Nursing

I am nursing Charlie. In a perfect world I might go to 1 year but I would at least like to make it to the 6 month mark. I decided to nurse because I had no reason not to. The evidence is fairly clear that if you can, breastfeeding is the way to go. At the same time, I can't say that I particularly like it. I read accounts by other women that make it sound like this transcendental experience making you at one with the moon and your baby and mothers everywhere. I can't say that I ever feel like that. At best, I feel fairly indifferent about it and at other times I have fervently wished that something would happen to make it necessary to switch to formula. I imagine that some of my feelings about the issue are shaped by the fact that Charlie was a frequent and slow nurser up until the last couple of weeks. Nursing sessions generally lasted 45 minutes and happened every 1.5-2 hours with a 3 hour stretch in the dead of night if I was lucky. I got plugged ducts and thank my lucky stars that I didn't get mastitis. In the most notable instance I spent 2 days clearing 7 plugs. Even then, I thank my lucky stars. I've actually had it fairly easy with nursing. While Charlie and I took a couple of days to really get the hang of things I haven't had supply issues, latch problems, infections, etc. I must confess that I visit my nursing message board and see these women become very distraught over nursing problems, going to great lengths to continue nursing or mourning the end of their nursing days and feel befuddled. I am told to cherish the cuddle time and closeness with my child. I am advised to relish the smell of my child and the satisfaction of knowing I can feed him from my body. I do love to cuddle Charlie but I get to do that to excess when trying to get him to sleep and could cuddle him just as well while feeding him a bottle. More often then not, my child smells of spit up and dubious diaper. We certainly don't neglect keeping him clean but more than 1 bath a day seems a bit excessive... And, knowing I can provide all he needs sometimes makes me feel more like livestock than Earth Mother. At times, it seems my only identity is as a provider of food. In my darkest moments, there is resentment that yet more sleep is lost, that I will never get that 45 minutes back, resentment that my body is no longer my own. The enforced down time of nursing can be a blessing but also a source of a great deal of stress to say nothing of wondering just how much daytime television one person really needs to watch.

Over the last week or 2 Charlie has finally begun to go 3 hours during the day and at least 1 4 hours stretch at night. He has begun to become more focused while nursing so we sometimes finish in as little as 15 minutes. This is certainly helping me feel that I might actually make it to the 6 month mark but I still don't seem to feel as warmly about nursing as some do. Is this just a function of time? Maybe I would feel quite differently if I hadn't had a choice and hadn't been able to nurse.

Nursing has made me feel somewhat bad for my husband and men in general. I have been able to participate in life in a way that women always have. I bore a child and now feed him in the same way that women 3000 years ago would have. My husband, obviously, had a hand in the conception of Charlie but doesn't get to experience the same connection to the past that I do. While he does provide for the family in the pseudo-traditional sense of being the main income earner, he doesn't provide in the most traditional sense. At no point will he likely ever create shelter or hunt food for his family. He lacks the generational connection that I have now experienced. While this doesn't particularly help me feel all that more positive about nursing in the here and now, it does, at least provide an abstract solace to mull during the 4 am nursing session.

Call Me SB (social butterfly)

Charlie has discovered the world. There are fans and lights and people. Charlie would prefer to never close his eyes again for fear of missing something. He's adorable! He has started making eye contact and he smiles and he seems to know who I am. He's also starting to go 3 hours between feedings (at least until we hit a growth spurt yesterday). This, of course, leaves me with the dilema of what one does with an alert 10 week old for 2 hours after you've already covered the diaper change and feeding.

Ironing

Why do all of Charlie's onsies have ironing instructions? Am I the only one who has debated how many times he can spit upon an outfit before I really have to change it?

