This is my cranky, again!

There are 3,059,0348,269,050 things that can kill/maim/disfigure/etc. babies.

I get told of at least 8 of them each day, usually because I'm doing at least two of them. Examples include that I clean the litterbox that my only-indoor cat uses (wearing gloves and a mask, and washing my hands for 2 minutes afterward), and yesterday's brie-on-ham sandwich that I drew flak for eating even though I'd heated the ham and brie so long the latter was threatening to bubble away.

I don't know whether I'm sensitive to this kind of thing because I was once accused of child neglect because a then-3-year-old Kieran wandered out my front door and down the street wearing a T-shirt and overnight pants, but it remains that I'm sensitive to the overload.

But I think I'm just sensitive to it because it's a barrage, even when it comes from well-meaning friends. Every day something new turns out to be teratogenic, or some baby product gets a massive recall, and pregnant women go insane with all the Danger: Will Robinson news that crosses the wires each day.

If you run across interesting information that ties in with pregnancy, I would very very much appreciate it if you shared it in a more general way so that it doesn't get lumped in with the barrage. Pretend, just to humor me, that I'm not your only pregnant friend.

(Now that I think about it, I'm amazed that no one has sent me a note about the cookie dough recall, since that would have a much higher chance of affecting me even though I finally quit looking at it as a snack food when I started addressing my binge eating problem.)

I really do try to keep a sense of humor about this stuff. I do.

But that sense of humor skips to "fail" a lot more easily lately.

Quotable Helcat

On friends gathering for potables in a thread called "Saloon or bust" which got a bit mischievous:

"I can't go for a beer because of my bump, but said bump has really boosted my bust."

Well, that was irrefutable

Dean has already scanned the picture, and I haven't announced it publicly because I haven't been able to get hold of Kieran, but...




I have to admit I'm not convinced it's not its foot at a funny angle, but that's probably denial.

Because you want to weigh in...

Some updates

I've taken to posting "how I am feeling updates" on Twitter and then favoriting them so that if I get asked that question by one of my Twitter followers I can just refer them to favorites. It really has gotten to a point that I resent that question so much that I've probably alienated a lot of genuine well-wishers.

But so be it. There's only so much I can take before my head explodes.

Anyhow, here's a more detailed version of the tweets so that you all know how I'm feeling doing.

My center of gravity has shifted during the past week, and my ligaments have loosened significantly. The end result is that (a) I start to waddle after being on my feet for more than a half hour, (b) driving long distances has become profoundly hard on my lower and middle back, and (c) I have significantly less upper body strength and leverage to accomplish basic gardening tasks, now that I have more energy to do them. But I still don't have quite enough energy for things.

I'm feeling the baby regularly now. Joke I circulated on Facebook and Twitter earlier this week was that it had gone from being a flutter to feeling like Bunky was riding laps around my abdomen on a motorcycle--in the span of three days. Last night, while Dean and I were trading some good-natured jabs over baby names (in which he announced that the kid would be named "SpaceMonkey" whether I liked it or not), suddenly I got three literal jabs in several sections of my belly that could have been described as a left, a right and a kick. "Bunky does not approve," I said.

This week is week 19, meaning I'm almost halfway done. Ultrasound on Tuesday may reveal whether it's a boy or a girl. And it may not. My mom and several of my colleagues at work are convinced it's a girl; most of my friends and wider family think it's a boy. I'm ambivalent, though deep down I have always wanted a daughter and part of me wants to know simply to get over the disappointment if it is in fact a boy, so that I can get on with being happy with it.

I started several baby registries this week but after sampling several of them, I'm sticking with Target/Amazon simply because the prices are significantly better. I wound up getting a subscription to Consumer Reports online, because I suspect the next year or so is going to be filled with "What's the best _____?" questions. I've also been keeping an eye on Craigslist for used items that will be harder to get from baby showers, and one of the first things on the list was a bassinet. Found one down in Spotslyvania for 50 bucks and was delighted to find it in near-perfect condition; the bassinet itself detaches from the frame and as such can be used as a portable bed so that we can do the family Thanksgiving we want to do, even with a two-week-old (assuming Bunky shows up on time). It's very important for me that Bunky have some time with my grandmother's sister, the only remaining member of that generation in my family; I have a beautiful picture of Kieran resting on my grandmother's lap at three weeks of age from Christmas 1992 and I hope we can do something similar with Aunt Hannah.

Speaking of that side of the family, I'm growing closer with those cousins again. Aunt Hannah had two children, Meade and Hannah, and cousin Hannah has offered to host the family/RVA baby shower. Her daughter Meredith, my second cousin, is spearheading the whole thing, which just cracks me up given some of her youthful foibles. On the other side of that family, Meade's daughter Ginny admitted to me shortly after she and I got back in touch that she had a bit of a hero worship thing for me when I was a teenager and she was an impressionable 9-year-old. Now it's turned around and I have a bit of a hero worship thing for her as she juggles being a matriarch in her own right, hosting family dinners, running marathons and raising her three adorable kids. I really want to ask her to be Bunky's godmother because I think it will help bring our families that much closer, and discovering how much I love my second cousins has been a joy. It's not terribly weird that I'm closer to my second cousins than I am to my first cousins; we vacationed in Hatteras together regularly as youth. But as I was notorious for doing prior to 2003 or so, I vanished off the face of the earth to them around 1990, so I missed a lot of significant parts of Ginny's life. Really glad to be a part of it again.

