Kicks, Weeks and Arbitrarily Assigned Gender

I call the baby "he". I don't know what it is, but I suspect it's a boy so I call it he. Plus, in our backwards patriarchal society, words like "he" and "him" are the default anyway. The main reason I suspect the baby is a boy, against all logic or reason, is that the close-up picture from the ultrasound looked sort of masculine to me. Yeah, I know. Even with skin, babies don't look masculine or feminine anyway, which is why any baby with short hair, no matter how many frills or ruffles it wears, gets called a boy by strangers. But still, I am somehow sure that this is a boy, just like I was ten years ago when I knew Ryan was a boy. She hates that story, by the way. So last night, lying in bed but not ready to fall asleep yet, Tom and I were talking and he had his big fat heavy hand on my belly and the baby was kicking him. Repeatedly. In the same exact spot, which is odd because it's usually not that predictable. But sadly, Tom couldn't feel even the hardest whacks from within. I'm forced to try to explain what it feels like to me so that maybe he can understand. Bubbles popping, so in that sense he feels like gas. Or you know when you get a muscle twitch but it's just in one spot, like one pinpoint jerking on your arm? It feels like that. But it's different, because with a muscle twitches you can flex the muscle to stop it, and with gas you can sort of feel it coming on, but this is so completely unconnected to you, because it's not your body doing it. It's someone else doing it so there's no warning and no flexing or moving to stop it either, not that I particularly want to stop it anyway.

On a side note, I am 140 days along now, exactly half way through my pregnancy. Twenty weeks, which I choose to view as five months, lunar calendar be damned, is a milestone. I get to turn to the next chapter in my copy of What To Expect When You're Expecting. It's a big day.

Names

We already have a boy name, but we're stuck on a girl name, including the spelling of one possibility, so we need help. Vote and let us know what you like. Also, comment here if you have ideas not on the list.

Caffeinated Fetus

I like the occasional coffee drink. Not black Folgers like my mother drinks all day, but a cappuccino or even just a flavored black coffee. I had made it known that I wanted an espresso machine with a frother for Christmas last year, before I knew I was pregnant and couldn't have all the caffeine, and I not only got one from Ryan but I also received a French press from my brother. Yesterday, in the mood for coffee and citing studies which state that a cup or two a day isn't bad enough to do damage to a fetus, I made a pot in the press. Since it's a 14 oz press, it only makes about a cup and a half of the smoothest Swiss almond chocolate coffee I have ever tasted. I made myself two pots, about 3 cups, which isn't that much for most people but for someone who hasn't had caffeine in about 4 months and whose pregnant body metabolizes it slowly, it was enough to leave me bouncing and vibrating all evening. And it got me my first kicks.

Yes, all it took was a massive overdose of caffeine and and what must have felt like an earthquake ridden womb, to get my baby kicking hard enough for me to feel it. All. Damned. Night. Also, unrelated to the kicking but certainly not to the coffee, I had some really strange dreams last night. Tom as a serial killer? I need to quit watching so much Dexter.

"....surrounded by alien milk people."

I suppose an update is in order, although I don't have much to say. I am still waiting to feel any kicking but I probably won't for another couple weeks yet. Sometimes I think there's something going on down there, and it doesn't always turn out to be bubbles, but I'm afraid I'm just trying too hard. Maybe it is fluttering, maybe it's my imagination. Either way, I'll feel kicks soon enough, and then Ryan and Tom can feel them too. On a funny note, I've started lactating and Tom is thoroughly disgusted. He's so cute when he's naive. He thinks he knows how these things happen and then something as silly as a little colostrum pops up and he's floored. I hope we have a boy and he lactates too. Tom will be convinced he's surrounded by alien milk people.

I Caved . . .

. . . and ate the hot dog. Sauerkraut, while still tasting primarily of vinegar and salt, is slightly more palatable if warmed in a frying pan with some garlic. Otherwise, just as disgusting and satisfying as it was the other night. This time, though, I used spicy mustard instead of yellow.

