I am an avid reader. If the excerpts and the 50 books links aren’t enough to convince you, let me assure you that, under normal life circumstances, I read one to two books a week. I love reading and I’ve loved reading ever since I was little. So, it was a bit odd that when I got pregnant, I didn’t rush to buy all the books on the subject or visit the plethora of websites that giver advice and information.
My first hesitation was statistical. There’s a higher than average chance of having a miscarriage in the first three month of a pregnancy, especially with the first pregnancy. Thus, I told myself that I didn’t want to get excited and caught up in all the reading. That felt like a pretty legitimate reason not to buy anything.
Once the first trimester was over, I was so busy throwing up that I didn’t want to get up from bed, let alone go out to buy books. So another two months passed and I still hadn’t read a word about being pregnant or the baby growing inside of me. (Not to lie, there was one website I went to ocassionaly which told me what week I was in and what that meant.)
On Month Five, once the puking stopped, I decided it was time to go out and purchase some books. Since my pregnancy was already almost at the end of its second trimester, I didn’t want to spend too much time or money on pregnancy books. Instead I bought books on the baby’s first year, teaching sign language, helping your baby sleep, etc. I bought only one pregnancy book that was supposed to be fun. I came home and read that one first.
After 60 pages, I had to put the book down and I never picked it up again. The same thing happened this week when I attempted to read our Childbirth Preperation class book. I can’t seem to get through these materials. A jaded person might claim it’s because I am not excited about the baby (which is definitely not true) or I am in denial somehow (which is also absolutely false). I am no longer feeling bad about not wanting to read. I’ve decided it’s healthier not to read.
There are about 10 pages in each of these books that tell you what a “normal” pregnancy/birth is like. The rest of the several hundred-page book talks about things that can go wrong. Or it talks about things that will definitely happen and that aren’t pleasant. Like bleeding or severe cramps or acute pain. While it’s a good idea to know enough to be able to differentiate between the normal and the abnormal, I am not sure that knowing the details of how painful labor might be will help me go through it more smoothly.
I figure that at this point the baby is big enough that it will hurt no matter how the baby comes out. I also know that the six-week class gave us more than enough information on what to expect, what’s a bad sign, and when to goto the hospital. The rest is stuff I don’t need to know.
I am going to stick to baby books instead.
As a child, I often wondered what made someone an adult. When was the magical time that you crossed over from being a child to being a responsible adult? My mom looked liked an adult. She acted like an adult. Her face, her conversation, even her toes were those of an adult. At the time, I figured once I was over my teens, I’d be an adult, too.
As the years passed, I didn’t feel like an adult and I didn’t think I looked like an adult. Not the way my mom did. Even though I discovered that she can behave like a child, too, I still thought my mom was more of a “grown up” than I was. College didn’t change that. Neither did moving into my very first apartment. Neither did getting a full time job and making more money than she ever did. It felt like maybe I was never going to grow up.
Lately, I’ve been thinking that maybe crossing over the threshold to having my own kids is when I cross over the threshold to becoming an adult. This is officially the time when I am going to be much more concerned about another living being than I am about myself. Not that there aren’t times I put myself after Jake or my family or a friend. But this is permanent and it’s constant. This little baby, and later the child and even the adult, will always come before me. I will have to learn to push other people away kindly but firmly to protect the well being of my baby. I will have to learn to make major progress on my “hangups” because now they are affecting an unsuspecting third party who never signed up to deal with my issues. Even if I don’t feel it, I’m going to have to learn to act the part of a grown-up. It’s all a bit overwhelming and scary. What if I mess it up?
I know what everyone says, “all you can do is your best.” But this is a huge responsibility. It’s not something to be taken lightly. I think my mom always looked like an adult cause she had us very young. She was only 21 when my sister is born. She learned to grow up very quickly. Over the years she adopted and looked the part of a grown up. And now it’s my turn. And I plan to take it seriously.
Though I still don’t think my toes look like a grown-up’s.
Since Jake and I moved to San Diego a year and a half ago, we haven’t made a huge number of friends here. It’s a combination of a lack fo effort and lack of circumstance. We both work from home. My office has a total of seven people and he works for himself. Having come from huge Wall Street firms, our current setup isn’t condusive to making work friends. We attempted to go to a few meetup events in the beginning but just got lazy.
This is why I had assumed that I wouldn’t have a baby shower. I figured I wouldn’t have anyone to invite. But four different people offered to throw us a shower and in the end we had fifteen people over on Saturday for the baby shower. It turns out we have more local friends than we thought. It’s amazing how little things make you realize the day to day things you take for granted.
