Second Trimester Begins, Sleepiness Continues.

This pregnancy has been way crazier than my last two. I am so worn out by the end of the day-- no matter what my day consisted of-- that I'm fast asleep by 9pm. Then I wrench myself out of my son's bed around 10, shuffle to my bed, put my head on the cool pillow 'just for a few minutes' before opening my eyes at 11 or so when I finally give up my idea of folding the laundry. I change into my PJs and officially go to sleep.
I'm already into the second trimester! I'm worried that this pregnancy is going to be worse than my last one during which I was exhausted for the entire period. I don't know if I ever saw midnight.
I shouldn't complain. My nausea is all but gone. I still don't have much of an appetite for things I used to crave, but at least I am not having to deal with the constant feeling of having to throw up. I did have a third barf in the first semester that I didn't write about -- probably because I was sleeping. But that was over 3 weeks ago and I have felt better ever since.

Having More Soon?

So it's just over six months since wee one was born, and life is just starting to come into order again. Which is probably why people want to know if I'm having another anytime soon. Maybe they ask because of how close my first two are. Which isn't all that close, really.

My answer is usually a very frank "not today." This usually gets people off my case.

Rest assured, dear readers (the multitude of my most faithful) you will be the first to know.

Just don't hold your breath.

Grey Hair

Kids. What they do to you. DH has told me several times in the past that I have a grey hair sprouting. I have never believed him. But today I saw one sprouting right up in the middle of my forehead. This even has made me feel 'old' in the way that no other event has. I have friends who've been sprouting grey hairs since they were in middle school-- mostly people with dark hair-- but it was never something I had. So on me grey = aging. Them's the breaks, I guess.

Mommy Brain

When I was pregnant this time I had what they called 'pregnancy brain.' I don't think that's the official medical term but it sure does paint the picture. I called it 'train leaving the station brain' because that's what it felt like. An idea would pop in but it would pull out of my brain before I had time to access it.

Pregnancy brain didn't end so much with the end of my pregnancy. It's only this week that I'm finding myself feeling somewhat organized and getting things done. Some of this might have to do with the fact that DD is now sitting and can entertain herself in this position for longer periods of time so I actually can get things done.

Whatever the reason is, it's a good feeling. DH also likes it. It's the first time our entire apartment has been clean at the same time since we moved in 4 months ago.

Having Another?

Is it rude to comment on how close --or far, for that matter-- people's children are spaced? I have definitely done it, but I think it has to be in the right context like, for instance, amongst friends. For example, I know people who have had or are having a hard time getting pregnant. But I guess the question there would be why they are waiting so long to have kids and not why they are spread out. I know that when people comment on how close my kids are (twenty-one months is not THAT close), they often do it with sympathy. Like, 'wow, that must be tough.' I guess it's tough. Certainly, I have almost no personal time, which accounts for how often I get to blog lately.
There have been times when I asked someone about the spacing of their children and wished I could have taken it back. Sometimes it's better not to know.

Cleaning Out My Closet

We're moving soon and the time has come to start packing up my stuff. Normally, this would be a great opportunity to clean out my closet and get rid of stuff I don't wear-- something I'm normally really really terrible at. I always think I'm going to end up using something again. And I almost always do. On top of all that, I am at this in-between stage where I have no idea what fits me and what doesn't and what will fit me in two or three months from now. I still managed to fill up about half a garbage bag with stuff to give away. And I can add a few pairs of well-used boots to that pile. But most of that stuff is stuff that was given to me over the last year or so that I've never really taken a shining to. So it's just skimming the fat off my wardrobe by a little. It doesn't constitute a major wardrobe turnover. AND I am itching to buy new clothes now to fit my current body.

With Regards To Labor and Delivery

I just wanted to add something or, rather, emphasize something with regards to my labor and delivery story from a few days ago. Laboring at home for as long as possible was the best thing I ever did.
Right up until the moment I got in the car to go to the hospital, I was folding laundry, packing a hospital bag for my DH, playing with my son, checking my e-mail, blogging, and watching videos online that my sister was trying to entertain me with. It was not a panicked, clinical experience with people standing over me and monitoring me. It was almost enjoyable-- except for the pain. I was able to get into whatever positions I wanted to get through contractions. I could move around at will from room to room. I could eat and drink, and I did, knowing that I wouldn't be able to until after I had the baby and then only at the next hospital mealtime.
Maybe I was only able to do this because my contractions did not get really bad until the very end, but I have no point of comparison since I didn't go into labor naturally last time so I don't know what it's like otherwise.
Maybe I said all this already. But it makes me so happy to think about it.

