the beginning of the new adventure

Last week, I nearly posted a very whiny essay about how frustrated and impatient I was for the baby to arrive. I was getting frequent false labour (a couple times I had contractions five minutes apart and when I called the hospital, they said it didn't sound like I was in enough pain for it to be real labour), I was exhausted, and, of course, highly emotional with it all. My due date passed, the clinic scheduled me for an induction a week and a half after my due date, and then that night, after I'd written down all the info about the induction and was not looking forward to the multiple hospital visits the next week, I woke up with more contractions. These ones felt a little different. They were regular-ish, somewhere between 3-5 minutes apart, and they did hurt. They didn't seemed inclined to stop, either. I waited a few hours, and then called the hospital. They told me to come in.

So now I am exhausted and highly emotional because we have a one-week old baby. E. was born about 11 hours after I realized I was in labour, and all things considered, it was an easy birth. I got my wish of no painkillers, but ended up with an episiotomy when she was in a bit of distress there towards the end. As the episiotomy was preferable to the forceps, I'm not too unhappy with that. Not happy about how much it hurts sometimes, but it's gotten to manageable levels.

J. was pretty impressed with how I did during labour, and has been really great. He goes back to work in a week, and I'm going to miss him badly during the day. As we're slowly starting to convince E. to sleep in her crib for extended periods of time, some things are getting easier. She has decided that it's a great idea to be fussy most of the night. I have no real idea of how often she was eating last night, or how much sleep I had. It's a blur of dozing and feeding and asking J. to take her for a bit because she was so grumpy she wouldn't eat. I can certainly see the appeal of formula-feeding, but as the adjustment to breast-feeding is mostly annoying because of the lack of me time, I think we'll stick with it.

For now, since she's stopped eating and dozed off, I'm going to go put her in the crib and hope she stays asleep for a while so I can get some sleep.

zucchinis and nesting

We don't often cook with zucchini in our home. J. doesn't like it, and I've never been particularly fond of most variations of it. I tend to prefer winter squashes and we both like cucumber, but zucchini is hard to like. I went through a ratatouille phase about five years ago, and both of us got thoroughly tired of zucchini and eggplant stew (since I did the simple peasant version, rather than the elaborately sliced and layered one). I think it's the texture and the bland taste that put me off.

But last week, some friends gave us a few zucchinis. They planted some in their community garden plot this year and, given that this is zucchini, they have it coming out of their ears and are running out of freezer room. I elected to make zucchini bread and discovered that two loaves of the bread used up less than one zucchini. I used the recipe I found here. It's very moist but a little bland, so if I make it again, I'm using brown sugar for at least part of the sweetener, a little more salt, and definitely more cinnamon.

Yesterday I did another batch using a different recipe. This one was for chocolate zucchini bread. I made a double batch and stuck it in the freezer. The chunk of it that stuck in one of the pans tasted pretty good, so I think it turned out okay. More flavourful than the other recipe, but that's what happens when you add chocolate. Then I grated up the rest of the zucchini and froze it in a couple of portions so I have enough on hand to try making zucchini fritters and at least one more batch of bread.

I've been on a baking kick, despite the heat. There are a couple batches of muffins in the freezer next to the zucchini bread. I think it's a nesting thing. We don't have lots of freezer space, so I can't freeze as many things for winter as I would like (such as fruit), and we certainly don't have room for frozen casseroles or anything like that. I can't go with the suggestion to have meals frozen and ready to re-heat for after the baby's born. With the available space, I might be able to squash in one casserole dish. My mum used to do this thing where she'd cook dinners for a month and store them in our chest freezer. She can store a lot of fruit and vegetables in there, too. But I don't get to do that. Maybe someday, when we own a place or live in a larger house, we can look into getting a deep-freeze. I fantasize about an upright one, since I have fun memories of almost toppling into the freezer as a kid. And as an adult. I haven't grown any taller since I was about thirteen, and having to bend over and balance on the edge of the freezer to try and reach stuff near the bottom is awkward when you're short and your arms are not long.

I don't think we'll be living on cereal for weeks once the baby's here, but we did get some canned soup, and I'm hoping to make a trip to the Korean grocery store today to pick up some extra noodles and few other things. My mum will be staying with us for a bit, and the friend who gave us the zucchini has offered to bring food over. J.'s taking a couple weeks of parental leave as well, so living on cereal will probably happen in September, rather than during this month.

Liminal

It's this feeling of waiting without any real knowledge of when the next change is coming.

I struggle with focusing. With sleeping. With making plans that may have to be cancelled at a moment's notice. We're about to tip over the edge into an entirely new adventure, and I don't know when or how it will happen. I can't plan for this more than we already have.

I dislike uncertainty.

Uncertainty is hard to live with, and it is inescapable. I can't live a life without it, yet I am always in tension with the principle of unpredictability.

I keep wondering how it's going to start. Will it be like the false labour I experienced a couple Saturdays ago, when I woke up with contractions so painful that I couldn't breathe deeply until I'd been standing under the hot water in the shower for at least five minutes, and then it really got easier to handle once I threw up from the pain? Or will it be slower than that, more like the milder contractions I've been experiencing for the last two weeks, but building in intensity? Will the contractions regularize like the books say they do? Will my water break earlier or later? Will I even realize I'm in labour at first? Will I keep getting these preliminary contractions, this false labour (or pre-labour, which is what the book the clinic gave me calls it), for weeks and end up being overdue? Or are all these little pre-labour signs happening now to get me ready and I'll end up going into proper labour in a day or two? I'm already hoping for the latter, because I'm tired of waiting, tired of aching constantly with no apparent progress being made.

