Falling Down on the Job

Oops! I forgot to post the latest belly pic. This is week 29 (I'll be starting week 32 on Friday), so some time has elapsed, but this is from my trip to Richmond. I'll get Coleman to take another one soon, since he comes home in 2 days! Yaaayyyy!!

Things Baby Likes

So here's a tally of the things baby seems to like, or at least that's how I'm interpreting it when she starts wiggling and bumping around in there. It could mean the very opposite, but we're not really at a point where I can ask her, so I'll go with 'she likes it.'


Anyway, so far we have:


1. Ash Wednesday service at the Episcopal church

2. When Mom reads Hebrew out loud

3. Loud organ music at church

4. Mom's bedtime (she always acts nutty as soon as I lie down). This also includes the shavasana (or relaxation) time of yoga, where I'm also lying still on my side. It's actually quite amusing to try to relax deeply when you have a party going on in your womb.

5. Mom's bath time (is it the warmth??)

6. Mom in any reclining position (though I'm pretty sure she doesn't like this and is fighting against the almost certain collapse of her space, due to gravity)

7. Any communal reading, especially the Lord's Prayer. My small group closes each week with us all saying this together, and as they have discovered, she almost invariably moves around while we do. Someone posited that she likes the cadence, and that sounds pretty convincing to me.

8. When Dad talks to her. He almost got kicked in the face one morning when we were in Richmond. I'm hoping she's learned to recognize his voice, even though he hasn't been around all the time. We do put him on speakerphone to say goodnight to her sometimes, and he talks to "the belly" a lot when we are together, so let's hope! We'll have to play catch-up now that he's going to be home full-time...

I'll keep you updated, but that's what I can think of for now!

So wait...

...I'm bringing a child into the world during the most significant economic downturn since the Great Depression AND during a global flu pandemic??*

Fabulous.


*Yes, I know global flu pandemic is redundant, but it sounded better...

Developmental Goings-on: Weeks 29-31

Getting you up to speed on both of us --

Week 29:
Me: Potential for varicose veins (thankfully none thus far)
Her: Weighs almost three pounds and measures around 17 inches, head to toe. She is pretty close to her birth length but, according to What to Expect, has to “chub out a bit.” Haha, chub. Apparently, over the next 11 weeks she will more than double or even come close to tripling her weight. They’re also right about feeling fewer big kicks (it’s getting more crowded in there), but more of other kinds of movement and actual body parts. I usually can’t tell what part it is specifically, but the movements she has been making have been intensely…human. Does that make any sense? They aren’t just sudden jolts or swift kicks – you can actually feel some body part moving across or shifting or rolling or pushing…that's usually when it really feels real. It’s also to the point now where you can watch my belly move. If I’m sitting still, you can actually see it morph and shift when she’s active. Wild!! That probably started around 28/29 weeks, and has continued.

Week 30:
Me: Heartburn. Check. Double check. It’s pretty bad, actually, so according to the old wives’ tale, she’s going to have lots of hair. Oh I hope so! Our friends’ daughter came out looking like she had a full-on toupee. It was awesome! At any rate, here is their explanation for this (which is really interesting, I think): “The same pregnancy hormones that cause your body's pelvic muscles to relax so you can deliver your baby also relax the ring of muscle that separates the esophagus from the stomach. The upshot? Food and digestive juices can head upstream from your tummy into your chest and throat — hence, the infernal inferno. Your expanding uterus, now exerting pressure on your stomach, only fuels the fire.” Sweet.
Her: Her brain is growing and developing daily, and is starting to get all those “grooves and wrinkles” that make it look all brain-y. She’s also able to regulate her own body temp now, so she starts shedding the lanugo (I think I told you about this one – it’s a layer of soft body hair that has been keeping her warm. Sounds scary, right? A baby with lots of hair I’m good with, but a furry baby – I don’t know. But the good news is they lose it before birth if they go full term.). Mom actually told me all about this earlier today…she’s so on the ball!

