June 15, 2010, 6:18 p.m; 20 inches, seven pounds.
Sorry I haven’t written in a while. As you can imagine, it’s hard typing while holding a baby and swiveling in your office chair at the same time. The gory details soon to come.
I will add this: he’s much cuter now. See?
Oh and by the way, his name is Elijah Luther. More on that later, too. Peace!
This is officially my last day before becoming a parent. Tomorrow at 6:30 a.m., we induce.
So I’d like to get a few things straight before I go. This is my favorite preggo picture of me, and whatever motherhood brings, I fully intend to carry on with the cute.
One friend of mine recently sent me an e-mail that said, “enjoy your last days of freedom!” Makes parenthood sound like a prison sentence. After so many years of trying to get pregnant, and finally getting this enormous gift at age 37, I feel the complete opposite. I feel that if I can successfully carry this little dude around with me for nine months and gain only 20 pounds, and not experience a single serious health issue and maintain good blood pressure and avoid gestational diabetes, I have the freedom to do just about anything.
And seriously, that’s what Baby Bjorns are for. If I ever get ours figured out.
Still more cause for indignance about the stereotypes of the Mother Who Has Given Up On The Slightest Appearance That She Has A Life came from a step-cousin of mine. She posted this depressing little gem as her status update on Facebook recently: “I traded eyeliner for dark circles, salon cuts for ponytails, designer jeans for sweat pants, Long showers for hairy legs, late nights out for early mornings, designer purses for a diaper bag and I wouldn’t change a thing back!! I LOVE BEING A MUMMY!! Repost this if you dont care what you’ve given up and will continue to give them up for your kids!!”
I say, hogwash. I knew this girl when she was a pretty princess teenager. There is no way she’s leaving the house without makeup every day. And that’s what makeup is there for — to help us hide the dark circles. If there is one thing I learned from living among the proper ladies of Texas, it’s that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with fronting. As in, making an attempt to look your best when you feel your worst. In fact, it’s encouraged. It may be 95 degrees in May, but honey, that clingy tee shirt looks ten times better on you when you wear that body shaper underneath. At first I thought this kind of “fake it ’til you make it” mentality was anti-feminist and self-hating. But really, it serves a greater purpose. When you put on the Spanx in 95 degree weather, when you slap on the makeup after a sleepless night, you look better in the mirror and you boost your own confidence. It makes you feel better, and you have a better day.
Yeesh, I just re-read that and realized how “Mad Men” that sounds. But really ladies, we’ve already shattered the glass ceiling. Let’s just put the bras back on and re-define motherhood on our own terms. Wouldn’t it be truly revolutionary in 2010 to make it look easy by taking care of ourselves AND our children, instead of making excuses for wearing sweatpants every day?
That said, I do plan to make the most of today. On June 14, 2010, I plan to: spend no more than 30 minutes cleaning up. Take a long shower and take an extra long time to shave, do my hair and put on makeup. Go shopping for something girly. Put on something cute, go to the coffee house and sit alone, reading some good vampire smut (and don’t even think that means Stephenie Meyer unless you want to get dope-slapped). Take the dog for a long walk and let her wander wherever she wants to go. Come home and take a nap. Paint my nails. Watch a chick flick.
Who knows, maybe I will look back on this list a year from now and laugh and laugh, and maybe cry. But maybe I won’t. Either way, I’ll still be wearing eyeliner and a nice shirt when I’m in public. No need to advertise how tired I am.
So my due date’s been pushed back from June 5 to June 13. I found this out on Tuesday after my weekly waddle to the doctor’s office. Through no fault of hers, there was apparently a mixup way back in December. Or maybe a disagreement between my previous doctor and the sonographer. Anyway, the little dude is scheduled to arrive a week later than we thought.
The only reason I found out this new information was because my doctor said “You’ll be 39 weeks next week, so when you come in for your next appointment we can schedule an induction if you want.” I told her I thought I was due June 5, this Saturday, so she looked it up on the computer, and there it was. It’s not so bad finding out things are delayed a week. The bad part is having to tell all the Grandmas and Grandpas and aunts and uncles and cousins not to get too excited when June 5 sails on by and I’m still knocked up.
My doctor looked at me with genuine sadness and said, “I’m so sorry!” This is why I love my particular doctor. You don’t often hear those words coming from an M.D. when there’s an honest screw up like that. I told her I wasn’t upset, because I wasn’t. Well, I was, just not at her or any one person in particular. The universe? God? Meh … I’ve got bigger bones to pick with God than complaining about my stiff pelvic bones and my hormonal sinus problems.