Hair Hair

That great hair feeling I was enjoying throughout my pregnancy? No more. I've already begun finding long, wavy stray hairs on my clothes and on baby, and I don't think it's my new conditioner at fault here. It's those postpartum hormones making my nails crack and my hair fall out. Last time 'round, I had to cut my very very long hair after six months because it was taking me at least forty minutes to brush it every time I washed it and I just couldn't afford the time. The hair would fall out and get tangled in there. I would have to stop several times during the brushing and pull handfulls of hair out of my brush. My hair is very tangled on a regular basis and so I'm used to spending time getting knots out, but this was ridiculous. Cutting it helped because there was simply less to get tangled.
I got my hair styled about six months ago and haven't cut it since. I don't cut my hair very often. It's still in a stage where it's quite easy to get a brush through. Hopefully I won't have to do another drastic cut to get through this period.
Also, my beautiful nails from during pregnancy are starting to lose their strength. Sigh. There are some things about pregnancy that you can't wait to get rid of, and there are some things you wish you could keep.

Fit To All Appearances

Looking good at two and a half weeks postpartum. At least, that's what people are telling me. I went to drop off DS at nursery yesterday morning after going through my closet to figure out what I could now fit into. I think it's good to start phasing out my maternity clothes so that I have a real sense of where I am in terms of getting back to myself. Last time, I allowed myself six weeks to wear maternity clothes and then I put them all away and made myself face my closet.

Anyway, the skirt I wore yesterday was one I was able to wear through my pregnancy although it is just a regular stretchy denim skirt. The shirt is a very simple cotton t-shirt that I don't normally wear at all because it's so shapeless that I usually get lost in it. But now thanks to breastfeeding and my recent pregnancy, I'm a little more curvaceous and so I fit into it nicely.

The teachers and parents who haven't seen me since I gave birth were making all kinds of comments about how good I looked and how they look more pregnant than me.... I kept denying that I'd 'returned to my old body' because I know what lies beneath the facade of clothing.

The truth is, I'm fine with how I am right now. I'm not crazy: I just gave birth under three weeks ago. I don't expect to look like a runway model quite yet. I was somewhat surprised and pleased to find out how little I care about what others think about how I look. What really matters, as they say, is what's inside. In this case, I'll say what matters is what's inside my own head. You have to know in life to take things that other people say with a grain of salt. When it comes to the shape of my body, I guess the other opinion that matters besides my own is my husband's. So I'l keep it in the family.

Baby Bumpless: The After-Birth Belly

I should have done a day-by-day photograph of my belly. I'll have to do it next pregnancy. I'm talking now about my post-pregnancy belly. On the day after birth, it sagged like an enormous misplaced boob over where my waistband would have been had I not been clad in a hospital robe. By day 2 it hadn't changed much. On day three, by the time I came home from the hospital, it had regressed significantly. I still had a soft mushy belly, but it looked like the soft mushy belly of a soft mushy person.

Looking at pictures of myself from a day or two after that, I can see that I still looked a bit pregnant. However, within the fist week, I was already able to feel that I had a waist again. It was a very good feeling. I keep putting my hands there because I can't believe it. What a feeling! A waist.

Now, about two and a half weeks after delivery, my stomach is soft and mushy still but it's not so protruding anymore. I probably look like I could stand to lose a few pounds-- and I probably can. I only weighed myself once, and that was within a week of delivery. My stomach was down but my weight was still about twenty pounds more than my pre-pregnancy starting point.

Another thing is that I normally have very prominent hipbones. I wouldn't say that they are prominent now but I can feel them again. I also feel like my thighs and legs are on their way back to being what they were before I gave birth. I still think my butt looks big, but I've learned that a big butt is not necessarily a bad thing. Fashion models may have nearly nonexistent bottoms, but I think a little bit of roundness on a girl is a nice feature. I am normally quite angular.

