Posted by Lily on Aug 25, 2008 in
Bogey I have very exciting news. No we did not pick a name, but the nursery is painted. Those of you who know me might think it is odd for me to gush over finishing a nursery. Knowing that the word “nursery” sends chills down my spine as I imagine the perfectly coiffed and manicured mother who has a perfect round pregnant belly and not an ounce of other fat on her holding up fabric samples based on her nursery theme, which she picked out three years before pregnancy.
Don’t worry, I haven’t put on my Stepford dress. My excitement stems from the fact that we completed something in regards to Bogey. We haven’t come up with a name. We haven’t come up with a plan for childcare when he is born. We haven’t picked a pediatrician. We haven’t started a college fund. We haven’t read all the books. We haven’t started our childbirth class yet (although we have finally signed up for one). There are all of these “haven’ts” that it feels so good to “have.”
We had friends come over Saturday and help paint and then we cleared out all the painting junk and drop clothes and such yesterday. We put his newly painted changing table/dresser (which used to be mine when I was a baby) in there and it works perfectly. That’s it. We haven’t moved anything else in, but that’s o.k. There is now a completed room for stuff to be moved into.
I will post pictures in the next couple of days. Apparently in all the excitement of the weekend Bogey decided to take up Tae Kwon Do night classes and my sleeping has been severely compromised. Then a cat started projectile vomiting at 4:00am this morning. I’m exhausted and don’t feel like taking pics and posting them this evening. But I promise there will be some. Even before and after shots.
I’ll leave the projectile vomit pictures out for now.
Posted by Lily on Aug 22, 2008 in
pregnancy Another midwife appointment today. Everything continues to go well. Bogey is the right size, and his heartbeat is super strong and super fast, just like his mom and his grandmom and his great grandmom and his great, great grandmom. So the genetics are shining through already. Not much to check on me today. I’ve gained one pound since the last visit two weeks ago, which is remarkable to me because I feel like I must have gained at least five. Daily. My blood pressure is beautiful and that’s about all we can ask for right now.
Today was the first visit where we start to meet the other midwives. I was a little apprehensive about this as I liked my other midwife and was terrified that if I met the new one and didn’t like her there would be this dread over the next two months of just KNOWING she would be the one delivering him. Somehow not knowing was much better to me. However, she was great and I can continue my midwife quest with a little less apprehension.
She explained all the third trimester changes going on and how the hormones from the first trimester come back with a vengeance now because they have lots to do such as softening the pelvis and the uterus and the cervix. John sits there and says contemplatively, with an absolute straight face: ah. yes. your pelvis has been feeling softer. The midwife starts to respond and then it really settles in what he’s said and she then realizes she paused while letting it settle, and I look horrified and then she can’t come up with what to say and then she starts laughing and then she leaves the room.
John turns to me when she’s gone, knowing
the look that will be on my face and says, I was going to say cervix. Aren’t you at least glad I didn’t say cervix? Or uterus? She wanted to meet me. This is meeting me!
This whole round robin of midwives is going to be a lot more taxing than I thought. Or at least taxing for different reasons than I thought.
The appt. went quickly, the longest part being when we got to the car and I realized I didn’t have my keys and they weren’t in my bag. My bag, which I started carrying to help me keep everything together because I kept setting things down and losing them. So we went back in and retraced my steps, although it didn’t take very long because I first went to my Most Frequently Visited Place and they were right there. Sitting on the back of the toilet. John asked if I really looked to make sure they were mine and not some other wandering pregnant woman’s keys.
The miracle of life is not actually the birth of the baby, but the fact that the father is still alive at that time.
Posted by Lily on Aug 20, 2008 in
tidbits I have twice been asked today if I was 5 months pregnant. Even when the questioners knew it was my first baby. And I was wearing a form fitting shirt. Not a big flowy, loose one. Tight. There is elastic in it. Showing the whole big belly. Or apparently, the whole kind of big bump. The most awkward silence came from the woman who guessed 5 months and was herself pregnant, not quite as big as me, and was 4 1/2 months pregnant. It was her first as well. I think I’m just going to start saying I breed dwarves for money.