This just means one more week of looking around this place and thinking of baby items that still need picking up. It means more time spent wondering about the exact time to propose God-parentship to our son’s prospective godparents. It means more phone calls from Mom and Dad, who are “just checking on me.” It means days are getting gradually warmer while I get bigger, slower and more tired while walking the dog. It means more mental energy spent worrying about exactly how many weeks old the little dude will be in July when I take him on an airplane bound for Florida, and whether or not that’s a good idea.
Which brings me back to my doctor’s proposal to induce labor. Of course, it’s slightly in her favor to induce, because then she can make this birth work around her schedule. However I don’t think that’s her only reason for suggesting induction. For her it comes down to the fact that this baby is technically full term. He can survive outside the womb, so in other words, she’s saying, “whenever you’re ready to do this thing, I’m ready.”
I put the call out to other mommies on Facebook. To induce or not to induce. And boy, did I get a message box full:
Wrote a college roommate of mine, who’s currently enjoying free health care in Canada: “If you get pitosin, get an epidural. It was not fun drug free. The Dr. on call decided he needed to speed up my labor. A$$.”
A new friend of mine from church wrote what I think is the best advice of all: “Only be induced if you are already progressing. I was induced from a cold start shall we say and it was not good. I was in labor for over 26 hours and wound up with the C section. If your body isn’t ready, don’t push it.”
One of my very fertile cousins wrote: “I was induced…with all 3! My longest labor was 4 hours–total. The only thing that I can say, after watching both [my sister] and my sister in law go through labor, is be prepared. [My sister] had no drugs and did lots better the second time around because she knew what to expect. My sister in law did epiderals both time (that I don’t recommend–the whole needle in the spinal cord freaks me out) and was fine. I only say be prepared because the labor is a much faster labor with little time in between contractions to catch your breath. However, I didn’t mind it one bit–it makes everything so much easier when you can plan it all out!”
On the other hand, another extremely prolific cousin had a different experience. Sorry about the all caps, but this is how she writes: “WAS INDUCED WITH [my first] AND IT WAS MY WORST LABOR. 19 HOURS OF LABOR AND 3 HOURS PUSHING. THE OTHER ONES WERE WITHIN 2 HOURS AND ONLY ONE OR TWO PUSHES. THAT IS MY EXPEIRIENCE. I WOULD NOT RECOMEND IT UNLESS IT IS A NECESSITY.”
That’s just the beginning of the wide variety of stories that came pouring into my inbox. So, the bottom line is, there’s no telling how the drug to induce labor will affect me, how long it will take or whether I’ll be able to handle hard and fast contractions without sticking a giant needle into my spine.
Yet another variable has now been thrown into the mix. There might be protein in my pee. The lab is looking into this as we speak. Literally, they are looking into a giant lemonade jug of my pee that I’ve been collecting over the last 24 hours and storing in the fridge. My dad laughed, “Oh boy, you’d better label that so nobody drinks it!” Seriously, Dad. There are only two of us living in this house and both of us know what’s in that brown jug. Also, we don’t live in a sitcom, so there’s no danger of our friend Joey coming over and helping himself to a refreshing glass of preggo pee.
Anyhoo, if the amount and kind of protein sends up a red flag, then that could be a sign that my blood pressure is about to go up (it’s been fine for the past nine months). If that happens, I might not have a choice but to induce. And that’s fine with me, I don’t want to sit and wait for the bad stuff to happen.
In the meantime, our little guy might just decide to show up today or tomorrow. And on the bright side, I’m not on bed rest. I’m not waiting for a kid to pop out in August in Texas. I’ve got air conditioning, and a pool that I don’t have to maintain, and a cute maternity swim suit that does not make me feel like an ox. I’ve got books to read, friends with whom to commiserate and a husband to bring me ice cream. Let’s just hope he gets here before the bright side starts to wear thin.
Not that I didn’t have a good teacher. My frugal Grandma could talk people right out of the clothes off their backs, so I learned about the fine art of garage sale shopping from the master.
I learned that no matter how much cash you bring along, you don’t keep it all in your wallet. You stash the bills in different pockets, so the garage sale proprietors don’t get a look at how much cash you are actually carrying. I learned you park your Element (or in her case, Brady-Bunch style station wagon) at the end of the street and just hoof it. Don’t get bogged down in car traffic, and DO NOT do that thing where you slowly drive by the sale to see if you can spot the good stuff. Time wasters and street cloggers, all of that. One thing I did not learn, or just refused to learn, was how to haggle. I just can’t handle that kind of confrontation. I would not do well in a foreign country where street bazaar negotiating is expected. Hmm, maybe that’s why vendors everywhere in Cancun bent over backwards to help me; I paid full price everywhere I went and they could smell me coming a mile away.