My face has thinned out. DH observed that women who are about to give birth tend to bulk up around the face. I noticed this in a friend of mine as well who's about 37 weeks right now. She's a thin girl with a tiny bloop of a belly but her face looks swollen. Mine was like that towards the end, but it's thinned out now.

All this is without exercise or any special dieting. In fact, I just finished consuming an ice cream pop. I was all ready to start going shopping and wandering about town after the baby was born but then she got sick with fever at one week and landed in the hospital for three days. Of course, I went with her. We were all but quarrantined in our room. You don't want to wander around a germy children's ward with a newborn. I was totally paranoid about germs that whole time and also totally sedintery. I had DH bring me my yarn and I sat and crocheted the whole time. Ever since then, DH doesn't want me to take her out until she's at least a month and even when he's home, which isn't so often lately, it's hard for me to leave her b/c I'm breastfeeding. Pumping is an option but it's hard to find the opportunity.

Anyway, the point is that my body does seem to want to get back to its normal self. Now if only I could help out by getting some exercise.

I'm Back With A Baby - My Labor and Delivery Story

For those of you who have been waiting with baited breath since my last blog posting, I apologize for nearly two week's delay. I could blame it on new motherhood, but that would be stretching the truth by about three days and I have about twelve days to account for. I have a very good excuse for the last four days which I'll share in another post.

When you last saw me, I was having contractions at home. They started in the morning after I noticed bloody show overnight. They were light and not really painful. DH had an exam in the afternoon and I took at walk and picked up DS from nursery, after which I went out for a falaffel and then stopped by the flower shop on the way home to pick up a thank-you gift for our friends who helped us out when I had that fever the week before. I even ran into them at the top of the street and they didn't notice anything. I didn't say anything.

Contractions started coming harder later in the afternoon. I would have to pause between blogging or cleaning or whatever I was doing, let it pass, and then go on. DS woke up and was climbing all over me. My sister arrived eventually and still I didn't want to go to the hospital, even though I knew (though I wasn't reporting to the waiting parties) that according to the five-minute rule, I should have gone already.

Laboring at home was the best thing I could have done. I wasn't being monitored or checked constantly. Nobody was holding me down or watching me or sticking needles in my arm. Nothing was strapped to me. I found a position or two that was ideal for waiting out contractions (on my hands and knees on the couch with my head on the armrest.) It was all very calm and, though I wouldn't quite call it pleasant, I can say that it was ideal conditions.

The contractions started getting bad and sweetly and without pressure, DH inquired when we would be leaving for the hospital. He was nervous that he'd have to do the job himself. I finally allowed him to convince me to leave the house when my water broke.

And then came the hardest part-- emotionally-- of the whole experience. I had to say goodbye to DS who I was seeing for the last time as an only child. Even thinking about it now is difficult. Fortunately, he had fallen fast asleep and didn't know that I spent more than a few moments lying beside him, stroking his hair, and apologizing. I know, I know, giving him a sibling is the best gift of all etc etc but it was still really tough on me. I knew that things were about to change forever. I'm not so good with change.

We ended up going to a different hospital than I had planned on since it was easier to walk to from our house and we wanted access. It's the same hospital where I gave birth to my son (after torturous procedures and interventions) nearly two years ago. It's not that the staff was bad. It's just that I had a bit of an emergency situation that time and it resulted in a very difficult birth.

I had awful contractions after that, and being in the car was pure torture. It's hard to relax into a contraction when you're strapped in to a bucket seat. Still, I was cautioning DH all the while to drive more carefully. The hospital is only 5 minutes away and though I could feel that the time to start pushing was near, I kept the news from him because he was already really nervous. He parked the car while an attendant helped me into a wheelchair and took a few details from me. I was going to refuse the chair but then I realized I had to get upstairs fast because the baby was on its way. DH arrived and we took off at a madcap down the hallway and up the elevator.

