That's the Ticket!

Instead of continuing my rant of earlier in the week, I'd like to accentuate the positive and talk a bit about how empowering pregnancy has been for me, despite all the negative crapola from some people trying to usurp my decision-making. Actually, it's so empowering to me, it's almost hard to believe all that other junk makes a difference (but it does, alas).

I know (really, I know) I complain a lot about pregnancy-related inflictions a la nausea, heartburn, cramps, etc. but in the silver-lining/feeling zen department: I have survived! Less than 3 months left and I will have successfully made AN ENTIRE PERSON! I can do ANYTHING! My body is an extraordinary machine that is crafty enough to make life! Wow! And once I give birth, I know I will really feel like a major superhero.



I would say "I feel sorry for women with a super smooth pregnancy who are not, second-by-second, alerted to what their body is truly capable of," but I think we all know that would be totally disingenuous. I am actually happy for them (though half-heartedly at moments), but I am also happy for me. And I am not even just saying this from the top of Olympus; I'm actually pretty nauseated right now, but look at me! I'm like Charlie Bucket's grandfather, except instead of touring the factory, I am a third trimester mom-to-be, ready for anything.

I never thought my life could be
Anything but catastrophe
But suddenly I begin to see
A bit of good luck for me

'Cause I've got a golden ticket
I've got a golden twinkle in my eye

I never had a chance to shine
Never a happy song to sing
But suddenly half the world is mine
What an amazing thing

'Cause I've got a golden ticket


Sure, taking the stairs at work is getting harder and harder and running: yeah, I don't do that. My back and feet ache, my joints need some TLC, I can't see my legs when I'm standing up, and my lower abdomen looks a little like a purple zebra, but by golly, I feel like these things are my trophies. They mark me as a person who kicks an extraordinary amount of ass, despite the fact that I am not sure I have much actual kicking ability at this time.

I also am pretty sure that in true Mama Bear fashion, present physical limitations notwithstanding, I would not hesitate to facepunch anyone or anything who I felt threatened my cub. RAWR! Max empowerment! I am now wondering if men felt the need to be the only ones who voted for so long because they realized they could not CREATE AND GIVE BIRTH TO PEOPLE. I am amazing. You are amazing.

Fear and Loathing in Las Utero

Warning: LOOOONG Rant ahead.

"Hello pregnant lady! Do you hate your body? Don't worry! You will!" Perhaps it seems like I'm exaggerating, but I cannot tell you how many times this message is apparent in a "modern" pregnancy. Even having selected homebirth and feeling confident and assertive about breastfeeding (in short, I exempted myself from hearing other people talk to me that much about their own ideas of childbirth), I still have to negotiate the battery of testing and barrage of the world's insecurities hurled my way (this week was especially bad for it) and it's getting close to time to facepunch.

Last night following a very bizarre and circus-y La Leche League Meeting at Memorial Hospital, Chay and I asked to go upstairs to tour the birthing area, just for our own edification and whimsy. After all, it's good to know your options. When you don't know them, you don't have any. And what a slap in the face! I was immediately relieved that I would NOT be birthing there after the nurse on-duty answered every question/statement ("Oh look a large shower for relief during labor!") with "Only if your physician orders it, but most surprisingly allow it."

Surprisingly? Bizard, guess what's up? I am the boss of my body; how do you like that?! I'll take a shower if I want to and you can step off. Oh, but is there someone with more education than me around here who I can obey? PLEASE! I wanted to slap her. But what was the lesson? You can't trust your body to tell you what you need when YOU are birthing a baby. You should ask an "expert." [eye roll]

I was very saddened to hear during the LLL meeting how many of the attendees have some busybody in their family or friend group weighing in that their nursing baby was too thin/too fat/too hungry/unable to nurse/didn't like the taste (???), which caused the mother to then either wean early, steer clear of nursing in the first place, unnecessarily supplement with formula, or take some other dramatic action. What some people don't realize is that the number one reason women will "fail" at breastfeeding is not: pain, infection, low supply, difficulty latching, or any other of the reasons that are often given. No, the number one reason, what most others are attributed to especially frustration, is lack of support: people telling you your body doesn't know/can't do what it was designed to do. Designed to do! Would you accept a broom that did not sweep? A lightbulb that did not give off light? No, and neither should women accept others telling them that they cannot breastfeed or that there is a better way for their babies or giving them other grief/stress about how to do it. Did women 100 or even 1000 years ago think they could not? NO or their babies would have died. Our bodies did not become stupid/incapable in the last century, no matter how much advertising money is spent to make us believe just that. But oh the advertising is relentless and unconscionable! "Humans, are you eating an unhealthy diet and never exercising? Well, it's obviously because your body is incapable of health and is a failure without technology! Take this pill! Buy this product! Be happy!"

