A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words and Some Good Old Fashioned Groundedness

How embarrassing for the LFM that his Mom is already posting nudie pics on the internets! (follow the arrow)

So not only did our beautiful son show all, but he did so in such a spectacular manner that everyone who has seen the ultrasound picture (ie the blackmail shot) has been incredibly impressed. Yup, that's our boy...and his gigantic no-mistaking-it-for-anything-else penis. We also got to see his other brain, which is also huge, and his face with his chubby little cheeks and WB's full round lips. He actually gave us quite the tour, thanks to the caffeine I had about an hour before hand, and it was nothing short of magical as we watched him open and close his teeny little hand (undoubtedly waving at the silly parental gawkers...he's a total ham, just like his Mama) or stick his teeny perfect little footprint right up to us. He looks healthy and the weight they estimated for him (1 pound 7 ounces) is right in the perfect range for his stage of development at 23 1/2 weeks.

We have a wonderful healthy beautiful (and well hung) baby boy!

We definitely made the right decision (for us) to find out now instead of waiting- its the little extra grounding force to make us feel more rooted in the pregnancy and our journey towards parenthood. What with all of the stress from the move and Mom's cancer, I feel like we needed that extra little something to make us feel even more solidly connected to our child and to each other....as a whole funky family. And boy did it! Even though I've known all along (I kept saying I thought it was a boy, and I just couldn't envision a girl at all...somehow I just knew) somehow this just makes everything so very real and beautiful in a way that supersedes the sucky stress of cancer and moving pains....in a way that supersedes absolutely everything else. All I can think or say or do is "We have a son!".

And that's a truly wonderful thing!




**I tried to scan the ultrasound photos and haven't been able to get any decent quality pics...I posted the money shot for now, but hopefully will be able to get a better pics soon.

The Interminable Wait AND My Beautiful Surprise

We have our 2nd trimester ultrasound today at 3:20pm. Yes, this is the ultrasound where we potentially get to find out the sex of the baby, providing the LFM complies and decides to reveal all. If it takes after its mother, it certainly will; if it takes after its father then modesty will undoubtedly prevail. Come on, LFM, be Mama's little monkey, just for today. After that, please adopt the easy going nature of your father, or we'll all be in trouble.

In the meantime, I'm trying desperately to hold on to my sanity until then, amidst a virtual standstill of time. Amidst a virtual standstill of time combined with a slightly stressful day at work, I might add. This is not fun. I think my head exploded an hour ago.

At 2:00pm I'll go get a little bit of coffee (our fabulous doula's suggestion), so that hopefully the LFM will be nice and active and not stubbornly showing us his or her butt only. That will take up, oh, about 10 minutes. Great. And as for the other 160 minutes???

I received the most wonderful surprise the other day, from one of the women in the Birth Circle that I go to (its a support system for women seeking natural birthing experiences- mostly for women doing home birth-which we'd love to do, but can't afford this time around, as insurance doesn't cover it and we don't even have monopoly money to spend after the move and all). At the last birth circle I was talking about how I would love to have a positive self image during this time (I believe my exact words were "I want to feel like fertile goddess") but how difficult I was finding that to be when faced with the plethora of not-so-wonderful comments I receive on a daily basis from total strangers and your average thug on the street with his pants around his ankles. The Nurturer had suggested that I designate a candle for positive thoughts and self affirmation, and light that candle whenever I was feeling negative about myself or life in general.

When I arrived home from a particularly upsetting day on Monday, I found a gift bag that had been left on the porch for me, containing a large pear scented (my favorite!) candle hand painted with a circle of women's faces superimposed on beautiful orange yellow flames. It even has glitter! The card accompanying the gift talked about how the circle of women in the candle represents the circle of women supporting me through my birth journey.

And it was just what I've needed. I have lit the candle every night and spent at least a few minutes by myself, feeling more centered and supported, and all from this one little surprise gift from someone I barely know at all. Sometimes the universe just hands you these wonderful experiences when you need them most. Thank you, Nuturer. You have, in a very simple way, given me a little extra peace of mind. That is invaluable.