Anyhoo, today was my first foray into the garage sale experience in this town, where I’ve lived for only two years. I decided to first hit this cookie-cutter golf course neighborhood nearby. You know the ones: all the houses come in varying shades of beige, cream and sand. It’s the same kind of subdivision named after a certain kind of tree, and God bless you if you can actually find said species of tree for miles around. And, all the street markers are made to look charming and old-fashioned, but in reality are so ineffective an non-reflective at night they should be illegal, because when you’re driving in circles after dark looking for the address of your book club meeting, you literally have to get out of the car to peer up at the street sign to get a good look. No, I’m not even kidding; I’ve had to do that at least three different times in three different neighborhoods at night.
I don’t know if these descriptions have anything to do with the quality of items for sale at these neighborhood garage sales, but I did notice a pattern. Lots of junk, way overpriced. Specifically, I was looking for a stroller. After passing up a couple of sad little umbrella strollers with no price tag, I did find one marked $40. It was about 25 years old, and the only brand marking I could see was something called “The Shopper,” in block letters. It looked like nothing I’d ever seen sold in stores in the U.S. The pattern on the fabric was a weird 1980s-style graphic. Something screamed “unsafe” about that one. Whether it was outdated hardware, old plastic or meningitis, I cannot say. So I kept walking.
Then I stumbled upon a house that must have been owned by a doctor who had very tenuous grip on reality. Boxes and boxes of JUNK with pharmaceutical logos all over them. You know those freebies the companies give to doctors offices? There was a box of brand new clipboards with Viagra logos, priced at $5 each. Then there were about 20 boxes of Viagra logo Kleenexes, which the good doctor was selling for $3 EACH. That is more than I pay for a three-pack of tissues at the supermarket. And then, a box of pens. Those big chunky ball point pens, with Viagra all over it, also for $3 each, marked “high end pens.” I’m sorry, there’s nothing high end about a freaking ball-point pen unless it’s engraved or something. I was so aghast that people were trying to sell freebies for so much money, I laughed out loud. I looked around. I seemed to be the only one who got the joke, because the look on the faces of the other shoppers around me told me they were simply smiling about all the Viagra logos, and the implied question of “just how many people did this doctor prescribe Viagra for in order to get so much free crap?” and not at the ridiculousness of trying to gain a profit from said free crap.
Of course, there is always the possibility that the Viagra avalanche was meant as an amusing distraction from the real rip-off, to which, I’m ashamed to admit, I fell prey. I spotted a huge rubbermaid tub full of cones of yarn, and an older woman, whom I can only assume was the mother of the doctor, came darting at me, asking “Are you a knitter?” Yeah, she saw me coming a mile away. Cancun, all over again. I explained that yes, I was, but most of her stash seemed to be super-fine yarn, the kind that works best with machine knitting. Then she showed me a nice cone of thicker teal acrylic yarn that could easily be used for hand-knitting, and while this woman was nattering on, my brain starting forming a totally illogical back story. My stupid brain started whispering, “This poor old lady is moving in with her doctor son because she’s ill, and he’s making her get rid of her knitting machine and her entire stash. She’s giving up on the one thing in life that gives her happiness and now she has to live with her cheapskate son. Be nice and just buy the damn yarn.” So I did. I gave her $4 just to get her to shut up about the “high quality” of this acrylic and elastic yarn.
Feeling a little ripped off, winded, and every bit of eight months pregnant, I started the long waddle back to my car. Along the way, I noticed that I’d been walking about the same route as a group of Amish women, who seemed to be in the market for some luggage. They were checking out every suitcase with wheels. Could they be plotting to pack up and run away from the 1800s?
Then suddenly I saw someone I knew. To be honest, I know exactly 20 other people by first and last name who live in this town, either by church or by book club, most of whom overlap both groups. So I about fell over when I saw my friend Becky, who almost dropped the toddler in her arms when she saw me (not really; she would never do that). After a bit of pow-wowing, she directed me to a garage sale two streets down, where I was sure to find some good baby stuff, and possibly even a stroller. And there it was. Two streets away was the sale organized by one of our book clubbers, Sara, and it was there I was able to check off the last two major things from my list of baby necessities. For less than $30, I walked away with a barely-used manual breast pump (looked clean and well-cared for, and did not scream “hepatitis” in any way), a set of Beatrix Potter books, a plastic thingy to wash pacifiers and nipples in the dishwasher, a Cars baby bowl and a Velveteen Rabbit baby bowl, and a freaking Eddie Bauer stroller.
