The Weekly Slug: 26 weeks (I think)

As for names, thank you very much for all the suggestions. My husband got a kick out of it. We've narrowed it down to two names, and we just keep trying them over and over. Each is from one of our families. He likes the one from my family, I like the one from his, go figure. But I think we feel better about the whole thing now.

I can't remember how pregnant I am anymore by the calendar. This is information you're supposed to have at the front of your head at all times so that people know. But I can't remember whether I'm at 25 weeks? 27? 28? Does that mean I'm 6 months pregnant? Or in the 6th month? Is this my last trimester yet? Thank goodness for pregnancy websites that utilize cookies.

There is an issue I became aware of this past week that scared the heebie-jeebies out of me. Though everyone expects everything to go as planned with their labor and delivery, I realized this rarely happens. This includes me. In case you're just tuning in, my OB wants to perform a cesarean at 37 weeks or so in order to reduce any risk of uterine rupture caused by natural labor and delivery. This didn't come as a shock when I got pregnant; I knew this was going to be the case after my last surgery to remove fibroid tumors.

Speaking of fibroid tumors, those bitches are a pain in the ass. I really am going to call my reproductive endocrinologist this week and invite her to come see me when our daughter is born. Then I'll ask her when I can schedule another visit with her to examine how bad the situation has gotten. Every time I have any kind of significant digestion movement down there, there's this excruciating pain in exactly the same place. Ugh.

Back to the idea of a planned birth. It occurred to me that women go into pre-term labor, and because I have fibroids, my odds are higher than average. Even if it's not pre-term, I might go into labor before a scheduled c-section. So then what happens? This isn't my first baby; it's not like I expect this to take 10 or 20 hours. Is it possible I could arrive at the hospital fully dilated and ready to give birth? What does that do to the risk of uterine rupture? More importantly, what does that mean for me actually having to go through child birth again???!?!?!? I'd like to pretend I'm some kind of superwoman who wouldn't be fazed in the least by such a situation, but the truth is, it terrifies me. My birth with Grace was traumatic. It's true; as time passes, you tend to forget how awful it was. But really, it was bad. It was induced, so I don't know much of the difficulty was due to overly severe contractions. But doing it over again really scares me to death. I'm not good with relaxation techniques and lots of pain. Grace emerged from my body as I was puking green vomit. When they asked me whether dad or mom wanted to see and hold her first, I felt barely conscious enough to even parse the question.

So then I started thinking this week, ok, no problem, I'll just enroll me and my husband in a childbirth class and then we'll be prepared no matter what situation presents itself. I did this before when I was pregnant with Grace, and though it had very little good effect on my actual childbirth with her, it made me feel less anxious. But going this route has its emotionally negative repercussions too. We're going to spend 4-6 classes learning all about natural childbirth, getting all geared up for such an eventuality, buying into all the reasons why it's the most wonderful thing in the world...and then what? Have a cesarean? It's bad enough I'm suffering from clinical depression (oh yes, I am, more on that another time); do I really need to throw ANOTHER curve ball into this whole thing that will cause more stress?

I feel like I'm in some kind of a pregnancy and childbirth catch-22, like no matter what I do something won't go right. I'm seeing the obstetrician tomorrow, so you bet there will be a lot of questions about 'what should we do now?'

Help me....

More unexpected news. Well, at least coming from me, it is.

I started this calendar year by throwing you all for a loop and announcing I was pregnant. That was such unexpected news, given my previous constant rantings about having only one child, a teenager, and you all have been great with that change in tone of my blog.

And then shortly thereafter I started in on my two month or so rant about Grace's diagnosis with ADD and what all that meant for her medically and at school and beyond. Again, you all were great. You gave me so much encouragement and advice.

So it seems I have come to another completely unexpected turn in my life. Most likely, for Grace's sophomore year of high school next year, we'll be doing homeschooling.

No, really. I'm not kidding.

I've never even considered doing this before, much less actually plan to do it and go through with it.

Just call me Dr. Homeschooling Mom.

It's a long explanation, and one that's worth dishing out. If this actually goes through, I'll fill you in when the details are settled. If it doesn't work out, I'll still give you the abbreviated explanation.

As you can imagine, any thoughtful advice is welcome and sought out by me at this juncture.

The midwest and parenting

I'm blogging at Midwest Parents today. I got my fill of frustration about summer plans and vented it all over there. So head over there!

Trolling about

I have a troll. Not here. The trolls have not cruised my blog. No, I have a friend on facebook who is a troll.

The funny thing is, I don't think he knows what it means for me to say he is a troll.

He's the husband of an old friend of mine, a friend I'd rather do without. The last time I had any communication with her, this is what I wrote. Since then I've had a surgery, sold one house and bought another, moved, and gotten pregnant. None of this seemed like something I wanted to share with her. I hope that all of you out there reading are coming to the same conclusion I am: there is no friendship left there.

So back to the trolling husband. He's not a loser, quite the opposite. He's someone who's had life delivered on a silver platter to him, and he likes to think of himself as better than others. He's well educated, comes from a wealthy family, and has settled into quite a comfortable life for himself and his wife and children. Everything is great. Except his personality. He's one of those people who is arrogant to a fault. He sees no reason to be compassionate.

On facebook, I am somewhat cautious with my public comments. The people I want to keep up with are disparate, to say the least. They range from my daughter and a few of her friends to my mother and sisters to friends of my husband that I know only through work to radical bible thumping conservative Christians to radical leftist ACLU-supporting liberals. There's a certain balance I want to maintain in an image that all of these people see publicly. What I say in more homogenous circles to them may be more expressive and opinionated, but I am somewhat cautious in the larger light that is my public facebook image.

Yesterday, when I heard about the decision of the California Supreme Court to uphold the decision of the voters on Proposition 8, I posted the following status message on Facebook:

"Will the state of California recognize same-sex marriages that were performed in other states like Massachusetts or Connecticut?"

It was actually a genuine question. I wasn't fishing for comments or trying to stir up controversy. The only comment came from the husband of my not-really-a-friend:

"Is this an issue for you and your husband?"

*sigh* Like I said, trolling. More unfortunate, it reveals a sad truth about his values system. Don't stand up for the rights of someone unless you personally stand to lose something.

I couldn't let the comment stand unanswered. I added the comment,

"On many counts, no, but it is a relevant question for other people I know."

It's also a relevant question for people I don't know. It is a relevant question period.

The only thing left to do, I resolved, is to add the application "Send Trolls" and send this guy an orange baby troll. Then I'll modify my facebook settings so he and his wife, my not-really-a-friend, will have a unique group of their own, "trolls," in which they can see very little about me and have no permissions to comment.