Alien Appetite

I have food cravings. For instance, I hate sauerkraut. Can't stand the stuff. And I don't eat hot dogs. I have no idea what they put in them but I have a friend who works at an Oscar Mayer plant and she tells me to avoid them. A couple nights ago I made Tom buy me hot dogs and sauerkraut in the middle of the night. I had visions of Chicago street vendors in my head and I cooked and ate the hot dog, piled high with kraut. The next day I woke up wondering what the Hell I'd been thinking. Tonight, I fight off the urge to go make myself another one. This baby is strange. Also, I think it looks like either a Roswell alien or the Grateful Dead lightning bolt skull. What do you think?

Hillary In A Different Light

In the beginning I just wondered about her electability. A lot of people still equate the name Clinton with secret blowjobs, and after almost 20 years of Clintons and Bushes I wondered if people didn't want a new name in town. Now, I just think she's kind of pissy.

Some MSNBC anchor accused the Clinton camp of pimping Chelsea out to the phone banks. Seem after months of keeping Chelsea out of the spotlight, she was making phone calls with the best of them trying to claim superdelegates and celebrity endorsements. Well Hillary took offense to the word "pimping" and turned away in a huff. She refuses to participate in any debates on MSNBC and won't even acknowledge an apology from the now-suspended anchor. Basically she took her ball and her bat and went home pouting. Also, she exposed a pretty big weakness to the world. Sure, I guess the guy was over the line, but in this world today, shit happens. And now Al-Qaeda knows that all they have to do is talk bad about her kid and Hillary will throw reason out the window. Fifty bucks says the first Bin Laden tape after the inauguration will, if Hillary's elected, mention Chelsea. And what do you want to bet it'll lead to some sore of military offensive, the likes of which she is campaigning against right now?

Also, after the Democratic party as a whole decided to penalize Michigan and Florida by not campaigning there and not accepting their delegates to the convention, after Hillary had been the only name on the democratic ballot in Michigan and was way in the lead in Florida, after polls showed Obama gaining on her, she decided to announce that it was patently unfair to ignore the votes of all of the democrats in Florida and Michigan. She asked that their delegates be counted and tried to make it out that Obama didn't care about the people and that only she thought every vote counted. Again, her name was the only one on the ballot in Michigan, and she had agreed to original plan in the beginning.

She's showing desperation, and she's not looking good. She's coming off as pouty and bitchy and even a little under-handed. Why can't she just give up and walk away like Romney did? Why can't she be the sore-loser/quitter like him? I like the idea of a close game, but she's really showing a bad side here. If I had been one of the people to vote for her early on, I'd want to change my vote.

If Only I were LITERALLY A Bitch

It's finally hit me. Two months after I peed on the stick and it told me the news, and then its sister confirmed it, I finally realize that I am having a baby. Maybe it was hearing the heartbeat for the first time or maybe it just took this long to sink in, but either way I have fully embraced my pregnant status. And so naturally, I am ready to get on with it. Where's my toeless view downward? Where's my kicking and my leaky boobs? Where's my false labor and then, at no doubt the worst possible time, my real labor? I'm ready to hurry this show up already!

It only takes 60 days for dogs to gestate. Why does it only take 2 months to make a puppy, or even to make six puppies, and it takes NINE months to make a human baby? Thumbs cannot possibly take seven months to produce! Dogs have better senses of hearing and smell than people and those miraculous systems only take 2 months from start to finish. And yet our inferior senses and our (ideally) far fewer nipples take SOOOOOO much longer to make. It's an inefficient system is what it is. Something should be done about it. I wonder who I file the complaint with.

One Day To Super Tuesday

Maria Shriver endorsed Barack Obama the other day. Her husband endorsed John McCain. Reminds me of my marriage, except that I don't know who Tom's rooting for. Sadly, I think he's so partisan that he doesn't even care until there's a democrat to beat. I don't think he gives a shit who the president is as long as it's a republican. I know he hates Hillary, as all white male republicans do, and I know he dislikes Obama for being a democrat. But I don't know who he favors in a Romney McCain race.