At first, Sara didn’t want to take my money for the $30 stroller. “I’d much rather give stuff away first to people I know.”
“That’s nice, but I can’t let you do that,” I said. “I’ll give you $20.”
She shook her head. “Ten dollars and that’s it.” She could barely bring herself to take my $10 bill when I handed it to her.
That is the kind of haggling I like. Haggling in reverse. Seems like a very modest, Midwestern, mommy-to-mommy way to haggle. This suits me much better than attempting to explain to some dimwit why he can’t sell a free pen for $3. So, I guess somebody’s looking out for me; they could see me and this belly coming a mile away.
I like to tease the Husband about the amount of time he spends with what I call the Square-Headed Spouse, i.e., his computer. But I’m now doing much less of that ever since we moved the office out of the office and into our living room. Now we not only have a room for our Li’l Peanut to sleep in, I also do not have to heave my pregnant butt off the sofa to schlep into the next room to ask him to make a Ben & Jerry’s run.
Speaking of forklifting myself up and down off sofas, beds, chairs, toilets, you name it: I always thought sitcoms were exaggerating with the way they used characters’ pregnancies for comic effect, especially when getting up or sitting down on things. Then all of a sudden I’m in the eighth inning, and it’s not an affectation. It is indeed high comedy, though. These days, I feel very much like a Weeble. However I doubt I would qualify for residence in the Weeble Tree House because, although I Wobble quite vigorously, there is a distinct risk that I may indeed Fall Down, something that true Weebles very emphatically do not do. It’s in the song.
Anyway, an even better reason now exists to explain why I shouldn’t tease The Husband about his computer usage. For almost the entire month of March, I was consumed by my own square-headed spouse. To be more accurate, I had about 42 of them.
They look a little something like this.
And this:
And this:
These are cubee craft dolls, made of paper and folded to look like tiny little robot characters. It was my small contribution to the all-out amazing baby shower my family threw for me last month. With all the trouble my mom and dad and aunts and uncles went to, I asked if I could please do the party favors. They eventually conceded this to me, and I went to town. Many moons and more than 42 pieces of cardstock later (plus two utility knives, one rubber cutting board, one sore tailbone and several paper cuts), I could cut out one of these puppies faster than Zorro.
The giant heads are what gave me my initial inspiration. Just fill with gourmet Jelly Belly candies and voila! Perfect party favors. If you do decide to do this, you may have to use a bit of tape. Some of the heads, especially the ones with long hair, tend to fall open and spew their insides out if you don’t hold them right. That’s fine, though — these things weren’t exactly meant to hold candy. All my idea.
Although some were a little taped up and wobbly, they got rave reviews. A cousin of mine said her little Egon (from Ghostbusters) “rocked her socks.” Others took some explaining. At one table, the ladies were debating the identity of one Stephen Colbert, and at another table, I had to fully explain exactly who in the world was Kevin Smith. In the end, my mother’s fears were unfounded about the weirdness of placing a tiny Conan O’Brien at the place setting of some unsuspecting auntie. In the end, she was just happy to be able to recognize a Garfield, a Kermit the Frog and a Hello Kitty.
If you want to make some of these fun little creatures for yourself, visit www.cubeecraft.com. The patterns are all free, and all completely adorable.
I could not end this post without pointing out that my 60-year-old dad got a chance to throw in his own pop culture reference into the affair. First, let me explain, we’re naming the kid Elijah. Second, Mom left Dad to decide on what the cake should say. So he showed up with this:
He was so proud of himself when he showed it to me. The joke went right over my head, sadly. I immediately saw red, and I said, “You know we’re calling him Elijah, NOT Eli, right??” Of course the joke gets more and more un-funny the more you have to explain it. “You know the song?” he said. “By Three Dog Night? ‘Eli’s Coming’? Come on, you know that song.”
Sorry dad, no. But I love that you came up with something clever. And I love the little story about how all the ladies at the bakery laughed and laughed when you told them what you wanted on the cake. Also I loved how Mom’s Boomer-age friends all burst in to song when I asked them if they knew what “Eli’s Coming” meant. I guess it’s only fair. Dad got to have a little Three Dog Night, I got to have my Princess Bride cube dolls. Which all tells me one thing: this Li’l Peanut is going to be one cultured kid.