[scream]

And finally, my major lowpoint of this week: the gestational diabetes test of nothing, which I succumbed to on Monday. This test involves drinking a bottle of high fructose corn syrup and then sitting still for an hour, at which time your blood is drawn and your glucose is tested to make sure you're under 140. This is a very normal process, considering I often drink 50 grams of HFCS and then sit absolutely still for an hour in my everyday life. Wait...what? I would also like to add that 50% of women test positive for this test, which results in another hellish test of 150 grams of HFCS and hourly blood monitoring for 3 hours, while fasting. Delightful! In the end, only about 7% of pregnancies (women can vary from pregnancy to pregnancy) will ever have gestational diabetes, which can be monitored with regular blood draws and mediated with diet to make it a non-issue, so I definitely see why 100% of women are subjected to this torture and nerve-wracking fear of "failing" the test when most have not exhibited ANY of the signs of having it. Oh wait, no, I have no idea. This is not even to mention the MANY, MANY tests for various other alarmist pregnancy-related issues that produce ridiculously high levels of false positives, are expensive, and don't amount to a hill of beans that I flatly refused, but which most women, if they are sold the bill of goods that comes on the pregnancy conveyor belt, have inflicted upon them. And why? Because it is rare these days, what with insurance horrors and time-poverty in the medical industry, for a doctor or medical personnel to explain to you in plain English that OMG! pregnancy is not a disease or a medical event. In a vast majority of cases, pregnancy and birth are: normal, natural, and safe. If you are simply aware of signs of trouble: consistent high blood pressure, excessive swelling, etc., almost 100% of the tests that are so casually administered to discover some kind of non-existent pathology, could be done away with. But that would not bring in the big bucks or sell us crap we don't need and it might, OMG, it might! teach women that they, and not their superior, highly-evolved physicians, are the experts on their own bodies.

Oh my Lord, this post is so long and I haven't even started ranting about ultrasound and the absolutely criminal legislation that just passed in Louisiana mandating that any woman getting an abortion there, even in cases of rape or incest, have an ultrasound first. But I guess that before you can truly loathe and fear your body, you have to first recognize that it is a dirty vessel of sin. OMG! OMG! I am going insane. That will have to be my next post.

If you read this far, you are awesome. Thanks. :)

God Save the Date!

I ordered a really cute baby book from Amazon to start recording some of my thoughts and ideas from pregnancy for Baby's future brain trust, so he can enjoy the way I still enjoy my own baby book. And it's lovely, but something's missing.

There are, naturally, a lot of fill-in-the blanks to document milestones such as "date you first felt baby kick," and "date Baby took his first step." These are a good idea, of course, but I was somehow surprised by them. "Date?!!" I thought to myself. "I'm a terrible mother already! I don't remember my kid's STUFF!"--and I racked my brain to figure out the precise date and time I first felt Baby on Board. But while I was doing that, I re-lived exactly how that moment felt (like a little fishy!), what I was doing (lying in Tempur Pedic dream bed), what I was wearing (Liz Lange maternity uniform, blue issue), and that magical moment of I experienced the mystery and wonder of it all. But I am sorry to tell you, I have no idea what the date was beyond April 2010. So that's what I recorded. (I am also sorry to tell you that aside from the wonder feeling, most of my pregnancy could easily match with those more practical details.)

Unfortunately, there was no room in the book to write "Baby, you felt like a little fishy to me, moving swiftly back and forth across my belly. I gasped in wonder knowing, really KNOWING, that you were a real person inside of my person." So I am writing it here.