Allergies and more

Everyone has some allergic reaction to something. Whether it's mild irritation from a mosquito bite or something far more serious like severe anaphylactic shock by merely breathing in the vapors of some allergen, we've all experienced this to some extent. I fall on the more severe side of this spectrum. I have been treated by an allergy specialist since I was 9-years-old and carry an arsenal of prescription medications with me at all times JUST IN CASE. I have had my share of experiences where I realized I was allergic to the hotel room I had just laid down to sleep in, the laundry detergent someone had used on their towels, the birds that had just been newly introduced to the home, or the chocolate brownies with peanut sprinkles that I had just greedily consumed.

I am sympathetic and empathetic to people suffering from allergy symptoms. Granted, it makes me a little crazy when people try to medicate severe allergies with over the counter drugs and then complain that it's your cat or your house that's the problem, but I can still empathize with them over the symptoms...and encourage them to see their physician to find a better way to manage their symptoms.

My daughter Grace does not have allergies to speak of. I am elated. Given all my problems with allergies and the role family history can play in one's likelihood of having allergies, I am overwhelmingly joyful that she never has to deal with these things. She gets a mosquito bite and she barely even notices. She can play with dogs and cats and horses and birds and do so outdoors in a meadow with tons of pollen floating about her, all while eating peanuts and chocolate and never have the slightest hint of a physical irritation from any of it.

Which is why it always throws me for a loop when she's sick and someone tells her she's having allergy symptoms.

Yesterday Grace came home from her father's house at 6:30p. She was clearly congested. Not coughing, no sore throat, not even sneezing, just a stuffed up nose. I asked her how long she had been sick. She said she wasn't sick, she had allergies, she had taken allergy medicine the day before that her father had given her, she felt better, and there was nothing to worry about. Huh? This isn't the first time this has happened. Maybe I'm arrogant, maybe I'm pious, maybe I just assume everyone has as much experience with allergies as I do...but isn't it obvious that a kid with no allergy history doesn't have allergies? And that someone who doesn't have allergies is actually catching a cold when they show cold symptoms?

I gave her a mild decongestant before she went to bed; she felt fine this morning. Before I gave her the medicine though, I explained to her that having allergies is not something that comes and goes. An allergic reaction is one that comes quickly and you can usually identify the allergen. I also explained to Grace that the most important thing when taking over the counter medicine is to take the medicine that is appropriate for what you are suffering from, not just one that seems to make you feel a little better. Sure, when you're catching a cold, an antihistamine will make you feel better because you'll get drowsy. But your congestion won't be alleviated. Sure enough, more than 24 hours after she had taken the allergy medicine (whatever it was), she was still pretty congested and I couldn't see evidence that it was getting any better.

As always, you can imagine that there's a bigger picture here that's eating at me. Two things bother me about this. The first is stupid medicating of children. Grace's father's family thinks all illness begins in allergies and that Benadryl is a cure-all. This follows from nothing I know about health care unless you have been diagnosed with allergies. Which none of them have been. And as far as I can tell, none of them really suffer from allergies of any kind. But that sore throat? Guzzle down some Benadryl. Same for a fever or stuffed up sinuses. Even if you've accepted that you have a cold, take some Benadryl too, 'cause it can't hurt you. (Do you feel sorry for the kids in this family yet?) It just makes me crazy that the simple difference between an allergic reaction and genuine cold symptoms are so poorly misunderstood. And all of these adults have enough education and resources to know better. None of them have ever been without health care.

The second half of this that makes me crazy is not unique to the "allergies vs. cold" dilemma. It's Grace's willingness to defend something that her father and his family does. She insisted with me that she was feeling better after taking the allergy medicine a day before, even though she clearly was still having cold symptoms. She said the medicine her father gave her worked. I explained that a medicine that makes you drowsy will probably make you feel a little better if you are ailing, but it won't treat the root of the problem. There's more to this story that I'll not bore you with, but the troublesome part to me is that she absolutely defends these actions to her own detriment. If we wanted to paint the situation black and white, you could say that when a situation arises in which Grace's father and I disagree on how something should be handled, Grace defends her father's actions every time. Even when she's sitting in front of me congested for the fourth day in a row.

I was thinking last night, though Grace and I have a very different storyline to our childhoods, I can relate to her on one thing: I trust my father. When he says something, I think he's right. This is putting it simply; of course I differ with him on various things now that I'm an adult. But when I was 15, I would have trusted his opinion on almost anything, despite having no real evidence that his opinions were valid or defensible. So Grace is just doing the same thing I did, and that I suppose that many kids do. When your father tells you something, you believe it. If your mother tells you your father is incorrect, you defend him and tell your mother she is mistaken, not your father.

That's all I can say about this now. There's so much more brewing in the back of my mind about how much I worry about Grace when she's with her father. It's petty and boring to list out my concerns. I think it's easier to summarize it all and say, I'm tired of having to hand the reins over to someone that I don't trust has her best interests in mind.

The Weekly Slug: 25 weeks

I need some help, y'all. Those of you who read my blog are a pretty smart bunch. Clever, witty, far more entertaining than I'll ever be. So here goes.

We are stumped for a second name for our girl-to-be coming sometime in mid-August. We have gone through more names than you can imagine. It's getting ridiculous. So I'm charging you all with the challenge to help me think of a name. Generally speaking, your choices are broad. You can go for English/Irish/Scottish names or venture into names from any of the Romance languages (e.g., French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Latin). German names are up for consideration too. But we're not stopping there. If you think of a Russian name or Swahili name that you think is just groovy, send it along to me. Really the only parameter I can definitely throw out there is that we're not wanting to go for something too exotic or outside of our cultures, so Barack (or Baracka?) isn't really something we'd consider.

I know this would easier if you had all the other names this girl will get (first, mom's and dad's surnames), but my good bloggy friend Baby? Maybe. (Or Maybe Not.) strictly admonished me in comments a few weeks back to keep the first name hush-hush. So I'm on the down low with that 411. But I could be persuaded over email to reveal the first name just as long as you don't post it here in comments.

Below are listed names that are taboo due to unfortunate people in the past associated with them. My apologies if one of the names listed is your own. I promise you, it's not on the list because of you, but rather because it belongs to someone else who is yucky and who's only good quality is sharing a name with you.