My Co-opted Body is Turning Against Me!

My new top favorite super fun pregnancy symptoms of the week (excluding the 45 minutes spent violently sobbing in a grocery store parking lot Tuesday night, because while the moodiness is a barrel of laughs and all, its not really new) include:

*My nose is now slowly but surely emitting any and all pieces of its bloody self every time I blow it, which is frequently because pregnancy swells your mucous membranes to epic proportions thus giving supreme dictatorial power to your sinuses to reign unchallenged over your entire being. Its like having the bloody snotty nose of a cokehead, but without all the extra energy (which I could sure use) and teeth grinding.

*Braxton Hicks contractions, which I've actually been having for several weeks now and thought it was quite possibly a re-enactment of the scene in Aliens where the alien pushes out through someone's stomach, until I checked with my midwife at the last appointment and she assured me that no, it is indeed the BH contractions. Not that I'm disappointment, mind you, but that really is kind of what it feels like. I keep wanting to shout, "No! Wrong way! That's not the way out! Head South and bear left at the cervix!" Its not painful at all, its just super uncomfortable and pretty damn creepy. And I get them multiple times a day every single day. Whew, jealous yet?

*My tailbone has started to hurt. Not my ass, but my tailbone. Its the oddest sensatuion and incredibly uncomfortable (read painful, I just don't want to admit it). I can't find a comfortable way to sit at all. Or stand. Or lie down. Or breathe and exist. Other than that, I feel great.

*The famed lower back pain of pregnancy has begun. Thank god for yoga, that's all I have to say.

New Year's Dinner

Me and My Two Honies

I Adore Him...(most of the time)

Maman Kissing the LFM

We had a wonderful belated New Year's celebration last night at Mim's, and it was a perfect gathering of family (both real and adopted). The LFM was particularly into the yummy radish spread, Mama Synge was particularly relishing the glass of wine it took her 12 hours to finish.

Goddess of the Hippos

2 days ago (before the nice New Year's haircut I got last night, which makes me feel much more attractive)

a few weeks ago, wearing the shirt WB's parents sent me for his birthday

Bless your sweet 'ole heart kind old woman at the health food store! Bless you for being shocked when I said I was 5 months pregnant, and bless your heart even more for saying I was tiny. You are my new best friend. In fact, I'm moving in to the Honey Shop, just so you can tell me every day how small I am. I like you more than my father, who loudly proclaimed the other night, to the detriment of my fragile ego, "Wow, you sure are getting fat there aren't you?". I like you much better than the playwright who came into work the other day and said "You're what, 8 months?" to which I of course assumed he must be joking, so I replied "Yup, 8 months...that's me..." and then upon realizing that he was indeed not at all joking I amended, "No, not at all. but thanks a lot for making me feel great." His way of rectifying the situation was to say "Well [female director] is about your build and she wouldn't have looked like that until 13 months!". Wow, glad you added that qualifying statement in there, makes me feel even better to be compared to a 5'10" super thin woman when pregnant. Let me go drown my sorrows by eating 10 tubs of straight lard, because you know, that's how I got to be this gargantuan...my top secret diet of straight lard and sugar.

Even strangers at random campgrounds have told me, "Wow, you are carrying quite large!" and these are mothers, people! These are women who have been through the oh-so-fragile process of pregnancy and who have presumably known how awkward it feels to be waddling around like a gigantic hippo! How could they ever think that would be a good thing to say to someone who might not be feeling their most attractive ever? The only proper response, even if I call myself ginormous, is to say how lovely I look. And small. Even if you think I need to have a permanent tattoo reading "WIDE LOAD" drawn across my ass and can qualify as a high occupancy vehicle all on my own, the only proper comment is a flattering one. Really. Because let me tell, I do not feel like the gorgeous fertile goddess that I want to feel like. And maybe, just maybe, if people stopped being thoughtless in how they speak about my new changing body, I could enjoy it a little more, and love my new hippo shape.

