New Mom Chronicles

Baby Watch 2007

I feel as if in some weird holding pattern.  But not really, because 'holding' would imply that there isn't the forward movement of my baby growing BY LEAPS AND BOUNDS in my belly (and into my ribs), and that I don't feel somewhat anxious about the forever ominous TO DO LIST.  Will it ever actually be done? Can I muster the energy, three weeks away from my due date, to actually clean out my closets?  Can Husband actually motivate, what with his job stresses and such, to do the projects that are on his list in his "spare time"?  Truth is, probably not.  And I guess I just have to accept that.  But, moving on...the holding pattern that really isn't...

Every day, I wake up and come to my senses (it takes a while these days), and then at around 10-11 a.m., I wonder if my very pregnant BF*, SS, had any labor pains last night.  It's kind of like jumping off the high dive after your friend.  She's in front of me on the plank (by 3 weeks), and I'm at that top ladder rung.  Once she dives off....well, then it's my turn.  Because there's no turning back.**

But WAAAAAAIIIIIIT!  I don't know if I'm ready yet!  I mean, am I really equipped to be a mother?  Will I just come apart at the seams into a pile of icky goo that my friends and relatives will have to try to manage and contain like a toxic spill?  Will I cry every day at the lack of sleep and hormonal shitstorm that is common after childbirth?  If I do, will Husband be able to be compassionate and caring, or will he be just as scared as I am that I'm going to lose my shit, never to return again?  These, are my fears.  I don't indulge the Dark Side by thinking these thoughts very often.  I'm a firm believer in the Laws of Attraction, 'not putting out there' negative thoughts because those thoughts will attract just those things that I DON'T want instead of the happy blissful early motherhood that I DO want. But I'm being perfectly honest here.  The Bad Thoughts do creep in from time to time.  And the To Do List.

Most days are good.  In fact, today's a pretty good day.  I feel motivated, have already cleaned my kitchen, and just sat down to update y'all before I start making some phone calls and attacking my list.  I read some of my Mother Daughter Wisdom book this morning, and feel very connected to my little girl (who has the hiccups again, poor baby) this morning.  For the first time, I noticed the direct and immediate impact of the outside world on my daughter in utero when I made a loud noise while putting dishes away. Yikes!  The kid packs a punch - or a kick, as it were.  I look forward to getting some things done today, going to visit BF SS and return a book to her, and then maybe playing my flute some and reading some more of my book.  I'm sure you wanted to know my plans for this Wednesday.  You can thank me later for the intense fulfillment that you feel in your heart, now that you know.

No pictures of the belly today.  Sorry.  We'll be getting a digital camera in the next few days, and once we have that I'm sure I'll get some up here.  In the meantime, here's a picture of me and BF SS with our bellies:

This was a month ago.  I know, I know.  Yes, I will post more recent photos soon so that you can marvel at the huge nine month belly.

And here's another picture for your amusement.

This is my Birthing Necklace!  Isn't it great??  I am totally in love with it. You can click it to enlarge it and see where your beads ended up.  The little sticky-outy beads around the bottom middle are my shrinky dink letters that spell my name.  It's hard to tell from this photo.

That's my story.  This is an experiment in just sitting down and writing whatever I feel like without censoring myself too much.  It's a little scary to do, but it is truly who I am.  Anyone who knows me knows that I I'm fairly open with my feelings and thoughts about my own life.  It's how I operate. 

Which reminds me, maybe my next post will be about the rock concert that Husband and I went to on Monday night!  You might be asking, "Wha??  A rock concert 9 months pregnant???" And I would say, "Yes!  Because I'm Totally Insane! And I insist on behaving as if I am not pregnant, and no I'm not really going to birth a baby any day now.  Denial! It's a great place to be!"

*BF, BFF...am I in middle school?  Well, for lack of better terms, yes, I guess I am.  We are best friends, and there's no other way to say it.  It is a comfort for me to just know that my BF exists on this earth.  I don't know how I'd survive without her.  I have no other friends that I feel so strongly about.  She's a sister to me.  So, I suppose I could call her my Soul Sister, but that just conjures up visions of a bad Blaxspoitation Film where we both wear polyester pant suits and bad wigs.  Worse than the middle sch...mmm...wait a minute.  Pant suits are kind of cool.  Especially if said with a lateraly lisp...heh heh...that makes me laugh...and middle school sucked bigtime...but I digress.  BF SS it is.  Because I said so.

