At least 5 toes...

Before getting pregnant I had wondered at what point you actually feel like a ‘mother’.
And after I found out I was pregnant I wondered if it wasn’t going to be until the baby was actually born, because just being pregnant wasn’t actually enough to give me mothering feelings as it turned out.
That is, until I started bleeding and had no idea what it meant – for me, my baby, or for my body.
And the idea that this was the foreshadowing of something more serious, or worst of all a miscarriage?
Suddenly you find out that amidst all the panic, and fear, and denial that this could be happening to you, there is also the undeniable feeling that you are the mother and this is your baby that’s at risk.
And a very new mother at that.
And what do mothers do when there’s something wrong?
Well, if they’re me, they apparently call their doctor at 10 at night and blubber about ‘bleeding’ and ‘what’s going on?’ and ‘is the baby ok?’.
And in between the blubbering and jagged breathing the doctor tried to advise, and suggested that we go to the ER. That an ultrasound should be done just to make sure that it wasn’t anything serious.
I’m not sure that the idea of going to an ER made me feel better or worse for that matter. I pretty much knew when I first dialed my doctor that there was a trip to the emergency room in our near future.
But my call to her left me feeling neither consoled nor informed about what was going on. Other than the fact that some bleeding can be normal – she didn’t really say anything else to make me feel at ease.
So we soberly got in the car and drove into Berkeley to our hospital.
About half way there I started to feel rather calm.
As I’m sure Trevor found rather consoling.
I was fine.
The baby was fine.
There was no way that something horrible could be wrong.
That and the baby had begun it’s usual 10pm-12am yoga routine right about when we got in the car.
What could possible be wrong with the baby if the baby was moving around as usual?
And then it hit me.
We’re going to the hospital.
A hospital where we will be getting an ultrasound.
You know what happens during ultrasounds? Stuff happens.
Like finding out the gender of the baby.
And just like that I went from feeling 100% worried about the baby to about 20% worried and 80% excited that we were getting an ultrasound at 19 weeks and NOT 26 weeks.
We were going to find out what we were having!
Of course the 20% of me that was still worried seemed to have a strong hold on me.
But I felt much better when the triage nurse told me that I probably had nothing to worry about.
And then they took us in for the ultrasound and I got to hear the little heartbeat – all doubt and worry went away.
And when the tech said “the baby looks fine, everything is the way it should be” all I had left to ask was “can you see what it is?”
“Well, this isn’t your official anatomy ultrasound – but I can definitely tell you that you are having a little boy.”
And here’s a little keepsake for our fridge:

And we know he has at least a right foot with 5 toes:

A Penchant for Drama

Quick note: BABY AND MOM ARE ALIVE AND FINE.
After receiving some concerned comments, and then rereading my last post, I realized that I may have a knack for writing with a bit more drama and suspense when I am both pregnant and up to my eyeballs in work.
Who knew.
My apologies to anyone that may have feared for the worst for me and the beh beh.
I will try and finish my 2-part 'dramatization' in the next day or two.
But my job may have other plans for me.