Week 31: (This week!)
Me: Cramped diaphragm. Check. Apparently, my uterus is pushing up against it (How big IS my uterus and will it ever go back to its original size?!?), and is crowding my lungs and keeping them from fully expanding, or at least making it more difficult. The result is that I’ll be “spare on air” until she drops, which makes me feel a whole lot better about being as winded as I was this morning going up a couple of flights of stairs!
Her: She’s fine on air – all needed oxygen is given through the placenta. She’s 3+ pounds and about 18 inches long. She can put on another 3 to 5 pounds before she’s born (or, if she’s like Coleman, another 7!!). She’s also working on her synapses/brain connections – eventually developing trillions of them. Yowza. According to What to Expect she’s now “processing information, tracking light, and perceiving signals from all five senses.” What an advanced little thing she already is! Did anyone have any doubt?? She is also sleeping for longer periods of time, and can I just say, Yeah!!! Keep that up, little one! That’s a developmental habit I can get behind!

Just thought you'd want to know what we were up to...

It begins...

(Sorry, folks, but the spacing gets all jacked up when I add photos and I can't figure out how to fix it...)

Coleman and I try, with more and less success at times, to avoid becoming "stuff" people. We don't want our "stuff" to run our lives. He is far better at this than I am, but I'm not so shabby at it myself. This has been a particular challenge as we now face the impending necessity of having enough to care for and nurture our imminent arrival, but without going nuts and without letting all the "stuff" take over our lives.

This was put into stark relief as we registered (I stilll haven't posted on this process...sorry. I will soon), and also recently as I had my first shower.

Let me begin by saying that I was truly touched by my coworkers' thoughtfulness in planning this event, their faithfulness in attending it, and their generosity in helping us get started in this new phase of life.

However, the pile of gifts was truly overwhelming. I should have taken a picture of all these in the back of our car (I had planned on walking to the shower...very glad I drove!), but I did snap a few shots once I got them in the house and laid them all out together so that I could see who gave us what in order to write thank-you notes. As you can see, it takes up most of our (admittedly small) living room. That is Felicity in the picture, checking things out:

This is just the pile of tissue paper ALONE! (There's a better pic, but this one has Perpetua in it!)

And so it begins.

The shower was wonderful, though, and I was so thrilled that it was a co-ed, cookout thing so that I wasn't the main event and I didn't have a room full of people staring at me while I opened gifts.

Here are some of the highlights:

This is me getting my party on

This is some other folks getting their party on

This is the cake...is it not the cutest thing ever?! It's a onesie!! I was sad that they had to cut into it at all.

This is a (terrible) shot of the horrific bag Lindsey got me as a joke - she knows that pretty, pretty princess stuff makes me want to hurl. (Yes, I was a girly girl, and I'll be okay if my daughter is, too, but I want her to choose it and not have it forced on her as a social pressure. I also have issues with the glorification of the princess...what does she do exactly? Besides being pretty and being married to a prince, she rarely contributes to kingdom justice or passes better laws or anything. I just don't want my daugther to admire something or someone based solely on appearance and marital status. Sorry, getting off my soapbox now.)

Here, however, is what was in the bag - fabulous, handmade slippers from a craft merchant in Mexico, where she went over spring break. I love them!

Plenty of clothes...

Oh, this was hilarious. They are chickie pjs, but the feet are actually little chickies! Awesome!!

My incredible parents actually fed-ex'd a gift that my coworker, Judy, surprised me with on the day of the shower. This is just to show that my mother clairvoyantly (is that a word?) managed to match the wrapping paper with my outfit...exactly.

The gifts inside included some of my baby clothes, including two little dresses I wore. One of them was worn on the day I was dedicated, and they included a little picture of Mom holding me while I was wearing it that day. It was the hit of the party:

I did, however, have to explain what "baby dedication" is to all the Catholics there as we passed it around. ("Is it like baptism?")

They also bought me my super-sweet (and super-expensive) breast pump, so the parents are really going above and beyond right now. Thanks, you guys!

Okay, sorry for the long post, but I had all these pics and nothing to do with them!

A Teaching Moment

Let me just take my experience this Sunday at church to propose some guidelines for things you are allowed to say to pregnant women, things you are not, and what is grey area.

To begin, we'll start with the easiest category - Things you Can Say:

A lovely woman at church who is the mother of four young children (and thus has quite recent experience with this stage) was rushing by to catch up to one of said children, but took time to stop and say, "You look beautiful." This, my friends, is always acceptable. Even if you have to lie, say it! My OB also said that one of her patients' husband said his rule of thumb is only ever to say, "You look lovely," so you're covered whether you're sure she's pregnant or not - keeping you clear of those "When are you due?"/"I gave birth two months ago!" fiascoes...