I hate Romney. He's too slick and too flip-floppy. He's a salesman, and a greasy one at that. Plus, I don't care what his religion is but he's too religious. It's probably a natural response to the criticism over the Mormon thing, but he runs too many "I have a deep and abiding faith in Christ" ads. And I think the God-crazy GOP president thing has kind of run its course already, don't you? But McCain I can stand. I mean he's a social nightmare, but he's the only GOP candidate who is against torture. I know, it's sad when being against torture is even note-worthy let alone a breakout position, but Romney mentioned Jack Bauer in a debate once. I've heard McCain say what I've been thinking for years. Stop talking about the other side. Stop comparing our "mild" torture to what they do in Iraq. The fact is, we're supposed to be better than them and the proud history of America was not built on torturing POWs. We are better than that, and we have to remember it.

It used to be that torture was something that the other side did, and that our brave soldiers were strong enough to endure when they could and if they couldn't they were fallen heroes . Torture was an act of unspeakable horror inflicted by an evil enemy. We might make our POWs work, but we did NOT torture them. We had a line that we as Americans were too honorable to cross, and the fact that we didn't sink to their level was a source of pride. Now, with our outsourced torture and the waterboarding, what pride is there left to have? And when you think about the "intense interrogation techniques", why did the government even bother to disavow those guards in Guantanamo Bay? All they did was take pictures and strip people naked and pose them. It's not like they were pretending to drown them, making them fear for their life or anything.

I really really hope Obama wins the nomination and then the presidency. But if we have to get stuck with another GOP president then McCain would be best. At least I won't cry for the future if I hear he won like I did after the last election.

From A Pregnancy Web Board

I found this on a pregnancy board and thought it would be perfect. I'm not posting it here to direct it at anyone, just so people can read it and get a chuckle.

10 things to remember when you are not the pregnant one....

1. The appropriate response to a couple telling you they are having a baby is "Congratulations" with enthusiasm. Any other response makes you a jerk.

2. Through the wonders of science, we now know that babies are made ONLY by the mother and father- not grandparents. Unless the baby is in your uterus, or you are the man who helped put it there, you may not ever use the phrase "my baby"

3. On the same note, unless you made the baby as defined in #2, the pregnancy, birth and the raising of the child are not about you. You do not have input. No one wants to hear your opinion unless they ask for it.

4. The body of a pregnant woman should be treated the same as any other body. You would not randomly touch someones stomach if they were not pregnant, nor would you inquire into the condition of their uterus, cervix or how they plan to use their breasts. Pregnancy does not remove all traces of privacy from a woman.

5. Likewise, no woman wants to hear comments on her weight- ever. A pregnant woman does not find it flattering that you think she is about to pop, must be having twins, looks swollen or has gained weight in her face. Telling her she looks too small only makes her worry that she is somehow starving her baby. Making such comments invite her to critique your physical appearance and you may not act offended. The only acceptable comment on appearance is "You look fabulous!"

6. By the time we are 20-30 years old, most of us have picked up on the fact that summer is hot. We are hot every summer when we are not pregnant. We don't need you to point out that we will be miserably bot before the baby comes.

7. There is a reason that tickets to labor and delivery are not yet sold on ticketmaster. Childbirth is actually not a public event. It may sound crazy, but some women really do not relish the idea of their mother,mother in law, or a host of other family members seeing their bare butt or genitals. Also, some people simply feel like the birth of their child is a private and emotional moment to be shared only by the parents.

8. Like everything else in life, unless you receive an invitation you are not invited. This includes doctor appointments, ultrasounds, labor, delivery, the hospital and the parents' home. You do not decide if you will be there for the birth or if you will move in with the new parents to "help out". If your assistance is desired, rest assured that you will be asked for it.

9. If you are asked to help after the birth, this means you should clean up the house, help with cooking meals, and generally stay out of the way. Holding the baby more than the parents, interfering with breastfeeding and sleeping schedules and making a woman who is still leaking fluid from various locations lift a finger in housework is not helping.

10. The only people entitled to time with the baby are the parents. Whether they choose to have you at the hospital for the birth or ask you to wait 3 weeks to visit, appreciate that you are being given the privilege of seeing their child. Complaining or showing disappointment only encourages the parents to include you less.