Letters of complaint to upper management

It would appear that I've fallen behind on my blogging.
A letter submitted to upper management has indicated that there has been some dissatisfaction with the frequency, or lack thereof, of blogging at this here blog.
Big surprise there.
I bet half of you have fallen out of your chairs.
To be honest, I've almost blogged about 5 times in the past few weeks, but have stopped because I was procrastinating on telling the story I wanted to tell.
Not because the story is hard to tell - just drawn out. And there's a bit of news at the end of the story that I wanted to break to a few people on the phone first before I published over the vastness that is the internet.
Now that the phone calls have been made, I can now safely blast into the vastness.
This blog is probably going to be broken into 2 parts.
And those of you who are familiar with my other blog realize that this means I'll get only part of the story down and then allude to the final entry and never ever ever get around to it.
Ever.
Ahem.
Can't really say anything to lead you all to believe otherwise.
But this one is only a 2-part story...so I'm sure this shouldn't be too hard for me to complete.
And I SWEAR! This one I will finish.
Girl Scout's honor.
(I'm totally holding my hand up in the girl scout's honor salute right now)
So.
This whole story kind of goes back, to ohhhhhh...my doctor's appointment roughly around 16 weeks.
By this point in time Trevor and I were both dying to find out the sex of the baby. We knew that typically you would have to wait at least until 18 weeks for a gender determination ultrasound - 20-22 weeks for a more accurate determination. So the idea of waiting another 2-6 weeks was pretty much annoying.
But we had no choice, and we would put up with the waiting.
And so by the time we made it to my 16 week doctor appointment all I wanted to do was get the form from my doctor to allow us to set up our ultrasound at 20 weeks.
That way I'd have something ON THE CALENDAR.
And 20 weeks sounded good to me - not to soon, not too late.
It was going to be 20 weeks.
4 more weeks.
One month.
Just 30 more days.
So imagine how much I wanted to jump off the examining table and wring my doctor's neck when she informed us that we would not be having our next ultrasound until 26 weeks.
I should point out that I really like my doctor. She's great. Laid back, good sense of humor peppered with the right amount of sarcasm. Old enough to have a decent amount of wisdom under her belt, but not so old that she might employ the use of leeches during my labor...
But this was not news I wanted to hear from her.
26 weeks?
That was 10 more weeks!
DO THE MATH PEOPLE
That's, like, 70 days! A long amount of time that no one should be expected to endure!
And I'm PREGNANT.
You do not tell a pregnant women something she does not want to hear!
It might elicit one of the following responses:
a) crying
b) yelling
c) crying spontaneously interrupted with yelling
d) yelling spontaneously interrupted with crying
But I took the news ok I suppose.
Wanted to yell and all. But I kept that to myself.
She explained that the insurance companies (oh yes, how DID I know they had something to do with this) don't really like to pay for ultrasounds.
In their humble opinion, ultrasounds should only really be used to determine 'issues', 'life threatening' concerns, to make 'diagnosis'.
Blah blah fucking blah.
And apparently ultrasounds during pregnancy aren't really necessary as far as they're concerned.
But they succumb to paying for at least one - because FOR CRYING OUT LOUD a doctor and patient should at least have the right to make sure the pregnancy is HEALTHY.
So it's very common for insurance to pay for at least one ultrasound.
Two on the other hand is a little more tricky. And my doctor's office is usually able to bend the insurance assholes to their will and make them pay for at least 2 - one to make sure the pregnancy is healthy early on (8 weeks), and one to make sure it's progressing safely (at 26 weeks).
And so we left the doctor's office with our heads hung low - with the knowledge that it would not be for another 10 weeks that we would find out the gender of our baby.
Woe was us.
Life was over as we knew it.
But we took it like the supposed grown-ups that we are, and went about our day as usual.
And it didn't take long before we started looking into those 3D/4D ultrasound clinics that are popping up everywhere, considering the possibility of just paying for an ultrasound out of pocket.
So we could know 6 weeks early.
Cuz I might have died if I waited another 6 weeks.
And $100 for a 'gender determination' session seemed like an ok price to pay just so we could stop calling the baby 'it'.
And then about 3 weeks later, at 19 weeks, life threw us a little unexpected event - and we found ourselves sitting in the waiting room of the Alta Bates ER in Berkeley at 11 at night.
On a school night.
On THAT note...I'm off to go enjoy my weekend.
I'll finish this one up next week.

...and I was worried about deli meat

I heard about this poor poor woman on the radio today.


I realize this happened 3 years ago - but I wanted to take a moment to sympathize with her concerns.
I mean, jackhammers ARE loud. And it's not like the baby is totally insulated and probably hears nothing more than a distant rumble.
There really should be a moratorium on all jackhammering in any residential area.
For ever and ever.
I hope Mellisa Williamson had a reprieve from the jackhammering soon after, considering it must be very stressful for her.
Good thing she's managing her stress with cigarettes.
Wouldn't want the baby to suffer from undo stress.

Some call it 'legroom'

There came a moment early on in this whole science experiment pregnancy that we decided we needed to upgrade our car situation.
I’m still driving the same car I bought in college – the only added ‘feature’ being the air conditioning. Everything else is as manual as it gets.
That and it’s about the size of a go-kart.
Trevor is driving an even older convertible two-door. Albeit his car has more features, only half of them are working correctly. The other half either don’t work, or require some patience/begging/banging/tugging on to get to work.
And if all that wasn’t enough, both cars are pushing 200,000 miles.
We love our cars – but we love our baby’s safety more. And IF either of our cars makes it another 50,000 miles, there’s no telling how well or safely either one would hold up in an accident.