Major thanks go to my friend Cynthia who really did 99.9% of the work. To Ashlie who surprised me and came all the way from St. Louis just for the shower. To Jess and Chris who, even though they didn’t actually get to make it since the weather was extremely uncooperative, had intended to drive all the way from San Fran for the day. And to Stacey who drove down from Palm Springs in torrential rain. And to everyone who came and intended to come.
It appears we, and our soon to be, are luckier than I ever imagined. We are surrounded by amazing people.
We’re down to four weeks left. Fact is, only 5% of pregnant people actually deliver on their due date. So most people say that our potential delivery period is somewhere between two weeks from now to six weeks from now. Either way, it’s coming sooner than we can imagine. The most popular question I’ve been asked latety is: Aren’t you curious?
Don’t you want to know if it’s a girl or a boy?
Of course I’m curious. This baby has been growing in me for over 8 months now and I am curious about all of the details. Does s/he have long legs? Are all the organs in the right place? Everything ok with the limbs, the brain, the eyes? Will s/he have blue eyes like Jake? Will s/he have colic?
I am desperately curious to meet my baby. I pray that all is well and she or he will be born and live to be very healthy and happy long after I’m gone. I have a million worries and another million hopes. And in my list of ‘things I really hope for,’ gender isn’t number one. It isn’t even in the top ten.
When I seriously sit down and think about it, I’ve decided that I don’t have a significant preference of gender. I know some pretty awful women and some pretty awful men. What I care about much more is that our baby turns out to have a mild and pleasant personality. That she or he is a moderately easy baby and child. That we do right by him or her. Those are the things I care about. I’ve met enough atypical examples of each gender that I know having a girl doesn’t guarantee any information about the sort of girl we’ll end up with. And same goes for the boy. We already have too many assumptions on the toys our kids will like or the life they will lead depending on the gender they are and I want to make sure I don’t fall into the typical pitfalls.
So when I am honest with myself, it really doesn’t matter to me what gender the baby is. The main reason I am annoyed we don’t know is because, in English, I have to refer to the baby as ‘it’ since we can’t justifiably use he or she yet. Whereas, in Turkish, we don’t have gender-specific pronouns, making the ‘it’ equivalent not such a derogatory word to use. This is one of those cases where pronoun ambiguity would be in our favor.
So, any premonitions? Girl or boy? (Oh, and we’re 99.9% positive that there’s only one so don’t even go there!)
This is one of those weeks when I wish things could slow down a bit. I have too much catching up to do with my life and I can’t seem to get it all working. That’s partly why I haven’t updated in a while. I have many things I want to write about but I don’t seem to catch up ever. I have too many emails and only more are piling up before I get through the list.
I’d say downtime will come with the baby but we all know that’s a lie. I figure I should do it all before the little one comes since life as we know it will most likely be over with the arrival. Hope to catchup and get back into the groove in the next few days.
Hope your holidays were fun.
Since New Year’s is my most cherished holiday, I have an inclination to make a lot of resolutions. I tell myself each year that this year will be the year I turn the corner on many things. This year I will learn to ride a bike. This year I will drive completely on my own. This year I will learn to take things less seriously. Less personally. Less emotionally. And, of course, most of it never happens.
I’ve come to believe that things happen one of two ways: out of severe necessity or because it’s time. In 2004, I quit drinking Diet Coke because I got pregnant and I knew that for a person who drank 8 to 10 cans a day, switching to 1 a day wasn’t a realistic option. I started drinking a ton more water, eating healthier, trying to keep my yoga to a regular schedule, stress less, and give up the need to lose weight. All for the same reason. The baby to come.
I moved leaps and bounds in driving in that I’ve become a lot more comfortable and can hold animated conversations while I’m driving. This didn’t come out of hours of practice like one would think. It actually seems the less I drove, the more I became okay with it. I still have a huge way to go on that but somehow the time must have come for me to relax a bit because I did without a personal effort or vow to do so.
As for reading more, learning more, being happier and calmer. Those came and went with the hormones in my body. To be fully honest, I can’t even remember the first four months before I was pregnant. I can’t remember how it felt not to feel so big and clumsy. Not to have to pee every five seconds. Regardless, most of this year felt like it wasn’t in my control and I learned quickly to keep up with the necessary and let go of the trivial.
Which brings me to 2005. I am now wise enough to admit that I cannot make a single resolution that I am guaranteed to keep in 2005. I cross my fingers and toes that the baby will come close to on time and the labor will be as bearable as possible and, most importantly, the baby will be healthy and happy. If all those things happen, I am willing to consider 2005 a good year.
Most of my wishes for this coming year involve others. I wish for Jake’s business to prosper. I want us to have a happy balance and a healthy approach to building our family. I hope the baby has an uneventful, happy, colic-free year. We will be starting the year with a lot of visitors which means that we’ll be surrounded by family more than we’ve been in the last ten years. I hope that it strengthens our bonds and starts us off in a good track.