Anyhow, sounds like I've got at least three baby showers in the works and a good leg up on secondhand gear at this point. Now if I could just catch up on work and sleep.

Oh and one last thing: new favorite site: http://babyfit.com .

Yay! Maternity score! And Mom woes...

I just got done washing the first bag of maternity clothes I got from windsornot this past weekend, and hot damn! I now have enough clothes to get me through the winter. I was laughing at all the blue in the wardrobe, though; Dani, being a natural blonde, is definitely a summer whereas I'm generally an autumn. So perhaps I'll go for those highlights come third trimester. Thank you, dear, for all that lovely loot!

Mom and I got into our first parenting argument last night when she insisted she didn't want to buy me the fancy cloth diapers because they were so expensive. When I tried to explain to her that I was not going to be able to use cloth diapers full time she asked why, it was never a problem for her. I tried to explain that she, as a stay-at-home mom, had the ability to use cloth. "I have 8 weeks for that, tops, mom. Then I've got to hand Bunky over at least part of the week to a caregiver." I think it's patently ridiculous that I should have to argue these kinds of things with mom when I've actually BEEN here before--did sometime cloth, sometime disposable when Kieran was a baby too. At the same time, I think in many ways she's reacting as though this were her first grandchild because she frankly hasn't seen much of Kieran over the years.

Anyhow, I could hear her bristling. Yeah, mom, I'd love to be a stay at home Mom too. But I can't afford the mortgage even when I am working. And I know all too well the stay at home Moms I do know aren't sitting in some kind of rarefied lap of luxury, I just know that if I was one I'd be more inclined to full-time cloth diaper.

I will not be catty...

...about the newest round of congratulations hitting the Facebook airwaves.

Please, hold me back...

And the "Ooooooh, yr starting to show!" no, I'm just fat, and Bunky has pushed all the fat up to make room. So I look fatter.

And the "How are you feeling?" I need better witty replies for this one. The first round is getting old.

And the "Do you know if it's a boy or a girl yet?" No, but I'm quite certain those who hold strong opinions over whether it's a boy or a girl will come to blows any day now, so I'm not telling them just so I can be entertained by the fights to come.

And people describing me as "preggers." I think that sounds like a pet's name, honestly. Whatever happened to good, old-fashioned "expecting"?

However, I did get a laugh out of my admin person watching me squirm in the dress I was wearing as I tried to cover up my abundant cleavage yesterday. "Oh, show off those assets," she said. Our conversation then centered around the definition of "low cut" when your boobs are suddenly two cup sizes bigger.

And part of my determination to cut back on the openly cranky comes from seeing pictures of my friend Teresa's baby. We got back in touch last fall after 20-odd years, but were inseparable when I was a freshman and she was a junior. She also has the dubious honor of having known me longer than anyone other than family members: we were neighbors and playmates as pre-schoolers. Nelson Cooper Burnette was born on Monday. And how can you resist this???!

Weight watchering, pregnancy edition

Weight Watchers is pretty strict about one thing: If you're pregnant, you can't follow the program. So I resigned from it in March.

I didn't gain any weight during my first trimester. That was good. But in the past month I've packed 10 pounds on. That wouldn't be a big deal if I didn't know in my heart of hearts that I've been binge eating the crappiest foods on the planet again.

I really, really suck, because I'm so committed to doing this healthily. But plain and simple, I know what poor nutrition did to my first pregnancy, and I will NOT let that happen again.

So I'm back on weight watchers. I'm just not following the plan. I need to track every single thing that crosses my lips or I fuck up. I need to be aware of how much those things that cross my lips "cost" me and I need to see it in print. If I follow the guidelines with my pregnancy nutrition checklist in hand (still trying to find a good one, but...) and ignore the "maximum points" thing, I'll do better. And any time I have to keep a food diary, suddenly the bad foods just drop out of my vocabulary.

I tried doing this on livestrong but Weight Watchers actually has a better food database. One of the drawbacks to the Daily Plate is that you might have seven different versions of the same food product and they all vary wildly in their nutrition information.

I still have 22 weeks to go. generally, during this time, a woman should gain a pound a week until the last four weeks, at which time weight gain drops off a bit. So I can still do this in 20 pounds. And I will talk to my midwife about this at my next appointment, I promise.

Quicked!

Got definite baby flutters on the way home today. :D Got all teary-eyed as I felt it, not once, not twice, but three times in about a 20 minute period. Nothing since, but that's the nature of it. It will get more pronounced in coming weeks.

it's been a great weekend. more on that to come from helcat, but babywise, other than quickening, the high point was fetching a carful of stuff from windsornot. Unfortunately, we discovered that the car seat won't help us any, but I've set my mother on a quest for a new one that hopefully she can split the cost up with via her sisters.