I sit here, typing, my back aching, wondering. I've been pondering what labour might look like for me since I found out I was pregnant, although I put most of my concerns about that to the back of my mind. It was more important to deal with what was at hand then, which was the constant vomiting. Now the vomiting's mostly subsided, and my back hurts and there are twinges happening at the top of my uterus, or the base of my uterus (or both at once), and every once in a while, the baby rolls over, kicks me in the side or in the ribs, and seems to settle her head ever more deeply against my bladder.

There's also not knowing where and when this is going to happen. Will I be at home when the real labour starts? The grocery store? What about during church on Sunday, or knitting group Monday nights? Will it be the morning, evening, or afternoon? The middle of the night? Will I be able to wait for J. to get home from work at the normal time, or will I have to call him, tell him to come home, and then call my back-up ride to get me to the hospital?

The waiting is strange and a bit surreal. It's the first of August, and we're less than 3 weeks out from my official due date, but realistically, the baby could decide that it's time tonight, or that it's time 4 weeks from now, or any time in between. J. has compared it to waiting for Christmas to arrive when you're in grade school. I pointed out that at least with Christmas, there's a set date, but he countered with the response that, for most kids of seven or eight, their perception of the passage of time doesn't really make that fixed day seem to arrive any faster. For me, all I know is that sometime during this month, I will give birth to a baby.

This is a bizarre idea. Ever since December, we've been getting ready for this, and it still doesn't seem like it will really happen. I mean, seriously, a baby is going to emerge from my cervix? Are you kidding? I've seen this kid on the ultrasound (and since they've had to double-check the baby's growth rate because she's on the smaller side, I've had four of those), and most of the time, I still can't quite believe that there's a tiny person inside of me. There's a small part of me that goes in to every pre-natal appointment expecting that they'll tell me there's been a mistake, and I'm not actually pregnant at all, but that there's something seriously wrong with me instead. And yet, every time, there's a heartbeat, there's the baby kicking, and this week, the confirmation that yes, the baby is still head-down.

There really is someone in there. And very soon, she'll want to come out.

How to write a crappy book on childbirth, or, how to piss me off in six easy steps

I don't actually remember the title of this book, so I apologize for that. Some kind of guide to natural pregnancy and childbirth. I picked it up at the library yesterday out of curiosity (and because the Braxton Hicks contractions just keep getting more frequent, so part of me's wondering if Munchkin's thinking of making an appearance), and put it down in disgust, very tempted to take it to the librarian and demand they strike it from their catalogue. While I disagreed with some things in, say, Bradley's method of natural childbirth, his book's wacky ideas made me laugh. They didn't make me angry.

What was wrong with the book, you may ask?

1. The author had no medical credentials. Zero. Being a "natural childbirth advocate" is not the same as being a trained doula (here doulas have to be certified to practice--I think in the States it can vary), registered midwife, nurse, or OB-GYN. I'm sorry if you despise the culture of credentials, but there is a reason why I prefer to take medical advice from medical professionals. Even the doctor at the clinic who manages to make me angry and upset every time I talk to her makes me feel like she knows what she's doing when it comes to medical procedures (she's just bad at the empathy side of her job).

2. Right off the bat, the author ranted about pre-term labour and how bad it is for the baby and then listed a few things to hold it off (true, a full-term baby is preferable, but the causes of pre-term labour are complicated and many are not fully understood yet). This included reducing exercise dramatically in early and mid-pregnancy. Last time I checked, exercise was recommended--the body goes through many changes in pregnancy and not exercising is counter-intuitive. True, we pregnant women are supposed to avoid high-impact exercise (one book I read included sumo wrestling on the list of stuff to avoid), but not exercising at all, unless your doctor recommends it, seems like a bad idea. What happens when you get to having the baby and your stamina just isn't there because you didn't exercise at all?

3. She was so adamantly opposed to medical interventions during labour that she only listed the cons of various medications and treatments. I'd like to hear both sides, please. There are reasons why medical interventions are available. I'm also far more likely to respond positively to a balanced view.

4. There was a section in there about how ultrasounds are highly inaccurate and get most things wrong, which didn't seem to have much basis in fact. Ultrasounds, like any medical imaging technology, have a margin of error, but that doesn't mean they are a useless tool.

5. She was anti-vaccine. I'm sorry (actually, I'm really not, it's just a habit to apologize for everything here in Canada), but just because you think having measles would make my child less prone to eczema does not mean I'm going to not immunize my child. I think eczema is to be preferred to some of the more dangerous complications that can result from measles. Even chicken pox can have some nasty complications that are far more likely to occur than side effects from a vaccine.

6. Also, she had some anecdote in there about a woman whose doctor had recommended a C-section based on a previous labour and the size of her pelvis. The author said that this person should have a natural birth because C-sections are to be avoided as much as possible, because it's just ridiculous that the baby might not fit through her pelvis. Who is she to say that this is ridiculous? I may be planning to avoid a C-section if I can, but I'm glad that the option is there if it's needed. And who knows? I might need it. It might be the safer route. If so, that's okay. It's not what I would have preferred, but the scenario that gets me and the baby safely through labour and delivery is the one I want.