I was greeted at the labor ward by a midwife who made me get on a bed and strapped a monitor across my belly despite my protests. "We have to know how the baby is doing" she said. I hate that. The baby was on its way out one way or the other. In the meantime I was expected to lie obediently in whatever positions they commanded of me? There was no way. Honestly, there are times in life it's okay to not be cooperative. Oh, and then they did that awful thing where they check how dilated you are. I HATE IT. There were only two times I screamed during the entire process, and checking my cervix was one of them. It hurts and also just plain bothers me more than any other thing they do. Apparently I have a very very long canal and they need to dig right in there to get at it. I refused it all through the other checks in my pregnancy. It also bothers me even now-- just thinking about it makes me cringe.

I was four centimetres. FOUR? FOUR? No way I was only four.

When they finally got me into the delivery room, I did what I never intended to do: I climbed up on the bed and lay on my back. And by the way, I was fully dialated. Ten beautiful centimetres. I don't remember them checking me at that point. Maybe they just had a glance and could see... I don't know. Anyway, by that point there was no holding back.

Oh yes, that was after they insisted on replacing my clothes with a hospital gown, which I suppose I should be grateful for in terms of laundry, but I had no interest in at the time. The reason I was on my back is that it's just the position I ended up in and I was in too much pain to change it at that moment. Also, I was comfortable. Also, I knew the baby was on it's way out. I could feel it. It was all very intense.

At some point, and I didn't realize this until later on, the pain turned to tension. Every muscle in my body was coiled up. Whenever the midwife wanted me to change position even a little bit-- shift up, shift down, move my legs, hold my knees, whatever, it's not that I couldn't do it, but it took enormous effort to realign any muscle in my body at all. It's like they were melted in position. Even when DH or the midwife tried shifting me just a little, I protested. The biggest movement I made was some shifting and once I flipped over on my side, which is apparently a preferred position over the supine one. Talking was also really hard. I mostly used hand motions or whispered to DH who then translated to the midwife. The only motion I was happy to consent to was pushing.

This tension had been building with every contraction to the point that I couldn't relax in between contractions. I needed more time than I had. But that was somehow okay. Because like I said, what I was feeling wasn't exactly pain. I wasn't feeling comfortable, but it was way better to be like this than having regular contractions. The only problem was that it was very difficult for me to tell when it was time to push. So I just guessed.

The mood in the room, if I remember correctly, was pretty relaxed. I had chosen what they call the 'natural birthing room,' which is basically called that because it contains a radio, a shower stall, and a hippie-style floor lamp. This is in contrast with the 'natural birthing room' in the hospital I originally inteded to go to, which contained a jacuzzi, a neat-looking purple bed, wood panelling, and who knows what else.
I guess I guessed well, because the midwife kept telling me that things were progressing. I can see the top of the head. I can see the top of the head. It's coming, just a few more pushes... I believed her and also my husband when they said these things, but I was getting really tired. I just wanted to wrap it up for the evening and come back the next day to try some more. I pushed for twice as long in my last birth. I guess that God gives you strength for what you need when you need it.

I had my husband on one side and the midwife on the other (and yest, a monitor on my belly but that stopped bothering me after a little while) And when they kept telling me it was just one or two more pushes away and then I heaved one or two more pushes and it didn't come out, I started to get really tired. But then I decided that I really could be working a little harder-- not that it was any picnic up until that point, but I hadn't given it my abesolute all until then. Not the of medal-winning, baby delivering all that maybe was required.

So I geared up, got ready to give it everything I had, and screamed. The stupid midwife had her fingers in there and was massaging oil around. Now, I know that the midwife is supposed to do that, and it's supposed to help ease the baby out and prevent tearing, but I'll say something here that might shock and appal you: I would prefer the pain of tearing over having her fingers in there. Really and truly. Okay, really and truly as long as it's not a third degree tear. But she could have warned me. Or at least asked me. You don't just stick your fingers up someone's hoo-hoo without warning. I don't care what the circumstances are. I HATE HATE HATE that feeling. It makes me crazy. I screamed for her to stop but she said something about her having to do it so I had DH (DEAR, DEAR Husband) explain to her that I really meant it. Also, all the rubbing and the horrible disturbance it caused me (again, I shudder to think of it) distracted me from the business of birthing. I couldn't push while she was doing that. I couldn't at all. It was very counter productive. I was ready to kick her in the face. But I couldn't move my legs on my own and I don't think she would have happily helped me to do it. If any readers feel the same way about this, I would be happy to know that I'm not alone here.