And it is with this reasoning that we found ourselves at a Toyota dealership last night.
We test drove the new 2008 Toyota Highlander with what had to be one of the most unenthusiastic sales reps I have ever encountered.
Overall I thought the car had a good ride – nice roomy interior, good suspension, nice handling. I thought some of the added features were a bit over the top and not well thought out – not worth the extra money. And it was a bit annoying that you have to buy either the AWD or the 4x4 to get the 3^rd row of seats. We only want FWD and don't like the idea of having to pay an extra $2500 to get AWD just so we can get a 3rd row of seats.

As for Trevor…
“So what did you think?”
“The back seats are too far back – you can’t reach the kids to hit them upside the head when they’re misbehaving.”
“I think that’s what they call ‘ample legroom’.”
“Yea, well, it’s lame. A parent needs to be able to smack their kids from the driver’s seat.”

With that we went over to the Chrysler dealership to check out the Pacifica.
We kicked the tires, took it for a test drive – found it to be quite impressive for the money.

As for Trevor?
“So how did you like the Pacifica compared to the Highlander?”
“I liked it…”
“Yea, it felt a little cozier than the Highlander – maybe not as spacious?”
“Yea, I could totally swat the kids from the driver’s seat in that car.”

We’ll be checking out a few more cars in the weeks to come. Hoping to narrow the search down by December when we plan to finally make the upgrade.
And with a little luck we’ll find a car with the right mix of what we need, and seats that aren’t so far apart that an occasional head smacking of the upside direction isn’t impossible.

Still Kicking

Someone is moving around down there – and it’s not my large intestine.
Or the small one either.
I’m not really sure what I was expecting would happen the first time I felt the baby kick. It’s always been one of those things that I was expecting would happen and was looking forward to it…
But I never had any thoughts or expectations on how I would react.
And with something like this, when there are already so many new and unusual feelings going on below your beltline, it’s hard to tell the difference between lunch digesting or a baby moving.
So it’s hard to know when you SHOULD react – or you might just be getting excited about that chicken sandwich working it’s way past your large intestine.
But last week I had felt sensations that could have just been general weird sensations that come along with being pregnant, or could be something else. Who knows really.
Then on Friday I was in the car with Trevor and felt what seemed to be most definitely a baby moving.
Just a quick nudge, and then a rub, and then it was gone.
And since that moment I have waited and waited. Pausing at the slightest sensation that MIGHT be that little nudge again.
And nothing.
Until today.
Just a little rub – that caught my attention.
And then a little tiny kick.
I think he/she was saying hi.
After 17 weeks of silence, of just being *with* each other, the baby is finally communicating.
Maybe just a kick today...regular kicking in 3 months…and then pissing you off daily in 13 years…
But it’s something to start with.
And after you’ve been pregnant for this long, it’s kind of nice to feel a little something that proves to you that you’re not alone.
And it gives you a memory to look back on fondly when they’re 14 years old and you wish that getting a kick in the stomach was fun again.

Just twiddling my thumbs

I am so lagging right now.
It occurred to me this morning on my commute - where I do some of my best thinking/self-chastisement - that I hadn't blogged in a while.
Shame on me.
I was supposed to be blogging more so that I could document this whole pregnancy experience and have it to look back on.
To lament for the days when I got a regular 8 hours of sleep and a daily shower.
But apparently I haven't had a whole lot to chat about.
To be honest, this whole being pregnant thing has been pretty uneventful so far.
I suppose I should consider myself lucky that I don't have all kinds of horrible ailments to be complaining about.
Life is pretty much status quo around here.
So there. Now I've written a blog entry that I will look back on when I have ALL KINDS of horrible things wrong with me.
And lament for the days when I had nothing wrong with me, and apparently all the time in the world to blog about how there's nothing wrong with me.
And one of these days I might get around to taking another "bump" picture and posting it.
Yes, that's right.
"Bump" is pregnancy lingo - or "pringo" - for my ever expanding belly.
And "Bump watch" is pringo for picture of a pregnant lady's belly.
I am down with the pringo.
Yo yo.
So stay tuned for the next installment of my "bump watch".
Can you dig it?