Questions, questions

Apparently people only know four questions related to pregnancy. They are, in order:

• When are you due?
  
• Is it a boy or a girl?
  
• Have you picked out a name?
  
• Are you excited?

I understand and appreciate that these people are happy for me and want to show their interest, and since they don't know me these questions are their polite method for doing so. But seriously, people. You don't know me. Why would you actually care what my kid's name is going to be? If I say "Yes, but we're not sharing it," as some people do, will you feel you have a right to be offended? And am I really supposed to say anything other than "Yes" to that last question? It's as bad as people who say "How are you?" when they're speeding past you in a hallway and are clearly substituting the question for "Hi," or the old-time "How do you do" (to which the only acceptable answer is "How do you do"). I almost enjoyed the variation that one of my coworkers threw in the other day, though it kind of appalled me as well: "Did you guys particularly want a girl, or did you not care?" After all, she was inviting me--begging me, almost--to say "Actually, we really wanted a boy. We hate the idea of a girl. We're not sure we're going to keep her."

Relatedly, I got my first "Are you sure you're still pregnant?" call recently. I'd been warned about these, when people call to say "You didn't have the baby and forget to tell me, did you?" I can understand the impulse; Eric's waiting on the result of an interview and I keep wanting to ask him "Have you heard anything?" even though I know perfectly well that he'll tell me as soon as he gets any news. But do they really expect me to say, "Oh, right, I did spend two days in a hospital extruding a whole new person out of my body. Totally slipped my mind or I would have mentioned it" or "Yes, I had the baby, but I didn't care enough about you to tell you" or maybe "Why yes, as a matter of fact, I did have the baby. She's sweetly asleep on a perfectly made bed with rose petals scattered around her and I've just sat down after my manicure to consider penning a few haiku in silver calligraphy to announce her birth, but gosh darn it, you've anticipated me"?

Ice cream and bugs

We had ice cream for dinner on Monday--well, technically we had a substantial snack, then stopped at Dairy Queen while out shopping because I really wanted a Blizzard, then got home late and had another snack instead of cooking--which I realized I ought to appreciate more than I did, since my days of "but I'm pregnant!" are coming to a close. I haven't even used my "send the husband on a midnight run for an unusual food" card. I suspect I'm something of a disappointment to pregnant women everywhere. Maybe I can keep the card for later.

My now-weekly checkup was yesterday. Everything remains fine--blood pressure back down to my normal levels, baby still head-down and poking her feet (or raygun, we can't tell for sure) into my ribs--except that I have tested positive for Group B strep, which is a bacteria that's asymptomatic in normal adults but is apparently the leading cause of sepsis and meningitis in newborns. In order to avoid passing it on to L.E.O., I'll be getting IV infusions of antibiotics at the hospital. Not a big deal, though I was grumpy about the idea of being hooked up to a pole my entire labor until they explained that I could just get a hep lock (a little needle port that gets left in your arm) and be hooked up just long enough for an infusion once every four hours. I think I'll feel a little bit like a cyborg, but that's all to the good.

Ready, set

I'd been feeling reasonably good about how much we'd gotten done to prepare for L.E.O.'s coming. But Friday night we had dinner with some friends, including four potential fellow trusted lieutenants, and one of them asked, "So are you ready? Is the carseat installed? Are your bags packed? Is the crib set up? Do you have clean clothes?"

This naturally threw me into a panic, and as a result this weekend we did four loads of baby laundry, including sheets and blankets so that we could make up the crib. We wrote a list for the hospital bag. (Most of what we'll want to put in it we're still using.) We wrote a list of people we'll need to send announcements to (designing them and addressing envelopes ahead of time seems like a good idea). And we installed the carseat bases and mirrors. I do not have work paperwork turned in yet, but that should happen this week, too.

We realize, of course, that this activity has guaranteed that L.E.O. will arrive late. There are still a couple of other tasks we want to finish before she gets here, and I'm seriously considering leaving them undone to increase the chances that she'll come earlier, but I'm not so sure she's that easily manipulable.

36 weeks

Here we are at a little over eight months, just one week from technically full-term.


(Nice hair. Man, do I need a haircut.)

My shirts are getting awfully short at this point. I don't really feel ready for labor in a few weeks, but there have been a few twinges that suggest it's going to happen. At my checkup Tuesday the midwife remarked, "You were having a Braxton Hicks contraction while I was helping you lie down." I didn't feel a thing, but it's good to know I'm actually having them, I guess. The checkup went well: I finally met the third midwife of the three who might be attending me, my blood pressure is slightly higher than normal for me but not actually high, and L.E.O. is still all systems go. Now to get through the next two to six weeks.

Push my buttons

We were over at the mothers' yesterday, and before long I sat on the couch to put my feet up because the Time of the Great Swelling has come. I had to shove my rings on yesterday morning, and my wedding ring (slightly smaller than the engagement ring) didn't fit at all today. We'll see if I can remember I'm married.

"My ankles are memory foam!" I exclaimed shortly thereafter. The medical term is "pitting edema," but I prefer "memory foam." It means that when I pressed a finger into my puffy flesh, the dent stayed, and then very slowly filled in. It was fairly creepy. Eric seemed amused, though--and more amused when L.E.O. started moving around a little and I poked at her through the top of my belly and remarked, "Hmm. Whenever I press up here, I have to use the bathroom." I'm not just a baby's life support, I'm a baby's toy. Push this button for interesting textures! Push this button to make it move!

