Today I take off.  As you can see I did manage to get my Eva’s Shawl done and I also got the wool longies done for the baby but I don’t have a picture of them.  I have been busy packing for my trip.  Packing for 2 months or so is a bit of work.  I take the dogs this morning to a dog kennel and the cats are being cared for by a girl in town.  I have all sorts of car fluids in the van and I have a full spare tire and fan belt in case.

My spindle arrived on Wednesday.  I haven’t started spinning yet as I knew I would want to keep going and I just had too much work to get done.  The crochet projects were more of a priority because I was scared I would forget where I was if I didn’t get them done.  I have one project for the road (I have always been the driver so I have never crocheted on the road).  My mom wants me to drive the stretch from Watson Lake to Muncho Lake because of all the wildlife on the road.  She said she would drive the stretch from Whitehorse to Watson Lake which is longer.  I am not that scared of wildlife as I get it on the road all the time.  I go to Whitehorse today with Brendan and his parents and the kids.  They are staying in Whitehorse and I pick my mom up at the airport tomorrow and we head to Muncho Lake.  Muncho Lake has a population of 7 people or something but it was a good stopping point for us so I reserved a room at the lodge there.  The next day I head to Grande Prairie where we stop for two nights for a break.  Myself and the kids will have travelled 2000km by then so I think we will need a break.  My mom grew up in Grande Prairie and her brother and sister live there.  My friend W lives there too so I will stop and see him also.  Then we drive to Edmonton to get my mom’s car, see my nephew that was born on Tuesday, and drive the 2 hours to my mom’s place.  Hopefully it goes as smoothly as it sounds.

I am taking my laptop and hope to figure out how to use it on the road.  I am getting excited now about everything.  I really feel like things are coming together finally.  My dad just emailed me today to say he is coming to Canada from Vietnam around my due date so I will get to see him too.  So many people to see.

Wednesday night I realized I wouldn’t have enough room in my van for the in laws, Brendan, their luggage, the kids and all the stuff for 2 months plus the baby stuff.  I decided to pack a box and send it on Air North freight to my mom in Edmonton.  So I packed all the baby stuff I have for a boy plus the blankets and towels that I have for babies.  I also threw in two crochet projects.  The slippers that I haven’t been able to finish and the afghan for my mom.  I have barely finished any squares and I hope that actually doing it in front of my mom will finally motivate me to get it done.

I went to Whitehorse for my appointments.  It turned out the Alternator on my van was fine and it was just the battery connector things.  The dietitian was also very helpful as I had no clue as to what I should be eating with this gestational diabetes.  Then I went to the regular doctor.  While I was there I was informed I get zero compensation for going down south to deliver.  I don’t have a good enough reason to go out of the Territory.  I was upset ( I had been told I would get medical compensation) but I am ok about it now.  My health care still covers the birth.  I was on Social Assistance but they have stopped that because I am leaving the Territory too.  They said I need to apply again when I get back.  I found that out a couple of weeks ago.  The doctor was commenting that despite all the stress my blood pressure was 100/60 so at least it looks like my body is at least handling the stress well which I hope means that the baby is not as affected.

My spindle didn’t come in the mail today so maybe on Monday.  I have to seriously get on top of my laundry anyways and not be playing with a spindle as I need to start packing everything.  Luckily for me a lot of my maternity clothes are starting to get small so there will be less of my stuff to pack.  I always go a bit crazy doing laundry as part of my nesting not wanting to be behind when I go into labour so I am sure I will be fine for clothes.  I have already sent all the baby diapers with that box I sent yesterday.  I use cloth and I still am using diapers that I used with Rhys 5 years ago.  That was a good investment anyways.

I am getting to the end of my yarn with Eva and I am really going to try to get it done before I leave.  I just want to get something completed.  I feel like I am leaving so many loose ends.

I haven’t been blogging recently as Brendan’s parents arrived on Saturday.  I went into Whitehorse on Thursday evening for an ultrasound Friday morning.  The ultrasound showed male parts again so it looks like it is a boy as the last ultrasound showed.  This one was to look at my incision from my first baby who was a c-section.  Hannah wasn’t feeling well and when I went to my pre-natal appointment another doctor looked at her and she had a temperature of 103 F.   My van was being detailed because of the in laws visit so I had to carry her.   I got some tylenol and my glucometer to test for blood sugar and went back to the hotel to wait for my van to be finished.  It looked fantastic and the tylenol helped Hannah and she was fine the next morning.