On Aspirations

We have started to come out of the fog of newborn care. Charlie is starting to sleep for 4 hours at a stretch, key word being "starting." He's also starting to go for 2.5-3 hours between nursing sessions so we can actually do things without sprinting home all the time although our outings are far from leisurely. Charlie is also starting to agree to take naps during the afternoon without me holding him the whole time and of longer than 5 minutes duration. There was a period of time in the very recent past that I could feel myself melting away. I had become "The Boob." I had no time to call my own. No opportunity to so anything unrelated to the physical sustenance of myself or child and sustaining myself was a far second, mainly attended to in order to preserve the milk supply for the baby. With time opening in my day to think beyond the vital, I've begun to give thought to my aspirations for Charlie.

When we discussed names we decided that it had to pass the Supreme Court/plumber test. In other words, the name had to work for either vocation. There is a school superintendent named "Tiffany" around here and I always feel bad for her. At any rate, before Charlie was born I thought that I didn't care what he did as long as he was happy. As time goes on, I am beginning to think that happiness isn't enough. In addition to being happy, I would like to instill the desire to make the world a better place. I don't really care how. He might simply have a cheerful disposition that makes those around him happier. He might always say please and thank you. He might cure cancer. Of course, now the question has arisen... have I made the world a better place in my turn.

Baby Radar

How is it that Charlie can be sleeping peacefully until the exact moment that I try to do a task?

At night, we'll have finished nursing, he will be completely out, I put him in his cradle, observe for a minute or two, coax his father to coherence and enlist him to rock the cradle and then finally get to go pee. Within 15 seconds, he's crying.

In the afternoon, I will put him in his swing and he will gaciously allow me to pee (what a gentleman!) after a minute or two he falls asleep. He will sleep through the dogs barking at a squirrel and a marching band on tv but as soon as I lay down on the couch to catch a nap, wailing comences.

Crock Pot Pork Roast

So, I have discovered that the only hope in hell I have of cooking dinner these days is to do all the prep at night while my husband can keep an eye on Charlie and then cook via crock pot. He was particuarly enamored with the dish last night so I thought I would record it here both to share with any interested parties and so that I could remember what I did. Sadly, it was one of those recipes that I did no measuring for but I'll do my best...

I'm not totally sure what size the pork roast was but I'm guessing a pound so, we'll go with that.

Peel, core and roughly chop 3 granny smith apples (1 per serving of roast).

Sear/ brown (I'm not sure which would be the correct term) the roast in a hot cast iron skillet.

Put pork and apples into crock pot with 1/4 cup brown sugar, dash ground clove, 2 shakes of allspice, 1 tablespoonish of ground ginger (1-2 inches chopped fresh is better but we didn't have any) and 2 tablespoonsish of apple cider vinegar.

Cook on low for about 9 hours (longer for a bigger roast). Mash the apples up about halfway through the cooking or when you get a chance- spoon a good hunk of them on top of the roast.

In other news, life with Charlie marches on. I have now managed to get out almost all of the baby announcements. I made my own and they weren't actually designed to be mass produced after the arrival of the baby and we sent out more than 120. Happily, the Christmas card I designed was designed with baby in mind so, we have some hope of getting those out before New Year's. I suspect that the annual Christmas cookie baking spree might not happen this year though. I haven't had the heart to break it to my friends yet.

Hooray!

Charlie had another weight check yesterday and was up by more than a pound from last week. His father is taking to calling him "Daddy's Little Porker."

Charlie promptly starting eating every 2 hours with gusto, around the clock, when he would have been at 39 weeks gestation which supports the doctor's suspicion that his slow gain was a function of him being so young.

Charlie very much seems to be a child that develops various skills abruptly and a bit ahead of the curve if his birth and eating are anything to go by. He is now furiously working on making his head stay up and had his first tummy time yesterday. He seems to be closing in on a smile although I'm more looking forward to eye contact.

Correction

In my sleep addled state I mistakenly wrote that the dopctor was terribly concerned about Charlie's weight. I meant to say that she WASN'T too terribly concerned.

Sorry!

It gets better, right?