Childbirth class IV: Death or Serious Injury May Result

The last childbirth class was mainly on safety and postpartum issues. Not much instruction on how to actually take care of a newborn, though we got handouts. I was slightly disappointed, but I admit that the title of the class doesn't specify anything about what to do once the kid is out and we've got other resources for that.

We started out with a ridiculously boring video on carseat safety. There were a couple of good points in it, but most of the video was shots of various kinds of carseats and booster seats and how they should be installed in various kinds of vehicles, with some crash test scenes for variety and scaremongering, and I've forgotten most of the information already. We did get a handout for a program at Toledo Hospital for free checks of our carseats.

We went over CPR and poisoning briefly (biggest poisoning incidence of children in the US: iron poisoning from children's vitamins) and general baby-proofing. Then we moved into what babies will look like when they come out. The answer is apparently Bill Cosby's assessment, "like a lizard." They'll have coneheads and puffy faces, tiny squinty eyes, covered with acne and vernix (cheesy "cream" on the skin) and lanugo (body hair), cross-eyed, with blue hands and feet, swollen breast tissue (male or female), and birthmarks and rashes everywhere. Supposedly we will think they're cute anyway.

We went over post-birth procedures for the baby: erythromycin in the eyes, shots of vitamin K and potentially hepatitis B vaccine, measuring weight and circumference and height, taking footprints, checking reflexes to assess gestational age, Apgars. We discussed things to expect for new mothers: looking pregnant still, engorgement, pain and bleeding, hemorrhoids, potential PPD, urination and sweating like you wouldn't believe. Jackie was enthusiastic about the products used to treat most of these issues, particularly witch hazel and Dermaplast, and dressed up in a hospital gown, wig, and hospital-issue underwear to demonstrate how they were used.

She discussed breastfeeding for a bit, enumerating all the benefits (not only will it make the baby healthier and smarter and the mother thinner and happier, it will rotate your tires and keep your cat from vomiting on the carpet) and dispensing advice on pumps. She also discussed "babyland," the magical realm in which you spend hours gazing at your newborn while visitors drop by and clean your house for you. She also said that the average mother is interrupted 84 times in a two-day hospital stay, including nurse and doctor visits.

The class ended with review in the form of Jeopardy! with some Family Feud thrown in, the expectant mothers versus the support people. Eric is in Columbus, so I was assiduously taking notes the entire class, but I put them aside for the game. Even so I managed to steal the winning 20 points with "lochia." (Probably the support people had blocked this out of their memories, even though Jackie had been telling us about it a scant twenty minutes ago. I'd like to block it out of mine, but sadly that will not be possible for long.)

One of our classmates hadn't made it because she delivered last Monday, but she brought her baby in for the last few minutes. She wouldn’t say much about how labor went, which seems like a bad sign, but then she'd had to have a C-section and she did seem happy about having the baby out of her (she was very uncomfortable at the previous sessions). She also volunteered (without knowing what we'd been discussing that session) that "breastfeeding slims you down" and Jackie was pleased.

We filled out class evaluations in exchange for our last two handouts ("What to Bring to the Hospital" and "What to Do if the Laboring Mother Panics"), and when I turned mine in Jackie said, "Was your husband not able to come because I cancelled last week? I'm so sorry! I always really liked his comments. Tell him he can call me if he has any questions." This may or may not have been wise of her, but I appreciated it. I think the class was a good idea, overall. We learned some things and got to ask questions, and the breathing exercises were actually useful (and for this last class we tried out labor positions first, which was kind of interesting and kind of appalling). We'll see in approximately five weeks how useful it turns out to have been.

Focus

Childbirth class was canceled this week, rescheduled for next. This is annoying because Eric will be out of town that day. I guess I'll have to take notes and breathe by myself. I wonder whether the girl who was thirty-eight weeks pregnant at our last class will be there.

In the meantime, this is what the crib looks like in the nursery:


The blankets hide all the clothes and towels and sheets inside. We're figuring on waiting a couple of weeks before we wash and put everything away. (Also, it's nice to have it all out while we're writing thank-you notes.) We'll also start thinking about packing a hospital bag then. I went through a few websites during lunch at work yesterday and compiled a list of everything (reasonable) they suggested. It's a long, long list, and that's without including things like a video recorder or a "focus" (a meaningful or desirable object for concentrating on during labor). My friend Courtney decided her two top options for a focus were a huge ice cream sundae or Johnny Depp doing a striptease. Sadly, neither would be very easy to procure or keep around for as long as she'd need them. For me, I don't think "sleeping on my back" would be an easy thing to represent as a tangible object.

I'm not definitely tired of being pregnant yet--though the back pain is getting old, fast--but I do think I'm starting to get to the point where I'm letting go of the old life and anticipating the new. I'm not really feeling like I need more time to myself before the baby comes, which was not the case a month ago. I'm glad to be in this state--though of course it makes the next several weeks seem longer. But that's probably okay, since while I may not need the alone time, I do need time to wash clothes and put things away and make the bumper (which Eric keeps making suggestions for which make it more complicated) and the quilt and finish this baby jacket that may or may not be any use...