At any rate, I slammed the book shut and did not bring it home with me. The overall tone made me too angry to be able to read between the crappy stuff to see if there was anything decent in there. I mentioned the book to J. yesterday evening and he was still pissed off about it this morning. After experiencing near-constant Braxton Hicks contractions for a few days, together with a couple not-so-delightful rounds of pre-labour (or possibly false labour--different books use different names--the guide I was given at the hospital calls it pre-labour), I've had to come to terms with the possibility that my child might arrive a couple weeks sooner than I was hoping. Or not. She might decide that random contractions are awesome (she certainly moves around enough after them) and it'd be a great idea to stay in there until after her due date. It wasn't a good time to read a rant about pre-term labour when, at 36 weeks, me giving birth would technically be considered pre-term.

I guess the worst thing about the book for me was that it felt like it was calculated to induce guilt in the reader, and to create distrust between the doctor and their pregnant patients. Yes, there are poor doctors out there (in the pejorative sense, not the financial sense, though I suppose there are those, too), but assuming that your doctor's an idiot from the get-go is probably going to be counter-productive. And really, do pregnant women need to be guilt-tripped? We're stressed out enough as it is.

a brief discourse on bras and some sewing

Well, the "making a new dress to wear to the wedding" didn't work out. I got it to a trying-on stage, tried it on, and realized it wasn't going to fit around the baby. If I'd been working with jersey knit, this wouldn't have been a problem, but woven fabric just doesn't have the same kind of stretch. So I went to the closet and found a dress in jersey that still fits me right now. It's chocolate brown and I like it very much (there may be pictures in a day or two, since J. wants to bring our fancy camera along tomorrow), but because I don't own a regular strapless bra (I do own a longline strapless bra, which isn't an option right now--it's not unlike a corset and babies and corsets just don't go together, despite what the fashions of the 1890s had to say about that), I have to go braless. Fortunately the bodice has some kind of reinforcing so I don't have to worry about making people too uncomfortable.

I'm going to be breastfeeding in about a month, so I'll probably be more comfortable leaving my bra off in about six weeks, but as of right now, this isn't something I do often (except at home, either alone or when J. is around, but never around other people). Hopefully I can refrain from adjusting things and drawing too much attention to myself tomorrow. I doubt I'll be the kind of breastfeeding mother who happily breastfeeds in public without covering up. In private, yes. In public, well, I've got a couple fancy cover-ups that were given to me, and we have so many baby blankets it's absurd. There are two mounds of baby blankets in the spare room right now.

I have managed to find some knit fabric that I can experiment with. That shirt pattern I picked up last week has a number of variations. I think I'm going with the short-sleeved scoop neck to start. Four pattern pieces, so only half a dozen seams and four hems to contend with. I'm still a little leery of knit fabric because I don't have a serger, but the only way to deal with this fear is to actually grit my teeth and give it a go. Plus it'll check off the "sewing with knits" goal.

In the meantime, I need to go to bed. It's only just past 9:30 and it's a Friday night, but I'm exhausted, which seems to be typical at this stage of pregnancy. Eight months. Tomorrow is officially one month out from my due date.

strangers try to determine the baby's gender by the shape of my stomach

I wandered into a local thrift store yesterday that always seems to be having a major sale (50% off!) and ending up spending 50 cents total on two sewing patterns. I also had a conversation with two of the volunteers about the baby, wherein I got to hear what I'm pretty sure the medical community classifies as "rubbish" about how to determine gender.

First I got the, "How far along are you?" question, followed by the, "Wow, you're small" comment. Yes, I know. I'm small, the baby's small, I'm not gaining weight like the chart says I'm supposed to, but I'm eating something like half a dozen times a day, not unlike a hobbit (elevenses, anyone?).

Then they asked if I knew what it was, I said a girl, and one of them proceeded to tell me about how her daughter was supposed to have a girl, she'd had several ultrasounds, all telling them it was a girl, and it turned out a boy. Then they told me that I'm carrying like it's a boy because my stomach looks like I've swallowed a football (American) rather than a basketball, like some women do. Then they asked what the heartrate was. I certainly don't remember; I just know that the doctor's happy with it. Apparently a faster heartrate equals a boy, and a slower heartrate equals a girl.

These methods sound a bit better than the old dangling the wedding ring on a string above the stomach trick, but I'm fairly sure they don't mean much. My guess is that the way I'm carrying has more to do with my body type and build than with the baby's gender, for example. I'm still fairly certain that the ultrasound, and the subsequent one, were correct. As we didn't need an amniocentesis or anything like that, we can't be 100% certain until she's out of me, but that's okay.

But those sewing patterns look like they'll be useful. Neither has been used--the pattern pieces aren't cut out and the instructions don't appear to have been unfolded. Both are from Simplicity. The dress is Simplicity 2889 and the shirt is Simplicity 4076. I'm thinking of making the dress next week, actually, for a wedding we're attending next Saturday. The gathers beneath the bodice should make the dress fit over my stomach. It's not the best-written pattern in the world, but it's a fairly simple construction.

The shirt pattern is part of my quest to learn to sew with knit fabrics without fear. I like most of the style options. The pattern is, again, a little more poorly-written than I would prefer, but the patterns aren't too complex, so I should be able to muddle through. We'll see how it goes.

that look

I'm pretty sure I got "the look" yesterday. The one where you can tell that someone is judging you. The one I try really hard not to give other people. I've gotten variations of it since I became more visibly pregnant, usually the, "Is she pregnant or just fat?" one. That one I don't mind so much. This one, though, I did.