Janine, Jeannie, Janet, Jenna, etc
Amy
Rebekah/Rebecca
Ruth
Michaela/Mikayla
Francis/Francisca

We also don't want names that are too overused, like:

Emma
Emily
Hannah
Anna
Sophia/Sofia

One other consideration. Generally speaking, there's a ton of names that start with "L" that we really like. Unfortunately none of them work due to the tongue-twister they create when combined with the first name. So no Lori, Lauren, Lana, Lucifer...hey, how did that one get in there?

I think that gives you enough ideas. Please send me your ideas. I don't care how many you send. I'm just so sick of googling "baby name meaning 'not a troublemaker' starting with B" and then bombarding my husband with, "Barbara? Barbie? Beatrice? Belinda? Belissima? Benita? Bernadette?..."

Thank you, thank you all. I appreciate you very much. I appreciate you helping me keep my sanity on this one.

Me, as described by my teenage daughter

A few months ago, a friend of mine on facebook tagged me on a question series for moms. I have grown a little weary of reading these things by other people and I am far too private to consider actually doing them myself. But this one looked like fun. Since Grace went along with the whole thing gleefully, I'm posting it here for fun.

The idea behind this thing is that you ask your child a bunch of questions about you, their mom, and they get to supply the answers unedited. I think the original intent of this thing was to get cutesy answers from preschoolers. You know, like asking how old your mom is or how tall she is? When I got it, I couldn't help but get Grace to answer it. I thought the perspective of a teenager would give the set of questions a new life. I was happy to tag all my friends who also had teenagers in the house. The result was that the early childhood cutesiness and love of mom was warped into something a little twisted, but still full of love for mom. Also, I love that Grace and I did this whole thing through messaging on facebook. Seriously, we never spoke a word about it to each other in person until the text was posted.

I give it to you all for fun. If you want to try it yourself (and haven't done this yet), just ask your kid the questions and write them down exactly how they respond. Grace told me I could put it up on facebook, so long as I did NOT change her answers. Too funny.

Without further ado, here it is as originally published.

-------------------

by Grace, 181 months (heh, heh. I love that I'm still saying how many months old she is)

1. What is something mom always says to you?
"What's your goal Grace?"

2. What makes mom happy?
Chocolate, a happy house

3. What makes mom sad?
bad grades

4. How does your mom make you laugh?
i dunno... i'm just a laughable person XD

5. What was your mom like as a child?
smart... she still is smart

6. How old is your mom?
37

7. How tall is your mom?
5 something

8. What is her favorite thing to do?
read, facebook, be with family and friends

9. What does your mom do when you're not around?
work... the usual

10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for?
being fabulous!!!!!

11. What is your mom really good at?
being a mom!!!!!

12. What is your mom not very good at?
singing

13. What does your mom do for her job?
she's a linguist

14. What is your mom's favorite food?
chocolate!!!!!!

15. What makes you proud of your mom?
she's MY mom

16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be?
i dunno, i don't think as my mom as a cartoon type.

17. What do you and your mom do together?
watch movies

18. How are you and your mom alike?
we both play musical instruments.

19. How are you and your mom different?
she's heather, i'm grace... enough said

20. How do you know your mom loves you?
she says "I LOVE YOU." it's pretty self-explanatory
(I have to interject here, I wish you could hear her say this. The capital letters and the period are intended to convey a tone of sarcasm, as in, 'duh, what a stupid question!')

21. Where is your mom's favorite place to go?
she likes to travel in general.

---------------

Hold on, hang in there.

Here is a quote from a woman I consider to be my hero, Amelia Earhart. I have held onto this quotation for years now, always finding it to concisely convey an ounce of truth not often found elsewhere. Today it brings me to tears, due to issues I won't disclose here. But perhaps it will also speak to someone else out there, so I decided to share it.

"The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.”

Amelia Earhart (1897-1937)

Letting the girl handle things

Grace spends every other weekend with her father. On Mondays that follow weekends she has NOT spent with him, she is scheduled to see her father for a few hours in the evening. We have a mutual agreement that he'll communicate with me by Friday afternoon/evening his plan for Monday. If there's no contact, there's no visit.

Last Monday night she visited with him according to their Monday-night schedule for the first time in several months. This is the story of how it went down.

No word was heard from him by the Friday before or throughout the weekend. No mention of the visit was made in our house. On Monday morning, about 10a, I got this email:

Heather,
I realized on the way into work this morning that I had not called this weekend to confirm plans to pick up Grace after school for dinner tonight. I apologize. At this point I am not sure what to do or how to follow up with Grace. I would still like to pick her up to come over to visit. But I guess I should ask if this still works for you following the weekend. As well, how can I contact her to let her know that I will get her from school? Again sorry for the confusion. Thanks for your help.

Hm. What to do, what to do, what to do.

It seemed like a step up from earlier weeks he missed in that at least an apology was included and the message came before 4p on Monday. Still, Grace was at school and I wasn't going to interrupt her school day to send her a message that her father would pick her up from school when he got off work and just to wait for him.

I replied to him that Grace usually called me after her after school activities were finished to ask when I would be picking her up. I would tell her then that she should wait for him. He sent a "thank you" and said he would be there at 5p (school is dismissed at 2:45p).

4:15p. My cell phone starts ringing. The call reads "Home."

I answered the call and got Grace, happy as a clam, telling me that she and her friend had come home together. It was at that moment that I decided to put the whole wrench in the works into Grace's hands and let her decide what she wanted to do.

"Did you think about seeing your father today at all?" I asked. She told me that because she hadn't heard from him, she figured not. She would like to see his family and all because she hadn't seen them in awhile, but there wasn't any plan.

I told her about the email correspondence in the morning and her father's subsequent plan to pick her up at school. She apologized for coming home early, explaining that she didn't know. I told her no apology was necessary; she didn't do anything wrong. Grace said she would call him so he wouldn't worry about her when he couldn't find her at the school. I asked her to call me back afterward.

When she called back, her tone of voice had changed. He apparently couldn't make it to the house by 5p, even though he had said he could pick her up at school by that time. Note, 5p at school would have been an hour of waiting for her after all her afterschool activities were done. She said fine, but told him that she would like him to buy her dinner out. And then she told me, 'he's going to make this up to me.'

I went home shortly thereafter and Grace was still at home waiting for her father. At 5:10p, she decided to start practicing her viola. When he rang our doorbell at 5:45p, she was still practicing and didn't stop. I answered the door, then told him to wait while I went to tell her he was there. When I came to where she was practicing, she acted as if she didn't know he was there and as if she had forgotten he was coming. She gathered her things slowly and took her time going downstairs.

Hm.