I know that I won’t be able to control most of what goes on this year (and probably all the others after this one). I hope I learn to relinquish the need to control quickly and learn to live my new life as wonderfully as possible. I make no resolutions this year, except for one which I think is necessary:
I will learn to go with the flow.
May 2005 bring all of you prosperity, luck, health, and ample joy. Thank you for stopping by.
I don’t dance. I used to years ago but I never enjoyed it. I always felt uncoordinated and awkward. My friends used to time their moves to the rythm of the song and I felt stupid and out of place. Eventually I just gave it up. I decided it wasn’t giving me the joy or sense of freedom people talk about. I’m sure a shrink wouldn’t approve of my giving up but I don’t miss it much.
My baby, it appears, loves dancing. S/he is already dancing and s/he’s not even out yet.
One of the things you’re supposed to start doing in the third trimester of pregnancy is to keep “kick logs.” These are typically done after dinner while you lay on your side. You take thirty minutes or one hour and count how many times the baby kicks in that time frame. Or you can count up to so many kicks and find out how much time it took the baby to kick that many times. This is so the doctor can make sure your baby is okay. A moving baby is a healthy baby, they say.
I’ve never had to do one of those logs. As soon as my body is in bed, the baby decides it’s time to dance. I generally count until 100 before I give up. We seem to reach three digit numbers in less than 20 minutes most nights. Just to give you a sense, they say to worry if the baby kicks fewer than ten times in a 24-hour period. Obviously, that’s not a problem we have.
Last week, I had a long week at work and noticed that the baby wasn’t kicking as much as usual. We were still easily over 50 in a day but for my baby that’s not a lot. I decided to wait until Friday to see if it was work-related. As we guessed, come Friday night, the minute my vacation began, the baby began dancing. S/he didn’t stop all weekend. At points it was so strong that you could see my entire belly shift to one side and come back or stretch in ways that look like they must hurt. But they don’t.
The kicking never hurts me. I love it. It’s like a way for the baby to talk to me before we get to meet each other. I know s/he can hear me now but I can’t hear the baby yet and such we communicate through the kicks. As long as s/he doesn’t keep it up once s/he’s on the outside, we’re good.
Firstly, I apologize for the lack of updates. I’d blame it on my exhaustion, my lack of time, my lack of ideas but this time it was something much more mechanical than that. Our not-very-bright ISP forgot to pull out the static IPs from the DNS pool last week causing major net problems for us all week last week. Which meant our connection went down every thirty seconds. I had a hard enough time working from home and didn’t have the energy to fight the ssh connection that allows me to post my entries. We’re back now, though, and all should be fine.
When I first got pregnant, other mothers told me that everyone would now touch my belly and they would all tell me what to do. I figured since I still don’t know that many people in San Diego, the chances of people touching me weren’t very high and also I have no problem telling people to get their hands off of me. However, I wasn’t prepared for how hostile I would really feel.
It seems that I automatically have a negative reaction to people’s comments regardless of the intention with which it’s delivered and how close or foreign that person might be to me. A few months ago, a friend told me that I really should get some maternity pants instead of unzipping the regular ones I wore. Instead of agreeing with her logical comment, my first hunch was to say:
“Fuck You.”
Thankfully, I didn’t actually say it out loud. But since then, I’ve noticed that everyone’s opinions on what I should and shouldn’t do is automatically greeted by my inner reluctance. I feel like telling them all off. For some reason instead of interpreting the information as helpful, I am processing it as confrontational or patronizing. And I am way too exhausted to be patronized.
So that’s how it goes.
“You really should have the baby’s room ready by now.”
“Fuck You.”
“You really should be exercising more.”
“Fuck You.”
“Are you seriously not taking any time off work? That’s crazy; you should take off starting the beginning of January.”
“Fuck You.”
I know some of this is good advice but I can’t seem to acknowledge that right now. What I need more is someone to spend time with and laugh with. I need a lot lot more sleep. I need to relax and know that everything will be okay with us and with the baby. I need someone to have fun with and not unsolicited advice. I am sure I will regret not listening to these wise people some day real soon, but for now I really just want them all to fuck off.
I love car trips. Ever since we did our cross country trip I love the idea of piling up everything I love into the little car and driving to fun places. Being in California and having a car has meant that we can leave town at the drop of a hat. Since we’ve been here, we’ve taken around one trip a month to somewhere within California.
I am hoping this fact won’t change when the baby comes. On Wednesday, Jake and I drove up to meet his brother and parents in Santa Barbara to celebrate Thanksgiving. I am thinking this will be our last trip out of town before the baby comes. Especially since I’m already almost too big to sit in the car comfortably.
