I don't even use caffeine anymore.

I've had three nosebleeds in three days. All very minor, but rather annoying. "You're bleeding! What did you do?!" Eric exclaimed last night. I'd taken a shower, was all. The other two times I was washing my face to get ready for work. Presumably it's the humidity that does it, softening the membranes that are overly engorged with blood already (L.E.O. demands blood sacrifices!). The book says to expect it. However, I hope it stops soon. Eric will believe me when I say it's a pregnancy symptom, but if I keep coming to work late because of nosebleeds, I'm pretty sure my boss is eventually going to have to ask me to take a drug test.

Not safe for (co)work(ers)

I'm not going to be a very patient pregnant lady. I mean, I'm not a very patient anything lady, but I'm pretty sure word is going to go around at work that Jenny's always very crabby and shouldn't be asked about her pregnancy. This will suit me fine. "How are you doing?" people ask me (a lot of people at work know, since I mentioned it to my boss's boss and she told a bunch of other people--I also told my department, but it's a small department and I don't think they found it a topic of much fascination). I say I'm fine, or I'm fine except for a cold, or I'm busy, or whatever. "But how are you feeling?" they say, with extra meaning, and I suppose they want me to talk about my morning sickness, or my cravings, or my ill-fitting pants, or maybe my headaches and constipation and backaches (for the record, I don’t have any of those things other than the pants, though it depends on the pair).

If it's early in the day and I'm in a good mood I'll indulge them by saying "Better now that I'm out of the first trimester." If it's later in the day or I've just dealt with a customer who's upset because I failed to thoroughly read his mind, I say I'm fine. If they press, saying, "Baby growing all right?" I say, "As far as I know, though it could be dead for all I can tell." (Okay, I only said that the once, and she was so shocked I was immediately sorry I'd said it.)

I don't want to talk about my pregnancy at work. I feel basically fine, so there's not a lot to talk about, and there are always pregnant women in the company and I've heard some of them talk incessantly about how they feel and what they think and it bores me, and I don't want to bore people. And if I say I'm fine, you don't get to second-guess me unless you're my parent or my husband.

Not a patient pregnant lady. Don't even think about the belly-rubbing bit.

These dreams

I dreamed last night that L.E.O. was a girl. Eric says this is an official intuition from me on the baby's sex. I'm skeptical, unless this is also an official intuition that the baby will be 12 inches long with a flat head and will have such an extreme fear of cameras she'll push herself out of the bassinet as a newborn to avoid having her picture taken, but for what it's worth, there it is.

(They say that "vivid dreams" are a pregnancy symptom. I haven't noticed my dreams being any different from usual, but then I usually have memorable dreams. And since I've got a cold, I'm just glad I don't have really boring dreams, which is what usually happens when I'm sick.)

Bloodletting

Eric and I both had the day off today (he because he lost his job a week and a half ago, me because work is forcing us to take four days a month off), so we decided to go to a lab and get bloodwork done.

I'd had an order for Eric to get cystic fibrosis screening since before my last appointment, but since the nurse got all the information wrong (including his name) we threw it away and I asked for another one. She still got things wrong on this one, but I just fixed them and the lab didn't say anything. My bloodwork was for a quad screen (the standard Down's Syndrome/spina bifida/etc. screen), and they'd also gotten information wrong on mine, but again I fixed it and the lab didn't care. Maybe they've had experience with this before.

Anyway, it was uneventful, except that my reliable blood-giving vein flopped and after three tries the lab tech decided to switch to my other arm, so I walked out with a matched set of bandages on my arms. I presume I'll hear the results at the next appointment. Here's hoping absolutely nothing is wrong. I talked to my friend Carol on Sunday about pregnancy and birth--she's due in about three weeks--and she said she'd lend me some books she has on the delivery process, but not for a few months, since (a) she'll need them and (b) I don't want to know about that kind of thing just yet. I wonder how much of this having-a-kid process involves things I won't want to know about until I have to.

Quantum Superposition of States

So, we'll be getting an ultrasound at some point in the near future. In the meantime, there is one very commonly-asked question, which is:

"Do you know whether it's a boy or a girl yet?"

The standard, non-geeky answer is, of course, "No." But really, that's boring. And of course, despite the fact that ultrasounds don't happen until at least week 18, L.E.O.'s genitalia have already developed. They are simply unobserved.

In terms of gender, therefore, we are dealing with a quantum superposition of states. From the standpoint of an outside observer, the baby is both a boy and a girl. Or perhaps 50% male and 50% female. Technically, from this standpoint, that means it has 1.5 X chromosomes in each cell (and 0.5 Y chromosomes). Of course, from the point of view of an inside observer, i.e. L.E.O., the wave function has already collapsed.

Yeah, yeah, quantum physics doesn't really work like that on a macroscale, I know. Still, more fun than just "No."

Pregnancy brain sets in

1. There's no reason it should take four tries to put a lab coat on.

2. Why on Earth did I decide to wear these shoes to work today?

R.I.N.D.S.

We don't have much baby gear at this stage (I can count what we have on one hand, in fact: sample formula from the doctor, sample pacifier from same, a poster, and a baby blanket Courtney made me about a year ago) but we are--or rather, I am--already equipped with what will probably be L.E.O.'s most beloved gadget. This is the R.I.N.D.S.: The Redundant Infant Nutrition Delivery System.

I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

The R.I.N.D.S. was concerning me up until recently, since it's supposed to have started internal reconfigurations which should have resulted in some outward changes, and it didn't seem to have done so. (Except for the promised color changes. It's really very interesting, since it doesn't look like a color change so much as like someone just kind of splashed some excess pigment over the top of the existing paint job.) However, Eric pointed out a few days ago that the R.I.N.D.S. was indeed increasing its capacity, if slowly. Which was reassuring, except that now I have to think about buying new, er, support rigs. And I hate buying support rigs. And I suppose I'll have to keep doing it as the R.I.N.D.S. continues to grow. I guess it'll get me in training for those endless rounds of ever-bigger Evil Overlord armor that L.E.O. will inevitably need us to buy.