Posted by Lily on Jun 30, 2008 in
Bogey As we come towards the end of the second trimester and October starts to actually be a real date, I decided I needed to get out and do some of those things that will be more difficult to do once Bogey arrives. So I lived it up. Went to a gay bar until late Friday night followed by IHOP even later that night, rested on Saturday, and then to balance it off, some church on Sunday, followed by a visit to a winery Sunday afternoon.
It was a fun weekend, but I am exhausted today. And to be completely honest, it really wasn’t as exciting I would like to sell it. I did do all of those things, but the only one that was done purely for the sake of doing it because we might not do it again for awhile was IHOP. The bar and church was purely a work thing. I did Syphilis testing at the bar and HIV testing at the church. As for the winery, I was drug along as the designated driver.
When I got home from the bar it was after midnight (for those of you who don’t know, I like being in bed at oh, gosh, about 9) and I, of course, was starving. Like wanting a full meal starving. At the bar we all had been talking about all the late night places we used to go in high school and college such as Waffle House and IHOP. That conversation planted the seed. I suggested IHOP to John when I got home as we have one about three minutes from our house. He looked at me like I told him I thought we should move into an IHOP. I told him that first of all we never were up past midnight, second of all if we were I almost never was hungry, and third of all, if the first two ever happened again we could not take our young baby into an IHOP. Really? John asked. Really, I said. Because while we are in the South, I’m not actually to the redneck point of my baby at IHOP in the middle of the night.
I of course have no problem taking him to a gay bar, however. Important distinction in my child rearing beliefs.
I convince John I was serious, he lovingly gets into the car with me and we arrive at IHOP. Across from the table with the young couple with their new baby. Not kidding. IHOP was exactly what I had been hoping for and I don’t need to go again until Bogey can drive me.
Sunday morning was church. Full on singing/dancing/swaying/amens and hallelujahs and more lively a sermon than I’ve ever witnessed in my life. On a serious note, I was incredibly impressed with the service. The reverend was instrumental in getting the congregation to test for HIV and flawlessly intertwined the message of education, empowerment, and prevention into his sermon in way that was approachable and realistic without being preachy. For those of you who are now going to expect me in church every Sunday, don’t get excited. But I did perhaps for the first time see some benefits of the overwhelming religion in this place.
It was a full weekend. But I haven’t gotten to my favorite part. There was lots of music this weekend. All kinds of different music, but throughout it all, a constant. My child LOVES music. Goes CRAZY for music. It’s as if he is playing musical chairs with himself. As soon as the music stops, he stops. As soon as it starts, he starts. He was so tired after Friday night he slept most of Saturday. I was even becoming a little worried until Sunday morning, when the music began again (albeit of a different variety) and he started his bumpin‘ and flippin‘ all over again.
So this kid likes music, or it causes Grand Mal seizures. There is so much yet to learn about him.
Posted by Lily on Jun 26, 2008 in
pregnancy Midwife appointment today. I’ve gained 5 lbs since the last one and the scales are now tipping at numbers I hadn’t ever pondered getting to. That makes it a total of 19 lbs gained so far. That puts me within normal range for now. As I still have a million lbs to gain between now and the end of the pregnancy though I’m pretty sure that number will be steadily rising, perhaps out of normal range. I think really the boobs count for a lot of the extra weight. And the systematic destruction of my brain.
Bogey is doing great. All his measurements are good, his heart sounded awesome, although he didn’t like the Doppler as much this time and kicked it every time the midwife used it. Pretty impressive aim actually. I think this bodes well for my dreams of him being a soccer star.
I’m healthy as well. Blood pressure is great, weight still good. The only prenatal testing we opted to have done was to see if I was a Cystic Fibrosis carrier and I am not, so that is excellent news as well. The whole issue of prenatal testing was actually an interesting one that I will post about later, because I think it is an important issue to give some time to and why we made the decisions we did.
The only issue at all is that my crooked back is not liking the extra front loaded weight very much. She recommended lots of stretching, watch posture, supportive shoes, and oh gosh, twist my arm, prenatal massage. She said that’s going to be essential to work out the tangle of muscle my back has become. It just so happens I was given the name of a recommended prenatal masseuse earlier today. The stars have aligned.