So, we went to the doctor again on Thursday for another weight check and Charlie was down another 3 ounces. The doctor is terribly concerned. He looks very healthy. His reflexes are good. His jaundice is quickly disapearing. He poops and pees and poops some more. She thinks that it may jsut have to do with him deciding to come so early. While he was a full term baby he is a very young full term baby.

Starting yesterday he decided to start eating every 2 hours. Dear God! I may never eat or sleep again. I am completely thrilled that this probably means he's getting with the program and will hopefully have gained some nice weight by his next weight check next week but I am really going through the ringer. The 2 hour thing continued all night and has gone into today. In addition, not only does he want to eat every 2 hours but one feeding session takes about 45 minutes. This means I get 1 hour of sleep at a time. I am so hopeful that this means he is growing and I'm commited to breastfeeding but I have to say that I could really get behind a resurgence in wet nurses. In addition to all this eating, he's also starting to have longer alert periods that I'm trying to really be responsive to in order to help him start to get the night/day concept. At this point I'm perpetually hungry but begining to feel alightly queasy at the thought of yet another granola bar (the one handed meal of choice around here), my girl parts all hurt from over use or contracting or whatever else, my neck aches from trying to sleep sitting up and nursing, and my head hurts from lack of sleep. It's a good thing he's so cute, although even that fades in allure by about 1 am.

Four Hours

Life with Charlie is going reasonably well. My sister-in-law left today and we survived the day alone while my husband was at work.

Two nights ago we had a night that made you question if you could actually do this but then last night I got a blessed 4 hours between feedings. I hadn't realized what a difference that hour could make. I slept long enough to have dreams. I didn't cry when it was time to wake up for another feeding. The benefits of breast feeding are many but it certainly isn't for wimps. Charlie tends to eat for about 45 minutes and was eating about every 3 hours so a full REM cycle was a mythical beast.

My weight is coming down. I had had this concept that since I had staying within the 25 pound range that the weight would all be gone by the time I left the hospital but I was sorely disappointed. I'm within about 7 pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight. I'm still in maternity and yoga pants though. (sidebar: why do my maternity pants fit so much better now? wouldn't they make them to fit the pregnant belly?) My mid-section is still too tender to handle much in the way of waistbands. I have high hopes that I will be back in my pre-pregnancy clothing by my 6 week check-up but I'll just have to see what happens. My mind is having trouble wrapping itself around the concept that I still need to be eating a lot to support my breastfeeding at the same time as I'm losing weight.

The doctor is concerned about respiratory illness and has asked that we keep Charlie home for the 1st month. This is making me a little stir crazy since that means I can leave the house for no more than 1.5 hours if I can manage to leave within a few minutes of the completion of a nursing session.. I hadn't really realized how tethered to the house I would be until my husband and his sister went out to get some dinner and do some errands and I realized that I had to stay home. I haven't had much difficulty with PPD but that was a low point. Especially since Charlie was born so much earlier than I had expected, there are lots of little errands that didn't get done. I have had plenty of help and people are more than willing to run errands for me but there are some things I really want to do myself. The dependence on others for the errands and the amount of help I needed around the house while in the early stages of recovering from the c-section has been a bit of a trial for me. But, my recovery is going well and I'm able to most things around the house at this point. I am eagerly counting down to Charlie's 1 month birthday.

Charlie!

My water broke at 8:30 (ish) pm on Thursday, September 7. I was in the middle of my mammoth cleaning spree and had just finished digging around under the sink for some cleaning supplies when there was a "gush." We called the doctor and were on our way to the hospital by 9:30. Charles Allen M... (Charlie) was born via a c-section (originally scheduled for the 20th) at 11:46. He weighed 7 pounds, 2 ounces and was 19.5 inches long. I had just started my 37th week that day so he was full term and was (and is) quite healthy. My incision is healing nicely and I am becoming good friends with Tylenol with codeine. We came home on Sunday evening and we are beginning to settle in. We are both getting better at breastfeeding and my milk seems to be coming in. There have been mood swings but no signs of hard core PPD as of yet.