So I can have something to think about other than the following:
1. How much will I hate myself if I can’t hack it at cloth diapering and decide to fill up the landfill with my baby’s disposable diapers and poop?
2. What if my mother, while in the family waiting room at the hospital, hears me swear like a sailor on leave while I’m in labor? Or worse, what if I have a minor complication, and my mom hears the doctor say something like “she’s losing some blood,” and I then get to hear my mom swallow her own tongue?
3. What if I think I’ve gone into labor, discover it’s false labor, and then have to tell all my far-away relatives to turn around and go back home?
4. What if my water breaks while I’m on the toilet, and I don’t notice? Seriously, I spend a lot of time on the toilet these days.
5. What if the dog has to go outside at 6 a.m. and the baby is asleep? If I take the dog out, lock the door and carry the baby monitor, does that make me a bad mom?
These are just the top five anxieties I’m currently having, brought on by my next doctor’s appointment two days from now. On Thursday I get tested for gestational diabetes. I shouldn’t worry, as none of the women in my family have had it, as far as I know. A few people have the regular kind, the kind of diabetes that doesn’t go away after childbirth, one of those people being my mother, therefore, doctors tell me, I might be at risk.
The dreams at night are getting more and more vivid and the Li’l Peanut’s dance moves are getting more and more enthusiastic with every passing day. Now that I’m hurtling toward my third trimester, or waddling, that is, I’m realizing there is a little person in there. And that little person is going to come out. And I will have to feed him and clean him and try not to screw him up. As the kids say, “shit is getting real.”
And that’s why, even at 27 weeks and growing, I’m still looking for a job. I’d rather save the panic attack for one big blow up on the big day, rather than stew every day with this low-grade anxiety that’s giving me acne while at the same time drying up my skin like a prune.
Oh, and there’s the part where they give you money in exchange for work. That part would be nice, too.
As the nurse prodded the balance beam along the numbers on the scale, I closed my eyes. Then she stopped, and I peeked. Turns out, it’s not as bad as I thought. Since my first-trimester weigh in — a little less than three months ago — I’ve gained about 10 to 15 pounds. Not bad for being this deep into my sixth month of pregnancy.
This morning’s appointment was nothing special. Weight, blood pressure, tape measure on the tummy, and then a little listen for the Peanut’s heartbeat. Clean bill of health, the doctor said. I reported no major problems other than the windedness after trudging up our flight of stairs, the ever-present post-nasal drip that plagues the throat and the mind 24 hours a day, and this morning’s surprise nosebleed. She nodded. “Check, check and check.”
In two weeks I get the dreaded glucose test, the one where you drink some orange syrup, wait an hour, and then find out if you have gestational diabetes. I told her I am a little worried about this, as every time I do eat something sugary, I get so jittery I want to run around the block. She said that’s probably more of a sign that I’m having a sugar rush, rather than an insulin issue. Probably due to the fact that I’ve eaten so little sugar on a daily basis since October. She and the nurse asked about sugar cravings, and I told them both I have a much greater craving for salty than sweet, specifically whenever I see a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. (By the way if anyone wants to donate to my Flamin’ Hot Cheetos fund, I would not be opposed.)
And so, this ever-growing bump is not saying I’m eating too much, gaining too much weight or that my body is doing anything other than what’s completely normal.
But now that it’s out there — and it is getting way out there — it’s starting to say other things. Specifically, “Achtung, baby!” The other night, no less than three women at bellydancing class came up to ask about the baby. One of them I’d never spoken to before. Later, while making a Target run for some cheese straws and bittersweet chocolate (and marshmallow Peeps for The Husband), at least two women with carts apologized for getting in my way in the candy aisle, when they had not been in my way at all. Then, while standing in the check-out line, a nice and very good looking young bearded hipster pointed out to me that this other register was free. Great! I waddled over to the new register, only to find out there was a woman technically ahead of me, but who had wandered off for a second to grab a Coke or something. But then she looked at my tiny basket and insisted that I go ahead of her. NICE.
I’m fully aware that this is not going to last. As soon as the baby’s out, it’s over for me. Back to being invisible. And based on some of the other mommy blogs I’ve been reading, I might actually experience the reverse — old crones accosting me at Wal-Mart to berate me about my baby not wearing a hat, or some such nonsense. I read about these accounts with my jaw agape. In my present condition, I dare anyone to say or do anything to cross me.
