Snoozlebunky

I was so proud of myself yesterday for not taking a nap and getting through the day ok.

Today, I slept til 10:30, got up and puttered around for a while, felt nauseated for the first time in weeks, tried to eat, went back to bed, and slept til 4:30.

Pregnant woman, must f*ck with..

I am really sick of "how are you feeling." I mean really sick of it. People don't say "Hi Helen" any more, and people who NEVER spoke to me in the office now lead off with the stupid question, which has caused the phrase in general to come off as patronizing, like I'm only interesting now that I'm pregnant, and if I give you an honest answer to that question, it leads to a conversation you never would have had with me if I weren't pregnant.

(and I don't mean you, doodebunky readers. I mean all the other "you"s who know I'm pregnant but really aren't interested in _me,_ just _pregnant me_.)

But it's a camel's back issue. Being asked that question several dozen times a day is making me not want to leave the house. Even just "How are you," which you might ask me if I weren't pregnant, would make me _feel_ more comfortable.

Please, stop pitying me because I'm pregnant, people! I'm torn between saying "horrible" every time someone asks me that and saying "fine, thank you" when I don't, so I've actually been explaining to people that being asked it a hundred times a week is hard to deal with. Most people actually laugh with me on it, but today I got, "*I* haven't asked you that."

I am so glad that at some point someone taught me that it's not enough to treat other people the way you want to be treated. Treat people the way they want to be treated, and in order to do that, you have to be willing to get to know a person at least a bit beyond the surface level. It also means I have to bite my own tongue at being snarky when asked that question for the umptyhundredth time.

But honestly, I guess some people love being treated differently when they are pregnant. me? not so much. It's sort of like the love I used to get when I was semifamous in Philadelphia--I can't stand empty attention, being an object of fascination instead of a human being. It's why it's been downright impossible for me to meet men anywhere other than the internet. (and thank god I don't have to deal with that anymore.)

By the same token, it is this personality quirk of mine that makes me very difficult to get to know. Being aware of this doesn't make me any gentler with new users.

By the same token, I did have another coworker today thank me for not being annoyingly pregnant, as in always squeeeeeeing over the cute. That's not to say that i don't have it in me, but it's also one of the reasons I'm not joining a baby bump club.

Oh, another pet peeve!

Just when I thought I had encountered them all, I walked down the hall and a colleague from downstairs said, "Hi, Mommy."

Never mind the fact that three billion things can go wrong between now and November, even now, but I think it boils down to the same thing that causes me to cross my eyes when Dean greets total strangers with "Thanks, sis." I'm not this woman's mother, I'm not of a mind to be "Mommy" when my son sat me down, what, 8 years ago now and said, "I can't call you Mommy anymore. From now on, I'll call you Mom." I know Bunky will likely call me Mommy at some point, but not for some time yet probably almost two years away. I don't know why I find it so patronizing--everything gets on my nerves these days--but I'm not exactly glowing over this pregnancy and I wish people would grok that without me having to sit them down and say, Look, starting over is hard enough without you treating me like (a) I'm about to break and (b) I've never done this before.

As I was walking up to church last week, I ran into the parish's director of programs--kind of like the senior admin person. We were having a nice little chat when she asked if I knew the sex yet, and whether I'd be finding out. "I'll probably find out at my next ultrasound," I said. "But I'm thinking about holding off on telling anyone until we get to shower season just for the laughs." She touched my arm and said, "Oh, I didn't even think--you probably get asked that all the time, and I forget how insensitive those of us can be when we ask these questions not realizing how much you hear it. Those become really dumb questions after a while." And I laughed, realizing she had just caught herself doing something that she herself had been annoyed by at one point.

You know, I appreciated that so much I gave her a hug. Granted, she and I are facebook friends so she might have gotten a whiff of my sensitivity, but she doesn't use the platform much so I doubt it. I'm just trying to be more mindful of why people ask the questions--I think everyone honestly cares even though I feel like I need a bubble over my head that automatically updates my answers to those questions.