My mother and mother-in-law both arrived Friday morning to meet the baby and get the house prepared for our arrival home. My mother (with a small amount of help from my mother-in-law) managed to finish up the 2 weeks worth of cleaning I had anticipated in about 2 days- go Mom! Luckily the changing table (the last major baby item) arrived on that Tuesday (along with the water) and my Mom washed all the baby items while we were in the hospital so we have all of the key baby bases covered. We have plenty waiting for us to "finish up" when things settle down but we can manage for now. They have both left and my sister-in-law will be here for the next week or so to help out.

I will try to post more within the next several days.

Let there be water...

We have been inspected and the well guys are coming to fill in the moat with the pipes later today. I am currently running the empty washer with enough bleach to fell an ox and then will move on to tackle the rest of the many, many items that will need to be washed before they are safe for a baby to chew on. On the plus side, we had apparently been living with a pale imitation of water pressure and the washing machine seems to be making much better time than it used to. Unfortunately, the toilets are now deafening but you can't win them all. Now to see if the dishwasher has experienced a similar epiphany...

I am also trying to decide what sort of nursing wear to buy. I think I have decided to get 2 of the Land's End overstock poplin nightshirts. I'm a little worried that I will want short sleeves but am thinking that at $7 a pop, if it comes to it, I can hack off the sleeves and hem them myself. I'm also going for 2 of the motherhood nursing tanks with built-in bras. I am also on a quest for somewhat stylish yoga pant/ zip-up hoodie outfits. In some ways, I'm finding this even more daunting than maternity shopping. At least with the maternity wear you could make rough stabs in the dark that if you were a medium, you would probably stay a medium but I have no real guideline as to how enthusiatic Bessie and Buttercup will be.

Finally, I made a leap of faith purchase yesterday. Both of my cargo pants met their demise last spring. So, when I was at our Gap Outlet (which has $9 yoga pants but only in hideous colors) I noticed they had some rather fetching cargo pants for quite good price and bought a pair in what is the high end of my pre-pregnancy size range. We will see how foolish that was in a few weeks...

The End is Nigh

I have definitely turned a corner in this pregnancy. It has become more daunting to think of being pregnant for more than a few more weeks than it is to think of all that is involved with having a person you are responsible for. I am ready to be woken in the middle of the night by something that will be cute at times and, in all probability, love me back until the age of 12 when I will become The Most embarrassing Person On Earth (I'm working on my collection of show tunes to hum while walking about with the poor child- if you're going to go down, it might as well be in flames). After all, I'm not sleeping for more than a few hours at a time anyway. I am ready to have more than 2 sleep position choices. I am SO ready to wear something other than these 2 damn pairs of capris. B. Moss' cute dresses are calling to me and don't spoil it all by pointing out the logistical nightmare which is breastfeeding in a dress- keep the dream alive!

I also seem to have started what some would call hard core nesting but I think it's really the precipice of panic with a healthy side of staying so busy I won't notice that it's actually, gasp, September. I am still happily convinced that it is August 26th. Floor boards are my current fixation. The other night I woke up to pee and simply had to go after the floor boards in the bathroom with a baby wipe (no, we still don't have water). As soon as we get water, hopefully tomorrow, I am so going after those pesky corners in the kitchen...

The town finished installing all of it's stuff on Friday and the well guys had hoped to get us switched over but Ernesto changed the plan. The well guys couldn't finish their previous job on Thursday since we had torrential rains and flash floods- to add insult to injury, this was the first major rain we had gotten since the saga began. They offered to come in on Saturday, but since it has to be inspected before they can actually turn the water on we would have simply been staring at a big trench in the yard until Tuesday when the inspector would be able to come. So, we have our fingers crossed that tomorrow will be the magic day. Of course, today it's pouring and they're calling for rain tomorrow too...

In happy news, I have discovered the 90210 marathon on the Soap station.

A Little Something...