Why Tom's Not Invited To Lamaze

Tomorrow is my first obstetrician appointment. If I remember from 10 years ago, I will sit in a waiting room for forty-five minutes and then spend 10 minutes in a room with a desk talking to a nursing student named Tiffany about what to expect and how to take my vitamins. Oddly enough, I would prefer an introductory pelvic exam from the doctor I'm going to be charged for seeing anyway.

It occurred to me today that when this child goes off to college Tom and I will be, respectively, 58 and 50. Midlife crisis time. Tom will want to leave me for an eighteen year old woman. This means that I could conceivably walk into the doctor's office tomorrow and sit down next to my husband's future mother-in-law. If Tom, like more and more men before him, decides to leave his ageing wife for a woman the age of his own child, there is a women somewhere right now pregnant with my replacement. I will never be able to look at other women in the diaper aisle the same way again.

Oh look, I'm carrying his baby and I'm already hating my gestational replacement. Are there no limits to the depth of my insecurity?

A Really Crappy Weight Loss Plan

Ahhh, the nausea is gone. Almost three months along, my first ob appointment in less than a week, and I can finally eat without puking. Sadly, though, I can't eat.

I had forgotten this little pregnancy joy, or at least the severity of it. I have no appetite. None. Like, you know when you're not hungry and you look at food, how nothing looks good? Well I can be all shaky and have low blood sugar and stuff, and I know I need to eat, but nothing looks good. And then if I eat more than a few bites I get queasy. Not nauseous, but just really really turned off from eating any more. I'm supposed to gain a pound a month, and I can't even eat as much as I was eating on my diet! Prepare for more doctor lectures. How can I lose my entire appetite? Is it hormonal? Is it pressure against my stomach from a tipped and swelling uterus? Is it a manifestation of a deep-seated fear of weight gain? And if it's the last one, why didn't it help with the dieting three months ago?

The Ex Files

Imagine Britney Spears just keeps doing stupid shit, just making the same mistakes over and over again. Imagine it's crotch-shots and bad driving and head shaving for the next five years. Muffin tops and car accidents and rehab and hospital stays and non-stop visitation hearings. And then imagine that she calls you, and asks for help. She doesn't know why people don't like her, what's she doing wrong? But she says she doesn't drink too much, and it's no one's business what she wears or how she drives, and people just don't understand her, and she gets defensive. And imagine that every time she calls you she is drunk and you are busy.

That's why I don't talk to my latest ex-boyfriend. And yes, I am aware that that makes me a bitch.

There But For The Grace Of God Go I

You know that guy who tries too hard to be a badass? He tries to grow a goatee but ends up with only a few dozen scraggly hairs on his chin, and then lets them grow too long like he's starring in a all white-boy punk kung fu movie. He wears his hat pulled low like a gangster but he'd pee his pants if someone got out of the car to bitch at him in traffic. He wears baggy pants and struts like he's all that, but he has to constantly hitch up his pants while he walks and he wears boxer-briefs, or just briefs, instead of boxers. In short, he's a loser and that's all he'll ever be and he doesn't impress anyone and he just doesn't get it.

That's my ex. One of them anyway. But he's the one who, after not seeing his daughter in two years, sent me a text message in the middle of the night reading "Tag your it". That's right, he misspelled you're.

Every time I read about some punk kids breaking into a store and getting locked in, or a would-be robber getting beat up by an old lady, I think of him. Not that he's a criminal, just that he's that pathetic. He changed his brakes one time and forgot to go back around the lug nuts after the first pass of every other one and his front tires rolled off the car as he pulled away from a traffic light two blocks from his house. His battery died once with the power windows down and he locked the car to keep anyone from stealing his stereo.

In my defense, I had low standards and self-image problems when I got pregnant. But since I'm an all-around fantabulous gal, I wonder why it is that us hot brainy types sometimes end up with losers. I mean, why do we settle? Thank god I outgrew it. Why do the biggest losers, in jail or on probation for the stupidest things, have the hottest girlfriends? The thirty year old pizza boys, the garage band dreamers living in Mom's basement ten years after graduation, the single guys who go to the food pantry. How do they get women at all, let alone decent women? It must be pheromones.