A date is a wonderful thing and it helps us to quantify and understand an otherwise elusive moment in time. But in some ways it sterilizes an experience and boils it down to X number of days ago when it can be so much bigger, or in some cases, a bit less cosmically relevant. Knowing the specific night that I put Matt's hand on my belly and baby gave him a good hard kick for the first time will not tell our son how his dad exclaimed and held me tight, knowing we were glimpsing the future. By the same token, telling you I last ate soup on May 1, 2010 (I have no idea, actually) seems to impress some larger meaning on such a non-event.

So I am going to try to keep up with the dates if I can in this book, though it's not really my way. (My way seems lazier and lazier the more often I think on it. Whoops.) But I am also adding some little envelopes for letters to my book, so I can recall to Baby, who will one day be a man, in my own way, the most significant memories I have of his early years, even if it is not the day he first recited the first stanza to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Maybe it will just be the way my eyes now well with tears as I imagine singing and rocking him to sleep or seeing him tromping around the woods with his dad. This is the stuff of the memories I already hold dear.

A post script about dates...

Right after I published, I was looking at my time ticker and thought "Holy geez! 86 days left!" But of course, like my dedication to milestone dates, my tenacity to my own due date is pretty shrug-worthy. My philosophy is that my due date is not an expiration date. While I hope very much, for the sake of my joints and my digestive functions, that Baby doesn't tarry too long in my most of me, he is really welcome to join us in this big world whenever he's ready.

Also, Baby and I are both enjoying Nacogdoches Farmers Market plums with gusto and I believe that these also become dates. Or maybe it's prunes. If so, what is the date, exactly?

Clear Your Clutter with Feng Baby*

It's here: the third trimester. On one hand I feel like: "wow! already?!" On the other, more logical hand that is in regular touch with my acid reflux, I think "Of course it is here. I have felt every minute of this pregnancy and enough is enough!" But it really is amazing how soon Baby will be with us--really with us all, and not just intimately acquainted with my digestive tract.

It seems the less room I have in my body, the more desperate I am to make room in my house--for baby, yes, but also for new dreams and opportunities for our family. (Molly was pleased to be the first recipient of a new dream therapeutic dog bed especially for seniors.) I am in nesting mode I suppose, though Matt contends I have merely returned to my former pre-pregnancy obsessive self. I haven't felt like myself in so long, it's hard to know if he's right. But even so, did my former self throw out bags and bags of personal letters from high school with nary a care? No, former self did not! Though present self still struggles with hanging on to more recent correspondence from loved ones.

Nevertheless, my desire to make way for baby is relentless and if I have to adopt my brother-in-law's psychological tactic of substituting the word "saving" with "hoarding" to get myself moving, I will! Ex. "Are you hoarding these leftovers for supper later in the week?" It's a nice, over-the-top move. Fortunately, Matt is anti-hoard and if I wanted to throw out pretty much everything in our house, he would support that. Unfortunately, Matt is also ridiculously evolved and he keeps reminding me that even if we didn't do one more thing to ready our house between now and Baby's arrival, we would certainly be adequately prepared due to having food, blankets, and our love.

Ha! Our love! Now, get to work putting that crib together, Huzz! Ha! :)

I know he is right on the money (as usual, sigh), but don't be surprised if the next time you come visit my house, the whole thing has been turned upside down, emptied into a dumpster and we're all sitting on the floor in empty rooms lighting incense. Although I think it's safe to say it won't be that dramatic since God knows I can't really sit on the floor comfortably and incense makes me want to vomit. So if nothing else, I will literally come to my senses to save me from myself.

Still though, it's gonna get feng-tastic, people!

*I have no idea if this makes any sense. I know neither the meaning of the word feng, nor the word shui. Hopefully that blog title is not offensive in another language.

Pregnancy Not Prevail!

I'm not sure how it happened, but I've become a pregnancy stereotype. In the mothering.com due date club forum I frequent, it seems like every time someone is complaining about some annoying side-effect of pregnancy, I am right there with them. Let's review.

• Nausea? You know it. (still.)
  
• Heartburn? Like fire!
  
• Leg cramps? Crippling at times and the crazy legs, too.
  