Anyhow, so I got the bill from the perinatologist and sure enough, the $150 that my insurance excluded is in the bill, so I am going to go by there on Tuesday and demand that they resubmit the claim with the proper code or at least an explanation that the consultation was for genetic counseling. Right now, I have about $500 in unpaid medical expenses to foot the bill for, a final T-mobile bill in collections and one last oil invoice to pay, but my car payment is caught up and the mortgage is doing much better. So I'm starting to feel more confident that by autumn, we'll be in better shape for Bunky to get here. Of course, Dean gets a whiff of a promotion just as we're trying to get him out to the valley full time...

mood swings...

I'm having one of those days where nothing feels right and I can't seem to receive anything right. I want to sit down in a corner and cry for no reason whatsoever other than the fact that right now I seem to be craving structure, and I can't find it.

I am taking just about everything personally, from the fact that I can't seem to get any member of my family to sit down for a meal with me unless it's at a restaurant, to work seeming chaotic as instructions fly from every direction, to even my ex, Justin, paying me a very nice compliment and resulting in me flying back with something along the lines of not good enough though, was it? Then, thinking I'd have leftover pizza for lunch only to find that it's almost all gone. Upset with my lack of choices in things to drink and feeling like water is choking me. Procrastinating on writing an article that needs to get done. It keeps going from there, like an icky, icky spiral that I know all too well but don't have a lot of recent experience with.

It's not helping that I'm sleeping so much, I don't think. It may be what my body needs, but my brain is not dealing with it well at all. Last night, I wanted to spend time with Dean, so I went over to his place and ... slept.

Tuesday, I was in pain, so I went upstairs and took a nap.

This is actually the fifth out of seven days in a week that I've taken a nap. And one of those days, I didn't nap, but vegged out on the couch for several hours in a semi-comatose state that might as well have been a nap.

So I'm frustrated with my body, for not giving me enough hours to do all the things I like to do in a day for going on three months now. I thought it would get better once school was out. I thought it would get better once I was in the second trimester.

Maybe it will. It's only been a couple of weeks, after all. But how to get control of the spin?

(omg, I said control....)

That tug on my heart...

I'm seriously thinking about joining the American College of Nurse-Midwives as an associate member with an eye toward building a business as a freelance writer covering midwifery topics. It's $135 a year, but if I can land just one professional level writing gig as a result, that becomes tax-deductible.

That does include a subscription to their professional, peer-reviewed journal and their newsletter, as well as access to their advocacy component, facilitating my ability to gather news and information about nurse-midwifery practice and distill it into layman's terms.

In a way, pursuing this would be fusing the 20-something me with the 30-something me in a way that I'd never considered possible.

I also noticed that the Virginia Midwife chapter site seems to have fallen by the wayside. That might also be a potential income source.

All of these things are things I'm considering because in a perfect world, I'd go on to Dean's insurance policy, move to half-time at AFCEA, and work the rest as a consultant so that I could be a better mom to Bunky. In fact, anything at this point I can do to become a full-time freelancer, I'd be all over. There's the church 2.0 route, but I've already established that I couldn't make a living off that alone, especially in this economy.

Belly up

The pains seem to have stopped within the past hour or so, finally, after making a brief "are you paying attention" cameo on the right side of my body (which was probably round ligament pain; the sensation isn't overly dissimilar). They will probably image my ovaries at my next ultrasound just to see what it might have been--apparently, the corpus luteum that generates a lot of the hormones until the placenta fully develops sometimes doesn't disintegrate properly, just as it sometimes doesn't after a normal woman's cycle. And I'm just getting to the point where the placenta is fully formed. It's kind of neat, though: if that's the case, then Bunky definitely came from the left ovary; not something that bears any significance other than the "oh neat" factor.

This is more neat, though. When I lie flat on my back, I can feel my uterus under my belly fat, and I can feel it, ever so slightly, shift as the baby moves, externally. Not quite the same thing as feeling the baby move internally, so I can't call it quickening just yet, but it's going to happen soon.

And I'm *really* excited about that. On one of my crying jags back when I thought I wasn't going to have more children, I was so devastated that I wasn't ever going to feel that sensation again. And now that I'm going to, I wish I could record the sensation in something more tactile. I remember the feeling distinctly with Kieran, but I don't remember things like where I was, or how I reacted;  I wasn't as good at chronicling things back then (and what journals I did keep were incredibly depressed-sounding, which fits, when you look at my marriage of that time).