Yesterday I felt a little tickly something. I can't say if it was fingers or toes but they were little and there were 5 (I would assume) and they tickled. I hadn't known that they could be cute even before you could see them.

Sheets

I can breathe a sigh of relief. I finished the 4th cradle sheet yesterday. The baby now has somewhere to sleep.

Now, if only we had water...

Good Heavens!

So, last night I suddenly realized that I was in week 35. I had been very happy with week 33. I was ready to hang with 33 for several more weeks. 33 and I, we're like that. In the early 30's, the pregnancy books were clearly at a loss for what to tell you. It was all summed up as, you know that stuff that sort of sucked last week? Well, this week it will suck slightly more. I am now wandering into the parts of the books where they begin to discuss things like how to tell if you're in labor and begin issuing dire warnings about packing bags and such. They all seem to also include a section about what to do if you wind up delivering at work. I'm not clear who these women are who manage to sail through the first 12 hours of labor and suddenly look up from a pleasant IM chat only to realize the baby is crowning. Nor am I clear why these women cart various pregnancy books with them to work. However, the gist seems to be that birth is messy so they offer various strategies for saving the office furniture and that you should not cut the cord.

We took our hospital tour last night. You could tell that I was the one who worked in early intervention as I was the only one asking detailed questions about level of NICU care available and wanting to know exactly how long it takes to get from our hospital to the one with the Level 3 care. There are definite advantages to delivering a small, regional hospital but a part of me longs for impersonality, hordes of residents, and incomprehensible layouts if it means my baby never will ride in an ambulance to get to the NICU. I keep telling myself that the chances that my baby will need that sort of care are infinitesimal, but we can add that to the list of irrational ideas that I can't shake, which includes the idea that my baby will be sitting on a rock in the wilderness (or at least the cow pasture out behind the hospital) until I personally have the baby in my arms. Ah, motherhood...

We are in the process of getting water. The town engineer, in what I suspect was divine intervention, apparently failed to realize that we didn't have an easement until the water guys had already laid the pipe. So, it looks like we will have water late next week (I sincerely hope since I'm waiting on the water to wash the baby stuff which needs to happen before I can pack the bag and the books are really freaking me out about the lack of bag packing thus far). But, we will have to pay for a survey which will wind up being rather expensive. Apparently, there is quite the tangle over the road and which parcels which of it goes with. Once they have figured out who owns the part of the road that the town used as an easement, we will have to convince that person to sign off on the easement. We're a little worried that it will wind up being the crazy guy on our street but the fact remains that the pipes are there so, he won't gain much by not agreeing to sign the paper. We're hoping that he will demand that we buy a couple of loads of gravel (he's a former ER doctor turned bulldozer/dumptruck operator...we don't get it either) so that he can regravel the road or something like that.

In news of the weird, my mother-in-law is completely convinced that Penny is going to drag the baby out of the cradle while the baby is sleeping. Motivation for Penny to decide to do this is still unknown and the fact that Penny is still fairly afraid of the cradle (or anything that rocks- the glider is highly worrisome for her as well we haven't put batteries in the swing yet but expect that to be quite the event) doesn't seem to mitigate her concern.

Charitable Thoughts on Morning Sickness

So, something unexpected has come out of this whole well thing. I have come away feeling almost good about my morning sickness. It turns out that it probably did what it was biologically designed to do (if a bit overly enthusiastically). Very shortly after I got pregnant, I decided that the water from our tap tasted bad so I avoided drinking it. When I did drink it, it had to go through the Brita which is less than perfect but still is another layer of filtration. After just a week or two more, I could no longer tolerate still water at all. So, any tap water I did drink was boiled prior to making a tummy soothing tea and most of the time I was mainlining ginger ale. My extended bout with morning sickness meant that I cooked very little food in my home. When I could eat, it was often in the form of pre-prepared foods like crackers or (on really good days) take out. I also followed a rule that anything I drank had to contain calories since liquids were often my main caloric source- that cut way back on the tap water consumption too. This means that the baby was probably minimally exposed to well water during the entire 1st trimester and a good hunk of the 2nd. I never really thought I could look back gratefully on 6 months of puking but, apparently I was wrong.