I was walking through the grocery store parking lot, and an older gentleman gave me an askance look. The one that said, "You're much too young to be pregnant and that's bad." I didn't see a glance at my hand, but since I'm not wearing my wedding ring right now (my fingers tend to swell a bit in the hot weather), that wouldn't have told him much. He might have assumed that I'm unmarried and judged me even more.

I'm aware that because I am short and young-looking, people sometimes think I'm much younger than I actually am. Back in September (or maybe it was October), a guy in line behind me at the liquor store accused me of being seventeen. I sighed and pointed out that I was twenty-five. I had one person blurt out, "Were you a child bride?" when I mentioned that J.'s and my fifth anniversary was coming up this year. Yes, we got married young, but not that young. Honestly, I think most of the time it's the height. I'm so short that people think I'm still a teenager, even though I don't act like one.

A few weeks ago, I ended up chatting with another woman at the maternity clinic. We have a shared dislike of one of the doctors at the practice and do our best to avoid her--me because she gave me crap about my mental health and stress levels and then proceeded to stress me out at each subsequent appointment I had with her, and this other woman because the doctor gave her crap at her first appointment because she'd had a baby at fifteen (although given that she was in for her second pregnancy five years later, is really none of the doctor's business). I was surprised because she didn't look that young to me. I suppose parenthood helps with maturity levels to an extent, but from this, I reinforced my belief that age doesn't necessarily equal maturity or lack thereof. I've met teenagers with more maturity than forty-year-olds, for instance.

It's true that my demographic--North American, white, college-educated, female--tends to put off having children until late twenties or into their thirties. Or at least that seems to be the trend for a lot of people these days. I've already screwed with those statistics by getting married young, and having a kid in my mid-twenties, though not too far out of the ordinary, is still messing with the stats a bit. I'm okay with that. I didn't want to be having kids in my thirties if I could help it, and even though we'd been thinking a year or two in the future for having children rather than right now, we're at a transition time, with me finishing school, that makes it easier to jump into parenthood because we knew things would be changing anyway. Neither of us is terribly interested in many of the typical 20-something activities. J. has an entertaining friend who is really in to the party scene, and while his stories are funny, they aren't something we want for ourselves. The last time we went to a loud party that had lots of alcohol and pot, neither of us drank or smoked. We left early because it was loud and boring and we were tired.

I haven't run into much judgement for being young-ish and heading towards being a parent, so it confuses me a bit when I do. There are times when I feel much too young to be having a baby, but that's about where my head is that day, not about whether or not I'm actually capable of this. I'm glad that this person didn't bother to talk to me. I could have corrected his assumptions, but it's too hot and I'm too exhausted to be getting into arguments with complete strangers.

ravens and other thoughts

Our upstairs neighbours have something that taps rhythmically on the floor. Or possibly a wall. I don't know what it is, I just know that it drives me crazy and makes me think of ravens. I just had to say that. I'm pretty sure it would annoy me whether or not I was pregnant, so I'm not attributing the irritation to pregnancy. That has enough irritations of its own. The tapping's been happening so frequently that there have been mornings when I'm about ready to storm up there and demand what to know what is rapping at their chamber's floor.

 

It's been one of those weeks where I don't get much done and then feel worse about myself because I didn't get much done. The hot weather and constant sunshine just makes it all worse. No wonder my thoughts have been dwelling on Poe.

I'd managed to get my childbirth-related anxiety mostly under control, and then we went to a labour and delivery class last night. The bit on massage was nice. The bits about epidurals, C-sections, babies accidentally inhaling meconium, and the potential for being group B streptococcus positive were not. I nearly ran out of the room to throw up during the bit about meconium, and thought seriously about crying when I contemplated epidurals. Also, I spilled my water bottle on the floor.

Overall, the class was helpful, but I really hate being poked with needles and so want to avoid an IV unless it's necessary (I've had an IV in before and it was not pleasant--I'm not about to add to the level of discomfort in labour unless I have to), and the thought of letting someone stick a needle in my spine makes me want to have an anxiety attack. That's another "only if necessary" thing, like if I absolutely needed a C-section. Which is another thing I don't want. 

And I hate this. I hate being scared, even though I know that a good deal of this is reasonable fear. Childbirth is a painful, messy, and potentially dangerous process, and that shouldn't be ignored. I want a relatively easy, simple birth, but I know I might not get what I want. It's not like pregnancy has been how I wanted it to go.

I'm tired of this. We have about 5-8 more weeks to go, providing she doesn't decide arrive early (God forbid), and between the weather and my general exhaustion and numerous other things, I just want the pregnancy to stop and the birth to magically happen so we can move on to the next bit. Of course, that's not what I get. I get 5-8 more weeks of backaches, heartburn, blood sugar testing, exhaustion, and Braxton Hicks, followed by a labour that may or may not be what I'm hoping for. Should be interesting. Maybe if I focus on the interesting side, I'll forget about the anxiety.

