California bound

It's late. Just finished grading the last final exam and posting the grades. Have gone 25 hours without pumping, and am surviving. I fly to California tomorrow (today!) with an almost six-month old on my lap. Oy. It's a good thing I work well under pressure.

I'm going to need to update the photo soon. Everything here is actually covered with snow.

Autumn

Hello, long time no post.

Liftoff Boy is doing brilliantly. He had his 4 month appointment last Wednesday and has now been through two rounds of immunizations. I'm amazed at the anti-vax stuff on the internet. The way some people approach studies that indicate no link between vaccinations and autism reminds me of the way some people keep insisting Barack Obama is secretly Muslim, or a terrorist, or a Black Panther or whatever. They look at the evidence and given that it disagrees with the fears they hold, they decide that the people providing the evidence are in on the conspiracy.

I didn't like seeing LB get four shots. He wasn't happy. But it was okay, it happened fast, and I want him to be protected from hepatitis and meningitis and a host of other illnesses that are, indeed, preventable through immunizations.

LB is still our giant baby. He weighed 17 pounds, 5 ounces (98th percentile) and was 27 inches long (100th percentile). His head is 97th percentile. So overall he's a big old guy.

I am still amazingly grateful and happy that his birth turned out to be a cesarean. Thank you, my little big guy, for refusing to turn upside down. The procedure itself went very well, was safe, and assured that LB and I both survived the process of getting him out. I'm in a snit right now because I occasionally search the internet for information about cesareans that is positive, and it's just not out there. I signed a petition stating my support for prophylactic cesarean deliveries as a legitimate birth choice after receiving an invitation, but there's so little out there. Mostly c-sections are made out to be a horrible, frightening attack on the body by evil doctors who want to endanger you and your baby to make money, but it's just the same old stuff all over again.

I agree that unnecessary surgery is often a bad idea. But anyone who seriously thinks that I should have endangered LB and myself by trying to get him out bottom-first with that big head of his stuck above the birth canal can jump in a lake. And even if he hd turned head-down, his birth would still have been dangerous. I'm glad we had the c/s, and I wish there were some pro-Cesarean group out there that I could join. The birth experience can be wonderful when it's fast, efficient and artificial and if I ever get pregnant again, it's what I'll be planning to do.

In other news, we've been meaning to start LB on solids soon (since he is gigantic) but other things intervened. We'll maybe try it this morning...

So sleepy...

I don't know the last time I wrote, but we're back in school now, and have even passed midterm week!

Liftoff Guy has a Tuesday/Thursday schedule and I've got a Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule, so we take turns with Liftoff Boy. LB is 16 weeks old today and is really getting the hang of this whole body thing. He can turn on one side, lift his head and shoulders up when he's on his stomach, and his head is totally steady when he sits. His eyes seems to be turning brown, and hair is starting to grow in more on his head. His eyebrows are getting darker. He smiles a LOT and laughs occasionally. Sometimes when he hears music he makes singing sounds. He can be exhausting, but he's such a sweet guy and so amazing.

But I have spent the whole day with him (he slept enough for me to be able to grade midterms, yay), and now I'm barely holding on. Zzzzzz....

Random stuff....

I saw a Hummer today. The back window was covered with Obama stickers and other left-leaning items. I wasn't sure what to make of it. But I was on my way to a Hindu temple for statue installation ceremonies, so I just assumed it was part of my day.

Liftoff Boy has made a cognitive leap this week. Suddenly rattles are interesting and can be shaken at will. The crib can be crossed with the right amount of wriggling. The mirror attached to his play mat can be adjusted to provide better and more interesting views. It's like he's waking up, very slowly, over the course of months, (re)gaining consciousness. After watching a cat slowly die, it's really interesting to watch a creature get stronger and better and more capable. It's also scary because when he's mobile, we're totally screwed.

I am afraid of Sarah Palin on multiple levels.

Sunday morning

Liftoff Boy is sleeping, which he wasn't doing so much last night when it was bedtime. He's been doing a starving/sleeping/fussy combo that is associated with growth spurts. And he's in need of a growth spurt, because at 10 weeks, he's only 15 pounds! Liftoff Guy asked me when the growing would stop, and I said when LB is 25 years old or so. From what I understand.

To be fair, he slept all night through on Thursday, spent Friday day with Daddy and Daddy's best friend doing a bookstore/video store/Indian restaurant crawl and was very well behaved, slept all through the night on Friday night... But yesterday, Saturday, he was mostly home with me and kept wanting to cry and fuss. Last night LG's best friend came over again and we watched Star Trek videos and ate pizza and LB was mostly fussy. We tried to put him to bed at 9, but he was totally awake, and still hungry, so he was up again at 10, eating and cuddling, and LG finally got him to bed sometime after 10:15 or so. I think. I was so tired, I can't remember. There Kirk was, trying to save the universe from some giant planet-eating robot, and I could barely hold my head up. Then LB was up at 4am, hungry, and didn't sleep the night through. LG gets up with him though...

I'm trying to drop my 3am/4am night pump. This is a challenge. I basically have to reduce the time I spend pumping at that point, by about 2 minutes, then keep that number of minutes for a couple of days, then reduce it again. So I've had two nights in a row with it at 13 minutes, down from the 15 I'm more used to. But THEN I'm supposed to keep my first pump after dawn pump down to its usual 9 to 11 ounces, and this meant I only pumped for 11 minutes. That was at 7:30 or so, and 2 hours later, I'm really uncomfortable. I want to get these things emptied. I'm supposed to be getting my breasts on a schedule (seriously) where they will know not to make milk in the middle of the night. The reason for this is that LB is usually sleeping through the night (not last night though) and if I were actually breastfeeding him, then my breasts would have to adjust to the lack of nursing. So I'm trying to recreate this slowly, in a way that won't lead to mastitis or some other nasty thing.

Tonight I go down to 11 minutes, and I'm not sure I'll be able to handle it.

Alone for the first time

This won't be a long post, but Liftoff Guy drove out of state to rescue a friend of his who's working in a very rural area, has terrible kidney stones, no medical insurance, and no access to those sound wave kidney stone breaking-up thingies (sorry). LG will be bringing Friend home so that he can get medical treatment here, but this is a 10-hour trip each way. So Liftoff Boy and I are in the middle of our first night home alone together.

It's 4:14am. I'm up pumping breast milk (I almost typed beast milk), hoping LB will keep sleeping at least until I'm done. I'm sleeping tonight better than I expected, but we'll see what happens in the near future.

In other news, LB continues to be giant. He had a pediatrician's appointment on Wednesday and is in the 100th percentile for both height and weight. At 2 months, he's 14 pounds, 6 ounces and 24 3/4 inches long. His head is 90th percentile. He's likely to be a big guy forever apparently, because of the size of his head. He's not just growing fast, he's sort of consistently big. I don't know. But wow. He's about the right size for a 4 month old. He can also support his weight on his legs already if you help with balance, which is also a skill associated with being 3 or 4 months old, per our doctor, not two.

LB had to have an ultrasound to check his hips, just because he was breech. He was fine, but the ultrasound tech felt compelled to mention that her giant child (another 9 pounder at birth) started walking at 6 months. Walking! Please, LB, don't be THAT fast!

Breasts

I am Lait-tit-ia, queen of all nourishment. My breasts flow with white delight. I am abundance and plenty.

Well, this is basically true. I've always had large breasts. Before I got pregnant, I was rocking 38DDs. This is something I apparently get from my dad's side of the family, not my mom's (and no, Kimba, this wasn't directed at you - my mom states this almost daily as in, "You sure didn't get those from ME!"). Anyway, now that I'm nursing... Well, they warn you that your cup size will increase 1-4 sizes. Guess which way I went! Yup, I'm now a 38I. I. As in ice cream. I bought a couple of nursing bras before I had the baby and guessing from my measurements then, I ended up with 44Fs. But pregnancy expands your rib cage in weird ways and after you have the baby your torso returns to its normal dimensions. So the 44Fs fit okay in the cups, but are huge otherwise and offer basically no support. I took my measurements, bought a couple of more accurately sized bras online, and now I'm waiting for sweet relief. Because you think you can buy 38I-sized bras anywhere in real life? Maybe somewhere but not so much here.

This is how bad it is. Liftoff Baby likes pacifiers. They gave him one at the hospital he really likes, so I went online and bought more of them, including a variety that's - get this - vanilla scented. We were trying it out this morning after I fed him expressed breast milk in a bottle and he spit it out and it kind of went flying, but I was too intent on cleaning up spit up to notice where. I forgot about it. We went out to lunch and to a farmer's market and I got home and decided to pump. Upon lifting my shirt I looked down into my bra and saw this bright orange latex vanilla-scented pacifier resting peacefully in my bra between my breasts. I had no idea. I guess it's always a good idea to carry a spare pacifier around in your bra, right? Ahem...