When she returned that evening at 8:30p, I asked her if she had gotten what she wanted for dinner. She answered with a steely, 'yes.' I told her sarcastically that next time she should ask for college tuition rather than settle for the small potatoes of fast food for dinner. She responded, 'good point,' and exited the room to get ready for bed.

ONE WEEK LATER (this past weekend):

Grace, for the first time, called her father and cancelled their assumed-to-be-scheduled Monday night visit. My husband and I were going out to dinner for our wedding anniversary. She said she'd like to come along with us. So she called her father on Saturday night (note, he hadn't called by the Friday afternoon deadline again) and told him she had other plans. And that was that.

Hm.

It's fair to say that Grace is thinking through some things. My gut tells me I should just let her work this out with her father and not get in the way. I'm not sure what the end result will be. I have a good friend whose parents were divorced throughout her childhood. She told me a story once about her senior prom. Her father was supposed to come pick her up and take her to the prom as her escort, as this was the tradition of the country she grew up in. An hour after he was supposed to arrive, she asked her brother to escort her instead. Her father arrived as they were walking out the door. She took the opportunity to let him know that it would have been nice if once, just once, when it really mattered, if he could have done something that showed that he cared about her. I keep wondering if in our family we're going to cross this bridge at some point.

Once upon a time

Four years ago today I married my husband.

It was an awesome day. Really, it was. Just perfect. Sure, there were things that didn't go the way they were planned; doesn't it always happen that way? But in the end, after everything was all said and done, we fell into each other's arms and said, "that was great!"

Since I put up pictures of my bouquet last week and went on and on about how much I loved it, today I'll put up the uncropped photograph. It was taken immediately after the ceremony, in a quiet alcove in the back of the church. This, I think, is one of those pictures worth a thousand words.


The ring on his finger was our best man's; 25 minutes before the ceremony I realized I had left his ring in my overnight bag that was still at the hotel I had gotten ready in. That was at 5:35p. On a Wednesday afternoon of rush hour traffic of greater DC. No chance that ring was going to make it to the church in time for the ceremony. Why didn't I give it to the maid of honor? Because she was 11-years-old. Despite her tender age, she performed her duties very well, but when it came to her new stepfather's wedding ring, I thought it best not to put that responsibility on her shoulders. Now that I look back on it, she might have done a better job with the responsibility than I did. Our best man has promised that the secret is safe with him.

I have to go out now during lunch and find a card for my husband. Finding cards for him is one of the most difficult things I do. The prose is never quite right and always seems canned. But to buy a blank card is even harder because then I have to think of how to put my feelings into words.

The Weekly Slug: 24 weeks

I'm officially in over my head. I had no idea pregnancy and childbirth and parenting and family-making had become such a fuss. Perhaps it's always been this way and I have just been terribly naive the first time around. Regardless, I am feeling a little overwhelmed.

It seems like you are required to have an opinion on every single little thing that could possibly ever happen to a child. And not just any 'ole opinion, a STRONG opinion. For instance, am I going to use cloth diapers or disposables? Or, am I going to have my child vaccinated on a recommended schedule or should I be conservative and slow down that pace? Or refuse vaccinations altogether? Breast or bottle, work or stay home, child sleeps in bed with parents or in a bassinette in the same room or in a separate nursery in a bassinette or in a crib...

Note that I haven't event touched the mother* of all topics: childbirth.

Before we go much further, I'm having a cesarean section. It will probably be done at or about 37 weeks. That being said, let's go on.

This week I saw this video at Momversation:



Before I saw this, I didn't even know there was such a thing as a birth plan. What the hell is a birth plan? Clearly the women on the forum think the idea of a written document is a bit over the top, with the exception of Heather Armstrong. Do I need a birth plan? Shouldn't someone who is caring for my pregnancy tell me about a birth plan? I'm almost through my second trimester and I don't even know what a birth plan is!!!!!!!

Listening to the dialogue got me thinking about how I used to talk about pregnancy and childbirth, long, long ago, way back when I was a budding young mother...

Grace was a healthy 7 lb, 15 oz baby born after 14 hours of labor by way of an induced labor, an epidural, an episiotomy, and a forceps delivery. The labor was induced because my doctor was concerned she would be very big and force me into c-section. Her Apgar scores were 8 and 9 and she left the hospital roughly 36 hours after delivery with a slight case of jaundice which resolved itself within the next 48 hours. Prior to childbirth, I had attended childbirth classes and hoped for a delivery in a birthing room in the hospital without the need for an epidural. That was the extent of my "birth plan."

After my daughter was born, I started learning about all the other options I could have chosen. If I hadn't had my labor induced, could I have averted so many other consequential negatives? What about breaking my water artificially, was that bad? Or the epidural that they gave me after 8 solid hours of intense contractions, while I progressed to only 5 cm dilation? My mind went wild. That doctor was a medical menace. He didn't take my feelings into account. He didn't ask my opinion of anything (did I have an opinion?). I got mad at my (now ex-)husband because he never considered anything other than a hospital birth, saying that he wasn't going to have his kid born in "some kind of a half-way house where pregnant women walk around naked and moaning." I learned all about how doctors don't care about women and just want to make money, never even considering whether the recommendations they give women are the best options for their health.

Well. That was many years ago. I still think there is not enough done in research about women's health issues. But after being treated for years for uterine fibroid tumors and endometriosis and resulting infertility, I've come to a different view of gynecology and obstetrics. The medical team who has treated me the last few years has not only tried everything in their power to make my reproductive options as healthy and natural as they possibly could be, they are also active researchers in the exact areas they treat me for.

Back to my scheduled c-section and a birth plan. I plan on having a healthy baby and doing whatever it takes to optimize my reproductive health to hopefully do this again. Though it might not apply to most women out there, choosing to deliver vaginally would put those goals at too high a risk for my husband and I to consider. So we're going to deliver this baby as late as we possibly can, while maintaining that there be as little chance as possible that labor contractions could begin on their own. That will probably be in week 37.

I don't see my doctor as pushing me into anything. My reproductive endocrinology surgical team tried everything they could to avoid cutting my uterus, thus allowing any (hopeful) future pregnancies to progress as naturally as possible. When we got to the point that there were no other options but surgery and making an incision across my uterus to remove a large fibroid out of a mass of adenomyosis, the lead surgeon talked with my husband and I as long as we liked about what this would realistically mean for any future pregnancy and childbirth.

For me, cesarean or vaginal birth is not a determination of whether I am empowered as a women. For me, the whole process of being empowered about my health is working with physicians who always communicate with me and work together with me. This applies not only to obstetrics and gynecology, but also to every kind of medical care I received.