And I look so cute in some of these maternity clothes I could just yarf. Who knew? Weird side effect I'm digging: the fact that my upper arms have lost 2 solid inches, most of which since getting pregnant.I still mostly need 1x shirts to accommodate their girth (which looks freakish compared to my relatively trim forearms), but I can wear a size "large" if the arms have a loose cut to them.

Anyhow, enough babble, I guess. Sometimes I have to remind myself not to take the rest of the internet personally, in fact more so lately. A lot of times my rambling (and tweet-rambling) is just me thinking aloud, getting the brain flotsam out so that I can process everything else more clearly. And too often I forget that my brain-dump sometimes causes consternation among friends, and they want to help, and I get irritated when they want to try. Where does that fall on the things-I've-done-and-left-undone spectrum?

Not the Best Day

Last night, I started having weird cramps in my lower left abdomen. Not contraction-like cramps, but not particularly intestinal-like cramps. In fact, they reminded me of cramps I've had while ovulating, and as I was trying to describe my symptoms down to the nurse on the phone, I got to that one, and she said, "Ah. Chances are you have an ovarian cyst." It's either that or something going on in that specific part of the intestine, and either way is _probably_ not serious and needs to just pass on its own.

The pain is enough to distract me from working, so I go take a nap that winds up lasting four hours. So here it is 7 pm and I'm working again.

They told me if the pain got worse or if there was blood to go to the ER (severe pain can trigger a miscarriage, apparently), but otherwise drink plenty of fluids and keep them updated if it doesn't get any better.

Not the best day

Last night, I started having weird cramps in my lower left abdomen. Not contraction-like cramps, but not particularly intestinal-like cramps. In fact, they reminded me of cramps I've had while ovulating, and as I was trying to describe my symptoms down to the nurse on the phone, I got to that one, and she said, "Ah. Chances are you have an ovarian cyst." It's either that or something going on in that specific part of the intestine, and either way is _probably_ not serious and needs to just pass on its own.

The pain is enough to distract me from working, so I go take a nap that winds up lasting four hours. So here it is 7 pm and I'm working again.

They told me if the pain got worse or if there was blood to go to the ER (severe pain can trigger a miscarriage, apparently), but otherwise drink plenty of fluids and keep them updated if it doesn't get any better.

e-i-e-i-omg...

I shouldn't say I busted out the tape measure this morning, but I did, and now for a little bra-related TMI...



Been noticing my cups overflowing, and fully aware that I need new bras. But I also know that being only halfway through my fourth month, I'm probably going to need new bras about 10 times over for every size change I go through. But for some reason, I wasn't expecting this much of a change. With Kieran, I never had boobs at all until I was about in my fifth month, when I surprised myself by becoming a 36C.

But by the time I was nursing, I was a 38EE. That only lasted as long as I was nursing, though.

So cue to this morning. I've been somewhere between a 36B and a 38C during most of my adult life. But realizing that none were fitting right, and the athletic bras I'd been counting on were actually uncomfortable, especially since they tended to redirect car seat belts around my beck, I measured everything again and calculated my new bra size to be 38E.

Um, if I'm almost to the size I was when I was nursing Kieran, and that seemed freakishly big at the time, what are they going to look like when Bunky shows up??!

e-i-e-i-omg

I shouldn't say I busted out the tape measure this morning, but I did, and now for a little bra-related TMI...

Pregnancy Is Not a Pathology

Reading Pushed at the recommendation of my midwife last week has really made me regret my fickleness in 1995 that led me away from nursing school, which had been my intent until my first marriage fell apart. My goal back then was to pursue nursing through to the graduate level and become a certified nurse midwife, but as we fell apart and I immersed myself more and more into creative writing (and I failed organic chemistry), I second guessed myself. Then things between us really disintegrated between 1996 and 97, and I lost all interest in school.

So anyway, being pregnant again has totally renewed my energies in that direction. And the more I read, the more I see that things have actually gotten worse for women in the 17 years since I was last pregnant.