Posted by Lily on Aug 18, 2008 in
parenting,
pregnancy Yesterday I was around a group of people (women to be specific, which explains the resulting anxiety) and they started asking me questions. Pointed awful questions and demanding answers as they cackled over their cauldrons and all of their female knowledge and power swirled around me as I suffocated and disappeared into the ground.
O.k. maybe not exactly how it happened. It was a lovely group and they were just conversing. Every now and then the conversation would dip in towards me and there would be questions about names, what I’m doing about work, all that good stuff. No, we still do not have a name. I work with nurses so I plan on working until he is born and if they have to deliver him, well, we do have an emergency kit with us at all times. Then the conversation turned to college savings plans and they ALL KNEW EXACTLY THE NUMBER CODE NAMES OF THESE EDUCATION SAVINGS PLANS. They were like, what’s your plan and I was like, move back to NC and give him a brochure to UNC. Not the right answer. This was already after I had managed to send a hush over the crowd by saying I had not picked a daycare if we decided we needed one. Apparently we are a few years behind on that one.
Honestly though, if he won’t be able to go to college because we didn’t save any money for him, does it really matter what daycare I get him into? And because I have no idea about work I don’t know about the daycare thing. It really is just a giant snowball of unpreparedness.
Then there is the serious stuff like diapers. And the biggy. The decision of all decisions. Do we snip off that little extra bit of skin hiding under those cloth or disposable or yet to be invented all natural green diaper that is made out of water runoff from electric cars? Ahhh, circumcision. You knew it was coming.
I went back and forth on this one earlier on in the pregnancy when we talked about it. I ultimately told John that I felt this was a decision that should be up to him. I was happy to offer input, but that’s a pretty darn sensitive area and I don’t have one. There is only so much I can understand. Yes, there are tiny potential medical advantages to having it down, such as reduced UTI rates in the first year and reduced transmission of STDs later on, but who are we kidding. His mom is Prophilactica. This kid will know how to put a condom on before he can tie his shoes.
And I have to say that in nursing school one of the very few things I took part in that made me turn my head and actively try to keep myself standing upright was assisting with a circumcision. By assisting all I was doing was holding the legs as still as possible and giving sugar water, but it was pretty awful. I could never watch one again. Let alone know I was doing that to my son. As we discussed it, John felt, and I agreed, that there was really no particular reason we felt we needed to have it done, but there were definitely many reasons why we didn’t want to have it done. So for now, our decision is not to do it.
Phew. One decision down. Only a few thousand more to make. And those are just the ones before he’s born. We’re totally getting a Bogey Dart Board. We will put whatever life decision we need to make for him on the board and then throw darts at the all the choices. This is a fail safe plan.
Posted by Lily on Aug 14, 2008 in
tidbits Just a quick note to say that I passed my glucose test. After a full lunch and my container of orange sugar my glucose was 107. They want it under 140. I think I accommodated well. Although the fact that it was only 107 after all that could explain why I didn’t get any kind of sugar high. Next time I guess I’ll ask for the double shot.
Posted by Lily on Aug 13, 2008 in
pregnancy As I have mentioned earlier, in the wake of the non-vegetable eating Bogey has condemned me to, I have increased my fruit intake tenfold. Especially peaches, my most favorite fruit summer has to offer. We’ve been having a spell of not great peaches in the grocery store, which makes my heart leap into my throat with the fear that peach season is coming to an end. It is always a sad event in my summer, but especially so this year when peaches are my strongest connection to that section in the grocery store that I used to frequent quite often, but now just walk past with a tear in my eye. I think it begins with a P.
John secretly makes himself salads at night trying to nonchalantly slip them onto the table and eat them without my noticing. I’ve created an eating disorder. I’m going to soon wake up in the middle of the night and find him gorging on spinach. Secretly. In the dark. Not wanting to upset The Beast With the Belly.