Evolution didn't create perfection

I have very strong feelings in the creationism vs. evolution debate. I even have a Charles Darwin pendant, although here in west Michigan I'd be kind of scared to wear it around (I have, but LG has relatives who are young earth creationists (really!) and it just would muddy some waters that are usually very clear despite our ideological differences). I'm a dyed in the wool evolutionist who's willing to consider that some force may have put evolution into effect, but that it works on its own without constant guidance. I guess I'm a deist, sort of. An agnostic deist. Hm...

Anyway, on the other side of things are people in the homebirth/no vaccines/attachment parenting/rabid breastfeeding until 7 camp, who are evolutionists, but tend to assume that because we evolved, the "natural" way of doing things is what's best for everyone concerned. I can kind of see this when it comes to diet. To a certain extent. But on one of my favorite blogs, Mainstream Parenting Resources, there was recently an excellent post on why what evolved and is natural isn't always the very best approach. It's called Evolution is not an excuse. I agree with the post 100%. Yay science!

I also happen to think that the screwups that have occurred through evolution (Humans can talk, but the physiological changes that took place to allow that make us more likely to choke to death on food! Not-so-intelligent design at work!) demonstrate the non-guidedness involved in the process.

On milk

The artificiality of my motherhood is still in place. Liftoff Boy gets breast milk, but he gets it in a bottle, usually 4 ounces at a time. Pumping is a pain, but it's tolerable. I hook myself up (I even got a hands-free bra that I use sometimes) and spend 15 minutes either online or reading, while the pump does its work. Depending on how long it's been since I last pumped, I usually get 4-7 ounces. 4 will go into a bottle and leftover milk will go into storage bags. We have about 220 ounces in deep freeze right now.

LB gets about 24 ounces of milk per day and about 8 ounces of formula, usually over two night feedings. Formula takes longer to digest, so leaves a baby feeling a bit fuller. It also contains vitamin D, which is missing from breast milk. He apparently eats more than he's technically supposed to, but if a baby is nursing from the breast they eat on demand and no record is kept of ounces, so it's hard to know. He shouldn't get more than about 27 ounces of formula right now based on his weight, so the fact that he's getting about 32 ounces of food (both kinds) per day seems high, but they said he'll spit up anything that's actually too much for him.

The milk issue is interesting to me. I've tasted it (gross? but how can you not be curious when your body is making it and you're feeding it to your baby?), and the stuff is sugary. It's also really sticky compared to formula. Something I read compared the flavor to melted vanilla ice cream and that's really close. Bottles of milk in the fridge also tend to separate - the cream rises to the top and I have to shake them before I feed LB. If he were getting the breast, the thin, skim-type stuff would come out first to quench his thirst and then the heavier, fattier stuff would come out near the end of the session. With pumped milk, he's getting it all at once.

LB doesn't nurse directly very often, but occasionally I'll try it, like when he's in the middle of a hunger freak out and his bottle is still cold, or when he's acting ragey for no reason. He'll latch on, rage, try again, finally get a good latch and then mellow out completely as he drinks. Meanwhile, bad mom that I am, I'll sit there feeling trapped with my back hunched into an uncomfortable curve, wondering how this will affect my pumping later on. I'll have my baby in my arms but wish I could spend the time doing something with my brain, like reading or surfing the net. I get bored during bfing, in a way that I don't when I give him a bottle. When I hold the bottle, I'm in control or at least we share control. When he's at the breast, he's totally in control and I feel like a milkslave. With pumping I can be away from him sometimes and measure how much he eats and I produce and feel like I can make decisions about what I'm doing. I like it a lot better, which probably makes me a freak of nature.

This is funny; it happened last night and has happened before. LB had his last bottle before bed, 4 ounces of formula. But then he was too awake and riled up and would only mellow out if he had his pacifier and would scream if it fell out. He was rooting and acting hungry. So I got him out of bed and gave him a bottle with freshly expressed milk in it. He got the nipple in his mouth, looked totally blissed out, and fell asleep. When I took the bottle out, he had drunk about 1/2 an ounce. And that was it. It was like he'd taken a hit of the good stuff and that's all he needed. I put him to bed and he sleep like 'til 4:30am. You can just see his expression, "Oh yeah, that's the stuff. Zzzzzzzz...."

Every day is different

Liftoff Boy doesn't do much in terms of establishing patterns. I guess I expected he would sleep at certain times and eat in predictable ways... But instead he's, you know, like any other kid. Yesterday we went to Meijer Gardens and took him around in his stroller and he was wide awake 90% of the time, looking up into the blue sky and the green tree branches and turning his head toward the sound of water and swamp frogs (they sound like an old guitar if it was missing 3 strings and you randomly plucked at what was left). His eyes were wide, he'd look at us as if to say "This is AMAZING!" and then he'd drift off a bit - only to wake up again later, still very impressed.

We got home and LB would not sleep. He was all wound up. Semi-hungry, demanding food and then falling asleep after a few swallows but then waking up again as soon as we'd put him down - and demanding more food. Instead of his 4 ounces or so every 3 hours, he'd want 2 and then 3 and then 1 and the pattern was just blown all to hell. Just as he'd start to drift off, he'd be wide awake again. It was sort of painful to see. I can't remember being his age (just over 3 weeks) but I can remember being a kid and having hyper battle with tired and not being able to sleep.

So he finally fell into a real, deep sleep about 11:30pm. Then was up to eat at 2 and back to sleep pretty easily. Then up at 6 and had a hard time, but finally back to sleep at 7 or so. Then up at 10 and awake for about an hour and a half. It was time for him to eat again at 1, but Liftoff Guy took him and he ate only about an ounce and a half (expressed breast milk) and then fell asleep again. So now the pattern is off. He's sleeping and didn't eat what he's used to so he's probably going to be hungry at some weird time and want less than what he usually eats... And it's going to be tricky.

I think he's making up today for missed sleep yesterday. He's stirring now, but I don't know if he's going to go back to sleep or demand the rest of his lunch. He doesn't know either.

So, I'm writing again....

It's been a while. Things have been super busy, as you might imagine. I'm trying to think how to blog about this briefly...but I'll just jump in and try.

1. Liftoff Boy is here. He was still breech the afternoon of his birth and we went ahead with the c-section. It went really well, amazingly well. I had my music playing (I didn't watch because I felt nauseated at the beginning) and he was born to "When You're Smiling" by Dean Martin. Liftoff Guy watched him come out, cut (okay shortened) the umbilical cord, and didn't get woozy at all. I nursed LB in the recovery room. I didn't get a headache from the spinal, my itching from the morphine was minimal, I didn't get the shakes, I never threw up. LB's apgar scores were 8 and 9, which are awesome. He was 9 pounds, 5 ounces, 18.5 inches long, and had a 15.2 inch circumference head. He's a wonderful little guy. As of yesterday, he was 9 pounds, 12 ounces and 21 inches long! I think his head circumference was 38.2 cm but I haven't translated it yet. Whatever that is, it's 90th percentile.

2. Although the surgery itself had no complications, I did develop a uterine infection that made itself known the day after we came home from the hospital. So there I went, 8 hours in the ER and then 3 more days in the hospital, this time without LB, which was pretty agonizing. LG brought LB and my mom to visit all three days, but it was really difficult. I also developed some weirdness with my blood pressure and am on meds for a while now. Hopefully they'll reduce them on Monday when I go in for a blood pressure check. I had to pump and dump because of one of the antibiotics though.

3. I am a pumping machine. Literally, right now, I am pumping as I type. LB never got the latch thing down, and then he had to be on formula, so right now he's getting 2/3 of his feedings as pumped breastmilk and 1/3 as formula. I'm making a lot and have 50 ounces of formula frozen so far. I hope to give him breastmilk for 6 months and maybe I can stop pumping early and rely on our stores (in the deep freeze now) for the last month or so? This is tedious work, and you have to feed him and then pump and I wake up desperate to pump even if LG has the night feeding covered.

4. LB is a wonderful little boy. Dark hair growing in, indigo eyes that seem to have gray and brown in them (they might end up brown like mine or even hazel, who knows). He's pretty mellow, loves to look around (especially at distant moving things like the ceiling fan or tree branches overhead), and talks to himself as he's falling asleep.

5. I have until August 10 to finish revising an article - this will be challenging, but it's good because a panel I participated on in the fall is looking to get our whole crew published in a journal somewhere. Since I'm up for tenure in the spring, this would be a good thing. Must revise article. Must do research. Oy.