Thank you so much for your reassurances. I hadn't thought about the filtering effects of the placenta. They spend so much time telling you about what will pass, thoughts of what won't didn't readily occur to me.

I also keep looking out the windows. We have had flocks of hummingbirds coming to the feeders this year and they don't seem to be falling ill from pesticides. We have oodles of other birds flocking to our yard as well as squirrels and rabbits and chipmunks and butterflies. It looks like we actually have markedly more than last year and more than other people in our neighborhood. I think that at least some of the birds are those that were hatched in our trees last year. It seems to me that if things were all that bad, our spring would have been much more silent.

The town seems to understand our urgency in needing to get on the town water and have been very helpful thus far. Forms are being expedited and faxed. Work orders are already in place. We are a little apprehensive about the actual laying of the pipe. We aren't terribly sure about the status of our road, legally speaking. The town won't or doesn't like to (which is unclear) tear up private roads to lay pipe. When we bought our house we were told it was private but if you look at official maps from the town it's not marked as private, nor is the street sign. It's fairly obvious when you look at the road that it isn't maintained by the city as it's gravel. But the water guy, the town engineer, and the work order guy all signed off on the work to lay the pipe so, we're not going to raise the issue. Our biggest worry is that the very odd man who lives a little further down the road seems to think he owns the road which, according to what we can tell from the deed and such, he doesn't. But, he does own part and real estate law can be murky. We plan to plead ignorance if the matter comes up and assume that trying to stop the town, once it is in motion, will take longer than the laying of the pipe and then, eh...

My Fucking Stars and Garters

So, we're on well water. I had assumed my husband had been testing it, if not the recommended once a year, then at least periodically, but he had not. With his dawning realization that pregnancy results in an actual baby (which seems to generally happen around 7-8 months for most men), he decided to at last test the well.

It came back positive for both e. coli and coliform bacteria.

There was much freaking out.

The tests came back on Thursday afternoon and the soonest we could get the guys to come and shock the well was this morning. We can't shock the well ourselves because of the way the well was installed.

The well man took one look at the well and said "Well, there's your problem right there, your well isn't sealed." Yes, in fact, we have basically been drinking from a hole in ground for the last 3 years. The well is drilled with a drill that has a much larger circumference than the pipe that is used for the pipe that brings the water into the house. So, after they put in the pipe they are to grout it or cement it in so that the surface water doesn't just go directly into the drinking water- a significant amount of purification apparently happening with all that trickling through clay and rocks and whatnot. Instead, every time we've had a heavy rain our water was polluted with whatever happened to be around. I am so beyond horrified.

We don't generally use any chemicals on our lawn or garden for a variety of reasons- some environmental, some not wanting to figure out which chemicals we should use, and some being that we just don't care enough about crab grass and dandelions. But, the man who lived here before us was definitely not an organic guy. The well is also right next to the dog play area (it's quite nice sized). The dog poop gets cleaned up regularly but still... Our neighbors, not so organic. We're on a 1 acre lot and the well is in the middle of it so, we may have escaped the worst of contamination but who knows what I have been exposed to during my pregnancy really. The only real plus is that no one has gotten sick from our water (that we know of) and my husband keeps freshwater fish and they haven't been showing any particular problems that might indicate Really Bad Things.

Shocking the well will only be effective until our next big storm but will buy me a little time to do some laundry and such. However, our water isn't safe to drink. I can't wash any baby items since there is a cold rinse at the end of the cycle and babies chew on everything. I can't wash anything that will be used in contact with food like dishcloths, etc. All of our dishes need to be rewashed and sterilized. I can't cook with our water. When we brush our teeth, we need to use bottled water. Our water problems have just been magnified since now, we don't just need to worry about killing the bacteria but we also have to worry about chemicals and other non-biological pollutants.