The next category is also pretty clear - Things you Shouldn't Say:

I was talking to a dear woman who I admire a great deal after the service, and she asked if we knew what we were having (I could have been a smart aleck and said, "A baby," which is how I usually want to respond to this query, but I didn't). When I confirmed that we knew and that we were having a girl, she said, "That's what I thought." Apparently I am carrying her like one carries a girl. Yes I know - everyone carries differently, it's silly to judge based on this, blah, blah, I know. That's not the point. The point is, you should never describe it like she commenced describing it. "See," she said, "girls give you that rounder, wider look. Boys are just way out here (*as she holds her hand out well in front of her body*)." Don't say "rounder, wider" to a pregnant woman. Just don't.

The last category is a little tricker - Grey Area Comments:

Another well-meaning church member, upon first running into me, greeted me with a "You're looking pregnant!" This, as a statement, is not irrevocably within this category (though it's just never necessary to say!), but as an opening remark or greeting, it certainly merits its place here.

Just thought we could all learn together...

Oh, and honorable mention for Things you Shouldn't Say goes to a man in the bar area of Abuelo's (oh, stop judging - I was getting a gift certificate for a friend, not tossing back a cold one!). I didn't give it top billing since it didn't happen at church with all the others, but it could actually merit a new category: What?!

While I was waiting on the bartender to get the certificate ready, this man asked me, "So, when are you due?" I told him - June 24th. "Nice," said he. "Is it mixed?"

........What?

I asked him, "What do you mean?" thinking that perhaps he could be asking if I were having a set of twins, one boy and one girl...I had no idea! He rubbed his forearm and then made a circle around his face and said, "You know, mixed!"

I informed him that it wasn't, but let me take this moment to clarify why this was an inappropriate comment. It wasn't inappropriate to suggest that the father might have a different ethnicity than I have, nor was I the least bit offended by it. The problem with this question is that it is awkward and is a conversation stopper. I wasn't sure how to say no to this stranger without making him think that there would be anything wrong if it were, and then there's just nothing else to say after this that doesn't get you into uncertain water. Just an odd thing to say, but then again, he was at the bar at 3:00 in the afternoon, so who knows?

No one told me there was a club...

Last night we were at this hip local coffee shop here in Richmond (before we went to this really incredible old theatre that plays second-run movies...we saw Slumdog Millionaire on a big screen for $1.99 a person!!), and they had a "community library" with books you could read while hanging out or, we assume, that you could check and and bring back.

We were killing some time there (Slumdog didn't start until 9:30, which is a late night for folks like us!), so Coleman grabbed some books off the shelf for us. He very sweetly and insightfully got me The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding - a book put out by the La Leche League, so it looked fantastic (anybody read it?). I only got to read two pages of it, though, because a woman sitting across from me started telling me what a great book it was, which led to further conversation ("When are you due? Is this your first, etc?"). Then her friend came to meet her, and she joined in conversation with us, too.

I'm telling you, we talked for over an hour about everything: breastfeeding (strategies, duration, support for, benefits of), labor, midwives, doulas, VBACs, c-sections, yoga, constructed gender identity (especially as it pertains to girls), water labor, mom support in a new town, vaccinations, books I should read, pediatricians...everything! These women were telling me their (quite personal) birth stories and they didn't even know me!

A little more than halfway through this conversation, a local doula overhears us and comes over to introduce herself. She wanted to join the chat, too.

I had an hour-long, sincere, and personal conversation with two (and later three) women that I did not know and will likely never see again. This didn't (usually) happen to me before, but somehow my bulging belly (and my reading material) is (are) my ticket in to meeting other women. The ladies in my Zumba class are the same way. Apparently moms everywhere have this little circle of support, conversation, and camaraderie that I have yet been privy to, but now I'm being welcomed in with warmth and kindness...and lots of advice! It seems that once you've been in the trenches, you form a bond - even if you don't know anything more about each other than that this person has (or soon will have) gone through the same primal process that you have and now has the battle scars to prove it, it's enough to form a bond.

I'm sure the same goes for future conversations about the struggles and trials of actually raising this child, but I'm not in that circle yet!

As a woman who feels that relationships with other women are some of the primary, formational relationships we can have, this is a wonderful new development and I am grateful for women everywhere who reach out, support each other, and know each other in this way that only women can.

More on Richmond in a future post...