And yes, I am hot. There's no picture on this page so you can't disprove it. And no leaving comments with links to pictures. I have to approve your comments and those won't make it.

Toes, already.

Okay I hate the pregnancy counters. Apparently I am two to three weeks farther along than I thought, because my pregnancy started before I got pregnant. What, you think that makes no sense? Well let me explain it to you.

Since most people don't have the luxury of being able to narrow the date of conception down to a couple days like I do (since Tom's only home a few days a month) it seems that the medical community has decided to date pregnancy from the beginning of a woman's last period. So even though I've only been pregnant since Thanksgiving (about 7 weeks), I am somehow ten weeks along. Also, by this screwed up logic, I have been four weeks pregnant at the beginning of every period since puberty, since it is now medically accepted that a woman can be two weeks into her pregnancy before the egg is fertilized. See? I was two weeks pregnant when I got pregnant!

So now instead of being only seven weeks pregnant, as in "Oh my god I'm almost two months along," I'm almost into my second trimester already. Suddenly the chapters I've been reading and the animated development calendars I've been googling are all wrong. And my due date: off by a week. Odd that it's only a week, but what the hell!

I do not need this, not when I'm this moody. Suddenly I have toes in my uterus, toes that were two weeks away from forming yesterday.

Jesus is the shiznit

The local evangelical uberchurch in town, which thinks it's more important than it is and has a freaking billboard out front on which it puts pithy little messages, apparently loves da gangsta speak. The sign now says:

New Year's Resolution: Increase prayer, Speak sofly, Know Jesus

I can't help it. I don't like the church and its focus on conversion rather than actually being a good person, so I mock its spelling errors. Every time I drive by I am compelled to speak urban street slang. "Yo yo yo! I be down wit da brotherman Jesus cuz I be speakin SO FLY!" "Dat be whack, homeboy! Da man upstairs be havin MY back cuz I speak so fly. Word."

Spellcheck is going to love this post. And I am going to go to Hell.

Caucus Schmaucus

I have voted in three presidential elections in my life, which is to say that I've voted in every one I was old enough to vote in. I have only helped elect the president once, because in the other two he was alternatively nominated by the Supreme Court, and elected by the evangelical theocrat populace. But oh well, why harp on it? It's not like he's gotten us caught up in a quicksand war in the Middle East or ruined our credibility with the rest of the world or anything. Oh wait....

Anyway, each election I vote in, and even the one before them which I sort of did vote in if you count a junior high mock election, I learn a little more about the process. I have learned a lot more about politics since marrying a Republican, though. (Interfaith marriages really test your faith.) But caucuses are, I'm sorry, a concept I just can't wrap my mind around. I understand primaries. You go to the polling place, declare your party-line preference, and then go vote on either a Republican or Democratic ballot and walk out with a little "I Voted" sticker. Primaries make sense to me. But caucuses are weird, like some 18th century holdover from before the concept of voting privacy became popular. I actually wonder if maybe the little voting booths in Iowa don't even have curtains. The idea of standing around for hours being forced to listen to speeches, and then raising your hand and being counted that way seems, seems, well it seems like the absolute perfect way to ensure low turn-out. Who wants to get packed into a room to listen to a last minute attempt to sway your vote? Isn't there actually a law that says people can't try to sway your vote within so many feet of a voting booth? But then again, a caucus doesn't have voting booths, and I may be thinking of an Illinois law.

I wonder why states with caucuses don't switch to primaries. Admittedly, I don't understand the caucus system so I don't know anything about it except that it has notoriously low turnout and that yesterday's caucus gave Obama what I personally hope is a great edge over the competition. But still. In a little over a year I am supposed to move to the Omaha, Nebraska area, which lies on the Iowa border. I now have one more factor to consider when deciding which side of the border to buy a house on. On the other hand, I would sit through a caucus if I had to, but I don't think Tom would. Maybe living in Iowa could save the country from one more Republican vote.