I'm fortunate to have a great set of doctors, both at the infertility clinic and at obstetrics. They work together seamlessly, so seamlessly that I hardly even noticed a shift in my care from one need to the other. I know this isn't the case for most people out there. I hope that we as a society can work towards it.

As for the other things I MUST have an opinion on:

• breast only, hopefully at least for the entire first year
  
• bassinette, in our bedroom, until she's big enough for a crib, and then she'll probably still stay in the bedroom a bit longer
• cloth diapers
• NO PHOTOGRAPHS of me during delivery or anytime closely thereafter. And none of my dear daughter that make her look like a wet rat or something else disgusting.
• I don't want to see any of the delivery when it happens, nor do I want to have it filmed or photographed. Been there, done that, know myself, wish to stay conscious and not become faint at the sight of my own gore.
  
• Thinking about getting a Tummy Tub, but I can't imagine the expense is worth it. People will make fun of me for putting my baby in a bucket, I know it.
  

Ok, that's it. I can't even begin to deal with all the rest of the things that I should have something to say something about. Can you imagine if I were having a boy and needing to explain to all of you why I would never have him circumcised?

* Get it? Mother of all topics? Childbirth? A-ha! I made a joke, did you guys see that?
You're not laughing, I can tell.
Damn, I'm still not funny.

How to develop pure hatred for stargazer lilies

Since Mother's Day yesterday, I've been noticing stargazer lilies popping up. At Dooce.com, and at Cake Wrecks. There may be more lurking out there. I don't go to church, so I didn't see whether mothers still wear corsages on Mother's Day. But if you went, were some of the mothers wearing stargazer lilies? I have one poignant memory from my past involving stargazer lilies, and it's amazing how from the minute I knew the name of these flowers I had negative associations with them. The event? My first wedding.

I was young, 21. I was pregnant, 13 weeks on the wedding day itself. And I had planned a wedding from start to finish in three weeks. I think I would have been happy to just have had a small wedding, family and a few friends, very low key. But the two mothers in the situation, mine and my ex-husband's, both had their reasons for wanting it big. They wanted the full scale thing, no matter how shotgun the situation. So I went down to the David's Bridal outlet warehouse in Hollywood, Florida and picked out a gown that fit reasonably well and could be altered in less than a week. We had 500 invitations printed in lickety split time and sent them out. My family, our family friends, and my and my ex-husband's friends were 100. The other 400 went to my outlaws' pared down list of must-invites (the first list that they faxed contained well over 600 names and addresses). The church and the minister weren't a problem; my ex-father-in-law insisted on performing the ceremony. Bridesmaids' dresses were bought off the rack at Talbots and sent to the relevant sisters and sister-in-law-to-be. My mother arranged for a caterer to put together the details for a reception. I drove from Florida to Texas with my dad and arrived about a week before the wedding. During that week, I found a photographer, a bakery who could whip up a cake and deliver it that day, and a florist. And it was the florist who suggested stargazer lilies.

A classic, he said. They will complement anything, and remain fresh all day long, no matter how high the temperatures reach (over 100F that day, as it turned out). Since the only color being used in the wedding up to that point was green (from the bridesmaids' dresses and the roses on the cake to the decorative ribbons on the rice pouches and the personalized napkins on the tables), the brilliant deep pink of the lilies would add a touch of warmth to the setting. OK, then, stargazer lilies it is. Everywhere. Bridesmaids' bouquets, floral arrangements for the church, centerpieces for the hors d'oeuvres only reception, and the cake topper. I didn't even knew what they looked like before I committed.

My consistent thought during the whole planning process was, just get it over with. How bad can it be? I was task-oriented, dealing with checking items off a list, not worrying about whether the best choices were being made.

Well, the day of the wedding came. The green roses on the cake matched the green of the bridesmaids' dresses. The green was actually teal. Teal roses on the wedding cake. I wish I had pictures left to send to Cake Wrecks. What the hell is a teal rose? My dress had been altered three inches too short and I had to run out at the last minute to a discount shoe store and buy flats. The program for the ceremony was embarrassing; my mother-in-law-to-be who had typed the whole thing up on her laptop and delivered it to Kinko's had included titles for all the family members on her side, but neglected to ask if anyone on my side had titles other than "Mr and Mrs." In addition, she assumed that all married women went by their husband's last name only, of course. My oldest sister was not amused. And then there were the stargazer lilies.

The first of the lilies I saw was the bunch on top of the cake. From a distance they looked nice enough. But as I got closer, I realized, there's some strange smell in the air; what is that? Then came the bridesmaids' bouquets. Stargazer lilies. Dozens of them. They were beautiful, make no mistake. But they were smelly. Really, really smelly. And then I realized, I have chosen to surround myself and everyone I know with flowers that stink. What a lovely aura to create. It got worse, though.

I started sneezing. Yes, that's right, me, the girl who's had allergies and asthma her whole life ordered several hundred, maybe even over a thousand, dollars in flowers, without ever considering whether I might be bothered by their aroma. Or whether they might bother my very allergic mother as well.

Those lilies started looking like big pink spiders to me, crawling out from every crevice, waiting to suck the life out of anything foolish enough to come close. They were deceptively cutesy, what with their pink glow and yellow speckling. But don't you be fooled; these were creatures spawned by the devil himself.

I spent the day red-nosed with a handkerchief in my hand, sneezing every few minutes and trying to ignore the pervasive, stinky, stargazer lily aroma in between nose snorts. When we were outside, the aroma got even stronger, making me almost nauseous. Was it not enough that it was over 100 degrees F, I was in a synthetic floor-length gown, and I was PREGNANT? No, I had to add some horrible scent that I was also allergic to.

Needless to say, I was relieved when, 8 years later, I had a reason to purge my possessions of any sign that the day had ever even taken place. Every picture, every memoir, every gift list, every keepsake, every bit of it went in the trash.

I'm sorry if you are a person who loves stargazer lilies and finds them the most wonderful flower in the entire world. Because I will never, ever, ever enjoy even a photograph of a stargazer lily, much less approach a live one in real life.

As for the rest of the story, for my second wedding, I visited five florists before I chose one. We only needed a bouquet for myself and Grace and four small women's corsages, still, I wanted to make sure it was right. When I finally found the man who designed my bouquet, I knew I had hit the jackpot. Here's what he designed:




Orange tulips surrounded by yellow calla lilies with a hint of a burnt orange/brown edging, all tied up with an orange organza ribbon. Perfect, simple, brilliant.

GORGEOUS.