My midwife wants to write a book about childbirth, but she's a midwife who wants to be a writer. I am keenly interested in these issues too, and I am a writer who would have wanted to be a midwife.

I'm thinking she and I will be talking more.

Anyhow, you don't have to read the entire book to get an idea of what I'm on about. This L.A. Times article, which was published yesterday, addresses it more concisely:

Once reserved for cases in which the life of the baby or mother was in danger, the cesarean is now routine. The most common operation in the U.S., it is performed in 31% of births, up from 4.5% in 1965.

With that surge has come an explosion in medical bills, an increase in complications -- and a reconsideration of the cesarean as a sometimes unnecessary risk.

It is a big reason childbirth often is held up in healthcare reform debates as an example of how the intensive and expensive U.S. brand of medicine has failed to deliver better results and may, in fact, be doing more harm than good.

....

The cesarean rate in the U.S. is higher than in most other developed nations. And in spite of a standing government goal of reducing such deliveries, the U.S. has set a new record every year for more than a decade.

The problem, experts say, is that the cesarean -- delivery via uterine incision -- exposes a woman to the risk of infection, blood clots and other serious problems. Cesareans also have been shown to increase premature births and the need for intensive care for newborns. Even without such complications, cesareans result in longer hospital stays.

Inducing childbirth -- bringing on or hastening labor with the drug oxytocin -- also is on the rise and is another source of growing concern. Experts say miscalculations often result in the delivery of infants who are too young to breathe on their own. Induction, studies show, also raises the risk of complications that lead to cesareans.

Despite all this intervention -- and, many believe, because of it -- childbirth in the U.S. doesn't measure up. The U.S. lags behind other developed nations on key performance indicators including infant mortality and birth weight.

And in at least two areas, the U.S. has lost ground after decades of improvement: The maternal death rate began to rise in 2002, and the typical American newborn is delivered at 39 weeks, down from the full 40. Public health experts view the trends with alarm.

I should add that I don't consider myself a radical. I'm not interested in a home birth, not crazy about seeing certain common sense things I did with my first son now being proselytized as "attachment parenting," and I tend to be moderate in most political arenas, mostly because being a journalist causes a person to be more circumspect in examining all sides of an issue. But I do believe that obstetrics is an important field that should support midwifery, not the other way around and not competing with one another.

Pregnancy is not a pathology, chapter 1.

In the future, I'll keep these behind a cut and tag them consistently as "the politics of birthing," for those that aren't interested. But reading Pushed at the recommendation of my midwife last week has really made me regret my fickleness in 1995 that led me away from nursing school, which had been my intent until my marriage to George fell apart. My goal back then was to pursue nursing through to the graduate level and become a certified nurse midwife, but as George and I fell apart and I immersed myself more and more into creative writing (and I failed organic chemistry), I second guessed myself. Then things between me and George really disintegrated between 1996 and 97, and I lost all interest in school.

So anyway, being pregnant again has totally renewed my energies in that direction. And the more I read, the more I see that things have actually gotten worse for women in the 17 years since I was last pregnant.

So I'm posting this one posting without the cut, but I expect there will be more. My midwife wants to write a book about childbirth, but she's a midwife who wants to be a writer. I am keenly interested in these issues too, and I am a writer who would have wanted to be a midwife.

I'm thinking she and I will be talking more.

Anyhow, you don't have to read the entire book to get an idea of what I'm on about. This L.A. Times article, which was published yesterday, addresses it more concisely:

Once reserved for cases in which the life of the baby or mother was in danger, the cesarean is now routine. The most common operation in the U.S., it is performed in 31% of births, up from 4.5% in 1965.

With that surge has come an explosion in medical bills, an increase in complications -- and a reconsideration of the cesarean as a sometimes unnecessary risk.

It is a big reason childbirth often is held up in healthcare reform debates as an example of how the intensive and expensive U.S. brand of medicine has failed to deliver better results and may, in fact, be doing more harm than good.

....

The cesarean rate in the U.S. is higher than in most other developed nations. And in spite of a standing government goal of reducing such deliveries, the U.S. has set a new record every year for more than a decade.