In other news, I'm tinkering with a book cover for my novel. The one I was going with requires someone else to modify it for me, and the person who offered to help doesn't have time to finish it yet. So I'm trying for a different look. Once I have that and I make a few more revisions, I can stick it up online and start advertising it. I really should have gotten this done last fall, but procrastination and I are on very close terms.

more changes

Brown rice, picture from http://www.tylermcpeak.com/wp-content/uploads/Brown_rice.jpg

The last few weeks have been more than a little fraught, but things are settling again. Earlier this month, I went in for the blood sugar testing that is recommended for pregnant women. You fast for at least 8 hours prior to the test, then they take a blood sample, make you drink a weirdly sweet fizzy orange drink, and  test your blood at one and two hours afterward. I woke up nauseous on the day and threw up the water I was allowed to drink on the way there, and felt nauseous through most of the test. Then I went home, figuring that I'd be fine. Several days later, I headed back to the hospital for my regular prenatal appointment, where my least favourite doctor at the practice informed me that I had gestational diabetes. Then she measured the height of my uterus and proceeded to inform me that the baby was too small and lectured me for not eating enough protein. Because my numbers were borderline (as in, my fasting number was just on the line) and because she was concerned about the baby's size, she told me she wouldn't send me to the dietician, but I needed to increase my protein intake.

I went home and cried the rest of the day. I cried at the drop of a hat off and on for the next few days, one of which was, unfortunately, Mother's Day. I nearly lost it at church and was about ready to punch the next person who told me "Happy Mother's Day." I'm not fond of greeting card holidays to begin with, and it's a holiday my mother especially has always played down, because she doesn't want it to be a source of guilt for her kids like it often was for her. So I've inherited a dislike of the day. I managed to get myself moderately composed by the end of the service, and then we went to see Star Trek, which helped a lot.

Then the doctor's office called again. Someone else had looked at my chart and decided I needed to see the dietician after all. I hung up and cried some more, furious that my body couldn't make a baby without reacting weirdly to food. Then I called them back and tried to find out why one doctor had told me one thing and the other had told me something else. The poor receptionist told me to call the dietician and talk with them, since she couldn't do anything. So I did. The dietician's receptionist was actually helpful. She suggested that I come to the appointment, that it would be helpful, and it seemed like she was actually interested in listening to me. So, off I went to the appointment.

Gestational diabetes is usually a temporary condition, where, for some reason or another, the body during pregnany either does not make enough insulin or does not process insulin normally. It can happen for a number of reasons--hormone levels, position of the baby (for example, if it's squishing too much against the pancreas), or probably a few other reasons I don't know about. The information sheet I was given said something like 3-15% of pregnant women develop it, which sounds like a crazy statistic. There are predisposing factors, such as ethnic background, weight, and a family history of diabetes. I'm a tad overweight and my mother had borderline gestational diabetes when she was pregnant with me, although not with my brothers, so it's likely that those, combined with my body's reaction to all the hormones (like with the morning sickness) were what tipped the balance. One of the biggest concerns with the condition is that, exposed to unchecked blood sugar levels in the mother, the baby may grow much larger than it would have without that exposure. This can, of course, lead to complications during delivery, and after birth, the baby can develop jaundice from the sudden drop in its blood sugar levels after being separated from the placenta. The mother may develop high blood pressure in late pregnancy and is now at increased risk of developing Type 2 diabetes later in life. Gestational diabetes usually goes away within the first few weeks after giving birth, once hormone levels return to normal. It's typically controlled with diet and exercise, and only severe cases require the administration of insulin.

When I came out, I had learned that I need to lower my carbohydrate intake for the moment and that I was now required to test my blood sugar three times a day. This was upsetting, too. I love carbs and I've avoided dieting on purpose for most of my life, because I didn't need to add to my body image issues. I'm unused to checking calorie and carbohydrate contents and have very little real idea of the caloric content of most foods. Additionally, after spending most of my pregnany puking my guts out, any food that stayed down was good. I'd thrown up several days in a row prior to my appointment with the dietician, and had been sick right before the appointment, which didn't help my state of mind.

Two days later, at my next prenatal appointment, I found out that I'd lost weight again, probably due to lowering my sugar intake and the morning sickness. Fortunately, the doctor who was in that day was not the one I'd had the time before. His attitude was that the gestational diabetes was an annoyance for me, but as long as I was careful about what I ate and made sure to exercise, I'd be fine. I mentioned the baby's size, and he checked again and told me that the baby's heart rate was fine, and that as I'm a small person, a large baby wouldn't be a good thing. He wasn't concerned. I got my Rhogam shot at this appointment, so now the concern about my blood-type going crazy on the baby isn't a problem (this is a whole different issue. I'm O-negative, which means I lack Rh-factors in my blood.  Most of the world's population has a positive blood type, so odds are that J. has contributed a positive blood type to the baby, and that she's also positive. If her blood crosses the placental barrier, my body could form antibodies to the Rh-factors in her blood. The nice thing about this is that there's a simple treatment for it that prevents my body from forming antibodies. At six months, the mother gets a shot for the problem, and then the baby's tested right after it's born. If its blood type is also negative, there's no worries. If it's positive, the baby gets a shot, the mother gets another shot, and then they're good. This is one reason for the early blood tests in pregnancy--this is an issue that needs to be identified early so it won't cause problems later).

After a week of monitoring my blood sugar levels, I was back at the dietician's. My levels are good, and I'm allowed to eat more than I thought I was, but I really need to avoid white flour most of the time, since that spikes blood sugar way more than most things. So it's whole grains for us, which I've already been doing more of because of the increased need for fibre in my diet (yay pregnancy). But for the most part, it's looking good. I don't have to jab myself in the finger quite as many times in a day now, and that's also reassuring. I'm getting used to it, but I'm not a medical professional, and never intend to be one.