I had made an appointment for an oil change etc. but while driving to Whitehorse the low battery light came on again and they said it was the alternator.  In 1 1/2 weeks I drive almost 3000 km so it should get fixed.  I picked everyone up at the airport and headed back to Faro.  I have ANOTHER appointment on Thursday in Whitehorse to go to the Diabetic Education Centre.  I made an appointment for the car and the GP for the same afternoon.  I am getting a little tired of this driving.  I get mileage because it is a service not available in my community but still it takes up so much time.  I just hope the alternator doesn’t go before I get it fixed.

I hope to get Eva done in the next while.  I picked up some blocking wires to block it.  The crocheting has been a bit sparse lately but I hope to change that once I get to my mom’s.  We’ll see what this baby thinks.  He might decide to come early and spoil all that.  However, being heavily pregnant isn’t great either so whatever happens there is something positive.

Hopefully my spindle comes tomorrow in the mail.  It is Rhys’s birthday too.

I didn’t get myself a yarn present but I did order a “Learn To Spin” kit from Golding.  Yes, not the cheapest spindle out there but in two months it is my birthday and I thought maybe this would be a good time to take up another calming hobby.  Plus, I have a lot of fiber and a wheel but don’t know how to spin really.  The wheel is a bit awkward to take with me but a spindle isn’t.  It isn’t like I am going to buy myself clothes for my birthday or something like that.

My pregnancy is high risk now for sure because in addition to the other things I have gestational diabetes.  Yes, life just seems to get better.  I did find leads on some spinning instructors in Alberta which is why I thought getting a spindle now was a good idea.  I do have a cheap one but the hook isn’t brilliant so it isn’t as balanced and I just gave up rather quickly.  When I started crocheting I ordered a set of hooks from Turn Of The Century. Having nice things makes it just that more enjoyable to use them.  Maybe this will help take my mind off of things.

I have started packing.  The trip is around 2700 km I think.  That is a guess.  I am starting with the baby stuff as that is the easiest to pack.  Then my post partum stuff (oh the joys of having a post partum figure) next.  The in-laws are coming next week.  This means getting the house decent looking.  Brendan’s mom is going to help me wall paper the kitchen with some paintable wallpaper.  The wall isn’t in great shape so I think this is the best option.  I have some wallpaper for one wall in Hannah’s room which isn’t in great shape either.  That is just regular vinyl I got at a garage sale.  Little by little things are getting done.

Crochet wise I am just working on WIPs.  The Pepper Pants are almost done but I think I may have made a mistake.  There was a section for the rear extension that said to decrease on row, work even the other row and do this 10 times (between the *s)  I repeated the two rows 10 times and maybe I should have only done 10 rows as it seems rather large and the pants rather shallow on the top but I guess maybe we will see.  I am not about to frog back as I am about to start the waistband and want to just get things done.  Eva is about 3/4 done.  It is capelet size right now and I am about 3/4 done the yarn.  It is an indie dyed yarn so one skein is all I have.  It is looking very nice.  That leaves the sweater for Rhys (no longer a birthday present), the slippers, and the two afghans I think.  The slippers will be next as they are from a cone of yarn and that is more awkward to pack.  Plus any new mother can use slippers especially in the hospital.  My much darned ones are nearing their end I think.

Hopefully I will have some crochet pictures soon.

My mom and I were talking last night and came up with a plan that she fly up on the May long weekend (May 16-19) and we drive my van down with the kids together.  One doctor recommended I go down at 32 weeks and the other said up until 36 weeks.  This way I will be 34 weeks.

I went to bed feeling pretty good.  I woke up this morning and realized I have 4 weeks to get ready for this baby!  I thought I had more time.  I have to find the baby stuff and pack it.  Go through the kids clothes and see what I should bring (I will probably be gone for 2 months) and I have WIPs to finish.  Otherwise I have to bring them or I might forget what I was doing.  Pack baby diapers (I use cloth) and toys.  As the nesting instinct kicked in I thought I really need to completely organize the house and maybe paint the bathroom and kitchen.  Brendan came over today to see the kids and was shaking his head.  This is the third time this has happened and as any seasoned father will tell you there is no stopping it.  A nesting pregnant woman is an unstoppable force.  The more kids you have the more you realize that being completely prepared for a baby is rather impossible but still you need to cover more and more angles with each child.  Memories of what you missed last time spring to mind and you try to fix things so things go more smoothly.  Men will wake up at 3 am to find women make casserole dishes to freeze for after the birth.  Other women do yard work knowing it will be harder to get to it once the baby comes.  The house is painted because you won’t have time after the baby comes.  Cleaning is a major one with most women.  Walls get washed and basements cleaned out.  Closer to the time you keep on top of the laundry and cleaning in case you go into labour and you won’t be home for a while.  Lists too are important.  You have to make lists for everyone so they know how you do things.  Keeping a pen and paper next to the bed is helpful when you wake up at 2 am with something else you have missed.  You can just write it down for later.  This doesn’t always work for those incredibly urgent things like baby proofing the kitchen even though the baby won’t be mobile for months.  Despite the fact you know you won’t be sleeping for quite awhile after the baby is born you can’t stop yourself.  It is almost instinctual.