The problem, experts say, is that the cesarean -- delivery via uterine incision -- exposes a woman to the risk of infection, blood clots and other serious problems. Cesareans also have been shown to increase premature births and the need for intensive care for newborns. Even without such complications, cesareans result in longer hospital stays.

Inducing childbirth -- bringing on or hastening labor with the drug oxytocin -- also is on the rise and is another source of growing concern. Experts say miscalculations often result in the delivery of infants who are too young to breathe on their own. Induction, studies show, also raises the risk of complications that lead to cesareans.

Despite all this intervention -- and, many believe, because of it -- childbirth in the U.S. doesn't measure up. The U.S. lags behind other developed nations on key performance indicators including infant mortality and birth weight.

And in at least two areas, the U.S. has lost ground after decades of improvement: The maternal death rate began to rise in 2002, and the typical American newborn is delivered at 39 weeks, down from the full 40. Public health experts view the trends with alarm.

 

So I'm sharing this first installment of "the politics of birthing" without a cut, and I do apologize to those of you who aren't interested and want me to get back to babyblogging. I will. Future posts with cut, but also to be posted publicly and with the hope that at least some of you will find the information enlightening.

I should add that I don't consider myself a radical. I'm not interested in a home birth, for one, and I do believe that obstetrics is an important field that should support midwifery, not the other way around and not competing with one another.

Because I miss Weight Watchers...

I've started using The Daily Plate at livestrong.com to track my food intake, because I had a lousy week on the road last week and gained a ton of weight in that week after hardly gaining anything the entire first trimester. Fortunately, it seems to have been a fluke and I didn't REALLY cross the 200 threshold again, but I'm definitely 198 now where I was 193.

The weird thing is that I've tried two different calculators to try and figure out what my appropriate caloric intake is. One said 2400 and the other said 3300, so I'm going to split the difference and go with 2800, which is what you get when you plug in 2500+300 anyway.

Pregnant Nose knows

"Pregnant Nose" has become something of a superhero round these parts. I can smell Dean's coffee a mile away, just busted Kieran on not brushing his teeth in... forever? and of course this morning's incident with the skunk was amusing, because Dean was swearing he didn't get hit but Pregnant Nose told him otherwise and made him change out on the front porch.

So anyway, just now, foraging around for something I can have for lunch, I dove for the carrots, and Dean started nattering on about Pregnant Nose again.

And then he said "Sounds like a Morrisey song, or something."

Boys to be girls who do boys like they're girls

I have a "either is good" attitude toward the gender of the baby, because I've always wanted a daughter but have already mostly raised a boy and know better what to expect.

But the more people who suggest to me that they think it's a boy, the more I find myself really upset at the notion that it might not be the daughter I've been calling for in my heart for all these years.

I have absolutely no intuitive feeling over whether it's a boy or a girl. One of the big litmuses in our family is morning sickness: The less sick you are, the more likely it's a boy. I got sick twice with Kieran, both times in the second trimester, and had very little nausea. I had near constant nausea starting from three days after I found out I was pregnant until last week, and this week it's been much better but not without its queasies here and there. But I haven't actually heaved all that much, mostly because of rigorous mindfulness when it came to eating the right amount of breakfast no matter how awful I felt. But I don't feel the degree of "morning sickness" that my aunt and mother described with their girls.

I got the probability of Down's in at a little less than a 0.2% chance. I have approximately a 0.5% chance of miscarrying if I get an amnio. So I've decided that since there's a bigger chance of killing the baby inadvertently than it having this particular condition (the other, more serious chromosomal disorders they screen for came in at <0.02%), that I will not be having the amnio.

I have another ultrasound scheduled for 18 weeks, at which time they will be looking for even more markers of things and there's a good chance we'll find out gender.

I'll be glad to know early. I am just so happy to be having another child, one I can raise with my husband, that ultimately I really _don't_ care whether it's a boy or a girl. I just hope that if it's a boy, I don't find myself languishing to have one more go at it, because I'm quite sure that Dean's going to shut down the turnpike before I'm fertile again. Granted, he was supposed to do so before this one happened.