Tomorrow's the day

And oh my goodness, I am freaking out. I'm moody and semi-scared - not just of the surgery, but of being a mom. Well, there's not much I can do at this point other than ride the wave. I'm sure I'll feel much better later, but oy, right now.

Stop me before I buy again!

So, it's Monday and I'm having the baby on Thursday. You hear a lot about women who know they're about to go into labor by a "nesting" instinct kicking in. Well, hopefully I'll miss labor (sorry, but I'm really happy about skipping that), so I'm not having the "natural" nesting thing. Instead, since I'm teaching a spring class and getting a little bit more money than I'm used to as a result, I'm spending. Mostly on the baby. I'm getting my nest ready through the purchase of much technology.

Sigh. We have hardwood floors and tile. I like that except unless you sweep/vacuum all the time, you end up with schmutz all over your feet. It's gross. I was contemplating this a few weeks ago and decided we needed a Roomba. So I bought one, and it arrived on Saturday. It's one of those little round robots that covers your rooms in some kind of scientifically-determined pattern, sweeping and vacuuming as it goes, bumping gently off of the walls and spending extra time on places where it senses more dirt. Liftoff Guy was irritated with me until he saw it in action and then he melted. It's a robot. We like robots. We named it Isaac after Isaac Asimov. And the floors are less schmutzy.

I also bought a Sweetpeace soothing swing thing. It rocks babies at 6 different speeds, plays a heartbeat or rainstorm or river or classical music or your own mp3 player. It's basically a robot mother - warm and fuzzy and sounds like the inside of the womb and rocks baby gently back and forth. I'm sure I'll hold Liftoff Boy all the time, but I love the idea of something high-tech that can also calm him down. Can you just see him napping in his robotic soother while Isaac the vacuuming robot spins by?

And then I bought the milk pumping set. I may rent from the hospital for a while too. But I can see that for me, motherhood isn't looking very crunchy granola natural. It's looking like a utopian (dystopian? I hope not) vision of a cybernetic future. A cybernetic consumerist future. I'm a bad person. Sigh.

Abandoned

More angst, sorry. It's just that I'll be 37 weeks pregnant tomorrow and I used to get a lot of enjoyment out of watching the calendar turn over, as it were. My huge library of pregnancy books all seemed to have something to say as I entered each new week. It was kind of like a weird, detailed pregnancy-oriented advent calendar. But now, with the c-section scheduled, I feel like they have nothing more to say to me. Each one has a chapter or part of a chapter where c-sections are talked about (in a tone that says "This probably won't happen, you poor dear, but if it does, you'll be okay!") but everything else assumes you're going the conventional route and I feel like they're done talking to me.

Now, in the real world, things continue to make me defensive. Liftoff Boy is still breech and at this point, it's just reinforcement for the c-section. It's not as though, at this point, that if he flips over we'll go the vaginal route (literally, that's a route isn't it?). Instead, he's just kind of making it increasingly clear that this is the way this pregnancy is going to go. And I'm really fine with it. Good with it even. I've begun to focus on the many benefits of doing a c-section a bit early and under non-stressful circumstances and I'm feeling quite happy about it. My doctor even says that they can set up a mirror so I can watch the birth (in a way where Liftoff Guy won't be able to see it) and they'll play a cd for me if I want (I'm going to bring in a Rat Pack one because how can I be nervous at all when Frank, Sammy and Dean are blowing Cool throughout the room? And I love the idea of doing something more fun than classical or new age.), and I won't need to be strapped down at the wrists, assuming I can keep myself from rising up. So I'm actually pretty psyched for this.

Meanwhile, though, I'm apparently not supposed to be psyched for this birth. I'm supposed to be regretful, hoping and praying that the baby will turn and that he'll be smaller than expected and that, to paraphrase my mom, that I can have a vaginal birth that is just as easy as a difficult bowel movement. One of my Fac.ebo.ok friends actually wrote, "I heard that if you put something painful, like an ice cube by where his head is, and then have someone talk down by where the head should be, the baby might opt for the head down position..." Um, okay, except that I'd prefer not to intentionally do something painful to the baby, and even if I did, he'd still be huge and they would still induce me early and I would still only have about a 30% chance of delivering successfully that way and then I'd get to have a long labor AND a more risky, emergency c-section! That sounds much better!!!

But the thing is, I'm supposed to run away from whatever's unnatural and desperately embrace the narrow shot I have at a vaginal birth, clinging to it knowing that it's my only chance to give birth the way that God/nature/Darwin intended. This is supposed to be painful and difficult, too, and by skipping labor for a Very Rat Pack Cesarean I'm transgressing all over the place. Oh well.

Oh, the shower was relatively mellow and nice, even though it was mostly populated by elderly ladies I'd never met before. A lot of LG's friends came, especially married couples who've known him since he was a kid who were in the Star Trek club with him, and at least one guy came on his own. I liked that our baby shower was co-ed, just like our wedding shower. It was very relaxed and having people our age there, both men and women, made it better.

Likes and dislikes

1. I like feeling Luke move around, especially now that he actually responds to me - I can sometimes feel a springy body part (I think it's probably a knee, although it could be an elbow) and when I touch it, it retracts and then comes back again. This is fun.

2. I don't like round ligament pain. Feeling like I've been stabbed in the groin is no fun.

3. I like the Home Birth Debate website. Scientific evidence for things is so much more convincing to me than feelings and the "trust birth" attitude. Plus the MD who runs the site has been posting reassuring things about cesarean sections lately.

4. I think these high-heeled baby shoes are loathesome.

5. I have mixed feelings about an upcoming baby shower that Liftoff Guy's mom and sister-in-law are throwing for us. I'm not a fan of showers in general, but when you're starting off with a new baby, there's a certain amount of equipment that needs to be purchased, and it really, really helps when folks contribute. At the same time, it feels greedy, like demanding hand-outs. Then it's weird to be here away from my closest friends and family - most of the guests will be people I've never met from LG's mom's and sil's churches. Gulp. Plus sil was astonished that we wanted it to be co-ed - but I've never met most of these folks. They all know LG, so it would be helpful for him to be there.

And it's LG's baby too! I am exactly 50% of Liftoff Boy's parents - not 90% or even 55%. And LG is a total mensch and extremely home oriented, and I'm the major wage-earner, so I think we're going to have a very balanced approach to parenting. The sexism that seems to be inherent in peoples' responses to a couple having a baby irritates the heck out of me. For instance, it makes no sense to me when a friend of mine refers to her husband "babysitting" their son. How do you "babysit" your own child? It doesn't make sense either when people say, "I'm sure your husband will help with the baby." Why don't they tell him that they're sure I'll help with the baby?

LG told me yesterday that a couple I've never met who are coming to the shower couldn't find us on the registry - probably because they were looking for my first name with LG's last name. I use a hyphenated name legally, so that's what I'm under. I was allowed to choose a second name, so I used my professional name, which is what I teach and publish under. But I'm not known by LG's last name on its own. And then LG's full name is also on the registry. So if they couldn't find us, it means that it didn't occur to them that I might not use a traditional married name and that the registry would be under the husband's name. This irritates me. Then later I got some ad addressed to my first name but LG's last name - I was almost moved to call the company and tell them to correct my name, but it was junk mail. If this happens again, I may put "return to sender - no such person at this address" - but it's junk mail so it doesn't seem worth it.

So anyway, I hope the shower will be fun, and it's always nice when people help make your life easier, but I feel like I'll be the wolf in a flock of sheep, not really one of them, and dangerous with my agnostic, feminist perspectives. Some of LG's geek friends were invited and so maybe that will help. I hope so.

Weird progress....

We decided to go to Detroit this weekend since Liftoff Guy's dad was doing really well yesterday (no pain, cushy new hospital, room with amazing view, big screen tv, lots of attention from nurses). The plan was to visit Windsor, Ontario so that I could add Canada to the list of countries I've visited (I think it's scandalous that I've lived in Michigan almost 5 years and have never been to Canada) and so that Liftoff Boy could visit at least one foreign country in utero.

However, today was the Detroit Air Race (also Motor City Pride Day) and downtown was packed with traffic weirdly rerouted and a horribly long traffic jam of people all trying to cross into Windsor. LG got cranky and we just decided to give up. After all, we'd already spent a lot of time in a very tony mall in Troy and went out to one of our very favorite restaurants (and they were doing lobster specials! woot!). We got to eat lobster mac and cheese while watching the Detroit Redwings beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, so that was fun. Plus there was a live singer in the restaurant mostly doing covers of John Mayer type songs....but he did an acoustic cover of Prince's Erotic City and that was SO unexpected I just broke into the worst giggles, whispering the lyrics to LG, who was shocked, SHOCKED I tell you. It totally made no sense, which was awesome.