On this Mother's Day

I can't remember the last time I spent Mother's Day with my mother. My two sisters and I live in entirely different places geographically from one another and none of us closer than 1500 miles to our mother. So though she may travel to see one of us on Mother's Day, if we invite her, even if she did this every year, I'd only see her once every third year. This year, she's at home in Florida with my dad. On Wednesday, they will both come here and visit with us. For Mother's Day, I sent her a card, I'll make her a cake to be ready when she arrives, and I'll call her this afternoon. Yesterday she and I spent two hours talking on the phone.

She and I are like most mother-daughter pairs in our demographic. We drive each other a little crazy. We've said things to each other that were really mean throughout my life. I went through years where I decided I just would never ever like her, understand her, or have any kind of meaningful relationship with her. But in the last couple years, I decided to revisit all that. She's a likeable person, even in the midst of things she does that drive me crazy. So despite the things that I could say negatively about our relationship or about her personally, I think I have to dwell on the positive.

Why? Because she's my mother.

The best stories I could tell you about my mother are the things she does in private when she's not "on" for the public. It's those moments behind the scenes, when the perfect hostess fudges details while saying things like, "oh, shit. Well, I'm sure they'll never be able to tell." I'm sure Martha Stewart has these moments too, but not when the cameras are rolling.

Yesterday we talked about how all Muslims are liars and agents of Satan, President Obama is not a Christian and has never done anything remotely reminiscent of what a Christian would do, that Rick Warren is a wolf in sheep's clothing because now he endorses gay marriage (he actually doesn't), and that most assuredly the United States will fall as the most powerful nation on earth and Armageddon will undoubtedly ensue. We also talked about a new book she's discovered, The Element, that she's giving to every one of her children, how she's wondering how my sister's kids will fair at Catholic school next year after being exclusively home-schooled for five years, and how she thinks babies shouldn't share a bed with their parents. Ever. And they definitely should move out of their parents' bedroom quickly as soon as they can pull themselves up because they might wake up and see things. And we talked about a cute blanket she wants to make for our new baby. She also asked me to explain how our baby will figure out that everything has two names and which name she should use (like, how does she figure out that the cat is "that cat" and "o gato" and that those are the same thing).

I like her because I can talk to her for two hours and she doesn't get bored or boring. I know I do things and say things that make her crazy. So I can put to the side the things she does and says that make me crazy.

Happy Mother's Day, all.

Marriage: Part Deux

Maine just legalized same-sex marriage. Even as their legislators were debating this briefly before they voted, the question of what impact this has on religious institutions was raised. On Wednesday NPR reported, "Republican Sen. Debra Plowman of Hampden argued that the bill was being passed 'at the expense of the people of faith. You are making a decision that is not well-founded,' warned Plowman."

This gets me thinking. What is it exactly that makes a marriage a marriage? There are so many possible answers to this question.

When I separated from my first husband and divorce proceedings were well under way, I told my dad I wanted to go on a date. He, being someone who believes strictly that marriage is an avowed relationship, the vows of which cannot be violated within that covenant, quickly replied that of course I wouldn't do that because I was still married. Huh? Under what definition of marriage? For him, the legal documentation of marriage was the bottom line as to whether one was married or not. For me, when the marriage vows of my first marriage were broken and both my ex-husband and I took action to sever that avowed relationship, it was done. I wasn't married anymore. I mean, for legal reasons, like whether I had health insurance I was married. But for purposes of fidelity? For issues that GOD cares about? No, I wasn't married.

This leads me to an interesting question: if you are a religious person and you think marriage has something to do with vows and God and sacredness and all the rest, what role does the state have in this? Does it even matter whether a marriage is legal with the state if the vows were true? And if there were no vows taken before God, then does that mean the marriage is real?

Some sects of religion are very clear on this. Take the Roman Catholic Church for instance. Either you are married in the church or you aren't. If you aren't, then you are not married in the eyes of God. It matters not what the state recognizes, no matter what state that is.

When my parents came to some important milestone in their marriage (25 years or something like that), they got talking about how they didn't have a copy of their wedding license. And then it occurred to my dad -- he couldn't remember actually getting it signed by the clergy who performed the ceremony or taking it to the courthouse. The consequence? They might not be legally married. He joked about it. They thought it was pretty funny. My mom decided to find out where it was and get to the bottom of the issue. She got a copy, framed it, and gave it to him for their anniversary. But my reaction at the time was, who cares? So, you might need to do some paperwork to make legal and documented what has existed for decades?

For the purposes of the relationship, I just don't think the paper trail is that important on these things. My husband and I were married in an episcopal church in the United States and filed it legally with a county in Maryland. Then almost a year later, we got married again in the Brazilian embassy in Washington, DC. See, we needed to have our marriage recognized in the country of my husband's citizenship, and a court document from a county in Maryland didn't cut it. In the end, it was less work to get married again at the embassy than it would have been to have the Brazilian Feds recognize the paperwork that existed from the United States. And then, as if that wasn't enough, my mother-in-law brought a copy of our wedding liturgy and our wedding invitation, all in Portuguese, to her priest and asked whether our marriage was recognized by the Catholic Church. Her priest is a good man, I tell you. He told her not to be overly concerned with the matter, that God sees true love. He also told her that if the two of us came to him, he would bless the union. We haven't done that yet, but we may very well do so in order to let all the friends and family in Brazil get to celebrate our wedding, as well as make it possible for our children to be baptized in the Catholic church. (More on that issue much later!) But you get the idea...being "lawfully and spiritually bound in matrimony" is taking years at this point. So when did we get married? Are we married? When will the marrying end?

For me it was when we took our vows in the episcopal church, the first time we did it. The second time we did it at the embassy, there were no vows, just a lot of paperwork and admonishment of what this meant legally for us both. If we get married again in the Catholic church and in Portuguese, that might be yet another meaningful event in our relationship. A way to say I still feel the very same way I did the day I married you.

So...what is your definition of marriage? Can you define it neatly and discretely? Or is it mushy and gray for you? I know that for people who do it once and it stays forever, and they only have one church and one court to deal with, it can seem like a very simple deal. But for me, when you get into the nitty-gritty of the whole thing, it isn't so clear anymore.

Back to my reformation

For Lent this year I gave up judging Christianity on the basis of the behavior of Christians, and on trying to define myself spiritually relative to my experiences with my family. Lent is over, so I suppose I could go right back to my old behaviors. But I think the point of these "sacrifices of the flesh" is to grow spiritually as an individual, thus to indulge after Lent was over seemed out of place.