• "Pregnancy Brain", i.e. Losing Your Mind? Just ask anyone who...what was I saying?
  
• Peeing all night?If I flushed every time, Nacogdoches would be out of water.
  ...and now my own special contribution!
  
• Kidney stones! Ah yes, hello calcium overdose.
  

Actually, yesterday's kidney stone incident may not have even been a kidney stone. My doctor told me there wasn't any trace of it in my pee by the time I saw him, but it's possible that 1) it was very, very small--though it didn't feel like it-- and I had passed it already 2) Baby and my organs were pressing on my ureter and any small amount of sediment + pressure could have restricted urine flow causing the same pain.

Did I mentioned that I drink about 3 16oz. glasses of milk and take a gimongo calcium supplement every night before bed due to the aforementioned leg cramps and crazy legs? Yeah, so therein lies the problem. Do I keep taking the calcium and possibly continue to experience what feels akin to what I imagine a gunshot wound to the back does or do I skip it and not walk a couple days after a long night of cramps?

Or hey! How about I just keep feelings sorry for myself! Ha ha. But despite cursing my fate a few times yesterday and lamenting not catching a break, I think I am waving the victory flag. I am so happy to be on the other end of this thing, stone-free (although my doctor said a shift in baby or sleeping position may cause it again) and better still, owner of a small bottle of Tylenol with Codeine. I don't have to take it...but I like knowing I could.

Pregnancy, you can't beat me! I'm still walking around with the living and my son is going to be hard core awesome because I have literally put everything I have into making him.

The House of Tomorrow

Since I went on kind of a mini-tear about babies and gender this morning on my twitter, I thought I might as well comment in long-form on my blog. Are you all familiar with Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet? I was introduced to this marvelous work of poetry by my brother-in-law, who gave the book to my sister many years ago. Here is what Gibran has to say about children that beautifully articulates my philosophy, as well.

On Children
Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Before I knew I was having a boy, so many people (strangers, especially) implored me to find out so they could buy me the appropriately gendered items or comment about his or her future as an appropriately gender-specific thing. And this is perhaps the reason why I didn't want to know and once I did, wanted to hold my secret close. Admittedly, I did go a little cuckoo when I saw some little dinosaur shoes for my precious son, but maybe someday if I have a little girl, she will love to wear them, too. My point is: my son is not even here and already the world is trying to tell him who he can be and I don't like it! He can be anything! He is the sun and moon and stars to his mommy already, but his destiny is not written.

My reply to some people has raised more than a few eyebrows when I said I don't care if he is gay or transgender or Mr. Lumberjack like his dad. And I don't! But even if he is not going against the grain in such ways that are central to his identity, I want him to be free to do and see and think what he will, without the world prejudicing his views from the moment his eyes first can see. Is this a hopeless idealistic wish? It may be. But for my son, I wish for the world to be his and I will protect, with my life and my whole heart, that opportunity.

Boy Joy

You may know I was completely ambivalent about finding out the gender of baby originally. Though I was SO curious (and that curiosity ultimately won out, at Husby's urging), I felt like it would spoil one of the best surprises of life or it would somehow let strangers know me far too intimately. Once I did know, I felt mixed, not because I was wishing for a girl, but like I had ruined my own surprise party. I wrestled with the decision to even share the info once I knew (as you know). But now, after sitting with the news of my little boy for a couple of weeks, I am just so thrilled: a little boy! Wow! My son!

A few days ago, I was listening to Handel's Messiah (my favorite) in my car on the way back from Lufkin and when the chorus sang "Unto Us a Son Is Given" (re: the birth of Jesus Christ), giant tears of happiness rolled down my cheeks as I thought about my little treasure I had been entrusted with, that I am growing inside me. I briefly contemplated naming him "Wonderful" or "Counselor," but "the Mighty God" and "Prince of Peace" convinced me these choices might be over the top. :) Still though, you know *I* will think he is the best of all!

What thrills me, perhaps in equal measure, is that my son will have the most wonderful man I know as a father and role model. This is very comforting since I am unlikely to lose my job as Mayor of Bizardtown anytime soon, but thinking of my little baby son does make me want to be better in every way. I hope I will be a mom worthy of this special treasure.