I'm still wondering how pregnancy as a whole is going to redefine my relationship with food. I've never had an eating disorder, but I have struggled with eating enough vs. eating too much, eating more healthily, and body image. For the first half of my pregnancy, it was all about keeping food down, and to an extent, that's still a concern. It's not entirely normal to weigh less at the beginning of the third trimester than I did when I got pregnant. Now it's not only about eating enough, it's about eating enough while keeping my blood sugar levels from going too high. Of course, my immediate craving is for the starchy foods that are the kind of thing I have to eat in much more moderation. As I write this, I really, really want Chinese food and I'd have to have fairly small portions of most of what I'm wanting (although smaller portions are probably a very good idea).

When I was at my worst points while reacting to this, I felt so tired of pregnancy being about what I could and could not eat. I'm still tired of that. And after the baby's born, after my body's handling insulin normally again, I'm looking forward to being able to have a few more carbohydrates and not having to worry quite as much about white flour. At the same time, I hope that some of the changes will be permanent, that I will grow more thoughtful about what I'm eating. I think that would be good for our family as a whole. Although I am planning to have sashimi with white rice sometime after the baby's born. White short-grain rice is on the list of "worse for the blood sugar" so I have to avoid it for now. Long-grain and/or brown rice it is. Two and a half months to go.

a knitting goof (and more pregnancy rambling)

Cute, right? It's a great hat, right? Well, this is what happens when you don't swatch, use yarn and needles rather different than the pattern's recommendation, and change a few things to "fix" what you think of as problems with the pattern without thinking them through. 
 

This hat was supposed to be me-sized. Instead, Munchkin now has a lovely winter beret for this year. And the yarn's discontinued, so I can't make a matching grown-up version. Yes, well, I suppose pride must go before a fall. I'd been so convinced that my mods to this pattern would render it much better than the original, but several of my changes just didn't work out as planned. This happens to me once in a while. It happens less often with knitting than it used to, but it certainly happens more often than I'd prefer. It happens with cooking, too, when I hare off on my own without thinking too hard about what I'm doing.

To clarify: changing a pattern or a recipe is not a bad idea. Changing a pattern or recipe without thinking about what the changes might do can be a very bad idea. This hat also exemplifies one of the laws of knitting physics: A work-in-progress may look either larger or smaller on the needles than it is in reality.

I can't even blame this hat on baby-brain, because I started it almost a whole year before I got pregnant, and it wandered in and out of the WIP box during that year. I finally finished it last week. Either I really goofed, or I'm psychic and knew I'd need baby-sized items. (Although by that logic, I'd have the sweater I'm working on turning out tiny, too, which it's not).

Last week, I got to have an ultrasound, which led to my doctor scheduling yet another ultrasound for the end of May. The baby is a tad smaller than expected, so now they have to check up on it again. The baby being small doesn't phase me quite as much as it might. I am a short person, from a short family, and I and a couple of my brothers were below the 10th percentile when we were born, and we were all perfectly healthy. I did marry into a family that produces larger babies (J. was somewhere around 9 pounds to my 5.4 pounds at birth), but so far, my genes seem to be winning as far as size goes. As far as temperament goes, well, the baby's activity level is more reminiscent of J.'s energy levels, which are much higher than mine. Being a little small may be absolutely normal for this baby, or it could be related to the way I couldn't keep much food down for the first half of my pregnancy. At least at my most recent check-up, I'd gained weight (less than I should have, but better than losing weight again). Eating food that stays down is becoming normal again, which is a wonderful feeling.

The baby should catch up a bit in size now that I'm actually keeping food down on a regular basis (or I hope that's what'll happen, so the doctor will stop worrying). The morning sickness isn't completely gone, but I'm off the medication and I'm keeping food down and only being sick occasionally. The nausea isn't gone, but that's easier to handle than constant vomiting. The interesting pregnancy symptoms haven't abandoned me yet, though. I get pretty achy and the baby likes to settle on top of my bladder, so I'm waking up many times at night to drag myself to the bathroom (practice for when Munchkin's here and needing to be fed in the middle of the night--I'll get used to the sleep interruption now).

At any rate, pregnancy is still uncomfortable, but I'm not as stressed about the discomfort levels as I was when I was constantly sick. I hear this is supposed to be the best time of the pregnancy, but that doesn't seem to be saying a lot. I'm definitely not going to be one of those women who want kids because they enjoy being pregnant. There's absolutely nothing to compare with feeling the baby move inside me, yes, but that's really the only bit I truly enjoy, and it gets less enjoyable when Munchkin bashes into my bladder again. I hear it gets even better when the baby's bigger and can punch me in the lungs. Should be interesting. 

In the meantime...I have to drag myself off to the bathroom again.

no Shakespeare, but there is knitting

 It's been something like a month since I last posted. I owe the blog (and presumably, anyone who reads this) four or five Shakespeare reviews. They are on the way; I just got bogged down in A Midsummer Night's Dream and haven't made my way out of the forest yet. Blame it on Puck.