We're planning on connecting to the city water if it's at all financially feasible (which it looks like it probably is) but that will take about 5 weeks (assuming the town guy gave us an accurate time estimate). The baby comes home in just over 6 weeks. This is pretty accurate since I'm having a scheduled c-section. If there is not digging happening in our yard by the week before the baby is scheduled, we're going to go ahead and shock and seal the well again. I refuse to bring my baby home to place where I won't be able to give the baby a bath, wash my hands, or wash the baby's clothing.

My husband is calling our realtor tomorrow. The well tested positive for coliform before we moved in (so, someone was supposed to tell us to re-test regularly but no one ever did). So, it was shocked but we're pretty sure they didn't wait the amount of time you need to wait before re-testing and giving the all clear. And, there's no way you can look at the well head and not see the big hole around it so it seems like there should have been some disclosure somewhere. But, Real Estate law is far from anything I know about and I have a feeling that this issue will be murky since I don't think we included "inspect well head" in our contract. We aren't particularly litigious but, if there is some way of getting help for paying for clean water or whatever, we'll take it.

Ugh! I'm so glad I went to all that effort to try to eat organic while pregnant...

Something's up...

I think that some sort of hormone shift must have occured over the last week. I became distraught yesterday when watching The Daily Show. They were doing this joke about using baby seals to seal the Alaskan pipeline. I also am starting to be a wee bit moody. And, there's totally something going on with my boobs.

Shirley has been a basket case all week for no identifiable reason. She keeps appearing stressed out when there are no identifiable stressors and it takes her an inordinate amount of time to tell me her tale of woe when I return from even very short outings.

Penny has been clingy for the last several days.

My husband has been getting progressively more schmoopy over the last day or so.

I expected at least the dogs to start getting a little wierd when I got close to my due date. I assumed I would smell different to them and such. But, I hadn't expected it to effect my husband and I certainally hadn't expected it to start at week 33.

Of Men and Dentists and Eating

Early this morning my husband and I had a bit of a tiff. It mainly revolved around the fact that he seems to have only figured out that there will be an actual baby living with us shortly in the last 2 weeks. I'm not sure what he thought was going to be the end result of this pregnancy but it didn't seem to be a baby that required things like a nursery. He had adapted wonderfully to pregnancy. The weeping, the getting me a glass of water at 3 am (what is up with this thirst?), the needing to help me out of the tub when I beached myself, puking at 4 am- all handled with good humor but the idea of a baby at the end was a distant sort of unreality. I've noticed this seems to be common among the expectant fathers. It seems that it is only in month 8 that the idea that pregnancy will end and a baby will come home (we hope and pray) really dawns on the fathers. One woman who is slightly further along than I am said that her husband woke her up after having a nightmare about the baby. When asked what the nightmare was he said that they had the baby and had to take it home and take care of it. Thankfully, realization has dawned on my husband and the nursery is close to done and things are getting ordered and such. What all of this has me wondering, however, is if this lag in realization (I had mine in mid-June) is unique to men or unique to the non-pregnant partner. In short, do lesbian couples run into this same problem? That would control for sex based differences in perception but still allow for only one member of the couple to be getting whammed in the ribs reguarly. Does anyone know?

Second, I finally went in for a dental cleaning last week. It was the most comfortable I've been in months. Everything was supported, nothing ached, I could breathe, my entire torso was happy. The cleaning itself was less than pleasant but the chair was a wonder. My husband suggested that we might get a dental chair of our own. I said that if we were planning on having a family of 10, perhaps, otherwise I'll just look forward to scheduling my late-pregnancy cleaning from now on.

Third, what is up with the baby making me need all these calories but then squishing up my stomach so much that it's impossible to actually eat? And, in one of those "wonder of pregnancy/the hell" sorts of things, drinking water in the night now causes heartburn and I required Tums! For water! Thai food for dinner- totally fine! But water- verboten! Argh!