70 days

One of the great benefits to starting a family in Latvia is the maternity leave. It starts 70 days before your due date and continues for up to a year after the birth. For the record, I got to choose my own due date (within a certain range) as was most convenient for my work schedule - I chose February 8 meaning I've technically been on maternity leave since December 1.

The first weeks went by in a flash - lots of midwife and doctors visits and a few trips to government offices to get the maternity leave squared away. (Luckily, since sunrise isn't until nearly 9am in December, I showed up at the offices when they opened at 8.30 and was able to avoid the lines.) Plus I actually spent a fair amount of time at school still in December wrapping things up, and will still be in to finish up a few things in January.

And of course I could not just allow myself to relax during this time - I am on three graduate level online courses (two of which I'm aiming to start and finish in the month of January before we become a family of three). I figured I sure won't have extra time on my hands after February, so might as well take advantage of these 70 days I got. At the rate we're going though, I feel like I could blink one more time and February will be upon us!

Lots of my time is filled with reading - preparing myself for birth and parenting, reading texts for coursework, and also just for fun. Mims the Wondercat has taken this as a time to start getting to know the baby. She kneads my stomach for a while, then lays down and he kicks and pokes her for a while, then she kneads him again, and so we go on.... It's a pretty cozy way to spend this season of hibernation if I do say so myself. :)