For example, I totally yelled at a driver who ran right through a stop sign the other day. Normally I’d just give a dirty look, but before I could stop it, I was shouting at the driver’s window, “THERE IS A CROSSWALK AND A STOP SIGN HERE!” And earlier this week, my husband informed me that he ate the rest of the tuna salad, and I was annoyed. And I SAID so. Pre-pregnancy, I would have said “That’s OK, honey” and smiled. And then there’s the issue of the girls’ vacation. Every other summer, my mom, me, my aunt and my cousin take a little trip. This year, we go to Florida, and a certain man in our lives decided he needed to tag along. I won’t say who. I will say that I agonized over how to handle the situation. Then, when I saw the person again, the hormones took over and I blurted out, “I just have one question: how would you feel if Mom invited herself along to your men’s fishing trip?” (OK, so now you know who it is.) Maybe it was a little blunt, but you know what? It worked. The bump, it turns out, has a mind and voice of its own. These hormones have made me say things that need saying, and confront things that need confronting. It’s very freeing. If you tend to avoid confrontation, and if you find yourself in a family that operates mainly on passive-aggression, I highly recommend getting pregnant.
I can only hope that once the baby’s out and the bump goes away, that the hormones somehow leave me hard-wired. Because I sort of like this new part of my personality. In a very twisted way, I actually look forward to telling some old, nosey busy-body stranger to shut her pie hole and mind her own business. That right there is probably some kind of sin on my part. But what are you gonna do? The bump wants what the bump wants.
We have a lot of it. So much, we don’t have even have room for one teeny tiny baby.
Well, not literally. You could bring a baby on the premises. Just not the kind of baby who comes with a crib, changing table, high chair, bouncy seat, car seat, stroller, breast pump, one of those doorframe swing things, and of course, a wardrobe the worthy of any baby with 9 great-aunties, a me-me, 87 second cousins and a complete set of grandparents. We don’t have room for that kind of baby. But that’s exactly the kind of baby who is coming in about three and a half months.
Our two bedroom apartment was, up until four days ago, a one-bedroom with an office/guest room.
No, we’re not moving to a bigger place. Call it anti-American, but I prefer downsizing our stuff to upgrading our living quarters. We’ve got a perfectly nice place to live, why not make the best use of it?
Fortunately we have help. Grandma Herbie and Grandpa Bill are coming this weekend to help outfit the room-formerly-known-as-the-office into a real nursery. Without the scary towering bookshelves in there, and with a crib and a changing table in there, we’ll finally know what it really feels like to live in a two-bedroom.
You: stay out of the crib.
You: make sure she stays out of the crib.
Because we’re on a deadline, we’ve been frantically trying to clear out our extra stuff. We’ve sold seven crates full of books, and plan to unload another three crates of textbooks this week. I’ve been ruthlessly cleaning out my high school boxes, college boxes, and photo boxes, telling myself I’m only allowed one plastic bin for all these keepsakes.
Here’s one of my favorites: a macrame project from Calvinettes!
The Husband tells me I could make more room in my one plastic bin by scanning all my old photographs. I cocked my head at him, the way my dog cocks her head at me when I practice my belly-dancing moves around the living room. He explained, “You can store all the images on the computer and then throw away the originals.”
Sorry, no. That’s bad luck. Some people, like the Amish, believe that cameras are bad because they steal your soul. Or something. I believe if you throw away an original photograph of somebody you love, you lose a piece of your own soul.
Anyway, who could throw away something like this?
Or this?
Or, heaven help me, this:
One of two known pictures of me in a bikini.
Aside from photographs, I have no problem getting rid of things, especially when I know these things are going to a new home and not to a landfill. One of these things, I’m hoping, will have a happier life.
This is our vintage Chinese console stereo. She’s got some wear and tear but she’s a real beauty. Our friend gave her to us a few years ago. It belonged to her dad. After he passed, we helped clean out his very interesting house, and I fell in love with the stereo. We’ve never used the stereo for its intended purpose, but mostly as a credenza. Or a buffet. Or something on which to line up all my Christmas tschotchki. This week, it’s going away. We moved the office into the living room, and we still need to move the bookshelves in here, but we can’t do that until we re-arrange the sofa and love seat, and we can’t do that until we move the stereo, which will also facilitate the moving of our rattan chairs and tables to a sitting area of the nursery. Got that? I’ve got an antique collector coming on Friday to pick up the stereo. Maybe he can get her working again. Weirdly enough, I have a waiting list of about four other stereo aficionados waiting in the wings if this falls through. Either way, goodbye, 800-pound credenza. It’s been real.
And hello old photos. You’re not going anywhere.