**I suppose there would be the option in the metaphor to climb back down the ladder, but you see, that was never an option for me as a little girl.  My older sister used to like to see me jump off the high dive with my flotation bubble on to watch me belly flop and then come zooming up to the surface of the water all gasping for air.  So, she told me - and older sisters are always right - that there was no climbing back down the ladder.  It wasn't allowed.  Mean, huh?  But I think I got her back when I cried at the smurf hat that she so lovingly made me when I was in third grade for my Halloween costume. Payback's a bitch.  Haha!  Actually, I still feel bad about that...Sorry, sis.

As I was contemplating my placenta...

I went to Walgreen's today to buy some supplies for the house and also for The Birth, I stood in the aisle of tupperware for about 10 minutes pondering the size of my placenta.  Yes I did.  Because I plan on taking it home with me.

I know!  Ew!  Right?

Into a brown paper bag (per my mom's suggestion) and into the freezer my placenta will go, until Chanti, a local midwife, comes back from various trips in March and can turn it into little, easily digestible, capsules for me to take during postpartum.  (I know that my sister just threw up a little in her mouth.  Hahahaha.  Sorry D.)

Anyway, this brought me to thinking about all of the things that I've learned - and all of the things that I never thought I'd hear myself say, or see myself do - during the course of this pregnancy.  For example...

Actually advising a pregnant friend of the interesting factoid I had learned in birth class - that prostaglandins are actually absorbed best through the gut.  You'll definitely have to look that one up on your own if you want to know.  It helps to induce labor naturally. Who talks about these things??

Saying to my husband, "Hey, check this out!  I have no ankles!  I have cankles!  And marshmallow toes!"  Ooooooh, SO SEXY!

Pulling a stool into our stand up shower so that I can actually shave my legs and breathe at the same time.

Looking into my pantry thinking, "Hmmm, which one of these bottles of organic olive oil will support my perenium best and protect my baby's bottom from explosive poops in the hospital?"

Adding the term "back crap" to my vocabulary.  Apparently this will be a term regularly used in a house with a new baby.

And what have I learned? 

That there are even worse hormonal shitstorms than PMS.

That pantyhose and pregnancy do not mix.  For that matter, neither do shoes really.

That it's super cool to look down at my belly to watch it move and shake with little baby earthquakes, and know that it's my little girl wiggling around in there, preparing for her arrival in the outside world. 

That it's really fun to daydream about what a great daddy Husband is going to be to this little girl, and that one of the things that I look forward to most about her arrival is seeing the look on his face when he meets his daughter for the first time.

I'm interested in hearing some of the things that you ladies learned or were surprised to hear yourself saying during your tenure being a baby factory.  Leave me a comment! No babies?  Leave me a comment anyway!  Make the pregnant lady feel loved!

Next post, pictures of the giant belly!  So exciting!

Off to our LAST HURRAH!!

Well...I don't know really how much of a "hurrah" it will be, given the size of my belly and limited capacity of my energy level, but it will be our last vacation for a while, just the two of us, up to our favorite place...

MENDOCINO!!!!  WOO HOOO!  YIPPEEE!!!  Can you tell I'm a little excited?  Just a wee bit?  It's going to be rainy, and stormy, and misty.  And I LOVE that for this weekend trip.  We'll be spending a lot of time here:

 

This is the 2 room B&B of the best friend of Lyn, the innkeeper at the B&B where we had our wedding.  Lyn is booked, and we are sad.  But we will visit Lyn & Bob and the goats & ducks during our stay.

I think it's all working out for the best, because [ahem], this will be our view:

Thanks Dad & ML for the Christmas money! This is a great gift, to be able to have a few days away from Scott's business to reconnect and get ready for the imminent arrival of our first-born, in just a little over FOUR WEEKS!  Wow.  Time flies.  Just when I was feeling like I had been pregnant forever...

Toodle - Loo!

How it all began...