To give her credit, this is a perfectly normal procedure for midwife to be doing and I'm probably the first person ever ever to tell her to stop. In fact, I was probably the first person in the hospital ever to be uncooperative during labor, so it stands to reason that she was doing what she was doing without any guilty feelings at all. She was actually pretty nice and respectful and definitely knew what she was doing. But at that moment, I hated her.

With that crisis over, I geared up once again for the Big Push. I pushed once, I pushed twice, I though to myself, 'push harder, let's get this over with!' and I gave it another huge push-- then I heard 'stop pushing!' I cant! I couldn't stop pushing remember, my body wasn't entirely in my controll. But it was all okay. A couple of seconds later I heard a cry and saw the midwife pulling the baby out and placing her on my chest.

I didn't have this pleasure with the birth of DS. His cominng-out was a lot more hectic and they took him straight to get weighed and measured and wrapped. I did get to hold him and feed him before they took him off to the nursery, but it wasn't immediate contact.

The first thing I noticed was how huge and heavy she felt, all curled up on my chest. To tell the truth, at that moment I was so weak that I don't think I would have been able to support a cup of coffee with my bare hands but I had a bed underneath me and holding me up so I was able to handle this little baby girl. I put my arm on her. She felt nice. I liked her. I got to hold her that way for a little bit and then they took her to clean and wrap her up. The midwife asked if I wanted to hold her again, but I told her that I didn't think I could.

It was time to deliver the placenta. I said no way. I can not push one more single thing out of me today. Let's do it tomorrow. But the midwife gave a big heave on my stomach (again, I wanted to slap her. Doesn't she know what I've just been through?) and with a few gentle pushes, I was able to get the thing out of me. They spread it out on the cart to get a look at it. It didn't look to me like you could tell anything from it, but what do I know?

At that point, I was shaking so hard I felt like I was riding a lawnmower. I was assured by various personel wandering through my room at that point that it was completely normal and not to worry. So I didn't worry but I did continue to shake. I also asked to be covered with a sheet. Just because I finished giving birth doesn't mean I want to sit around with my legs open for all the world to see. I don't care if they're doctors.

I can't remember if cutting the cord came before or after delivering the placenta. DH wanted to do it but I think he was also a bit weak and couldn't get a good grip on it with the scissors so he declined.

And then came the stitching up. I had a second degree tear. Whatever. It was superficial she said. Whatever. It was over. I consulted my watch. The whole thing, from the time of my arrival at the hospital, had taken under two hours. Under and hour forty-five. The baby had done her part, I had done mine, DH and midwife had done theirs. We had done well. We have a new daughter.

Off With My Rings

With apologies to my husband, I took off my wedding rings today. I usually don't like to take them off at all and leave them at home. I feel that they are safest when they are on my fingers. But lately I haven't been able to get them off and they're starting to irritate my fingers and leave indentations where the swelling has gotten to be too much. So this morning I realized I had just enough squeeze space to slip them off, and that's what I did with a touch of hand cream for lubrication. It's been a few hours but the indentation is still there.

I was worried that in a worst case scenario my fingers would really really swell or else I'd have to go to the hospital for some procedure and then it would really be a problem. I think I wore them through my last birth. I remember having difficulty removing them only towards the end of the pregnancy but even then it wasn't so bad.

DH made fun of me for apologizing to him over taking them off. He is not sentimental about things like this (though I'm sure he's glad I wear them on a regular basis.)

Flip Flop: Pregnancy Positions and Floor Avoidance

I'm not a big mover and shaker in bed. I'm also not someone who talks about my sex life so please don't misinterpret my words. What I mean is that I don't do a lot of flip-flopping in my sleep. However, I have been known to change positions over the course of a night.

Right now, and it has been this way for the past couple of months, probably-- ever since I got HUGE -- I can't simply roll from side to back to other side. Something about the slosh slosh of my belly prevents this from being a comfortable maneuver. In fact, I would say that most maneuvers are uncomfortable for me lately, but when turning over in bed involves waking up, sitting up, and then shifting my weight, the burden of it is a little more memorable.