Back to the peaches. John comes in the other day and says, hey babe, I think our peach tree has some ripe peaches on it. For those of you who are thinking wow, bogey brain. You’re complaining about a lack of peaches and you HAVE A TREE GROWING THEM RIGHT OUTSIDE YOUR HOUSE. Let me explain.
When we moved here last year, there had been a very bad freeze that April. A very bad freeze that killed pretty much all budding and blooming foliage, especially trees. We moved in May, it rained two, maybe three times, and then it did not rain again until September. I am not joking. In that time, anything that had managed to survive the frost turned a horrible brown, withered, cried out for help, and then died a painful, dehydrated death. It looked like we were in a nuclear winter.
Someone did mention it looked like we had a peach tree and an apple tree in our yard. As the leaves turned yellow and fell off about mid-July, it never occurred to me that the trees actually could produce fruit. I figured they were somehow ornamental. Like the beautiful cherry trees that blossom and then nothing else.
This spring there was no damaging late freeze and we actually have had some rain over the summer. Turns out our peach tree apparently grows peaches. Well, after it performed a dramatic display one night while we were outside eating dinner. You could almost see it put its hand up to its forehead and gasp before it in slow motion, forcefully snapped itself in two sending one entire side to the ground in an epic Shakespearean death scene.
There are many reasons I like this tree.
The most important being this:
We picked an entire bowl full of peaches from the tree. Delicious, ripe, juicy peaches. Peaches that are beautiful as well as taste amazing. Today there were even more waiting for us. So I kicked off my shoes, stuck out my belly, and headed to the kitchen for some serious pie baking.
Posted by Lily on Aug 11, 2008 in
pregnancy I decided I was getting bored with the other blog design, so I figured I would change it around to keep it fresh. I’m sure there are lots of you thinking, um, another picture of one of your animals is not so fresh. Perhaps not, but this picture of Serena really encapsulates where I am at the moment.
Except for a few days near 100 (those would be the opossum rotting days) it honestly hasn’t been that hot. HOWEVER. As I am now a baby making furnace, my idea of hot has rapidly changed. Really any temperature above 70 I consider too warm. So the 80s and 90s w/humidity has been making me hot, tired, and cranky. Not wanting to do much but sleep. But I can’t really do that either as I now pee every 20 minutes I believe? I haven’t actually set the stopwatch yet, but I swear after I pee Bogey finds the one tiny corner of Club Bladdero that did not actually empty ALL THE WAY so as I collapse back into bed for the fifth time that night he does a swift kick to that corner telling my brain “Hey! Lady! Gotta pee! Bladdero is full!” I have managed to somewhat master control over my brain so I don’t actually get up again at that moment, but eventually a couple of hours later, the brain wins.
Again, look at Serena.
We did have a midwife appointment last week and all continues to go well for Bogey. His heartbeat is strong, he is measuring up correctly and moving as he should. We now will start going every two weeks just to keep a closer eye as he rounds third for home. For those keeping count at home, we are almost at T-minus 10 weeks on the due date, which means in about 7 weeks he will be considered fully cooked. Not that I am expecting him to emerge at that time, but it is somehow scary to think that in 7 weeks, there is a ready to go human just hanging out inside of me.
I also seem to be doing well. My iron level is on the low side of normal, but normal and that’s what matters, my blood pressure continues to be excellent, and I have gained…..22 lbs. I am starting to see the 22lbs elsewhere on my body than the belly and the idea of having gained 22lbs is fairly shocking to me, especially when I’m now into the part of the pregnancy where I’ve been told I’ll REALLY start to gain weight. I had my glucose tolerance test as well, and am still waiting on the results of that.
John had his phone with him so he was able to capture the wonderful experience of sucking down orange glucose. Definitely the most flattering pictures I’ve ever posted here. I got it down in about 7 minutes, which was a couple of minutes over what they wanted, but honestly there was no way that was going down in 5 minutes. Unless they wanted it back up in an even shorter amount of time.
I never got the sugar rush that John and the midwife kept expecting, but I did get the sugar crash, which I thought wasn’t really fair as I never got the crazy high to go along with it. I’d say it took me a full 24 hours though to recover to the point of feeling as normal as I ever do now.