One weird thing that happened the other day was that I was talking to my boss about my midwife, and she asked me why I didn't want to go with an obstetrician. I found myself mystified that more women don't want to be in charge of their own labors. In fact, I can't understand it, even though I've seen it plenty. Maybe it's just my own stubborn streak, and arrogance about how Heath-Gilliam women are brilliantly designed to give birth. I trust my body. In fact, if I didn't have a few key risk factors--not big risks, but key ones nonetheless, I'd have the baby at home in a snap.

the attack of the know-it-alls!

Best example yet. Dean has a friend who, apparently because she was a biology major, knows everything about childbirthin'.

OK, so I'm probably exaggerating. What she has is a less-than-favorable opinion of traditional midwifery, and it sounds like it may be colored by some firsthand knowledge of a bad experience. But she sicced that opinion on Dean with "I vote no on traditional birthing.." as if my choices were some committee's to make and insinuating, with "ignorance is bliss," that *we* don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no babies. And since she busted out the all caps, I busted them out right back, because I'm no stranger to having strong opinions, but I'm also of the mind that mine are better informed than hers are, because (a) I've read two thousand-page obstetric texts cover to cover from back in my I-want-to-be-a-nurse-midwife-days and (b) I know the context of my pregnancies better than anyone.

It's _really_ difficult for me to deal with the "you shoulds" in the information age. It was one of the things I noted when friends of mine were pregnant and participating in pregnancy communities on LJ, and would come back with these horror stories of the everywoman's opinion bullshit that would make me go, I'm so glad I had my kid before there was an internet. And now, while I'm glad it's so easy to find information online, I still resent anything I perceive as being dictated to. Add to that the fact that I'm a lot more likely to take things personally right now, and wham. Deadly mix.

It's funny the difference between Dean's temper and mine. He gets frustrated with things, and I get frustrated with non-things--people's attitudes and opinions they impose on me. Of course, a side effect of this is that I tend to get angry at Dean for getting angry at things, and have learned it's better for me to remove myself when he starts screaming and cussing violently at something that's fallen to an inconvenient location.

And it's not that I don't think people should have their opinions, or that they should always agree with mine. It's just that I respect differences in opinion in general and try to avoid debating-to-persuade, because I know it's futile to try and change other people's opinions; they can only do that on their own. You can give a person information, to be sure, and I know a lot of times that's people's intent when they do things like vote no on my committee-driven pregnancy.

Oh, to hell with it. I'm just going to put my pregnancy on the Today Show and let people vote on it. Are they going to vote for the gender, too, like our kids are doing? Dean just suggested, actually, I put the management of my pregnancy on e-bay.

Telling the folks

So now that we have a couple of decent ultrasound images, I have figured out how I'm telling my parents. I'm giving each of them a card, one for my mom for mother's day, and one for my dad as "early birthday." The card is going to say that we wanted to give them a keepsake of their grandkid, and then we're attaching a gift for them to open.

("We" is going to imply Helen and Kieran, notsomuch Helen and Dean, until they open the gift.)

And then they'll find this photoalbum:


...with prints of Bunky's ultrasounds inside.

Things I never want to hear again, vol. 2.

I have had a run of people asking me if this is our first, and the constant "make sure you ____ because you need to ______" is really making me more gunshy about talking about my pregnancy at all.

Technically, it is *our* first, yes. But it's more correct to observe that it's our third, and each of our second respectively. But if I say it's *our* first, we get broadsided by reams of advice that ultimately make the wanna-be parent sound way dumb. They should all get the Doodlebunky Disclaimer.

Blogging on whattoexpect.com is going quite well, aside from one completely incoherent comment I got this morning that is LOLworthy for its WTFness, and even Dean in his _best_ redneckese couldn't pull this off.



This is PG #3 for me .I can say I do and dont feel you on the Belly issues. I do on the privacy Invasion and all the touch E touch E stuff I'm the same way keep your Fingers to yourself Please! Lol! But to be honest I wasn't into my other PG's like I am now euther, for sum odd reason.My 1st 9-9-99 = Boy . My 2nd 11-21-03 = Girl . Now I have a New YearsSurprise ! on the way. Wonder what this one will be.