Last week, the Husband and I learned we’re expecting a boy. You know how I said there’s always a 3 percent chance the doctor gets it wrong? I’m here to tell you the doctor most definitely is not wrong, unless of course that is a little girl in there, and our little girl has a pet turtle. In which case, as the doctor put it, we need to get ourselves a “tiny plastic palm tree and some lettuce.” We laughed and we laughed, and then I wondered how many times the ultrasound tech has heard the doctor tell that joke. If I was the ultrasound tech I am sure I would not mind hearing that about 12 times a day — it’s a pretty good joke.
The Husband first suggested posting on my blog that particular photograph, the proof-is-in-the-turtle, moonshot photograph. Certainly he’s proud of the Li’l Peanut. However I let him know in no uncertain terms that I was not going to post on the Internet any images of our son’s twig and berries, lest some twitchy prosecutor make a phone call and I get apprehended by the local authorities and I appear on Dateline, bewildered in my preggo sweatpants and cereal-encrusted cardigan, while Chris Matthews stands there asking me dumb questions like “What are you doing here?” That would be inconvenient, mainly because while they are kicking the door down, the dog will run outside sans-leash to chase squirrels, which she is expressly not allowed to do in our apartment community, getting us evicted barely three months before before our hilarious doctor delivers unto us our well-endowed baby.
Also, I don’t want to embarrass the kid. There will be plenty of time for me to do that unintentionally. I’m saving it up for 20 years from now, when he’s a famous rock star and I’m backstage with my nunchucks, keeping the gold-diggers at bay from my Li’l Peanut.
Instead, I’d rather embarrass myself and do something I thought I would never do on this blog, and post a picture of me and Li’l Peanut at 22 weeks.
All in all, not too embarrassing. One of the few photos of my in my 30s that I have not hated with a white-hot seething in my stomach. The Husband is a good photographer. Also, I was dressed up and made up and freshly blow-dried for book club, and not in my preggo sweatpants. Yeah, I don’t get out much.
So here’s what’s going on with the baby right now: he’s about 13 ounces. His organs are formed and he’s starting to look like an actual baby. He can hear my voice and Daddy’s voice, and can respond to sounds. He might be able to open his eyes, but he doesn’t have sight yet. Li’l Peanut likes rice milk and not cow’s milk. He likes seltzer with a little bit of lemon juice and stevia at night. He likes red grapes, oranges, pickles, Miracle Whip, rice cakes, cheese and Boca burgers. He really doesn’t like sugar, refined flour, caffeine, kung pao or jalapeno cheddar cheese straws. He either really likes it or really hates it when the cat stretches out on my stomach and purrs. But I’m 100 percent certain he likes the nightlife; he likes to boogie. He seems to enjoy belly-dancing class, and I’m pretty sure he’s inviting his friends over in the middle of the night for a rave party down there.
Here’s what’s going on with me at 22 weeks. My skin, hair and nails have gone from completely dry and damaged in the first five innings, to the complete opposite now in the sixth inning, complete with acne. The mucus-producing alien at the back of my throat is still there, and I’m Neti-Potting at least twice a day to keep myself sane. I’ve got the sciatic pain in my hips and the round ligament pain in my abdomen. I get winded climbing the stairs after walking the dog. My appetite for vegetables is s-l-o-w-l-y coming back; I can now eat green beans without gagging at the smell. However, I would still prefer Flamin’ Hot Cheetos to be my primary nutrition source. My jeans no longer zip all the way up, and I’m using a hair band to MacGuyver the button to the buttonhole. Also, I’m really looking forward to this fun glucose test in a few weeks to see if I have gestational diabetes.
But for all my aching and kvetching, I wouldn’t trade in my pregnant pants for a glass of wine. I might think differently in the ninth inning, when I’m ready to meet the kid. For now, all the aches and pains and indigestion and heartburn and late night dance parties are just a fun precursor to all the metaphorical aches, pains, indigestion, heartburn and very literal late night dance parties to come with parenthood. Bring it on, little man.
For the last four months, we’ve been referring to this baby as Baby, He/She, Li’l Peanut, and sometimes, when we’re in a hurry, “it.” By this time tomorrow, I am hopeful we can hang up the gender neutral subjects and pronouns and excitedly refer to the little monkey by one of the names we’ve chosen. We have our 20-week sonogram tomorrow, and there is a 9 out of 10 chance — if all the preggo mommy forums on the internet are to be believed — that we’ll be able to find out the sex of Baby.