So today I am washing as much laundry as I can so I have time tomorrow to go through boxes of baby clothes and organize the basement.  4 weeks is not a lot of time you know……

So yesterday I went to Whitehorse to see two doctors. I had my regular appointment with my GP and then I had to see an Obstetrician because I am having another VBAC. They have both recommended that I go “down south” for the birth because I have support down there for childcare and anything else I might need. I would probably drive just because I would be gone a month or two and the sheer volume of stuff I would have to bring for the baby and kids makes it easier. Also there is the problem of my van being left at the airport and not having transportation while I am away with my family. As soon as I hit the Alberta border I have friends and relatives so it is just getting through the Yukon and B.C. which would take 2 or 3 days of driving. About 2000 km to get to Alberta and then I have to go to the other side to get to my mother’s house. The doctor’s say that medically speaking my pregnancy is fine. It is just all the “what ifs” that they are worried about. Doctors up here have to look at the whole picture as many people live in remote places without any facilities and in this case they just want to make sure I have the least amount of stress possible.

So I took some pictures of my trip to Whitehorse. I only go through one town so it is just the highway. It is the middle of April so although it is “spring” that means something different. It is a time of changeable weather. Basically it snowed for parts of the trip.

This is the highway from the side of the road. This is heading in the direction I needed to go.

Here it is the other direction with the sign indicating where to turn to get to Faro. It wasn’t snowing at the time that was just what was left from winter and from the night before.

The Robert Campbell Highway. There aren’t any shoulders and in the winter when you never see the highway (they don’t clear down to bare road) you drive down the middle of the road until you see an oncoming car. They sand the middle of the road only in most cases.

On the left is the beginning of Little Salmon Lake which is frozen. It thaws out sometime in June. The road begins to wind around the lake for about 35 km.

This is the unpaved bit which doesn’t look much different except there aren’t any lines. There isn’t a lot of gravel on it but it wasn’t as rough as it can be particularily at the end of the summer.

Then it started to snow.

The Klondike Highway. This is the second major highway of the Yukon after the Alaska Highway. The snow had stopped obviously.

This is another frozen lake called Fox Lake. The rivers are starting to break up a bit but the lakes are pretty much frozen over still.

After my appointment I decided to drive back but around Whitehorse it was snowing quite a bit. That cleared up a ways out of town and was pretty much a repeat of everything above. I only saw one animal on the drive and that was a moose outside of Faro. I couldn’t find my camera before she (?) ran off.

So there you go. That is how my trips to the doctor go. It is 350km but pretty much looks much the same with different mountains and lakes as you go along.

I used to make a lot of my cleaning products and beauty products.  I became interested in it again recently and went to Cranberry Lane a Canadian company that sells ingredients for soapmaking, beauty products etc..  So I ordered a bunch of ingredients thinking I could make all this stuff.  Well there is a tiny problem.  Not really a problem but more hesitation on my part.  Here is an example of recipes I am talking about.  Now if you look at the antibacterial spray and so forth you see one of the ingredients is vodka or ethanol.  I do have some isopropyl alcohol kicking around but to get vodka I need to go to the liquor store.  Not a problem right?  I am in my 30s but I am 28 weeks pregnant.  In the Yukon every bottle has a label saying you should not drink during pregnancy and there are signs all over the store.  I am not a drinker anyways.  Maybe 4 or 5 in a year and definitely not vodka.  I know I shouldn’t feel hesitant to go into a liquor store obviously pregnant but I ended up asking Brendan to go in and get me some cheap vodka.  He thought it was funny.  I will let you know how things turn out.