My reason is... not to show off my belly. But to Show how u can actually loose a wonderful Figure injust 40 wks.LOl!

Plus I'm keeping track,because I find it to very intresting to my young ones.My Baby (5) girl is ready for the Baby to come out NOW. Rite now she said.So she can have somebody to play with. Ha,ha,ha .And my son (9) was ready for her to come, so he could help.But he let meknow at age #4 he wasn't gone change no DOOOOOOOOO-DOOOOOO Dipers.Ha,Ha,Ha.I I must say back then I don't think I could have done it w/o him. My BIG BOY ! He learned tie a shoe,just to help me! Ahwwww! Ain't that sweet.

+ It's always fun when we sit and look at the Transformations I went through to git them here safe and sound. You see the space in age? those Belly Pictures weren't all that pop back then either.


My advise to u Keep your in-law away.It's not a secret to anyone when a person is not to fund of them. I think she tryna git your baby to come out looking like her.

So Be Aware!!!! Just An ole Myth

(30) PG #3 ,LMP 3-27-09 ,HPT 4-28-09 Results + ,OV 4/7-4/12, EDD 1-1-10 WoW!

Meet Bunky

Dean will have the rest of them posted later. He's doodlemaier.

Best Exchange of the Morning

I'll write a bit more later, as it's been a whirlwind couple of days and this morning was my nuchal translucency scan, but this was priceless:

Ultrasound Tech: Pardon me if I'm poking you too hard. I'm trying to get the baby off the back of your uterus. (Bounce. Bounce.)
Me: Oh, baby is just taking after older sibling. Can't pry him off the couch, either.

I'm a bitch

Hormones are really effing with me. Among the things that I notice and yet have no control over:

1. Despite almost three years now of public speaking experience, since getting pregnant I shake like a leaf when I talk in front of people. I had so gotten over that.

2. I'm airheaded as anything. I left milk out last night, and twice in the past 24 hours have left the refrigerator door sitting wide open while doing other things in the kitchen. However, I notice anything OTHER people do wrong, and have no brain filter over whether to address that with the person or not. For instance, not sure whether it was Dean or Lil'D who kept leaving the back door open yesterday, but the number of flies in the house today show that my obsessing over it was for a reason.

3. I'm much more prone to anger and upsetness and other short-temperedness, and it's really bringing out the passive-aggressive in me as well as the "say things you can't unsay" thing, something I was notorious for while on depo and to a lesser extent while on the pill.

4. I'm also more prone to taking things personally that ordinarily are things I just write off. This is having a profound effect on my relationship with my sister-in-law, whom I'm dreading seeing today if I go to this thing with the in-laws. It's also affecting my ability to deal with Dean's constant flake factor. But then, I'm sure he's tapping his foot waiting for me to start nesting so I clean up this frackin' mess I don't have the energy to deal with.

5. Every day that I think I start feeling better, something happens the next day to show that I'm still a frackin' wreck. For the past two days, it's been four-hour afternoon naps I've been powerless to avoid. How the hell am I supposed to get anything done??!

Oh Belly; Oh Bother

I said it before, but now--with flavor! I am so tired of belly ads. You know the ones I'm talking about; every pregnancy site is littered with pictures of bellies on women. It frustrates me because it's bad enough that those of us that are endowed with extra cleavage in general have to cope with people talking to our breasts, and now, it's our bellies that everyone obsesses over. That, and the general stupidity of people who no longer greet me with "hello," but instead always say, "How are you feeling?" I'm now getting asked this at least a dozen times a day. I don't want to be rude, but even visits to the bathroom have turned into vicarious pregnancy social hour. I feel like I should take the white board off my cubicle--the dry erase board that lets people know whether I'm in the office or telecommuting--and carry it around over my belly, with status updates a la Facebook.

So, back to the belly ads. And belly covers. And naked bellies all over. I'm thinking they are every bit as airbrushed as any model in an ad. I mean, I still have the stretch marks, much faded, from my first pregnancy.