Since I’ve revealed that the Husband and I are definitely choosing to find out, I’ve discovered that most people come down strongly on one side of the argument or the other. I was not even aware there was an argument. The Nannas and Poppas and Grandmas and Grandpas in this case are still in baby bliss phase, so we could be having an alien and they’d still want to go shopping for diapers. They don’t care either way when we choose to find out if it’s a boy or girl, but now that we’ve decided to go for it, they can’t wait to know.
However, there have been other reactions. One auntie wrote on my facebook page, “Do you want to know??????” A friend from college wrote, “Why do you want to find out, it’s either a boy or a girl…”
At Christmas, a few other aunties and uncles were slightly disappointed that we were going to find out. Most of my relatives seem to favor the not-finding-out-until-the-baby’s-out method. I guess that’s fine for some people, it’s just not for me. The Husband would be fine either way. He has been mostly Switzerland during the entire four months. More accurately, he’s the Red Cross, delivering emergency cheese to my living room campsite in a timely fashion, or whipping up some comforting red bush tea while I’m retching over the toilet. I just mean he’d pretty much go along with whatever I wanted, knowing or not knowing.
I respect any pregnant woman’s decision to not find out the sex of the baby, if that’s what she chooses. However, I have yet to hear a compelling argument against finding out. It seems to me the pros of finding out far outweigh the pros of not finding out. Here’s my list:
Pros of finding out the gender of your little stowaway:
1. Science is our friend. The technology is there, the baby’s twigs and berries (or lack thereof) are right there on the screen. You and the Husband are there for a routine scan anyway, so it’s not as if there’s an extra fee involved in finding out. Why not let’s just have a look see? Our priest also made a good point about this. He told me his wife’s opinion was that she would hate not knowing while some lab tech out there did know.
2. Waiting until the birth isn’t going to be that much of a surprise. It’s 50/50. So I don’t understand the surprise factor. There’s no real suspense there, because unless you’re Henry VIII and you really care that much, you are presumably going to be happy with a boy or a girl. Also, it’s safe to assume that the day (and/or night) of labor and delivery is going to be full of surprises already. “Surprise! You suddenly have to vomit!” or “Surprise! It’s too late for the epidural!” And for anyone who might be worried about the sonogram getting misinterpreted as a boy, and then — surprise! — it’s a girl, the chances of that happening are about 3 percent or less.
3. Gender neutral planning is hard. Try shopping for anything for a baby when you don’t know the sex. Just try it. You are pretty much limited to the basics of hygiene and child safety: outlet covers, Q-tips, those squeezy nasal irrigator thingies. Anything else — anything cute — is white, green or yellow. Blankets, bibs, onesies, you know what I mean. Sometimes you can find cute multi-colored things; my first baby gifts for the Li’l Peanut came at Christmas, just two days after announcing the news to the family, and it was a snowman plate and a set of bright red and orange bibs. So cute, and totally neutral. But let’s face it, some time before the birth, you’re going to want to shop for a little tiny dress or a teeny-tiny baseball shirt. Just make it easy on yourself.
Pros of not finding out:
1. ?
Honestly can’t think of a single one. I guess it comes down to personality. My personality is just way too anxious to not find out.
In the meantime, I’ve busied myself by digging out this one-pound cone of gorgeous, neutral, cotton yarn that I fell in love with about three years ago. I’d made some dishrags with it, but I loved the way it knitted up so much that I envisioned someday using it to make a baby sweater. So I bought more of it. A LOT more. It’s the perfect color of beige, with little splashes of red, purple and aqua. It’s begging for a few dark wood toggle buttons. At the time I thought I couldn’t get pregnant, so I put it away and waited for the time when I could knit it up as a gift for a foster baby. As you can see from the photo, I’ve finished the hat and the booties, and just started on the pants, or bloomers, or whatever you want to call them. Then it’s on to the sweater, and then the afghan.
The plan is to use this hand-knit layette set for the official first photo, the one that gets sent out to all the aunts and uncles and grandmas and grandpas and cousins. I’m not terribly keen on the pink hat or the blue hat they give you at the hospital these days, or even the cost-cutting pink AND blue striped hat. Pink and blue are fine, especially when mixed with other bright colors, but the pastels are just not my thing.
I guess you won’t be able to tell by the clothes in the photo whether it’s a boy or a girl. Anyway, everyone will already know the baby’s very boyish or very girlish name by then, so it won’t matter what the baby’s wearing. And because, like the desire to find our or not to find out, it’s about personality. Whatever the popular opinion is, forget it. I’m doing it my way.
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