Well, actually that would mean going back to the story of how I met Husband.  I'm going to save that for another day.  This story is about the beginning of the little one that is currently taking up residence in my belly, soon to make her Grand Entrance onto the stage of the big bad world.

First we had The Plan.  HA!  Yes, the best laid plans and all that. We thought that we would maybe start maybe trying to get pregnant perhaps in the Fall of '06. Like, around September.  Or October. Or...does May of 2008 still qualify as the Fall of '06?  Probably not. Anyway, that was The Plan.  And then we went camping with our very good friends, SS & A.  A lovely time was had by all.  We cooked really great food, read poetry out loud, drank really great wine (A named one vintage in particular 'Sheila', for she was so loved), and went on lovely walks. After the night of Sheila, SS and I went for a walk together along the creek and she took an amazing photo of this little girl.

She was just so lovely, hanging out by the side of the creek with her mom and brother.  I said, "I'll have one just like that, please!"  Little did I know ...

A few days later, SS called and was...um, worried?  Concerned?  She thought she might be knocked up.  And we both thought, "Nooooo, couldn't be!"  Sure enough, 4 days later, SS is pregnant.  We all were floored!  And happy!  And freaked out!  And WOW!  That was June 15th.  Around June 21st, I started suspecting that maybe I had joined my most favorite female partner in crime (although most of the crimes up until this point had involved copious amounts of lemon drops and cosmos) in the 'expecting' arena.

This was too soon for a test though.  So I decided to ask.  You see, I had been talking to my little baby being for some time now.  Even though I knew we may not want to conceive for a while, I was feeling excited about being a mommy and had started talking to my little one.  And since that camping trip, I had printed out the picture that SS had taken and put it up on the mirror in my bedroom, sort of as my muse.  One night before I went to sleep, I asked the baby to give me a clue, some kind of sign.  That night, I had THE single most vivid dream ever in my life, that I was with my mom and sisters, and I knew - like I know my own name - that I was pregnant.  Even though the tests weren't coming pack positive, I knew.  This was just the beginning of the magic...

A few nights later, we were with SS & A on the eve that they told their family the Big News.  That night, Husband drove us the long way home from down town in Charlotte, the Spyder Convertible.*  I was super tired, but really wanted to drive up to Twin Peaks to look at the view.  On the way up, Husband and I looked into the sky at the same exact moment, and we both saw a HUGE shooting star.  I had the strange feeling that it was my little baby being, shooting out of the sky to drop down to be with us. 

I know.  So romantic.  Let me live it now, before the sleepless nights and the drool and the back craps.  Back to the story.

The last sign before taking the test, was going in on July 1st to see my acupuncturist. She pulled me aside and asked me if I was okay.  I guess I looked pretty awful.  I told her of my suspicions, and based on the timing of my cycle, we agreed that I should wait until a few more days had passed before I took another test.  I broke my end of the deal.  I did that because I went to sleep that night and had another dream.  Just before I woke up, I had just as vivid a dream as I had had before that if I took a pregnancy test, it would come up positive this time.

On Sunday morning, July 2nd, I took the test, made the coffee, and came back to the bathroom to find that I was, most definitely, pregnant.  I barely let husband wake up before I blew him away with the news.  He was definitely happy,  but understandably a bit shocked.  In between the camping, and the finding out about SS, and the dreams, Husband and I had agreed that we would start trying sooner than we had planned.  He had just gotten a wonderful job that he loved, and things seemed to be going well for us.  Why not!  We probably wouldn't get pregnant for a while anyway, right?

Mm hmm.  Right.  As it turns out, we were pregnant before we even decided to start trying, and even before SS & A found out they were pregnant.  We conceived on that camping trip.  After Sheila, and before the walk and the photo.  And now here we are.  I'm at 34 and a half weeks.  Obsessing about all manner of organizational projects, visiting with friends while I still can maintain some modicum of focus, eating healthy, and making sure to get enough rest in preparation for the birth of my first baby, my daughter, my little girl.  I can't wait to meet her.

*The story of Charlotte, who was more an Albatross than any kind of spider, will be written about at a later date.  That post will be entitled, "The single most stupid blonde-headed financial blunder of my life".  Tune in!  It'll be an exciting time, reading about all manner of boundless stupidity!  What fun!