But I wore my pregnant self out. Suddenly yesterday I started having pregnancy symptoms I've so far managed to avoid, specifically really noticeable Braxton Hicks contractions and swollen feet and ankles. It didn't help that our "four star" hotel was really run down and that the air conditioning in the room didn't work. I woke up pretty much every hour, sweating in a way that only a very pregnant person can sweat. Yick. I think I need to start taking things easy...

Still miss the girl, too. But very nice, despite the ups and downs, to run away somewhere else for a couple of days.

Oy

The National Spelling Bee is on, and because I'm a bit of a stress case, it's making me cry. When they lose I get teary, and when they get it right, I get teary. Goodness.

One reason I'm stressy is that Liftoff Guy's dad woke up with a bad pain in his calf. LG's mom took him to the emergency room and an ultrasound showed he had a blood clot in his leg. So he's being hospitalized for a few days while he's given blood thinners to get this thing to break up and dissolve safely. I'm confident he'll be fine, but of course LG is very worried, just as I would be if it were my dad.

And I'm still thinking of and missing my girl. It's been a rough week, you know?

Sad news

Liftoff Cat died sometime early this morning. I found her on the couch between two cardboard boxes - we started putting the boxes on the couch during the night because she liked to pee on the couch. Eventually, when we turned them on their side, they became fun sleeping places for her.

The last few days however, she had been sleeping on the back of the couch. At about 3:30am I woke up and found her sleeping on the back of the couch and moved her over to her food. I gave her some cat food and she started eating, so I petted her and went back to bed. Apparently sometime afterward she had moved to get back up on the back of the couch and either slipped or slid off, fell between two of the boxes onto the cushion, and died.

I woke Liftoff Guy at 6am when I found her. I was in shock. He gathered her up in a towel and we put her in a cardboard box along with a jade ankh necklace of mine (when Liftoff Cat's "sister" cat died, I buried her with a jade scarab ring I really liked. My cats get buried with Egyptian symbols because the ancient Egyptians respected cats), a piece of the other cat's fur, her crinkly frog toy, her brush and a can of salmon Fancy Feast. We're going to go out and find her a proper "coffin" this morning - her "sister" was buried in an awesome hat box that looked like an old fashioned suitcase. I'm sure we'll find something suitable for this girl.

I've been crying off and on all morning, grieving but also relieved that she died on her own, at home, and that we didn't have to go through the excruciating process of deciding to have her euthanized. The vet was still hopeful and Liftoff Cat was eating really well yesterday, even though she was clearly tired and having trouble catching her breath.

What it comes down to is that her lymphoma was in remission for almost a year. It returned apparently in late April and she began to vomit fairly frequently. We gave her anti-nausea meds, but by May 11th or so she had begun to lose weight and an exam showed her cancer was back, really strongly. Her vet (who has been wonderful) decided that we could try her on a "rescue" form of chemo. She had been on Leukeran, which worked well until it didn't anymore, and now we were going to try Ceenu. The problem with Ceenu is that it causes anemia, but LC's red blood cells were close enough to normal despite the Leukeran that we thought she could handle it. It was 27 when we started the chemo, 17 a week later, and 14 1/2 a week after that. But her white blood cells were up and the vet thought this was a good indication that her marrow was kicking back in after being suppressed by the same mechanisms that suppress the cancer. On the good side, the cancer was responding really well. On the bad side, as of yesterday she was still having a hard time breathing and occasionally wheezing. We had made up our minds to get her an injection of erythropoetin this Thursday to encourage red blood cell production if her count was still low. Of course, now we'll never know.

We think it was either her heart giving out (anemia in cats can weaken the heart and she wasn't young), or she fell or something and couldn't catch her breath. This is going to be a source of pain for a while, but she died here, on her couch, after a lovely day spent outside with plenty of food and petting, and now she's wherever she is. I just wish she could have met Liftoff Boy.

Hyper

I originally created this blog with a friend's very domestic blog in mind. She is a stay-at-home-mom and writes about house things, and I started this blog during a cold Michigan winter, which tends to make one feel very house-focused.

Well, I'm sure it's going to get even more domestic with Liftoff Boy arriving because how could it not? And I'm doing my academic obsession thing, reading medical journals through the school library's databases and finding as much information as I can on macrosomia (big baby), cephalopelvic disproportion (big baby head), and failed induction. What still ticks me off are the hippie granola sites that argue that it's literally impossible that any baby could be too big to be born vaginally. One (I don't have the link, I ran away and lost it) even suggested that heads can never be too big because our gene pool is all set and the moms who had too-big-to-be-born babies all died and so did their babies and so the genes are all gone.

Um...did someone forget that proper nutrition increases growth? When I go to France and I see tiny short parents born during WWII with sons and daughters that tower over them, it occurs to me that getting enough food, vitamins, minerals, etc. makes people bigger. That height and weight both have increased since the early 20th century, at least in Europe and the U.S. I've taken prenatal vitamins since before Gigantor was conceived and I have a husband who makes sure I eat lots of fresh fruit, meats, fresh veggies, etc. So I'm growing an actual large baby who may be too big to be born in the traditional way. In addition to this, I was a c-section and almost 9 pounds despite my mom smoking during my entire gestation period (and drinking full-caf coffee all day). My dad was born through c-section. I'm sorry if c-sections took us to the third generation of giantosity without killing us off and removing our faulty genes from the precious gene pool. Guess what, crazy hippie midwife lady (not all midwives, just the one whose site I read)? I'm screwing up your theory with my big baby-producing, genetically maladaptive, well-nourished chromosomes. Suck it.

Oh, I meant to write in this post that LB's birth has moved up. Seems the doc can't do June 23rd and so we're going for Thursday, June 19th. This means LB is going to be a Gemini, not a cancer (we liked the Moon Child idea, but Gemini was the space program that preceeded Apollo, so that's cool), and he'll be born on Juneteenth, and in the spring instead of the summer. And instead of necessarily being "fair of face" because of being born on a Monday, he'll "have far to go" because of being born on a Thursday. So yes, he'll help populate the first permanent colony on Mars. And the reduced gravity on that planet may someday help his co-progenitrix birth a giant-headed Martian child.

New Info

Liftoff Boy is a big baby. The ultrasound today gave him an estimated weight of 6 pounds, 7 ounces. He's only 34 weeks and one day (full term is 40-41 weeks)and from his head circumference, abdominal circumference and femur length it looks like he's already what a lot of babies weigh when they're born. So with weeks and weeks left to grow, he probably will be 11 pounds or so.

Now this isn't sure. But even if he's not, there were a couple of interesting twists. Number one: His head circumference is 333 mm right now. This doesn't provide a lot of information about what he weighs, but it does mean that his head size is 4 weeks ahead of what the average is. 333 mm would be an average circumference for a baby at 38 weeks. This means that at 40 weeks, his head ihttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifs likely to be very large indeed. At 5'4", this could be a real challenge. A macrosomic baby is already difficult (although not impossible) to deliver vaginally, but when this is combined with a much larger than average head, we're talking another fine route to a c-section.

Even though I don't know what "bonce" means, I found this article today about big heads and I kind of like it. It's British.

Number two twist: After being a perfect head-down baby for the last month or so, LB decided that today was a good day to try being breech. He may flip over again (in fact, he may have already) but when mom's considering a c-section and you have a giant head, a 91st percentile abdominal circumference AND you decide to be breech, it's almost mocking. Sigh.

So, we have scheduled (tentatively, things could change, the boy could....stop growing? Sure, it could happen.) a c-section for June 23rd. This is only 1 week early and will allow LB to stew in his own juices for another week. If I were going to be induced, we'd have to go a week earlier even, and I thought I'd rather have him bake another week than do the induction. I may have mentioned this before, but a study I found indicated that in macrosomic babies, inductions led to c-sections 57% of the time. So, big baby + induction = 43% chance of vaginal birth. Add in the fact that Mom is 38 and heavy and then consider that baby boy has a gigantic head, and I'm looking at a much smaller percentage.

Some women would absolutely be willing to try for the vaginal birth even if they only had, say, a 23-33% chance for it to work. But honestly? I don't want to. Complication rates with c-section are higher if the woman has labored ahead of time (this includes infections)and I don't see the point. I want my baby out in the world and healthy, and I don't feel I have to do this in a particular way to be happy about it. I don't see this as an amazing physical challenge, I don't see this as an affirmation of my womanliness. I will have abdominal surgery and it will hurt like a mf'er (I've done it before, I remember) as I recover and I won't be able to bond with the baby immediately - but you know what? Liftoff Guy will. And LG and LB will be able to cuddle and bond and then I'll come back into the picture a couple of hours later and that bond will be there. As I recover, LG will have to take a larger role giving LB bottles of breastmilk and changing him and my role will be important, but not primary. I want to be 50% of the parenting for this little guy and I think these circumstances will help that to occur.