The next appointment isn’t for six weeks, unless something comes up. At that time I will have my glucose tolerance test. Yum. Sweet, sweet sugar drink. My pancreas can hardly wait.
And to prove that my brain is still shriveling, I have yet again sent something else through the wash.
Weekly Washed Item: Driver’s License
Posted by Lily on Jun 23, 2008 in
pregnancy The layout of our bedroom/bathroom is such that to get from the bedroom to the bathroom you go through our closet. I say closet, but really we have considered making it Bogey’s room. It is substantial for a closet and two people can comfortably fit in it and get dressed and move around and play hide and seek with no problem. When walking from the bedroom into the bathroom you walk in front of the full length mirror in the closet. This means every morning when I get up and go into the bathroom to get ready, I see me. All of me. Before pregnancy (BP) it was one of those things I got so used to I didn’t really notice myself. Now I can’t help but see this large oddly shaped being walking past it every morning.
This morning as I was walking into the bathroom I stopped and did a double take. I SWORE my belly looked bigger. Noticeably bigger. From last night to this morning bigger. I got dressed, went into work and one of the nurses I work with (I only work with three so we see a lot of each other everyday) stopped and looked at me and p
retty much said Dude. You’re bigger. Your belly popped out overnight. She is saying this with all the love in the world, as she is perhaps one of the people most excited about me being pregnant. So it wasn’t just me. Everyone agrees that overnight my belly noticeably expanded. Above is a picture of me tonight cooking dinner. Compare it with the previous picture post and see what you think. Perhaps it is not noticeable in the picture, but it’s bigger. I am aware it’s not the greatest picture. And I am not picking a wedgie for those who are tempted to point that out. I am pulling my shirt over the rear part of my body that perhaps is also starting to expand somewhat. While I would rather all expansion go to the front, I can see some advantages to rear expansion, such as balancing me out a little.
And as an added bonus for the evening I am posting one more picture. A picture of a look. A look I’ve been told many of you might be familiar with. Proper credit is due here to John, who took this picture after he had referred to me being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen one too many times.
Posted by Lily on Jun 19, 2008 in
tidbits John: Why is (insert any number of random things) happening to your body?
Lily: I don’t know.
John: Why is (insert any number of random things) happening to your body?
Lily: I don’t know.
John: Why is (insert any number of random things) happening to your body?
Lily: Dude. I don’t know. Really, I don’t understand most of the things that are happening to my body right now.
John: Oh. So you’re a teenage boy.
Posted by Lily on Jun 17, 2008 in
tidbits I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned the one fairly peculiar dietary development during my pregnancy. I am unable to tolerate vegetative foods, ie salad. During the first trimester I would sometimes feel kind of queasy in the afternoons/evenings, but nothing too severe. Salads never really appealed to me during that time and after awhile I thought I should probably go ahead and try one because it couldn’t be that healthy not to eat any. So I ate one. And then promptly threw it up. The one and only barfing incidence during pregnancy so far. As someone who would probably choose fingernails being pulled out over throwing up, this was a big deal. A big deal that ended salad eating during the first trimester. As time has gone on I have begun to desperately miss salads. Especially as summer settles in and that is a usual staple meal for us. Periodically I have tried to eat some, only to quickly reach for the ginger ale as the salad fights back. As long as I get the ginger ale in time, things usually end o.k. O.k. being not throwing up. But it makes for a fairly unpleasant evening of indigestion. I tried again last night deciding that this is ridiculous. I am well into my second trimester and for some reason have gotten it into my head that if I don’t start eating salad now Bogey will never eat anything green in his entire life. Ever. He’ll be anemic and pale (paler than he’ll already be with two ghostly parents) and eat nothing but sugar.
I barely got the words ginger ale out before John was there with the glass. Salad 27, Lily 0.
But I’ve got my stomach and Bogey beat. Even though I can’t eat the green stuff? I can eat the fruit stuff. Lots of fruit stuff. It is as if my weakness for vegetables has turned into a strength for fruit. I ate seven peaches one Saturday and my stomach didn’t even bubble.