Today was a mostly uneventful day. The most significant thing that happened involved a conversation with someone that jogged something loose in my brain and allowed me to get past the section in my thesis that has been paralyzing me for the last week and a half. The conversation wasn't related to my topic, but suddenly, I could look at my advisor's comments and what I'd written about someone else's analysis, and I realized that my advisor's comments were helpful. Seriously, what the heck did this author mean, and was there really that much of a difference between these things that appear the same that he had to go and give them two different names and toss out confusing examples that didn't actually jive with what he was trying to argue? That realization fixed a few things, which was very pleasant.

Life's been interesting in some respects. I am, finally, officially, a permanent resident of Canada. I spent most of March panicking about my interview, which turned out to be a couple questions which had already been answered in the paperwork, and then signing a couple things. Oh, and paying them another $500, sitting through a powerpoint presentation on being a PR in Canada (once in English, once in French), and then sitting and waiting for my name to be called. J. and I were one of the last couples called in the waiting room. The other couple had a pregnant woman, too, although she was nine months pregnant and I was only four and a half months along. We ended up chatting with her and her partner and wondering how long it was going to take for them to sort out their computer problems. They still hadn't been called up by the time we were leaving, but I hope everything went well for them and that their baby has either arrived safely or will soon arrive safely. I love how they made the most pregnant woman wait the longest, though. It was probably an alphabetical thing, but still.

We did have a very cheerful immigration agent, which was quite pleasant. The entire staff at that office seemed to be in a good mood, despite computer issues. This was helpful, since I was wound as tightly as a spring. J. was very gracious about putting up with my constant freak-outs about something that was essentially a foregone conclusion, but this has been a long process. And I'm pregnant, so my moods aren't quite what they would be normally. I'm prone to being more than a tad inclined to worrying, but throw a fetus in my womb and that tendency gets much worse. I actually tried to take worrying off for Lent this year, just to help with my sanity. It didn't entirely work, but forcibly reminding myself that worrying doesn't actually fix the problem, and makes me feel worse to boot did make a small difference.

Besides the thesis, and the immigration stuff, I have had the knitting. I finished a hat the other day.

 Isn't it lovely? It's a beret, and is double-knit so it can be worn in the winter. I made it of Mission Falls 1824 yarn, which has been discontinued. I try to use the small amounts of Mission Falls in my stash sparingly, on worthy projects. It is soft and the colours are lovely and slightly muted, and it is machine-washable. So I took this hat off the needles, wove in the ends, and settled it on my head, eager to wear my beautiful hat. That was when I discovered that the hat looked much bigger on the needles than it was in reality. This hat is so small that it is going into the pile of baby hats in the spare room. That's right. I inadvertently knit a hat for Munchkin. I hope it likes the hat. (Munchkin is still an 'it' because the ultrasound where we will ideally find out the baby's gender is next week).

This project turned out the appropriate size, so I'm not too worried about my knitting skills going weird. This is a hot water bottle cozy. I gave one of the jogless stripes method a try on this one, and it mostly worked.

The hot water bottle cozy had been a project in the back of my mind for a while, but I finally knit one because pregnancy makes my back hurt. Last week, there were several nights in a row during which I had to curl up with the hot water bottle because my lower back hurt too much to let me fall asleep. This whole making a person thing is harder than it sounded when we started on it.

pregnancy is a weird country

And yes, that's really true. My latest list of odd pregnancy things involves pre-natal vitamins, awkward conversations, and me eating probably too much sugar because it doesn't upset my stomach, among others.

Prenatal Vitamins: So, when I first got pregnant, I ran out and got folic acid tablets, which are something like $6 for a bottle of 120 pills. This I knew I was supposed to take, since it helps make the brain grow. When I couldn't keep the folic acid down for a few weeks, I wondered out loud if my kid wanted to be born without a brain, but since the ultrasound shows it does have an actual brain and spinal cord, it's probably fine. I knew I was also supposed to be taking pre-natal vitamins but there were so many kinds that I was really confused. I figured I'd ask the doctor.

Doctor=not helpful. "Take pre-natal vitamins." "Which kind?" I ask. "Oh, whatever." No, don't tell me whatever, tell me what I need in the pre-natal vitamins because the number of choices is overwhelming. Finally, I wandered into the local health food store, where the person in the shop that day pressured me really hard to buy the $30 dollar bottle of 60 tablets which you have to take 5 times a day. I told her I was going to do a little more research, left, and went to the pharmacy a little further down the street. They had one kind of pre-natal vitamins, a generic type that looked like it had everything the fancy ones did. And the bottle had 120 pills, to take once a day, and only cost about $15. Sold. They're overly large pink pills so I tend to take my daily dose at night right before I go to bed to minimize the possibility of vomiting the pill back up. At least now they can't guilt-trip me at my next appointment.

My brain: Pregnancy is melting my brain. I look at words and see something else. A friend's phone rang the other day, caller unknown, and I saw the screen when she picked it up, and I swear I saw "unicorn" instead of "unknown." I need to pick up shea butter for something, and I swear, I couldn't remember what it was called. The only word I could think of was "xiaolin" and I knew that wasn't right. It did come back to me, of course. 24 hours later.

On Monday, I needed the kitchen step stool (I am short) to get something and I couldn't find it. I walked around and around the apartment, feeling like I was losing my mind, only to realize that my husband had set the lid from a rubbermaid container on top of the stool, effectively hiding it from me. Last night I confused vertical with horizontal. To be fair, I usually have to stop and think with those terms, but the stopping and thinking didn't happen and the word vertical came out when I meant horizontal. This makes me worry about my upcoming thesis defense.