I talked to a friend of mine today that did baby #1 as induction followed by a c-section (40 hours later - she doesn't recommend that route) and baby #2 as a secheduled c-section, and the father-son bonding in both cases was a joy to behold. I can't wait to bond with LB myself (especially after seeing his adorableness in the ultrasound today, drinking amniotic fluid and hiding his eyes behind his arms - he looked so much like a real baby this time and much less like an alien) and knowing his proportions makes him seem much more physically real. I'm his mom - we will bond. But this way, Dad is going to bond too, just as strongly. And while some natural birth moms think that this is bad (baby should bond initially with just one person - mom!), I think it's very, very good.

Catching up....

Summer (spring?) vacation is here and I'm very happy to be just teaching a 6-week spring session. Monday for 3 hours, Wednesday for 3 hours, and the week is through. This is pretty good when you're in your 8th month of pregnancy. A good friend I've known since I was 13 or so is coming to visit tomorrow and staying for 5 days and that should be fun too.

Anyway, the two newsy things are that Liftoff Cat has officially dropped out of remission and her lymphoma has gotten bad again. We started a new type of chemo last Thursday to try to get a second remission going, and we're in the watch-and-wait phase. She has good moments and bad moments and this means I have happy days and totally-depressed-and-sleep-deprived days because I really, really want her to stick around. I love her so and I've had her for 14 years. So fingers crossed.

The other thing is that at my OB-Gyn appointment last week I learned that the doc thinks that Liftoff Boy was already at 5 1/2 pounds. This is with 7-8 weeks to go! She thinks if he keeps growing the way he has been ("good nutrition" is what she blames it on, hmmm...) that I'll end up with an 11 pounder at 40 weeks. She tested the waters on inducing me a week or two early and in a way that sounds good because Mom would be able to schedule her visit to coincide with the induction (thought: find out if there are hotels near the hospital). On the other hand, my doc also seemed to be warning me about c-section as a possibility and I've been reading about how women who are older than 35, overweight, and induced (each of these individually) are all more likely to need a c-section. If I'm going to need a c-section anyway, I would much rather just do it than go into a pitocin-induced labor and spend hours waiting for my cervix to ripen. Apparently induced contractions are more painful anyway.

So, this puts me into the "elective cesarean" category and apparently makes me a bad person. But even if I just have a 50% shot at needing a c-section, I'd much rather do that when everything's mellow than to get into a situation where there's fetal distress, meconium, and a growing urgent need to get the baby out. I'm reading a lot about vaginal vs. cesarean recovery, pros and cons, etc. and one thing that always comes up is how hard it is to recover from abdominal surgery. Well, I had an emergency appendectomy and I can remember the 8 days in the hospital recovering from surgery very well. I remember the pain of even taking deep breaths (and laughing was agony for a couple of days), but I also remember that it was doable. This is what I think I'm going to do (unless the ultrasound says Liftoff Boy is, I don't know, only 4 1/2 pounds next week or 5) - just schedule the cesarean and skip all the preliminaries. But I can hear the voices of women who take labor and birth very spiritually all telling me that I'll be missing out, that I'm being selfish, that I should at least TRY to deliver vaginally. But since I'd already be a loser for getting an epidural, I don't think I'll ever please them. Sigh.

I actually dreamed last night that I had LB delivered by c-section then was made to feel bad so they had to put him back in so I could deliver vaginally! Yeesh.

What this pregnancy is like

I thought I'd write down some of the things I'm experiencing during this pregnancy, especially since my mom, who was 36 when I was born, can't remember many of the details of her pregnancy. Honestly, that's not uncommon for her (she has always had a poor memory - not a symptom of anything else), but it's frustrating for me when she can't remember if she had stretch marks or a linea nigra or experienced colostrum production in her third trimester, etc.

The first trimester was relatively easy. One thing my mom CAN remember is that she never had morning sickness, and fortunately that was the case with me too. I had a few noontimes where I felt like my stomach was slightly upset, but never any nausea. In fact, the only nausea I had was 2nd trimester motion sickness during plane travel to and from Washington DC and while riding in the backseat of Liftoff Guy's friend's car around the city (we actually had to pull over and let me spit out some of that disgusting pre-vomit spit that can fill your whole mouth). I never actually vomited though.

Around 12 or 13 weeks, a pinched nerve in my back that sometimes caused problems when I slept on my right side or back by making my right thigh go numb decided that it was going to cause problems all the time. My right thigh went numb as I walked, which was a first (I was visiting home in California at the time) and over the next few weeks decided to cause shooting pain if I ignored the numbness. My OB-Gyn sent me to a physical therapist where I learned to do a variety of mild back and core-strengthening exercises, and the exercises (and perhaps just getting bigger and having the balance of my body change) have led to some improvement, although the thigh is still numb most of the time. I've learned that raising my foot during a long shopping trip on anything 6 inches to a couple of feet off the ground really helps. I also began wearing a maternity support belly bra thing in January and that seems to be helpful.

In the last few months or so I've begun getting stretch marks, especially on the lower hemisphere of my belly, around my bikini zone, my hips, and on my upper thighs. They are reddish pink and really irregular. Some are horizontal, some are vertical, but they're all relatively short, say between 1 and 2 inches long. My belly button is still an innie, but flatter than it was. I don't have a linea nigra and I have, indeed, started producing clear fluid and some orangish colostrum within the last few weeks.

I've gotten winded easily since the beginning of the pregnancy and my resting heart rate has been pretty high throughout. I'm just sitting here at the computer and it's 96 bpm. This started really early (like early in the first trimester) and I was told it relates to higher-than-normal blood volume. Walking across campus now makes me pant and it takes a while to recover from climbing stairs.

I first felt Liftoff Boy move on New Year's Eve, 1997. It was a tickling sensation low in my abdomen and was similar to pain. Very strange. As he has gotten bigger it's been a much more physical kicking and knocking, although recently there's been more of a feeling of stretching and rolling. He'll definitely let me know by pushing or kicking if I'm reducing his space too much by leaning my belly into a table or sleeping with my knee pressing into my belly.

I had round ligament pain in my second trimester and it was the sudden-move-feeling-like-you've-been-stabbed-in-the-gut sensation. Recently, though, there has been a variation of round ligament pain where the ligaments that go from my groin into my thighs (especially my left thigh) have gotten into the act and that has been breathtakingly painful. One of my back exercises required me to lie on my side and do side leg-lifts and that was agonizing. I've stopped that and have tried to wear my support thing more and they pain has gotten better over the last few days.

I have a bit of heartburn yesterday and today.

Aside from urinating constantly (normal), I have decided to defy convention and move my bowels constantly. Huzzah! No constipation for me so far. My doctor knows about this and says it's pretty normal, just not as common as constipation. I guess I'm grateful...

Right now I wake up in the night and forget how I've grown and am amazed at how much control I need to maneuver myself around. Getting in and out of bed has become a challenge. And I have 9 weeks or so to go!

Finally, emotionally it has been interesting. As Liftoff Boy has gotten bigger, I can feel him through my abdominal wall, but I'm having trouble visualizing him. I have moments of extreme tenderness and teariness, but sometimes it's because of the anticipation of meeting him, and other times it's because I'm worried about the changes his emergence is going to bring (arrival always seems like the wrong word - I mean he's HERE, not anywhere else). I can't say I'm feeling love for him yet because I've never met him. He's an abstraction more than a baby to me. I've never been good at visualizing things that are hidden. I don't feel like I'm playing a creative role in his growth. I feel like my body is being used for some other purpose and my conscious will and desire has little to do with it other than being consenting. I will sing and read to him sometimes, but I worry he can't hear since he doesn't react much to sound. I like it when I give a little push and he responds, though. Usually when I give a little push he seems to ignore me. So far this doesn't seem like a spiritual experience, and anything I read or watch that suggests that it should be makes me mildly uncomfortable. Instead, it's an interesting biological experiment that involves me growing a small person in my body, much in the way that you can grow bean sprouts in a glass of water. He's definitely more active than bean sprouts, though. Despite not feeling what seems like "love" yet, though, I feel very, very protective of my body because of his presence. I'm sure love will arrive when I have a better sense of him, i.e. when he's on the outside.

Whew! Now I can save all of this for posterity. Liftoff Boy probably won't care, but if we have another child, I'll probably want to look back on this for comparison's sake.

Copacetic

Today's OB-Gyn appointment went fine. I've only gained a pound since two weeks ago (better than the shock of gaining 11 in 5 weeks then 5 in two weeks!). Apparently I decided to explode weight-wise (or Liftoff Boy did), but that seems to have stabilized. Seriously, nothing like gaining 16 pounds in two months.