This week, however, has been a hard one. The world seems to be full of Christians behaving badly, and being quite confrontational while doing so. I've been thinking all week about whether to write about this stuff. I just didn't want to react; I wanted to inspect my own self in light of these headlines and see where I was in my own growth.

The leading headlines that are relevant to the topic at hand:

• Miss California, Carrie Prejean, after boldly speaking out against same-sex marriage during the interview portion of the Miss USA pageant, becomes a spokesperson for the National Organization for Marriage. Only days later it is revealed that she posed semi-nude as a teenager for a modeling photo shoot.
• President Obama chooses to recognize National Day of Prayer in United States and has his press secretary to announce the recognition in a press conference, acknowledging that the president begins each day in private worship. The stark contrast of this private recognition of the role of prayer in one's personal life to the spectacular and very public way that President Bush recognized the day during the previous eight years drew great criticism from conservative Christians and conservative Christian groups.
• Bristol Palin, the teen mother of her own 5-month old son and daughter of the governor of Alaska and former Vice Presidential-hopeful Sarah Palin, gave a series of interviews and made several appearances as the teen ambassador for the Candie's Foundation which works towards the goal of lowering the incidence of teen pregnancy in the United States. Her peers note the discrepancy and relative hypocrisy in her message, as well of contradictions in her statements at various times during the last few months. Some even say she is just a tool of her mother, spitting out rehearsed lines that comport with her mother's political agenda of abstinence-only education.

It's likely that at least one of these issues has sparked some thoughts in your mind in the last few days. Clearly by listing them all here, I've been unable to ignore any of them. But what do they have in common in my thoughts? Why bring them all together here? What does a beauty queen campaigning against gay marriage have to do with a president praying in private or with a teen mother preaching abstinence? They all have to do with the politics of religion and social issues associated with conservative religion. For me, it is difficult to ignore these things because it brings up many things I dislike about religion.

Still, there's the Lenten deprivation, a sacrifice that I would like to keep up. I'm trying very hard to separate the sin from the sinner. I would like to look at God without God being damaged by the actions I see done by those who claim to follow him.

But I'll say this about all this stuff in the media. It's hit home with me. I don't like the way things are painted as black and white in the world, right and wrong, and anything that criticizes what is wrong must be right.

I see Carrie Prejean and I see someone who is opportunistic, and right now opportunity is being a conservative Christian beauty queen. I don't see depth of conviction, no matter what that conviction is. This isn't right at all. But because she said she thought marriage should be between a man and a woman only, she is considered to be a devout and righteous person, one who is heralded as a hero, a champion, a woman of deep principles.

I see critics of the president as foolishly grasping to his actions this week as being anti-Christian and anti-prayer. Quite on the contrary, his actions are completely in line with the teaching of Jesus Christ. Consider Matthew 6:5-8, the passage that immediately precedes the text commonly known as The Lord's Prayer."

"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him."

Seems to me that President Obama's predecessor, the one being heralded by conservative right Christians right now, was, in the words of Christ, "babbling like a pagan." So no matter how much you want to say negatively about President Obama, if you are a Christian and you want to judge him on his practice and upholding of the faith, you have to applaud him this week.

As for Bristol Palin, I feel so much pain watching this girl. I see her and hear her and I believe that she doesn't understand the words that have been fed to her to parrot back to the public. I wish she could take some time to examine her own thoughts and ideas, that she could reflect on everything that's happened so far in her life. Once she's gotten a chance to do that, then she can begin to form her own genuine values, not the ones she inherited from her parents and her parents' political stances. It may be that she comes to the conclusion that abstinence only education really is the best choice and only foolproof choice in preventing teen pregnancy. But when she comes to that conclusion on her own, it will be apparent from her ability to logically argue for it in public and not contradict herself.

I want to hear the calm voice of a conservative Christian who realizes the truth of these three situations. It's not that Christian values are under attack this week, or that we are witnessing innocents become victims of the vicious words delivered by sinful, selfish liberals, or that the leader of the country is a wolf in sheep's clothing, pulling the rug right out from under the feet of those who herald the moral compass of this country. No, not at all. It's that people are jumping on whatever the latest sensational headline is, listening to a sound bite, and attacking without ever really thinking about the deep truth of the entire situation.

Hair cut, and get ready for a bulge of posts

I've been in a bit of a dry spell as far as writing goes. Time has been short and the ideas are not really coming. I think that means everything is peachy in my life and that I have nothing of controversy to report. But nonetheless, it's nowhere near as much fun for me seeing as how I don't get to write and I don't get any fun comments from you out there who read this thing.

This is your warning, I think I'm just going to bang out a bunch of these today and post them now. I mean, why keep you guys waiting, huh?

In the meantime, Grace and I both went to get our haircut at the mall yesterday. She, the girl who protested haircuts of any kind until she was at least 6-years-old, the girl who previously had never had a haircut that cost over $12, the girl who conceded only to have her hair cut once in any 12-month span, she has quickly become quite addicted to the whole salon thing. Now she wants me to buy a styling product at $15 a pop once a month, insisting that she needs that much and that particular product. I told her she better start saving her babysitting money, then.

Me? I'm back to my old self. I told the stylist I wanted something short, very short, kind of a pixie cut that doesn't require me to do too much fuss with the front of my hair. When I think of what I don't want, think: Kate Gosselin. How does she manage to do that much to her hair every day anyway? Isn't the whole point of going short so that you have less to mess with?

The end result I like very much:


Simple, practical, fuss-free. And I require way less styling product than Grace. Kudos for the budget. I beat her hands down. And just in case you guys think it, I am not going to replace my pedestrian specs and go for big, chunky, funky eyeglasses. Yes, such eyeglasses would make a statement, but they would also get in the way of my seeing insomuch as I would constantly be seeing the rims in my peripheral vision, not the world. So this is much makeover as I'm subjecting myself to for this season.

Some awards, grateful thanks, and spreading of good vibes all around

Just before I took my relatively abrupt, unannounced, unexplained, roughly 2 week hiatus from blogging a bit ago, two very spicy bloggers chose to bestow awards upon me at almost the same time. They are both spicy in that they love to talk about life as it is, the good, the bad, and the truly ridiculous. I like that so much! I don't think I even come close to achieving the same level of tongue in cheek. I wish I could.

First, it's the "Friends" award from Margo at Life in the Short Lane.