So thank you, awesome lady in the Honey Shop, (who has birthed 5 children and ushered 10 more grandchildren into this world so probably knows a lot about pregnancy) for giving a pregnant goddess exactly what she needs. I walked back to work with my head high, feeling wonderful about my big 'ol belly and ass the size of Canada.

Happy New Year to all the Jewish monkeys out there - may you have a sweet and joyous new year! WB and I are going to Synagogue tonight, where I'm sure everyone will have some sort of opinion about my belly, and since many have known me since age 3, will feel quite at liberty to express said opinions. However, this is the most exciting Rosh Hashanah for me ever, with many exciting new beginnings happening this year.

The Kitchen Sink and Beyond

Its 3:30 in the a.m. and I can't sleep at all. I can hear WB snoring very clearly from the other side of our very large apartment (that is after all how he got named the Wild Boar), I've already eaten the requisite midnight ice cream, and still I don't anticipate sleep arriving at any point soon. Don't get me wrong, I'm exhausted. I just can't sleep.

The Little Funky Monkey is awake too.

Then again, the LFM is awake much of the time these days, and is quite the active baby. I've been feeling movement for about 4 weeks now. It began at a little over 16 weeks when I felt what can only be described as someone tickling me from the inside, but very briefly. Just like this little tickle tickle and that was it. That progressed into what I call the "bloop" phase, because I decided that if the kicking had a sound effect, it wold undoubtedly be a "bloop!". Now it feels much more like a kick a lot of the time and its kind of also this weird dropping feeling at the same time, like when you're in an elevator and your stomach drops, only this is much more localized in the body. Its such a weird wonderful crazy feeling...it happens all the time but still kind of takes me aback every single time. Its kind of like this weird thing that's taken over your body - mysterious and wonderful and truly bizarre all at once. It also feels like this wonderful secret between the baby and I - its just us communicating solely with each other during this time, and it feels so special and sacred, this dance that's occurred between mother and child in utero throughout the ages. It makes me feel humbled, even when its slightly annoying or quite strong and distracting.

We have our first midwife appointment here in River City (not its real name) on Thursday. I'm anxious to meet the woman who will be guiding us through this process and even more anxious to schedule our 20 week ultrasound (we turned 20 weeks on Saturday) and find out whether its a boy or a girl. I'm so impatient I can't wait for the ultrasound - I don't know how I'd ever wait through the whole pregnancy! Not to mention the fact that every single person I know as well as every stranger in the grocery line keeps asking me when I'm going to know the sex. Its driving me crazy! If one more person asks me (especially my dear mother who asks me every single time I talk to her, which is often) I'm going to lose my shit on them. Seriously. I'm just as eager to know as you people are - more so, because dammit its my kid - and getting asked every 6.3 seconds only makes it worse!

And that's it for my middle of the night posting - I have much more to update considering I've been a blogging slacker, but I really should try and get some sleep. Also I just don't feel like writing - that seems to be a rather constant symptom throughout this pregnancy, at least since the big move. Then again, I've certainly been more than a little down in the dumps and having a very hard time with the whole transition, so I guess its no surprise I don't feel like writing. Its not exactly fun to write about feeling depressed, and its certainly no fun to read about it. I try and save my pity parties for truly special occasions, like this evening, wherein I laid in bed paralyzed and staring aimlessly into the middle distance while convincing myself that nothing will ever be okay. See? I told you it was really not that fun. Ah, these are the joys of pregnancy that you're not supposed to write about or talk about..doesn't really fit in with the whole glowing thing. I could write post after post about the hormonally inspired mood swings (I'm sure WB could write an entire novel)..but its late and I don't want to scare you off from ever reading this blog again.

Really I'm usually much more entertaining than this. I promise.