Blood pressure today was nice and normal, down from last time. I saw my doctor in her secondary office and she seemed a lot less rushed than normal and so we got to chat quite a bit about going for tenure while pregnant, my decision not to take any official maternity leave (I'm giving birth during summer vacation, so this works), and general stuff. I learned that my current situation of...um...not being constipated at ALL...is actually okay and normal, and that the stabby pains I've had where my left leg meets my groin are yet another lovely variety of round ligament pain. LB's heartbeat was around 145, which is very nice, and he's still head down.

The only slightly "hmmm..." thing, and it's very minor, is that my fundus (uterus height) is 32 cm, which is where it usually would be at 32 weeks, and I'm only at 30 weeks. This may indicate that LB is a big boy, so the doc wants to do another ultrasound at 34 weeks to check his weight.

We had a nice cuddly moment this morning where Liftoff Guy kind of spooned me before we got up, and put his hands on my belly, and LB kicked for him a couple of times. But then I had to run to the bathroom (natch) so the moment couldn't last. Still, it was very nice.

Haroldson's Coffee World

When I was 17 years old, I got a job at a store called Haroldson's Coffee World, at the City Shopping Center in Orange, California. It wasn't my first job, but it was the first job I liked. I did an internet search for Haroldson's this morning, and nothing came up, so I decided that if the memory of the place was going to be preserved, it was my job to do it.

Haroldson's was owned by Harold Bregman, and his son, whose name I don't remember. Harold was a short, round, mustachioed Jewish man from New York, probably in his late 60s or early 70s at the time, which was 1987. I remember his bald head and his imprinted apron and the restless way he moved his hands. He had been a cab driver in New York, and his manner was very brash, which probably made sense doing that kind of work. He hired me right after I graduated from high school, when I was looking for a summer job. I stayed on and worked there for a couple of years, by which point he sold the store to an Italian family from Canada. They were okay, but Harold was an amazing boss.

Harold was the kind of guy who would yell at customers if they got on his nerves. He'd yell at the (mostly) girls he employed too, but he was also extremely generous and trusting and warm. You'd be scared of Harold if you didn't know him and caught him in the wrong mood, but when Christmas season came around, he made sure his employees all got a share of the sales they made. He was funny and kind, and although I can't remember his wife's name (it started with a Z), he loved her very much. I think she was a concentration camp survivor and he was very protective of her.

The store, pre-Starbucks (at least in Southern California), sold coffee beans of 20-25 different flavors, including a hazelnut with real hazelnut slivers. I learned to drink coffee while working there, and to be able to describe the difference between Sumatra Blue Lintong and Jamaica Blue Mountain. We ground coffee beans, sold the whole beans, and sold chocolate-covered espresso beans. We made capuccinos and espressos. I learned to foam milk. We also sold coffee cups and mugs, tea sets, loose teas, bagged teas, jelly beans, cookies, and coffee makers of a wide variety of types, from drip filters to percolators to French presses and more. I loved describing the flavors to customers, learning what our regular customers enjoyed, and teaching them how to use a stove-top espresso maker. For a future anthropology professor, it was good training for teaching, explaining, and learning a bit about the coffee-growing societies of the world.

The next door over was a men's clothing store run by a Persian family. The husband (Abraham? Ibrahim?) would frequently come over for coffee, but he didn't like to wait in line and sometimes he'd pour himself a cup without waiting. This happened too often and eventually Harold kicked him out of the store! I can remember Abraham standing, amused, in the mall just outside the entrance, buying cups of coffee without actually coming in. Eventually Harold's temper would subside and things would go back to normal, but there was an ebb and flow to it all. Customers would sometimes tell us employees that it must be a challenge to work for him, but if you stuck around and got to be friends with him, he was very loyal and reasonable and funny. Still, the Muslim-Jewish tension that resulted from the mall layout was a fascinating subcurrent in an otherwise calm work situation.

One day, I think soon after Christmas, he said he had an announcement. I was hoping to become assistant manager and really thought that might be it. But no, he was selling the store. And the era of Harold and Haroldson's came to an end. Haroldson's continued for a while without him, and the new family actually opened another store, but eventually the City Shopping Center shut down, was razed, and replaced by The Block. I miss Harold and completely lost touch with him. But working for him was the first time I had a job I looked forward to going to.

Baby sleep

I am not a co-sleeping type. I am one of those weird people who, despite being affectionate and lovey-dovey in waking life, cannot sleep with anyone touching me. I've never fallen asleep in a lover's arms and even feeling Liftoff Guy's foot against mine in the night is enough to get me to pull away.

This works because we have a giant king size bed and so there's plenty of space. But I can't sleep if someone (even a cat) is touching me. It's weird, I know.

So, when I hear of blissful arrangements where everyone, Dad, Mom, and Baby, are all in bed together in happy slumber and Mom just pulls Baby over to nurse when Baby starts to fuss, I respond with trepidation. If I can't sleep while barely touching my husband, I certainly could not drift off with a baby making physical contact with me. I don't have a problem with a baby sleeping in my arms, for a while, but the whole sleeping thing just wouldn't happen.

So, we are getting a crib. My mom gave me her credit card info and after exploring my registry, checking out prices, looking for similar/the same crib at other sources, we have decided! And so the picture above is of the convertible crib we're getting (it's going to be on the way next week or the week after). It'll be a crib for Liftoff Boy, then a toddler bed, then a grown-up bed and it matches all the oak in the bedroom and should be really nice.

Grading, grading, grading....

It's that time of year when I receive somewhere around 90 fresh, new 7-9 page papers to grade and have to get them back to the students (at least I feel guilty if I don't), before they "evaluate" me. While some of them are fascinating to read, they tend to be repetititive, and as an ENFP, doing the same thing over and over makes me cranky and semi-depressed.

ESPECIALLY when it's clear that they either misunderstood or ignored the guidelines for the assignment. When I ask you to cite at least three academic sources, I mean that those sources should, you know, be cited. In your text. Not that you should give me a lot of unsupported information and then give me a works cited page where I'm reading authors' names for the first time and wondering how on earth you thought you incorporated their work.

From dictionary.reference.com:

cite /saɪt/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[sahyt] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–verb (used with object), cit·ed, cit·ing.
1. to quote (a passage, book, author, etc.), esp. as an authority: He cited the Constitution in his defense.
2. to mention in support, proof, or confirmation; refer to as an example: He cited many instances of abuse of power.
3. to summon officially or authoritatively to appear in court.
4. to call to mind; recall: citing my gratitude to him.
5. Military. to mention (a soldier, unit, etc.) in orders, as for gallantry.
6. to commend, as for outstanding service, hard work, or devotion to duty.
7. to summon or call; rouse to action.

Maybe they're thinking of definition number 4, and fleetingly recalling various works as they write their papers.

To be fair, most of them aren't doing this. Most of them are being good. But when an otherwise good student can't manage to follow directions...

BTW, in case you're wondering why I don't sound like an ENFP right now, stressed ENFPs start acting like ISTJs - and ISTJs are all about rules being followed. Aargh.

No Foolin'

Some good news today!

1. Despite failing the 1-hour test, I don't actually have gestational diabetes according to the more accurate 3-hour test I took last week.

Here are the limits for the test:
Gestational diabetes will be diagnosed if two of the following values exceed the normal limit.
Fasting - 95 mg/dL
1 hour - 180 mg/dL
2 hours - 155 mg/dL
3 hours - 140 mg/dL


My numbers were 60, 139, 126, and 74 - that big drop at the end explains why I had a total sugar crash just as I was getting home from the doctor's. I was sweaty, shaky, confused and kept dropping things. But those numbers are great - the nurse over the phone said my body obviously can really kick the sugar out. I'm happy not just because it would have been inconvenient to have it, but also because it can be an indicator of a greater chance of getting type II diabetes later in life and can cause problems for the pregnancy and the baby.

2. Liftoff Guy finally felt Liftoff Boy kick this morning! We were chatting - I was on the couch with my computer and my half-caf coffee and LG was taking his cereal bowl back to the kitchen, and LB started kicking. He's upside down and I felt the kicks right under my breasts in the upper portion of my uterus. They were pretty strong and so I had LG come over fast and put his hand down and about 3 seconds later, bam! He said he saw my belly move and felt the kick. This is the first time he's ever felt a kick.

It will be amusing to let LB know that he first introduced himself to his father on April Fool's Day. I wonder which one of them that says more about? Of course I first felt him on New Year's Eve, so maybe LB just likes holidays (like his mom!).