I'm also dealing with maybe a tiny bit of nesting-- though you could also just call it the urge to pick up after my toddler and live in a reasonably neat house-- but it's too hard to pick things off the floor. I know this because it has just taken me a half hour to tidy up what should have taken about three minutes. And I'm still not done. I've been begging DH to recover things for me from under the couch for days now but he always finds excuses. In order for me to do it, I would have to actually lie down on my back, I think.

***Update**** He picked everything off the floor and out from under the couch when he got home.

Still, if i drop something, once it's on the floor it's pretty much lost to me. Oops. There goes my bobby pin-- I'll just get another. Spoon fell? The drawer is much higher than the floor. I'll get another from there. Even if the spoon is, say six feet (maximum-- I'm a tall girl) away from me and the drawer is farther than that. Then again, I don't like moving very much at all. Turning around in the car's passenger to look at DS in his carseat is something I've learned to avoid by just waving to him in the side-view mirror.

This too shall pass.

Third Trimester Waiting Game

The waiting game has begun. I'm not technically in the zone yet for giving birth-- that will come next week. But from this point forth, if the baby wanted out then nobody would try to stop it. I packed my bag. I'm making backup and more backup plans for child care while I'm in the hospital. And I'm waiting. I never actually went into labor last time because I was induced. On one hand, I want a quick labor like every normal person. On the other hand, I want a few hours warning so that I can take care of affairs before going to the hospital. There are some things you just can't do until the last minute.

2nd Baby: Prepared or Getting There

I was commenting to my husband last night on how NOT wierded out I am by the coming of this 2nd baby. This statement might sound contrary to what I've said in other postings, (also here and here)but in fact it's not. I have some anticipation about how the baby will fit in to our lives, especially for my DS. And I have these minor issues about the gender and about whether or not I will love it, but I know these things will be resolved when the baby is born... well, I'm counting on it, anyway.

My attitude towards the arrival of our second child is very matter-of-fact. Compare it to a summer vacation and knowing that in September I'll be in school and I have to make plans around that. We have some major moving and traveling coming up soon and we've had to take a newborn into account in our plans. This planning has been going on for months, so talking about having another baby is really feeling very natural. I'm also getting used to the name we're most seriously considering...

Pregnant with a Toothache

Painful, bleeding gums are common in pregnancy, but this is above and beyond. I am sure I have a really bad cavity or two and I am almost sure it's going to require some drastic dental work-- hopefully not a root canal! I'm really afraid of having any procedures done during while I'm pregnant and so I spoke to my OB during my visit last night. He basically said I should go for it and don't worry. If there are antibiotics involved, they will give me something appropriate. If there is an x-ray involved then they will cover me and especially my pregnant belly with a lead apron (I'm going to request three). If it requires local anesthetic, that's ok too... Not that I know what kind of dental work I'm in for, but at least his reassurance was soothing. He pointed out that there's no way I can wait two whole months to have this taken care of-- the pain has been keeping me up at night (occasionally.)

What a pain in the butt to get a dentist app on short term, though. Considering how popular they are, you'd think they were giving away balloons and toothbrushes (which they don't) instead of collecting significant dough for drilling in my mouth.
The thing I hate most about going to the dentist-- pregnant or not-- is having to keep my mouth open for a long time. It makes my skin feel all stretched out. I'll have to put on some heavy duty moisturizer.

Interestingly, my husband, who has been having a lot of pregnancy symptoms alongside me, is also having dental work done. I don't know if you can correlate his wisdom tooth extraction with whatever I am about to undergo, but it's definitely in keeping with the pattern of Couvade syndrome-- or sympathy pains felt by the husband.
Sigh.
Wish me luck!

The Ugly Walk

I discovered today that the pregnancy waddle is just the dingified version of the ugly walk. I was having sciatic pain, as I usually do when I've been sitting at my desk too long, and since nobody was watching, I lapsed into a shuffle-and-drag kind of walk as I was leaving for the day. Nobody was around to see me. However, usually when I'm wandering the corridors I'll do the waddle. It looks nicer-- more pregnant, less injured.