And Sam got another opossum. I’m not mad. What else is there really to do in TN.
Posted by Lily on Aug 5, 2008 in
Animals I haven’t properly introduced our other dog Sam yet, even though he has been mentioned quite a few times. I’m not actually going to be introducing him today either. But he has provided an adventurous few nights over the last couple of weeks, which culminated in one very adventurous afternoon. Here is a picture of said dog, just so you have an image to keep in your head. .jpg)
I believe I mentioned a little while ago that Sam had taken up hunting opossums in the middle of the night. A habit every dog parent would be proud of. He started this months ago. We woke up to Sam barking his head off, opened the door to let him out and within 10 seconds? he had returned with a giant opossum in his mouth. He was so proud because he had killed the opossum and brought it to us. But it was an opossum so it was just playing dead and Sam had no clue. We told him what a smart, brave dog he was and then brought him inside allowing the stupid opossum to awake from the dead and scuttle off somewhere.
The last couple of weeks he has twice more done this, but we think it is the offspring of the original opossum as the first one was quite large and this one was more medium size. It is always in the middle of the night when Sam does this and we are always too foggy to think that’s what he’s after so we let him out just in time to fully wake up and realize what we’ve done. A couple of times in the last week we have been quicker to react and when he starts going crazy at night we tell him to shut up and go to bed. And because he has brains in his skull, opposed to the sweet, fluffy, cotton candy in Serena’s, he knows what that means and goes to bed.
Our hope is that if he were barking at an intruder he wouldn’t be quite so quick to go back to bed.
Today, I arrive home from work and let the dogs out. They were out in the morning, but I came home and let them in at lunch because it was 100,080 degrees today. Maybe only 99,070. Thermometers are only so accurate. Serena wanted no part of going out because it was FAR too hot for a dog. Hello? Had I not been outside? Sam went bounding out to pee on stuff.
Then he started barking. Eventually the curiosity of what Sam was barking at got Serena so she too wanted out. She went out and started barking, having no idea what she was barking at. Par for the course. I gave them water and then went to the car to go pick John up from work. As I lay my hand on the gate though, I look and Sam is standing at the side of our garage barking behind it. Not going behind it, but barking behind it. Decidedly NOT going behind it. I figured this did not bode well. Especially when Serena trotted over to the garage, looked around the corner and quickly trotted back to me as if she had seen nothing. Absolutely nothing. Let’s go inside.
Getting irritated at being out in the heat WAY too long and knowing I’m late picking up John, I whip around the garage expecting the stupid opossum to be lumbering around. Not quite. Try, Large, Angry Vulture instead. Oh yeah. There was a massive vulture literally staring me in the eyes. I, like Serena, quickly ran back around the garage. There were many questions going through my head, probably the biggest being, um…why is there a giant vulture in my yard? That was not scared of my dog in the slightest? After much debate of trying to figure out what to do I start walking over to the vulture. It kind of ruffles and then flies up to the branch of a tree directly above where it had been sitting on the ground. Sam then runs over to the spot where it had been and a swarm, a thick cloud really, of flies rises. And then the smell hits me. And then I go inside. Get the leashes at John’s suggestion, get the seat belts as Sam has no interest in the leash, and both dogs run over to the gate for a car ride. We all three go pick John up and come home. The vulture of course is back in the yard but this time when it sees me it flies away.
John investigates and indeed, Sam has finally killed, truly killed, the medium opossum. And the vulture kindly eviscerated it. As John and I discuss the afternoon I tell him I can’t figure out what made it fly off. Why did it leave when I showed up, but not when a rabid, snarling, growling, barking dog was charging it?
John’s response? Well, the dog’s smaller than you. You’re pretty big. I know he meant this in a purely humans are bigger than dog way, not in a you are pregnant way, but standing there dripping in sweat, hot, tired, and cranky, I took it as a you are pregnant way. Before I got angry though, I thought about it and decided maybe that’s not so bad. It is like a pregnancy super power. Something you can put on your pregnancy resume: Scares Vultures With a Single Glance.