Snowy spring

Spring started a few days ago, but the second day of spring we had a massive snowstorm and everything got covered in white again. Today we're having a mix of rain and snow. This, and my desire to sleep in this morning (which I did) is why I have put off having my second gestational diabetes test.

I took my first last week Wednesday. Nonfasting - the number needed to be under 140 and it was 154. So I get to come back in this week after fasting from the night before, do a blood test, drink more glucose stuff, and then do three more blood draws, at 1 hour, 2 hours and 3 hours after the glucose. This is going to make for a long, hungry, possibly shaky morning. I plan to bring grading and my iPod. Most women who fail the first test pass the second one, so I'm crossing my fingers.

I'm going to try to get some exercise in now. Ta ta...

Sniff...sniff.....

I just sneezed as I was bringing up the blogging page! I'm still congested a lot of the time and frequently wake up drooling on my pillow. Huzzah. Anyway, I'm hoping this is pregnancy congestion and not the bronchitis/possible pneumonia that one of my colleagues has. It's been a bad winter for illness. Nearly everyone I know has been sick multiple times.

Liftoff Guy has gone off to work but this the first day I've had in a while where I can just relax a bit. Liftoff Cat is napping in her Am.azon box, it's gray out but not super cold and not snowing, and I'm relaxing after a busy set of days. I had a colleague from a prominent east coast museum come to campus and since she does research that involves my maternal ancestors (seriously!) I was able to let her look through some old (hundred year old) family scapbooks, speak to one of my classes about linguistic anthropology, and then do a joint presentation with me that related to early anthropology and those ancestors of mine. It was great fun to have her out, but also stressful because one of her flights was canceled and then her luggage was lost, and I was running around doing damage control and not getting to bed until quite late. Now it's done, and it was good, and I can sit on the couch and rest a bit.

Liftoff Boy seems to be slightly quieter and less active over the last couple of days, although when I woke up at 4:30 this morning he was pretty active when I lay back down to go to sleep. He moves when he wants to. I wish he did it more because I worry about it when too much time goes by.

I get tested for ges.ta.tional dia.betes next week and I'm a bit worried about that. Also about my blood pressure. It was kind of high last time (I hadn't exercised in a while and I was nervous about the big ultrasound) but I can force it up by worrying about it. I should try to take it a bunch of times leading up to this so that I relax about it a bit. My pulse is also high, and it HAS been throughout this pregnancy, but it still concerns me.

I sure complain a lot in this blog! Mostly everything is going well and it makes me happy to do things like bringing out speakers and doing joint presentations while I'm pregnant. I'm scared of being put on bedrest! But I feel pretty good. My referred back issue in my leg flares up sometimes, but I'm fine overall.

Hello Little Boy?

On Saturday night, and again on Sunday night during the Oscars, Liftoff Boy started thumping me with some pretty impressive strength. It felt just like someone touching my abdomen from the outside, poking it with a finger or something. When I put my hand down, I could feel the poking. He mostly has been doing it at night, but last night I couldn't feel much of anything and as of this morning, I've begun to fret. Now, yesterday during the day I felt movement from time to time, just not the feelable pokiness. But I miss the feelable pokiness. It's cool. And now I find myself puting my hands on my belly and moving it a bit, trying to wake him up so he'll play.

I need to stop worrying. He is very small and I'll only feel the pokiness if he decides to kick or push particular spots. He could be giving himself a very elaborate face rub or be doing jungle gym stuff with the umbilical cord and I wouldn't know. But I'd like him to move so I can feel him again. I'm only 22 1/2 weeks and a lot of women feel nothing at all at this point... But come on, Kiddo. Show me what you're up to.

Of routines and other things

A good friend of mine who writes a blog wrote a post about routine, which I read this morning. She's doing the stay-at-home-mom thing and planning to homeschool and is working hard to create a safe haven of domesticity for her son. I read her blog entry and felt pulled into the general coziness of it, but also felt myself screaming "No no no no!" on the inside.

I am not really a routine-based person. My mother is, and it was one of the things that made me most unhappy as a little ENFP child (raised by an ISTJ - you do the...math?). She was about realism and established routine - the bathroom gets cleaned on certain days, certain days are for laundry... I remember not feeling secure because of it, but limited. As I got older it became a goal to break routine. Could I get her out of the house and make her miss her bathroom cleaning? Hmmm....

My work as a professor means that I do have a routine...that lasts 15 weeks. And then it changes to something else. Some semesters I wake early, others I wake late. Sometimes Liftoff Guy and I can carpool to work, some semesters we can't. I can handle the routines because I know they won't last. They'll change eventually into the big open opportunity of winter break or summer vacation, from solid back into liquid. If I find myself establishing a routine at home, I'll break it on purpose. In the mornings I weigh the cat, give the cat her medicine and make coffee. But sometimes I'll make the coffee first and do the next bit while it's brewing. Sometimes I'll weigh her and then give her the medicine and THEN get the coffee going. If I put the water in the coffee maker too many times in a row and save the grinding for afterward, I'll find myself mixing that up. I try to change things all the time.

This means that it's going to be tricky when Liftoff Boy arrives. Babies are supposed to love routine, thrive on it. Well, routine tends to make Mommy miserable, so there will have to be some compromises. I think LG is less routiney than he could be. Maybe we'll have a flexible little boy who enjoys mixing things up and not knowing what comes next.

Despite this, I do feel warm and domesticated here. We usually eat dinner together and sometimes lunch. Last night LG ordered pizza and we settled in with that and watched a video about the radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds" that sent 1930s Americans into a total panic. Then he went to read the paper while I watched a favorite guilty pleasure, Zoolander.

As for Liftoff Boy, I began working on a baby registry yesterday and have been reading lots about the colic and the "fourth trimester". Since motion seems to be so important I began thinking about the baby carrier by a famous maker that we got on a famous auction site, but also about mechanized sleeping things that move babies around. I found moving sleeping things on the registry site and then lo and behold, the next section of the book I'm reading was about them too. In a positive way. LB is going to get lots of love, but he's also going to have some interesting techy experiences, from mechanical sleeping arrangements (if he's colicky) to pumped milk. I suppose infant care is going to be very routine based, but I'm sure I can mix it up to some extent... I'll figure out how at the time.

little anxieties

I've had two nights sleeping without any kind of cold medication - and last night I woke up at 1:30am in full drool all over my pillow and my blanket. Yuck! And after attending a senior capstone class and discussing sex and archaeology for three hours then coming home and watching election results, I found that my dreams were full of students and debate and drama.

Bad dream about Liftoff Guy writing to the physics department in an e-mail about how anthropology was useless as a discipline and then spending too much time with another one of the lab instructors (female). In the dream LG was a lot like Evil Ex, just really mean. Evil Ex was someone I was in a very long term relationship with, but who ended up cheating and being emotionally abusive while I held on out of a misguided sense of loyalty I had picked up from my mom. I had to hide most of the bad stuff from friends and family and it was really traumatic so sometimes those feelings will rear up in dreams...

Weather here is bad and dangerous again. It's sunny, but very very cold and the roads are icy and they keep showing horrible traffic on tv. Scary stuff. I'm worried about getting out of here.

Finally, I've begun reading about colic, even though Liftoff Boy won't be emerging for another 4 months or so. And this is making me anxious. Maybe he won't be colicky - but I want to be prepared and be able to handle it if he is. I'm borrowing worries again...

Little Update, Down and Up...

Things have calmed down somewhat. I was on Jeopardy! last year - my episode was filmed in March and it aired in June. I came in second place by missing the Final Jeopardy question... it still makes me slightly sad, although the experience was fun. I should have won, though, dammit! Anyway, they played the repeat of the episode tonight, which I wasn't expecting. I still lost. At least I got my two Daily Doubles right... So I did respectably.

In BETTER news, we found out about Liftoff Kid! He is officially Liftoff Boy! In my group of friends it seems like everyone has a boy...so now me too! We're excited and it makes the pregnancy so much more real to know the baby's sex and be able to use his name. This is cool.

Surviving.

Well, Dad got through the weekend okay and is feeling better, despite leaving the hospital in a rage on Thursday night, driving home in the dark (which isn't legally allowed based on his driver's license), and only realizing the next day that he left with the IV needle and some attached stuff hanging out of his arm. Yikes. But he's on meds and feeling better, so this is good.

Liftoff Guy and I continue to be sick but are finishing our antibiotics. Our joint religion/science academic presentation thingie on Saturday was cool and went well even though there were some fundie types in the audience that were sort of scary.

The weather has been scary too.