I hate my gynecologist

I do not like my gynecologist. He's never missed a big problem or pushed for unnecessary procedures or anything big like that, he's just....condescending. He has kind of a "I can't be bothered to dumb this down for you right now, I'm a busy man so just take my word for it, everything's fine" vibe that rubs me the wrong way. I like doctors who explain things to me, who don't lord it over me that they have medical degrees and I don't. And if there's one time in my life when I don't need to feel patronized and barely tolerated if not resented, it's when I'm in the stirrups. But since I can get my paps from my nurse practitioner here in town, who I absolutely love, I never worried much about shopping around for a gynecologist. Until now. Now I have a very limited period of time in which to try to find a doctor I am willing to trust with my unborn child's health and/or survival.

I didn't have this problem when I was pregnant ten years ago. There was one obstetrician who saw patients here in town (nearest hospital with a maternity ward is fifteen miles away) and he turned out to be perfect. He was personable without being unprofessional and he put me at ease. And then he moved to Dekalb. So that left only three other doctors at the clinic, none of which was willing to drive all the way to my little pissant town. But then one of them left. So now there are two. And I really have to hope that the one I know nothing about is taking new patients AND isn't an asshole.

Never again will I have a gynecologist I don't like. From now on it's only the cream of the gynecological crop for me. I henceforth shall demand perfection with a speculum! Either that or I have approximately seven and a half months to convince my nurse practitioner to take extra classes, get her through the classes, and license her with a hospital.

New Year's Eve Eve

Pregnant on New Year's. And Tom's back on the road. What's a girl to do?

So Ryan and I are having a party, a VERY exclusive and formal party. We are going to drink fake wine and get fake drunk and wake up the next morning with fake hangovers. We'll probably spend the whole night listening to her new Hannah Montana CD and playing giant checkers on a rug. And next year we'll do the same thing, but I'll try to sleep on the couch between moves and we'll keep the music down so the baby can sleep.

I love motherhood, but I got to admit the New Year celebrations are pretty tame.

Christmas Eve Eve

Ahhh. Christmas Eve Eve. Today is the day of my extended family's holiday celebration, which means that Mom will pick up Ryan and take her while Tom and I stay here and avoid my extended family. It's what the holidays are all about.

My family is a lot like the character list of Soap, with some Knots Landing thrown in for good measure. My grandmother you've already been told about but in case you missed that post, imagine Bev from "Roseanne" in Kurt Vonnegut's body. Then there's my uncle the religious freak and his 5 daughters. The oldest three are religious freaks like their dad, but with tattoos they think no one knows about, and the youngest two are adopted foster kids who keep getting arrested and are on a distinctly Spears-Lohan life path. My aunt, the socialite, was living in a swamp in Louisiana with her carnival worker husband when I was born, but then she married her divorce lawyer and he became a judge and she got a big house on a hill with a pool and now she thinks she's Martha Freaking Stewart or something even though her son did time in Leavenworth for manufacturing crystal meth in his dad's minivan. But her grown kids live in nice houses with nice things because she buys them for them. And in this big jumbled heap of family, I am the black sheep. Drug addictions, federal prison sentences, stints in rehab, none of these things is enough to bring any of my cousins down to my level. So I avoid the whole shebang.

I used to go to family Christmas. I would spend the whole night on my aunt's porch smoking with my uncle's wife and my aunt's husband. Sure, every once in a while Grandma would come shuffling in looking for whatever small child had run away from her that time, but for the most part is was just us smokers. But my uncle by marriage died, and my aunt by marriage left her fire-and-brimstone husband, I quit smoking, and the party this year is at my grandmother's small house, with nowhere to hide. So rather than go and try not to defend the woman I still consider to be my aunt to a house full of her ex-in-laws, I will hide like the coward that I am. Also, my cousin Dana is pregnant too, due one month earlier than me, and I don't want to face the comparisons.

But maybe I should go, since Tom is in town and I'm going to spend Christmas Day with his family. It's only fair that he spend today with my family, right? We'll see.