Meeting new people: The other week, J. and I had a super-awkward conversation with a couple who are also having a baby around the same time as us. It was one of those things where someone at church said, "Oh, you should go talk to them, they're pregnant too!" But other than the pregnancy thing, we have zero in common with this couple. They're younger than us (not necessarily a problem), have been married for less time (again, not an issue), work in drastically different fields (not an problem either), and we couldn't really discover interests in common (that is a problem). It's just going to get worse once we do birthing classes and the post-natal community group. The assumption that we should hang out with people simply because we all have kids might be nice for the kids, but it doesn't seem so great for the adults.

The thing is, we do know people with kids whom we already enjoy hanging out with. One of my friends, whose youngest is six months old, has been really helpful (e.g., recommending stretches to deal with the weird aches in my hips), and another who has two-month old twins has also been really great (she lets me hold her kids and ask questions about random stuff). And I like spending time with them,, and presumably (since they haven't indicated otherwise), they like spending time with me. So the groups we'll end up going to might introduce us to people we'll actually get along with. We don't know.

There are other things...the way sentimental stuff on television makes me cry like it never has before, my new aversion to the smell of garlic, how I'm not showing yet but I've had to start wearing maternity jeans because the zipper on my normal ones won't stay up any more, and how I'm tired all the time. It feels very strange much of the time, because this is all so new. I told the doctor at my last appointment I was a bit stressed, and she demanded to know what I was stressed about, like I had no right to be concerned or confused because I'm pregnant with my first child and I've had the morning sickness that refuses to stop. They grill me about my mental health every time I'm at the doctor's because I have a history of depression and I'm currently not medicated for that. I don't need to be medicated for depression right now, since I'm doing quite well, but at that appointment, because I admitted to feeling stressed, it felt almost like the doctor was trying to push me into getting back onto meds. The public health nurse who called to chat was much nicer. She went through a list of questions with me designed to evaluate my mental state, and said it sounded like I was fine. We'll see what my next appointment looks like. Maybe I just need to learn how to summon my assertive self for things like doctor's appointments like I do for activities like rambling about stress assignment in language in front of an intro phonology class.

rambling about food

Years ago, I read Marya Hornbacher's memoir, Wasted, about her experiences with anorexia and bulimia. It's the sort of book that makes you really want to avoid developing an eating disorder. She's a very good writer, and I'd recommend her work simply because of that, but I'd also recommend it because it's an important story to read. Sometimes, having read her story was one of the things that kept me from going off the deep end when I was in the darker parts of my depression.

Depression isn't as much of a problem right now as it has been in the past. I've gotten off my medication because I'm pregnant, and the anticipated problems with stopping the medication didn't happen, which was a really great thing. But I've been remembering Wasted recently, because morning sickness has been enough to put me off vomiting for life. I finally caved yesterday and got the prescription for an anti-nausea drug filled. It doesn't help completely, but at least I'm no longer throwing up everything I eat or drink. Just some of it. That's a lot better than what was happening yesterday, when I couldn't even keep water down. I keep telling myself this has to be worth it, but at this point, I think childbirth sounds better than pregnancy. At least labour doesn't last nine months. Unless pregnancy suddenly changes, I'm probably not going to be one of those women who wax lyrical about how wonderful and magical pregnancy is. If someone tries to tell me that right now, I'll probably feel like punching them (although I would refrain, since this is Canada).

This was supposed to be going somewhere. Oh, yes. One thing Hornbacher mentions is the way being deprived of food makes you obsess about it. My being sick is about the cocktail of hormones bouncing around my system, rather than the complex reasons that might drive me to an eating disorder, but I have not been exempt to thinking about food. I'll be lying in bed, falling asleep, and suddenly think, despite the nausea, "I want a doughnut!" Or I spend a while looking at recipes on Pinterest. Or wishing I felt well enough to bake the chocolate chip cookies I want to eat, but know won't go over so well.

There are things I plan to make once my stomach settles. I want to learn how to make pho, and there're a couple desserts I've been longing to try. I even found a recipe for Beef Kimbap, which is one of the Korean versions of sushi (or sushi is the Japanese version of kimbap--people aren't really sure). And it is sushi I'm allowed to eat--everything in it is cooked. That's one of the things I miss most, really. I like alcohol, but it's easier to cut that out. Alcohol's expensive and it tended to interact with my anti-depressants to make me even more prone to drowsiness and sleep disturbance, so I didn't have it often before I was pregnant. But it's hard to say goodbye to sushi until after the baby's born, because I feel that fish tastes best when it is raw. And there are at least half-a-dozen good sushi places within an easy walking distance of our home (i.e., several blocks). More sushi places than Starbucks, and there are a lot of Starbucks around here. After we went to go see The Hobbit on Saturday, we went for sushi, because I hadn't eaten in hours (that's a long movie, and I'd been sick beforehand). I got teriyaki, and J. got sushi. I did eat a couple of his California rolls--those are okay--but I've been craving sashimi, and my plan is, once I'm able to manage a dinner out after the baby's born (or failing that, we'll do take-out), I'll get a chirashi-don from our favourite sushi place. Nothing but rice topped with lots of fish.

In the meantime, in the absence of some of my favourite foods, I'm making blueberry muffins. I'm using this recipe, which looks fantastic, so now I need to go to the store for buttermilk.