Today is U-Day. The Big Ultrasound. Today, baby permitting, we find out if this is Liftoff Girl or Liftoff Boy who's been acting so quiet and then takes a few moments to kick the heck out of mom before settling back down. Weird feeling yesterday while I was sitting, waiting in the car for LG to to to the post office. All of a sudden a bam bam bam. Bam bam bam bam. Bam bam! In my lower pelvis. It sort of hurts, I mean, not horribly, but still. I still can't feel anything if I put my hand on my tummy though.

I don't want to be nervous about the ultrasound, but I bet I am. I'm also annoyed that I haven't been able to really exercise lately because of being sick, then being sick again, and then being sick now. So I don't know what things like my blood pressure are going to be like.... Especially when I'm worried about whether they'll spot anything unusual or abnormal or we won't find out the baby's sex.

I'll update.

Not my favorite day....

Today has been a bit strange.

It started off interestingly...I woke up having dreamed about what "really" happened in the Garden of Eden. In my dream, God created Adam and Eve as a diversion. They were basically toys and they weren't "real". When the snake (Satan) got them to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he was playing a trick against God. This made them "real," not toys, and God was responsible for their souls after this. He didn't want to be. It was like having a set of Legos and then something happens and they come to life and you're responsible for feeding them, giving them shelter, etc. And they don't really die! In the dream it was clear that this "realness" was passed down to all of humanity, so God was tricked into this huge responsibility that he never really planned. And as I was waking up, it made it a bit clearer that inefficiencies in the human body existed because we were never meant to last - we were just playthings that came to life.

Weirdness. I woke up feeling like I'd been told something very significant. This is what I get for teaching the Gnostic gospels to class on Monday.

Today I felt sicker. I ran around getting medicine for Liftoff Cat and because of residual snow it took much longer than I planned and I ended up having to reschedule my physical therapy appointment. I called the doctor on the drive home (well, the nurse), described my symptoms today and they got me on another prescription for antibiotics because I seem to be getting another sinus infection. Liftoff Guy is still sick - I think he has bronchitis.

This afternoon was working on stuff for work, and the evening was dinner with a job candidate. Things were hunky-dory until my drive home when my brother called. Apparently Dad, who also had a lot of chest congestion, had a doctor's appointment today and his doc decided he probably had pneumonia and had him go to the emergency room. Dad went there just as my brother called him and didn't properly hang up his cell phone. This meant my brother listened to Dad getting a Tylenol for his fever and an IV put in... But when I called the hospital they said he hadn't been admitted and was still in the emergency room. Right now I don't know what's going on.

But today has been too much. I hope Dad's okay.

Blech

I am a disgusting ball of immune responses. I have my third bad cold since getting pregnant (had a stomach virus too, just for variety), and this one I got from Liftoff Guy. Thanks, LG! He sounds like he has bronchitis but I'm hoping to avoid that myself.

Yesterday we had horrible snow, very heavy, that lasted all day. It wasn't so bad in the morning, but I felt terrible and when I looked at the forecast and contemplated getting to work, feeling really ill, then having to negotiate 9 or so inches of snow in order to get home, all I could think was, "It's a trap!" So I wimped out and canceled classes. LG headed out anyway but his afternoon lab was canceled too when they decided to shut down campus at 4pm. He said I was "wise" not to go in... but this means I have to go in today to finish a report. The good news is that there's no snow today.

So - head to the vet and pharmacy today for meds for Liftoff Cat, go to physical therapy, drive out to campus and do that report, drive to a downtown hotel to pick up a job candidate for our department, take her to the local tapas restaurant with a couple of other faculty members and....go home and sleep?

Right now watching "A Baby Story" and then into the shower. But still so sick... Bleh.

Hmmm....

My Liberal Identity:

You are a Social Justice Crusader, also known as a rights activist. You believe in equality, fairness, and preventing neo-Confederate conservative troglodytes from rolling back fifty years of civil rights gains.

Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com

The Adventures Continue....

Liftoff Guy and I woke up this morning to the sound of a high-pitched screech. After some fumbling around looking at our alarm clocks and being confused why they'd make such a sound, we were able to pinpoint it to our carbon monoxide alarm. Oh joy.

This led to me throwing Liftoff Cat out into the cold rain and throwing some windows open, while LG tried to get me to close the windows to see if the alarm would sound again. So we closed the windows and waited and as soon as the furnace went on again, so did the alarm. This time, I insisted on keeping the windows open and we shut down the furnace. LG called a furnace repair company and we were both very happy to have our little gas-powered mini-fireplace in the living room to provide heat without turning on the furnace.

The furnace guy is here now doing a furnace inspection. He tested our levels with his level-testing thingie and they were about 27 with the furnace running. This number is within safe limits, but problematic because it's not clear where it's coming from. What's also surprising is that wall unit alarms usually don't go off unless the level is 50-70. So we don't know if the level was higher than that or if we have a particularly sensitive alarm or what. But it's no fun with a 6 pound cat in the house and a half-pound baby in utero. Hopefully we'll be able to get this taken care of quickly.

Olfactory progress! and other things...

I woke up right at 7am today, since LG was supposed to go observe a lab this morning. He was still asleep, but when I spoke he announced that since he only had to observe, he wasn't going to go in. He moaned and coughed and sounded miserable, so I got up and left voicemail and e-mail for the instructor so she wouldn't miss him...and then, of course, I was too wired to go back to sleep.

Physical therapy took longer than I had planned to get to because my car was under an amazing layer of ice since our storm thingie on Wednesday. Simple brushing and scraping were getting me nowhere. If it was like that on my car, the streets must have been delightful. But I eventually got to PT and did a number of exercises. Basically, I'm extremely mobile, but I seem to have a pinched nerve because of compression in my lower back. She gave me exercises to do to help open it up. At one point I had to lie on my belly for a little bit and that was bizarre. It felt like someone had put a softball into my waistband and was asking me to put all my weight on it. That there uterus has gotten bigger, I tell you what.

I don't know if the PT helped, but we finished up and I made another couple of appointments and then headed out to get cold stuff for LG and then stopped at Fresh Market. I can smell again! I had a horrible sinus infection in November and lost my sense of smell entirely for 3 weeks. Then it started to come back, but was really limited. I could only smell what was literally under my nose. In the last two weeks I've begun to be able to smell ambient smells again - coffee being brewed in someone's office, popcorn in the anthro lab...and grocery store smells today. Even freshly baked bread! I am so happy because I was afraid it was gone forever.

Now it's like 4pm and I'm trying to work on stuff for the language class. It's interesting, and I like it, but I'm also restless and kind of bored and keep updating my e-mails to see if anyone has written me. I'm also restless because another storm thingie is due in, this one involving less ice, but a major snow dump of 4-8 inches. The chances of them cancelling school tomorrow are almost nil, so I'm freaking out a bit.

The IntelliGender Test

Okay, I guess it's one photo per entry. So, in my previous entry I mentioned taking the IntelliGender test (add first morning urine to chemicals; swirl; see if the concoction turns dark green (boy) or dark orange (girl)). I took it last week and it said "girl." I have promised to let the folks at IntelliGender know on February 12th whether they got it right. Apparently their "girl" results have been more accurate than their "boy" results so far....

Now to bring Unexpected Blueberry Tea to L. Guy in his office next door. I like to surprise him. Yum, tea.

My inaugural post

I have friends with blogs and decided I wanted one that was on the more personal side. This is probably because I'm 18 weeks pregnant with baby number one and need somewhere to vent and journal and do all those fun things.

Today the university where I work had a snow day, which means I didn't have to drive on ice through blinding clouds of blowing snow to lecture on Judaism and Christianity. The bad news is that on Friday, weather permitting, I'll have to somehow cover Judaism, Christianity AND Islam in one 50-minute period, and I'm not sure if it can be done. But with midterms coming, I have to get us back on track.

Pregnancy-wise, I'm definitely getting rounder. Even though I worry sometimes that I haven't felt anything moving, and even though for a "fluffy" person like me, it's pretty early to feel anything, I have had quite a bit of tickling and odd sensations in my lower pelvis today and I know it's the Liftoff Kid at work. I've felt movement on and off since New Year's Eve, which probably means this kid likes to party. Or that s/he was protesting watching a 1970s TV-movie that starred Cliff Robertson as Buzz Aldrin (the deeply painful Return to Earth). Liftoff Guy had a 16 mm copy of it and that's how we rang in the new year, watching that on a makeshift screen in a friend's basement. It was actually really fun.

We get to find out if Liftoff Kid is a girl or boy on February 12th - assuming LK cooperates. According to a probably silly test I took last week called IntelliGender, however, LK is a girl. We shall see, but I've had 4 or 5 dreams now that the baby's a girl and most of the family seems to think so. If LK's a boy, there will be some adjustments to be made, mentally.

I'm trying to post some photos and the blog software wants them to be at the top of the page. Not sure how to adjust that.