blame her at all but still, when I think about that night, I get really scared. The worst part is that I don't simply start thinking scary thoughts, I get physically scared. I get all tense, pull my shoulders up, feel shaky inside my chest and I bet I look deeply worried as if the doomsday is approaching. 
That's extremely far from the inner calm and well prepared attitude that is needed for a pleasant birth experience. I have to deal with my fear, otherwise the second time might be even worse than the first one. I could get very tense and make a potentially bad experience into a horrible one. 
.
. And this "heatlhy" nearly vegetarian menu almost made me anemic.
I clearly don't get enough iron with food so I should eat more foods that are high in iron content. Right? Well that's what the midwife said so it must be right. So I should just eat plenty of beetroot, strawberries, beef, spinach, cereals and soybean?
I guess he never read that spinach is so full of oxalates that they practically negate all the iron they contain. Rhubarb is sour because of oxalic acid and in not recommended for people with iron deficiency. I think this fact I'm going to have to ignore. I want rhubarb pie! I need my rhubarb pie and I'm gonna eat it no matter what those nutritionists say! 
I later realized the absurdity of a man (what do 
Fortunately I knew he didn't really mean it that way - he was really friendly and sweet. Also he didn't comment when I tasted the good wines during conference dinner. There the waiters were really adamant to fill everyone's glasses with wonderful red and white wine that were picked especially for our 4-course superb dinner. I seemed to be the only one sending back two nearly full glasses. 
But the menu item "tartar de boeuf" did not light up any warning lights for me. I would have been suspicious if it had been some sort of high-end restaurant specialized in variety foods, but it was just a small clean restaurant that looked like a place ideal for an early morning coffee and croissant. Of course Tartar de boeuf, also known as Boeuf de tartar, is the raw dish that I shouldn't have ordered. I tasted it and suspected what it was, then I had my friend ask the waitress how it's made. The reply was, "Take meat, chop it and mix it." It was really late, I was quite hungry, it didn't taste so bad and the meat looked, smelled and tasted completely fresh, so I just ate it. Just at the beginning of the month I declared that this raw meat dish is something that I want to try at least once in my life, but certainly not while pregnant. Oh well. I guess it was meant to be. 
Ah how I love the Internet. 
Finally she let me proceed so she spared her company the discussions I was planning to have about my medical data being my private matter and, how ridiculous it was to think I was 2 months more pregnant and so on. I was even planning on demanding them to prove they have any right to keep me off the plane, and since I knew they don't have any right, since I wasn't a danger to anyone and not braking any rules. In case they would keep me off the plane for not having that certificate, I was going to demand refund and a compensation for any discomfort or I'll go to the press claiming this company has prejudice against pregnant women.