So my kid? He may be eating sugar by the spoonful, but he’ll be washing it down with some freshly squeezed orange juice.
Posted by Lily on Jun 16, 2008 in
Uncategorized It has finally occurred. The belly is now protruding further from my body than the boobs. I also am now so heavily front loaded that I’m pretty sure a new gravitational pull has been created here on ear
th. I know, I know, it is only going to get worse and compared to pretty much all pregnant women you’ve ever seen I’m still really not anywhere on the large scale. For my poor scoliotic back however, there is already enough weigh to haul around. Here are some pictures John took of me in one of our gardens that we created this spring. The pic above is a profile so you can actually see the conquering belly. That’s Sam on the left, Serena is actually hidden by my leg. This is me discovering that the store actually labeled our roses wrong and I have two of the same bushes. Grrrr… The roses are turning out amazingly well though so I can only get so mad
. The picture to the right is me in the same place, just a different angle. Still Sam, I have no idea where Serena went off too. When John first came around the house with the camera to his face Serena barked at him like he was a total and complete stranger and she would kill him on the spot. This would be the dog who earlier today didn’t notice when John came home, entered the house, walked through the house and into the backyard. My confidence in her security skills is not high. I am fairly sure Sam w
ould tear a stranger to shreds. One out of two isn’t bad. This picture on the left is in front of our butterfly bushes. We bought two (maybe three, can’t remember) last year, which turned into four or five, which we transplanted this year to a different spot. For a few weeks they looked like they would most certainly die, but now are healthy and strong and I’m pretty sure will be taller than me by the end of the summer. You can’t really appreciate the flowers on it from the pictures, in part due to the fact that most of the flowers are out of the picture, but they are big beautiful purple blooms. I think you may be able to click on the pics individually and get a bigger image. Those are little lavender plants around my feet, which by next year should be huge and wonderful.
The final picture is just me sitting on the wall in our backyard. The series of pictures of me actually getting onto the wall are far better than the end result, but as I would like to keep some shred of dignity I decided to post the one that looks like
I just hopped up and relaxed back onto it. That would be Serena behind me. She was no help whatsoever in my attempts to hoist up onto the wall. I had grand plans of a more interesting post this evening, but it has taken me about an hour and a half to get the stupid pictures uploaded thanks to some blogger problems. I’m sure sometime in August or September I’ll feel like a bloated whale and will crush any camera that gets near me. Until then, enjoy the pictures!
Posted by Lily on Jun 11, 2008 in
tidbits Fairly early on in the pregnancy John began inspecting my belly button, wondering when it would pop out. He has been very disappointed in its lack of progress and in fact was becoming concerned that maybe mine wouldn’t become an outy. I said I’m pretty sure the laws of physics dictated it was impossible to go to full term with an inny belly button. He thought it was very sad because it looked like my poor belly button was struggling greatly to stay an inny. What would you really expect? I’m queen of stubbornness. Did he really think my belly button would be any different? After weeks of watching my little belly button struggle mightily against all odds, it has started the pop out. Subtle still, but you can see the stretching of it and the shiny taught skin of what used to be a definite inny slowly becoming an outy. Just wanted to give kudos to my elegant, stubborn, transitioning belly button.
Posted by Lily on Jun 9, 2008 in
pregnancy Not much exciting to report. Although I thought I should include a weight ticker so people can know exactly how much weight I am gaining. Not something I really thought would be all that exciting but I get lots of questions about it. I wish I had some sort of visual aid I could use, but right now my creative juices are fried so I’ll just have to report. As of the last visit with the midwife, which was the ultrasound day, I had gained 14 lbs. I would say since that visit which was about ten days ago, I feel like I’ve gained another 40. Not that I feel very weighty, but somehow the heat makes every pound actually feel like 5. It is an exponential relationship that I’m sure John can graph for me. The next midwife visit is on June 26 so there will be a weight report after that visit. I should start a bidding hi/lo game on my weight. That will fill the time until the bidding begins for date of Bogey’s birth and all of those other things people bet on.