This award is given to the writers of blogs that "are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award." Wow. That's really nice. Thank you, Margo! I'm really glad that Margo and I found each other through blogging and hope that we can meet each other face to face someday! The award she gives me gives me a tall order to fill, though! Here's who I'm passing the award on to:

Amy, at Welcome to Amy's World
Angela, at angelawd
Little Miss Sunshine State
Heather at Cool Zebras
Crys at Modifying Motherhood
dragonfly mama at Stepmama Metamorphoses
Bubblewench at The Blogs of Life
Mielikki at what its like to be mie

The second award comes from a blogger who is very private in that she doesn't make her blogs public, but very open in that she bears her soul on those blogs. In the few short months that I've been reading her two blogs, I have fallen in love with the honest way in which she faces the ups and downs of life. Some of you may have seen the award before that she gave to me: The Lemonade Award.


It's given to bloggers that you feel show great attitude or gratitude. Again, I am grateful and honored to receive the award, and now must pass it on. I give it to one blogger in particular, who I have loved getting to know over the web: Natalie at I married a Polak. She shines through her blog, and that's not easy to do. When I see that she's adding a new post, I read it right away. Check out her blog to see what I'm talking about. For Natalie, here are the rules of the Lemonade Award:

1. Put the Lemonade Award logo on your blog or post
2. Nominate blogs that show great attitude or gratitude
3. Link to your nominees within your post
4. Let the nominees know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog
5. Share the love and link to the person from whom you received your award

And to the one who gave me this award, let me know if you want me to link to you. I will be happy to if you would like that :-)

Head on over...

... to Midwest Parents. I'm blogging there today. About garden pests in the backyard and Grace leaving food in her bedroom. Two plus two equals...

What would you do if you were Kate?

I just saw this clip online.



Did anyone else see this coming a mile away? Sorry to be so jaded, but the relationship between Jon and Kate Gosselin as shown on their show seemed way too off to be ok.

The Weekly Slug: 22 or 23 weeks, depending on how you count it

No, I won't tell you her name. But everyone in our family refers to her by her name now, not Slug. I feel like I should rename the segment "The Weekly INSERT-BABY'S-FIRST-NAME-HERE." It wouldn't be so bad because her first name starts with an S. OK, that's all I'm telling you. We're back to debating a middle name anyway, two different possibilities now. There's a third alternative that I've soundly rejected. My husband is stuck on wanting to give the child my mother's maiden name as a middle name. My mom comes from deep German American roots. You know, where there's a Meyer on every corner and people cook meat and potatoes and carrots and peas frequently and put radishes in salads and everyone is very outspoken? So her maiden name, like all surnames in her family before she married my Scotch-Irish Dad, is very recognizably German. If we gave the Slug this middle name, her full name would go first name, German-name, English-name, Latin-name. I think that's too much to do to any kid. Another thing we've rejected in the baby-naming category is my middle name Lee. It comes from my grandaddy who died three years ago. He was Robert Lee. Yes, he is named after the general. In fact, I would be the last of many generations in my family who is named after Robert E. Lee. I would like to give a child one of the names, either Robert or Lee, but it just doesn't seem right just now. I guess you could say this makes me optimistic that there will be a third child to give the name to.

Now, on to me. I won't complain, really. Most of what I could tell you is so damn typical of the kinds of things women complain about when they are pregnant. Back pain, tiredness, feeling heavy, constant physical adjustment, having trouble getting comfortable in bed...you get the idea. One thing that has reared its ugly head is fibroids. If you've been following this blog for a bit, you know I had two surgeries last summer to remove a few biggies. When I had my first ultrasound to confirm this pregnancy in January, three more could be seen. They were bigger 10 weeks later. And now? Now I can tell you where they are. I don't need an ultrasound, I can feel them. There's nothing that can be done about them right now. But here's the very short narrative a fun scare I had a week ago. I realized last Saturday that I was having contractions. They had been going on for three days, but by Saturday I was having them every time I wasn't laying down, and I was having to breathe through them. I called labor and delivery triage at the hospital. They said to lay down and drink lots of fluid and juice. I did, and the contractions slowed. And then I started thinking, what's causing this? The only red hot source would be the fibroids. I read somewhere online that 8% of women without fibroids have real-live preterm labor and 20% of those with fibroids do. Regardless of the odds, real-live labor at any point in my pregnancy would be bad due to my surgeries last summer and other factors. And I find myself realizing, the odds really don't matter at all unless it's you. So we hope I beat the odds and that the Slug does too.

On a very wonderful note, I am loving this pregnancy. The contrast between my emotions 15 years ago and now are stark. When I was pregnant with Grace, it was completely unplanned and the entire pregnancy was surrounded with shame and I-told-you-sos from people who thought I was too young and shouldn't have been having sex while not married. That definitely had an effect on my view of the pregnancy. Worse? I think it had an effect on my parenting all along the way. I have a feeling I'm going to write more about this in the coming weeks. I don't think I would have ever realized any of this had I not had the experience of this pregnancy.

The day after the contractions-that-wouldn't-stop episode, I sat on my bedroom floor and went through the contents of five or six big boxes that had been in storage for over a decade. They were filled with everything from a lock from Grace's first haircut and the cards of congratulations we received when she was born to a schnazzy light blue coat I bought for her in Berlin on a trip to visit her godparents when she was seven-years-old. In between were scores of tailor-made outfits my mother had stitched together for Grace, baby clothing from my own infancy, blankets, cloth diapers, and other baby linens. I felt the crash of emotions. I was excited for the possibility of having another girl to use these items, while simultaneously realizing that I didn't have such joy and anticipation when I was expecting Grace.

This pregnancy is completely different than when I was expecting Grace. It is amazing to watch the every day growth and development of this baby within my body. I love looking at my body. I love feeling this little girl kick and kick, and I can't wait to see her. Last night, for the first time, my husband felt her kick. She was really active and was giving one good kick after another. So as we were laying in bed, I just laid his hand over my belly. Sure enough, within a few seconds, he felt it. His eyes flew open and a huge grin came across his face. There were three more episodes like this during the evening and overnight. The bottom line is, I am loving every minute of her life, anticipating her arrival with joy. The apprehension of being the mother of a baby again has almost completely dissipated. I'm doing things like eagerly thinking about what kind of diapers would be the best choice for our family and what color curtains I'd like in our nursery (Mom's coming next week and maybe I can go to the fabric store with her and get some custom-made ones :-) ).

All these feelings are good, but they bring up so much in me that I didn't know was there. I don't think these are things you share with children. That you were apprehensive about them being born. That you cried the day your milk came in because your body looked so, well, motherly. That you didn't know how to cope and balance your youthful wants and desires with her youth. I'll think on that a bit more.