Today I had to go into the nursing station and have a screening test for gestational diabetes.  It was just a precautionary thing.  I had to drink this sickly drink and then wait an hour and give blood.  I do live just blocks from the nursing station but to go home again and have the kids complain when I left again wasn’t what I wanted.  I had asked Brendan to come over and watch the kids.  Of course Hannah decides to sleep the night through for maybe the 3rd time in her life and on top of that sleeps in.  My son slept in too.  My living alarm clocks didn’t wake me up until 15 minutes before he got here.  I got ready and grabbed my Eva shawl.

It is so nice to work on a crochet project when waiting.  Normally I have kids to watch so I hardly ever CIP.  It gave me a glimpse into the future when I will be able to crochet without being on the constant alert like I am now with small children.  I can’t wait in some ways although I do love the hugs and cuddles I get from my small children.  They will stop doing that too soon I think.  However on the crochet front I am sure I will be more productive.

My blog is mainly a crochet blog but believe it or not there is more to life than crocheting.  The doctor’s office phoned today about my next appointment and I thought maybe I would do a post on giving birth up north.  This is my first birth in the Yukon as I moved here in April 2006 when little Hannah was 5 months old and Rhys was 2 almost 3.  I had them in Germany.  I can tell you how much fun it is to give birth when you don’t speak the language very well (German grammar will be a mystery to me for the rest of my life).  Sign language only goes so far.  Obviously, if I am bent over in serious pain and heavily pregnant that it probably means I am in labour but other than that I had problems telling people what was wrong.  English speaking people were always busy it seemed.

Ok so getting back to the Yukon.  The Yukon has one hospital serving 483 450 km2 and a population of 32 355 people (in December 2006).  The hospital is in Whitehorse.  Most of the communities have a nursing station which employs a practice nurse and some other nurses.  A practice nurse has special training to work in these type of conditions.  Faro, used to have a doctor who covered the two communities closest to here (Ross River and Carmacks) as well but after the old one left a replacement hasn’t been found.  There is a volunteer ambulance service which will pick up the person with the medical emergency and take them to the nursing station (or health center as the one here is technically called as there are only 2 nurses full time).  The nurse is the one with the authority to call the medi-vac  people to come and get the person and fly them to the hospital in Whitehorse.  The ambulance takes the person to the airport.

Women who are 35 weeks and up deliver in the hospital here.  If the baby comes earlier than that you need to be flown to a bigger hospital down south.  Women outside of Whitehorse are asked (told more like it) to come into Whitehorse 2 weeks before the due date to wait in a hotel or wherever until you deliver.  First Nations benefits cover the expense if you are First Nation but if you are like me then you are supposed to come up with the money yourself.  Not only do you have to stay in a hotel room but you get two or more weeks of trying to entertain your other children while heavily pregnant in a hotel room.  I sense some good times ahead.  There is a room in the women’s shelter for a woman on her own to stay in if need be.  I am not leaving my kids for a couple of weeks of course so a hotel room it is.

I asked how long I have to stay in the hospital.  Apparently, if everything goes well then only a couple of days if my mother is there to help (normally it would be a husband but in a case like mine she said she needs my mother to be there).  This is to be a second VBAC.  Like I want another c-section!   One was one too many in my opinion.

So that is how it goes apparently.  Seems to be a bit more work than it needs to be but that is the way they do it around here.   As time goes on in the next 13 weeks or so I will keep you posted on how things are going.

Things are going pretty well now.  A couple of days ago they weren’t so I didn’t feel like blogging.  Today I feel a bit like Ebony here on MY chair.  I set up my rocking chair in my bedroom under a nice sunny window with my afghan and sweater in case I get cold and she thinks I have created an oasis for her.  Life as a cat must be good.

While I am showing cat pictures here is my other one at the base of my yarn cabinet.

Cleo is older and has been with me since before I met Brendan even.  She seems to be a bit disturbed about my pregnant belly and I am sure she wonders why I am having another loud child who will try to pull her fluffy tail.   Ebony loves to ambush her and there is often hissing in the night when she is telling Ebony off for jumping on her in the dark.  Both love my afghan and wonder when I will be making them another one so they don’t have to share.

On the crochet front I have done some work on the Granny Hex afghan and on Rhys’s sweater.  That leaves Eva, the slippers, and the longies…oh and the other afghan.  Seriously, I am done with afghans.  I have caught myself looking at some patterns and shake my head at my obvious irrational thinking.  The summer I usually make mittens and other small things.  The kids always need mittens and they are a good summer project.  I will have to make some thumb-less ones for the new baby.  I look forward to getting the winter backlog done.