Raging Hormones? Maybe

I don't recall having much problem with the stereotypical raging hormones of a pregnant woman last time around. Except for when I went into labor --well, I was induced-- and something about that really knocked me off kilter. Maybe it was the fact that I was basically chained to the bed (I really wanted to be walking around) by the heart monitor on one side of me and the IV pole on the other. Maybe it was the whole drama of getting induced in the first place (I was still a week and a half shy of my due date but there was a bit of an emergency). Maybe it was all those things together. But at one point I looked up at the faces of the entire OB staff who had crowded into my room (naughty me for walking around and having the heart monitor slip off again) and started crying so hard that DH had to speak on my behalf. Then there was the incident in the hospital after the birth when I spent an entire morning crying, but that's a whole other story.

Today, however, I surprised myself by bawling my eyes out over a seemingly trivial incident. Nobody at DS's nursery had told me that they were having a harvest festival, that he was supposed to bring a basket of fruits and a pudding snack, that he was supposed to wear a white shirt. He was the only kid in blue. I don't know why but I care so much about these events. The staff could see that I was upset and they promised to dig up a shirt for him, to share fruits from other kids, and to provide him with pudding. I believed them. But still I had to run out of there before they could see my eyes filling with tears. Maybe it was my gratitude. Maybe it was the frustration I'd pent up over a traffic incident that happened on my way to drop him off. DH thinks that it was because I felt deprived of things as a child (I disagree). But in any case, by the time I got DH on the phone, I was a blubbering, snozzling, nose-blowing mess. I sat there on my cell phone (than God he was available) with the motor running for a full ten minutes-- I'm normally very careful not to talk for long on the phone so this is a big deal-- and still I didn't feel better. All the way to work I had tears running down my face. I finally allowed myself to acknowledge that perhaps I really just do feel strongly about holidays at nursery and not having him feel left out-- though as DH pointed out, he probably didn't even notice. He's really young. I even found pretense to call the nursery and see how things were going a while later. Well, I have to say, I can't attribute the whole incident to logic, therefore it must be at least partly hormonal-driven. I have succumbed. But at least I can recognize it.

Already Ahead of the Curve

I was just reading some forum postings about people whose ultrasounds don't necessarily correlate to how old they think the baby is, and I forgot until now that it's exactly what I thought at fist.

Apparently getting an ultrasound before 12 weeks is the very best way to measure the baby's age. Also, they count the weeks based on your period, which feels wrong but I guess turns out more or less right more or less of the time. I mean, so far things are staying on the track they told me I'd be on.

The Best and Worst Times To Shop

The worst time to go grocery shopping, as we all know, is when you're hungry. Hunger can cause you to make decisions that you wouldn't normally make at the supermarket. One solution to this problem, by the way, is to just open up a package of whatever the first thing is that you're craving and eat it right then and there (and of course pay for the package on your way out). Another way to avoid this problem is to carry a shopping list and stick to it. Easier said than done.

Now, the best time to go shopping is just after someone agrees with you when you complain that you've been putting on weight a little too quickly. In this case, it was my obstetrician. When I told him how much weight I gained (about 11 kilo or 23 lbs and I'm in the middle of my second trimester), he gave me a little smile and said "well, you're only supposed to go up about 13 kilos, so you don't have that much more to go." I don't think he meant it in an encouraging way.

I went to the grocery store immediately afterwords and bypassed the huge sale on store-brand canola oil (which was, in fact, on my shopping list) opting instead for the high quality, low retention, omega 3 enriched stuff. I also lingered by and then forewent the incredible sale on the juice I always drink, figuring that I'd be better off with water. But that compulsion only lasted a few more aisles. Then I stocked up. We can't serve ONLY water when we have guests, right?

I told DH about what happened and we talked a bit about BMI and what the numbers really mean. I told him that I'm just getting over the feeling of being fat. I think that my belly has grown a little but my weight remained stable, which has contributed to a somewhat more pleasing distribution of surface area on my body. And I don't REALLY look fat. My face hasn't exploded in roundness. Just a little. The thing about pregnancy is that you just never know. You never can tell what is due to overeating and what is just baby. So we go by the standards and the numbers and, depending on our personalities, we either forgive ourselves or we don't. (I'm of the first school, usually.) Time will tell if the weight gain was a healthy one or not. Or there are also some people whose bodies have a genetic tendency to spread and stay that way after childbirth. We shall see.

In any case, it's about three hours later and I'm sitting here, stuffing my face with marshmallows. I guess the diet was short lived, but at least I bypassed those brownies at the store.