Our current car trips already include 7 books, 10 movies, a cooler with lots of veggies, fruit and water, several gigs of music, 2 laptops, several chargers, camera with three lenses, several sets of changes of clothes, and a blanket and pillow. All this just for a four-day trip. I can’t begin to imagine how much more complicated it will get once I have to bring along diapers, baby clothes, baby blankets, baby food, baby toys, and a million other baby needs. Our little Civic isn’t the roomiest car there ever was but it has accomodated us very graciously.
Pithier and longer entries when I’m back in town. In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy your weekend.
I am a few days away from week 30. That means we have around 10 weeks before the baby is here (assuming it’s full term and not early or late.) A few weeks ago the doctor worried that my uterus was too small, but now I am measuring exactly where I am and all my tests (blood and diabetes) came out healthy. The baby’s heart is beating loudly and at the correct speed. So all seems to be fine.
Except that I’ve gained a lot of weight. I spent the first five months gaining a tiny bit of weight and now I’m gaining like it’s going out of style. I’ve gained a bit over 22 pounds and I don’t show any signs of slowing down. The thing that makes me mad is that I’m not eating any chocolate or chips or ice cream or anything that’s your typical pregnancy food. The only possible culprit is that I drink Orangina (maybe a glass a day) but I can’t honestly tell how I’m gaining all this weight. At first, I really freaked out. I asked the doctor if the weight gain has any bad implications on the baby. He said that there’s no correlation between weight gain and a big baby. The main causes of baby size are diabetes or a genetic disposition to having large babies. The main downside to gaining more than the desired amount is that I’ll have more to lose afterwards. (There are other disadvantages like my back might hurt a lot, etc, but I am not anywhere near that range for now.)
So all my worries are from being vain. The baby is ok. The pregnancy is coming along fine, yet I am spending hours crying because I’m gaining more weight than I would like. How’s that for a good mom?
As I am growing bigger and bigger, my daily life has changed quite a bit. In the last week, three times, I woke up at 3:30am to pee and lay in bed for about an hour before I gave up on sleeping, got up, read some stuff on the computer, watched a bit of TV and went back to bed. As someone who used to be a night person, I really really don’t enjoy being awake at 3:30am unless I haven’t gone to sleep yet because I am coding something fun. Now, I wake up in the middle of the night a lot and I am in deep sleep by 10pm most nights.
I spend most of the day in my nightgown unless I am going out. Loose clothing that breathes a lot is the only option lately. I am hot almost all the time and there’s nothing I can wear that’s comfortable in every position (meaning lying down vs sitting vs standing).
I am tired all the time but not able to sleep. I used to be able to sleep anywhere, anytime. I slept so hard that earthquakes wouldn’t wake me. Now, I spend many afternoons attempting to sleep and I am constantly unsuccessful. When I am actually sleeping, it’s very light and a hiccup can wake me up. The only good side of this is that I seem to do a lot of lucid dreaming lately.
I used to do all my work on the couch, in front of the TV. Thanks to my tummy, sitting on and getting up from the couch has become a challenge. Unless I sit up right, my stomach is going into my ribs and hurting me quite a bit. So, now I sit at the table, up right like a stick was shoved up my ass.
Oh and have I mentioned I can’t seem to read anymore? I am so slow at it and my concentration is way below normal. I can’t go to the movies anymore since I have to pee several times in the middle of the film. Each time I bend down to take a macro shot, it takes several minutes for me to get back up. And, of course, every piece of food is viewed with: “Will this still taste good if I am burping it up all day long?”
The fun part is that I know things are going to get more interesting as I move from month seven to eight to nine. I just hope that my back doesn’t give out. That would really suck. Ahem, and I am aware that my life will change considerably once the baby comes but one day at a time for now.
I spent a large portion of today looking for baby items that I am supposed to have before the baby comes. According to several places, I am supposed to have like 248 things before the baby even comes home. The small problem is that I absolutely hate shopping. Of any kind.
After reading the completely contradictory reviews on each item on amazon, I’ve decided I can’t do this online. I can’t do this alone either. I need someone who loves shopping to provide our trip with some enthusiasm. I am hoping my mom may fill the void. My sister is doing a huge amount of work over the net but I need a physical person here with me.
There are too many decisions to make and all of them seem incredibly important. I imagine all that matters should be that I get a bed, a stroller/carseat, diapers, and some clothes. Is everything else really urgent?
I figured carrying and having the baby would be the hardest part until the baby came, but I must say that the shopping is proving to be quite painful.
|
projects for twenty twenty-five
projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
|
