I'm in the gardening club as well, or at least I'd like to be. I want to build up a new little garden now when I'm on vacation. I was going to paint the "baby room" but decided that painting while pregnant is not good; I'll save it for maternity leave somehow or other... so instead I figured I'd build up a little garden around our (barren) apple tree. Nothing nearly as ambitious as Helen (even if she does call it "not huge"!). I mostly just want to put a ring of stones around, take up the grass and put in soil, and perhaps put some flower bulbs down later in the fall or whenever one does such things. I'm so terrible though with plants, and so is DH. We have, say, a 30% success rate. You should see the pots of herbs I planted before the summer. My cilantro is red for some reason, the dill grew about 3 foot tall stems with no actual usuable dill, and the parsley stayed about 1 inch tall even though it's still alive. And Helen is growing PINEAPPLE? Guess you guys have a very different climate than us,

Good job on your first day back, Rozzie. It sounds like you have a good boss for the situation. I also had to do that same sort of explaining to mine -- "I'm going back to 100% today but BTW I'm pregnant again so I'm going to be off to a whole lot of appointments all the time." The comment about being jealous that you were on leave is just the kind of foot people tend to put in their mouths. One of my old coworkers called me at home on a Saturday morning once and woke me up, and she said "Ahh, sleeping late, I guess that's the kind of luxury us people with little kids don't have!" I wanted to smack her, actually.

Paula -- I think it will work out okay at work, at least for the next 4 weeks, since I have 3 weeks of vacation starting next week! I won't be able to get any better information on what my duties are until after that since the guy who decides is on vacation now, but I have at least decided what I will be doing for the next 7 or so weeks in a way that I feel is best for me and doesn't require me trying to be more than one human being. Right now I've just come back from starting to set up my new lab, so I now have three different "offices" and three computers. I must be special. :P

Lan -- I'll have to see what can be done around the 17 week mark, as that will also be around the same time as Beiron's EDD. I don't think I'm going to be in a position to travel a lot, but my stress will only increase in another way if I feel like I'm not taking all opportunities to learn my new job. However, the leader for my new project thinks I'll be fine, since I have worked with similar stuff this whole time and the other guy is brand new, just started this week. That means I might not have to be in Stockholm so much after all but rather just a day or two and then come back home to my new lab. Much nicer to be a 1.5 km bike ride from home than a 200 km train ride.

I'm feeling 100% symptom-less. I even slept only 5 hours night before last but still managed a whole normal day without a nap. It's hard not to think, "Oh no, I feel good -- what's wrong with me!"