No name yet, really no forward movement on that front. I’m thinking we might just turn on the TV and see what’s on when he’s born. With all these reality shows on I’m sure there has got to be some great crazy name that will work. We really have Bogey stuck in our heads so whenever we try to come up with something, we keep defaulting to Bogey. Again, WE ARE NOT GOING TO NAME OUR CHILD BOGEY. But it is hard to shake that name right now. We figure when we find a good one we will know because it will be easy to transition out of Bogey.
It’s a million degrees here, I feel like a lump who gets overheated at the drop of a hat. So I’m a big complaining pregnant woman who is doesn’t sleep very well at night and complains that her back hurts. I think that was what John always hoped for when looking for a potential spouse. I did bake a pie in the kitchen while barefoot yesterday. Somewhere a Southern Fairy got her wings.
Bogey is moving and kicking all the time. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have a sleep cycle as he moves constantly while I’m awake and if I wake up at night he is kicking away. John can now feel Bogey when he’s moving so he believes me about the whole baby in my belly thing. He was starting to get kind of skeptical. I will try to post a new pic of me in the next couple of days. Assuming my face does not melt off between now and then.
Posted by Lily on Jun 4, 2008 in
pregnancy I know, it has been almost a week since I last posted, but honestly how do you top the last post? Actual pictures of the blog namesake. It doesn’t really get any better than that and there won’t be anymore fun pictures of Bogey until he is actually born. No real headway on the name front. Although the baby name book we have has a list of pirate names in it. And redneck names. My favorite off that list would have to be Clete.
It has been an interesting week for me. Up until the ultrasound I had definitely been guarding myself against getting too excited. I wanted to see the closed spine and all of the limbs the same length and the perfect little mouth and beating heart, etc. I didn’t want to let myself get too joyous in case some horrible thing came up in the ultrasound. But nothing came up and I have a healthy, wonderful baby boy growing inside of me.
So I let myself get ecstatic. Pure joy. A healthy baby. Developing normally. And on top of that? A boy. Then I don’t know, maybe two days or so later I absolutely panicked. There is a healthy happy baby boy inside of me. And right now he is fine. Everything is going according to plan. But I have FIVE MORE MONTHS to keep him that way. For those who aren’t pregnant right now, that is an eternity. More than an eternity. It is an immeasurable time. All of a sudden all I could think about is every possible thing that could go wrong. His cord getting stuck around his neck, I don’t feel him move for awhile, my placenta leaps off the uterine wall, Bogey gets bored and wants out early. And the more I thought about it the more I panicked and the more I panicked the more I realized that was probably bad for Bogey and would contribute to him being displeased with his surroundings and wanting out early. You can see the spiral.
I mentioned this to John and commented how it was hard and everything was out of control. John leapt at that comment. Like a Lion on its prey. Not really at the whole comment, just on the word “control.” He said, “That’s it! You are not in control!” And then elaborated on that particular thought for awhile.
Perhaps I am a smidge of a control freak. I will admit this. And except for my vitamins and good health practices and prenatal care, I have very little control over what’s going on. Bogey is growing and chilling and incubating. And that’s what the next five months are about. And that kind of makes me a little crazy. I sat with that for a couple of days and have actually calmed down quite a bit. I am learning to relax and pay attention to him but think good thoughts of him hanging out and enjoying the totally luxurious life he’s leading right now.
The interesting thing is, except for my complete panic about Bogey, in general I have found pregnancy to calm most of my anxieties. I have many crazy anxieties that I worry about pretty much on a constant basis and I am amazed at the base level sense of calm I feel in regards to those anxieties. I know this doesn’t make much sense as I just spent three paragraphs talking about how panicked I got, but I have felt a shift. Maybe everything just shifted onto my thoughts about Bogey, but I don’t think so.
This may seem introspective and great, but just so we know the brain isn’t working too hard and things aren’t too serious, I washed my debit card this week. In THE EXACT SAME POCKET OF THE EXACT SAME PANTS that I washed my phone in last week. And put a tablespoon with honey into our clean dishwasher full of clean dishes. John deserves a medal.