But that's ok: between the bags of maternity clothes, the crib, the strollers (3 of them!) and the other gadgets, I can safely say that we're much better off than we were two days ago!

I'm a little weirded out to discover that certain things I did with Kieran when he was an infant, like often letting him sleep in the bed with me, carrying him in a soft carrier, and breastfeeding him are considered now part of a movement called attachment parenting. I'm annoyed by it being something that requires a ridiculous amount of propagandist spin, in much the same way as I get annoyed by the militant fans of homebirth. I'm particularly distressed that they have their own gerund-formed nouns-- "co-sleeping" and "babywearing." I don't want to be thought of as an activist, but as I explained to Dean why I preferred carriers over hitching an infant car seat around, he agreed with me really strongly and announced that we could take turns carrying the baby, one carrying the baby and one carrying the gear. It was a really cool moment that made me just awww! at surprises I get from Dean on a regular basis these days.

So anyway. I'm using babies'r'us to start creating a registry but I don't think it's the one I'll promote: just about everything on it is signficantly cheaper on amazon.com. So it's like I'm using babies'r'us to explore but will use the amazon/target registry when it comes time to start pimping things out. And I won't really populate these things until I know whether it's a boy or a girl, but if anyone sees an awesome deal on something, the gender-neutral color to go for is tans and browns that combine well with pastels. And I'm realizing a lot has changed in 17 years, sorely tempted to find a public place to ask the question, "what's the best/most creative/most interesting/most useful baby shower gift you received and why?" I'm pretty sure it must have been done in these thousands of baby forums around, but haven't found anything yet. Must look some more.

In about 2 weeks, I should be able to answer the boy/girl question with a reasonable amount of certainty. :) I still have to get my insurance working with the perinatologist, tho.

Feed me, I'm your parasite!

Ever since the nausea abated, I find myself waking up with low-level headaches that don't go away until I find the right food to eat. And I never have any idea what that is, because I have this voracious appetite but nothing I eat tastes _good_ other than frozen fruit bars and ice cubes. (I know, that probably means I'm dehydrated, but it's been consistent even when I drink a gallon of water over the course of a workday, which I usually do.) And ice from my freezer isn't good enough, although if ever I was contemplating upgrading my fridge to one with an icemaker, it's now, even though I don't have the money for it or the water line I'd need to run to make it work. Really, I want to gut the kitchen and build my dream one, knock down the deck in the back and build a patio surrounded by garden, and renovate the upstairs bathroom to have a separate bath and shower and to look more like my aunt's upstairs bathroom.

A little overmotivated, probably, but in the meantime I've been a cleaning fiend when I've had the energy to be such.

This headache thing is just wrong, though. And I can never figure out what it is that Bunky and my body are conspiring to get me to eat. For a while it was ketchup-friendly foods, but it's not that now. (And I think it's funny how many people think ketchup is the thing I craved during my first pregnancy in my "how well do you know Helen" quiz on Facebook.)

In the meantime, my strange pregnant girl behavior has been to go to 7-11 and get a Big Gulp filled to the top with ice and a little bit (about the equivalent of a single can) of Coke in it--or go somewhere else where there's a self-serve drink station and do the same. I drink the Coke and then eat all the ice, which is something I have _never_ done in my life. My mom is an ice chomper and I can't stand the sound, generally, but right now it's the best thing ever.

Mo'Belly Blues

I've been trying to figure out why the area between my breasts and my belly suddenly poofed out two weeks ago. Back when I weighed 220, that was a roll that was the first thing to go when I started losing weight.

Reading a bulletin board populated by plus-size pregnant women finally made it make sense. What's happening is that the baby is taking up a good chunk of my lower abdomen and pushing my innards up. They'll get pushed back eventually as the baby grows even more.

I don't remember this happening with Kieran, but I weighed 130 when I got pregnant with him, so there was significantly less body mass to move around.

At any rate, I had a checkup today and met the first of my midwife's backup OBs. Fetal heart rate was a lively 159 bps, but she had trouble finding it at first. "Try toward the right," I said, because that's where I've felt the uterine distend when baby stretches.. not true quickening per se because that's an internal sensation rather than something one palpates externally, but I was convinced I'd felt it move on the right several nights in a row as I go to bed and try to meditate my way to sleep with my hands resting right above my hips. Guess I was... right? Anyhow, I liked her. She's in her 50s, had a very matter-of-fact disposition but we had a good time joking around about how everything has been reduced to insurance codes instead of people.

My linea nigra is starting to darken, and my belly skin is starting to itch. I get headachey real easily and my nose is usually stuffy and full of bloody ick.

I ate like crap today. I'm almost out of fresh food, and forgot to get grocery money from Dean the other day. The ants went nuts on the ground floor today and took over the kitchen. I went nuts on them and then cleaned the kitchen and my office (which had an ant attack over the weekend) to the point of utter insanity. I think a nesting trigger may have come early, perhaps because I watched "In the Womb," a National Geographic special, and sobbed hysterically when they got to the childbirth scene.