Sometimes the bellies are attached to faces; sometimes they're just bellies. (I'm looking at the message board banner right now that has two bellies facing one another, one being touched by the owner of the other.)

And that leads me to another thing. It's been a generation since I was last pregnant, but I do not recall this "touching belly" phenomenon. It tickles me that there are numerous cafe press sites on which you can purchase buttons that answer those inevitable questions of "when are you due" and "is it a boy or a girl or do you want to know?" But even funnier? The one that has the entire checklist: "It's a ____, due in __________, and no, you can't touch my belly." I'm so buying that one the moment I know Bunky's gender.

My sister-in-law, the day she found out I was pregnant, wanted to touch my belly. I was about 10 weeks along. "Um, to actually feel my uterus, you'd have to violate me," I told her; there was nothing to feel yet. But because I sport a healthy belly that's just plain "fat," I guess she figured she had the right to touch it, because upon giving me a hug, her hand wandered down along my side and tried to squeeze in for a belly rub.

I have never been close with my sister-in-law, but I didn't have outright antipathy toward her until that moment. And we're having a big in-law gathering tomorrow; I do hope to hell she doesn't try this again.

The Telling of the Tale

It's a good thing I'm not entrusted with national security matters. When I found out I was pregnant, I had the worst time keeping it secret, and it didn't take long to start leaking it to anyone who would listen. I started blogging anonymously, but I've never been good at that; I think I'm only doing this here because I'm trying to cultivate a more reflective voice while retaining my humor, which I'm actually fairly well known for.

We told my in-laws over Easter dinner, and we're telling my parents over Mother's Day weekend. It was really funny with my in-laws. When Doodlemaier told them we were expecting, my mother-in-law laughed, because she thought we were joking. "Oh, yeah, right," she said. I smirked, and said, "Um, actually, it's not a joke." Her mouth dropped open and her hands went right to her reddening cheeks, not unlike that Home Alone moment, just without the ARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH.

So now I'm trying to figure out how to tell my parents in a clever, but fun way. They are older than my in-laws; I think my mom and my father-in-law are about the same age but her having married someone significantly older than her has made her older, if that makes any sense. Also, unlike my in-laws who live 15 minutes down the road, my parents are half a state away. I had considered getting a cake made that said "you're going to be grandparents, again!" but then I realized how hard it's been to not tell them during our weekly-ish phone conversations--and there was no way I was going to be able to wait until dessert. I'm considering bringing a "mother's day" flower arrangement with a card attached with a similar message, but I don't want my dad to feel left out, and the cake was actually a nice idea because his birthday is coming up so I could have made it a combined birthday/mother's day cake.

I have a week to figure it out, at least. The setting is that we're going to an afternoon dinner at my parents' favorite seafood restaurant, and meeting them there. It's really important that I get there before they do because I'm starting to show, but because I lost a lot of weight (about 30 pounds) before getting pregnant and they've only seen me a couple of times in that 8 month period, hopefully they'll just think I'm putting some of that weight back on. (The nice thing is that my pre-weight-loss pants will most likely fit well into the summer!)

Now, a couple of things about me. As a teenager in the 80s, I was the kind of kid who dyed her hair cherry red or purple, and I never really outgrew my punk tendencies. I can't stand saccharine gestures, and if I go too silly my parents will wonder if I've finally gone insane (which would probably look, to most people, like I've finally gone a bit normal). I remember reading through ideas to tell one's husband and seeing things like "Bake cinnamon buns, and when your hubby comes down for breakfast announce you have a bun in the oven!" Cute, but oh my gag. That never would have worked with Doodlemaier anyway because we were both so shocked by this development, anyway.

And the other thing about my relationship with my parents is that we've had a lot of problems over the years, but the best way we've had for coping with them has always been our collective sense of humor. So it would likely be best if I found some way of incorporating the funny into this announcement, without being too cute.

One thing I considered was going in wearing one of my bulkier hoodies, and placing a baby shirt over my belly, unzipping the hoodie, and saying, "So how do you think this looks on me?"

I'll figure it out, one way or another, but I'm curious--do any of you have funny stories from announcing the news to family? Tragic ones? Touching ones?