My cousin, Sarah had her baby yesterday. She was induced after being a week late and walking around one centimeter dialated for like three weeks. After 21 hours of labor she had a boy. 8lbs 4oz. Duncan Quincy Winger.

Monthly Check-up

So we had our monthly midwife visit lastnight.

Turns out the Polyhydramnios has taken care of itself it seems. I am now measuring right on target (31cm at 31 weeks) which means my belly shrank (it was 33cm at 28 weeks last visit).

Also, last month I gained 9lbs in a 5 week period. This month I only gained like 2.5lbs.

The baby's heart rate is good and solid and the baby is reactionary, meaning the heart rate rises when you poke at my belly... it's really quite funny.

And the baby is head down.

So Let's Celebrate!!!!

Holy Crap!

I haven't any idea why i'm making that face... and yeesh where'd my butt go? The joys of pregnancy: Goodbye young, taut, sexy body, hello goof-ball!

Weekend In Pittsburgh

Jes and I went to visit my sister, my god-daughter, and her brother who all live in Pittsburgh last weekend.



She is the cute brownish one in the blue shirt on the far left in the first picture.
We made a lovely dinner of Longanesa (filipino sausage), Lumpia (filipino meat egg roles), rice and squash.
Jacob is Jes's brother who patiently sat while Jes gave him a Willy Nelson.

I spent a lot of the weekend sneezing as they have cats and I'm deathly alergic.



The blonde is my adopted sister and god-daughter, Kali.


And... I miss my sister!!!

Visiting the Midwife

Sorry for the long delay again. However, it seems those of you who read this have sort of fallen in numbers anyhow.

So the house is coming along beautifully. I love my hard-working, handsome husband.

At our 28 week check-up we had our first Sonogram. The Sonographer said that it looked like we may have extra fluid. We got a call a couple weeks ago that confirmed that we do have excess fluid and we scheduled a second sonogram. We went in for that last thursday. That Sonographer said that it looked to her like the amount of fluid has decreased since the first sonogram but that we still have excess.

And yes, it has a name. Polyhydramnios

Now, you may be wondering why this is a concern.
1. It can be indicative of developmental problems with the fetus (such as Downs, Spina... etc)
2. The excess weight can trick the uterus into thinking the baby is ready to be born before the due date.
3. The baby can get in some strange positions pre-birth due to all the space to move about.

And some other things i'm sure i haven't discovered yet.

So, I worried for a bit, ate up anything i could google on the subject for a couple weeks. And now i feel fine about it. The liklihood that everything will work out fine and the baby will be healthy and full-term is in our favor.

I've started taking a homeopathic remedy called "Natrum Muriaticum" which is a salt balancer and may help, or at least not hurt in the process of riding my body of the excess fluid slowly but surely.

On another note, i feel enormous. I have three shirts that really fit, the rest gap slightly at my pants and you can see my belly and the beautiful Linea Nigra i've developed.

My cousin Sarah is due by the end of the week and has been having severe back pain since last week. She's ready to pop.

Other than that, thank god the weather has cooled off and lightened up a bit.

Due Date Update

76 days to go.

Who do you think the baby looks like?

Oh Mama!!

Beautifully Painted Naked Pregnant Bodies!
http://www.embody.org.uk/butterfly.htm


&

The truth about the beauty of a woman
http://shapeofamother.blogspot.com/


(Thanks Jen and Donna Smith)

Not my belly

Strident" and proud

"Strident" and proud
Columnist Katha Pollitt blasts feminism's new timidity and says, "This 'girls just want to have fun' feminism is a very shallow approach to life."
By Jessica Valenti
Jul. 12, 2006 Katha Pollitt's well-known wit and incisiveness run through all the pieces in "Virginity or Death!" -- a new collection of more than five years' worth of essays from her Subject to Debate column in the Nation. The essays cover a wide range of issues from the war in Iraq to healthcare, but unsurprisingly, the bulk covers feminist issues: abortion, child care and work, and the seemingly never-ending backlash against women's progress. In these meditations, Pollitt defies the stereotype of the finger-wagging, Mommy-knows-best feminist. She credits younger women with being "so much more confident and multicompetent" than she was at her age and lauds their accomplishments.
However, Pollitt definitely has strong opinions about women framing every decision they make as "empowering." She notes in "Sex and the Stepford Wife" that "women have become incredibly clever at explaining these [demeaning] choices in ways that barely mention social pressures or male desires." But, as harsh as Pollitt can sometimes be, there's always truth behind her observations.
When I spoke with Pollitt by phone, what struck me most was her optimism -- something a lot of feminists are understandably lacking these days. We're so busy lashing back against the backlash that forward-thinking feminism is hard to muster. Pollitt says that she wishes people would stop talking about feminism's supposed demise and instead talk about its "life." After reading the book, it occurred to me that maybe young women should do the same favor for their predecessors.
Some of your essays deal with the antifeminist backlash that has been brewing lately. So many of those arguments -- like Sylvia Ann Hewlett's book about older women not being able to have children because they focused too long on their careers, or the New York Times articles about the "opt-out revolution" -- seem like spruced-up versions of old myths. Why do we keep falling for them over and over again?
It's a very interesting question -- why do they keep doing this? It's part of the half-fulfilled nature of feminist hopes. I think that there's a fear out there that "Oh my God, if women aren't holding to marriage and child raising and sacrificing themselves for the family, then nobody is going to do it." People will just be living in their studio apartments for their whole lives. [Laughs.] For example, Sylvia Ann Hewlett had five children, and she produced some of them when she was over 50 years old! And she's saying, even if you have one child you're going to be crying in the gym because you don't have two children. And you just want to say, "Look -- you wanted to have five children." But obviously this is a minority taste. I think there are probably more people in our society who have no children than have five children. She just seems unable to accept that people are doing more or less what they want to do, or some version of what they want to do.
I remember when I was younger and just getting into feminism, I read Susan Faludi's "Backlash." And now, it's really the same exact thing all over again. It's so odd to me that women are still letting bogus statistics -- like if you're over 35 you're more likely to be killed by a terrorist than get married -- affect them.
Yes, it's very odd. My mother used to subscribe to Ladies' Home Journal and Good Housekeeping and all those women's magazines, even though she always worked. She would get these magazines and I would read them when I was little and there would be articles: "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" and "How to Have a Better Marriage." I was always thinking -- what's it to you? Why do the editors of this magazine care if somebody else is married or not?
You include essays in the book about the loss of Betty Friedan and Andrea Dworkin. In the Dworkin piece, you say that you "miss the movement that had room for her." Can you just explain that a bit? Do you think feminism has become watered down?
I was thinking about how timid and deferential and also Beltway-oriented so much of organized feminism is now. It seems to revolve around electoral politics and abortion rights -- those are the two big deals. Think about all the feminist bookstores that have closed and feminist magazines that have folded. I get much less sense of a vibrant culture of feminism with its own institutions and its own internal debates.
What does an effective feminism for the future look like to you?
I think that feminism needs to be more grass-roots, and this is true at the electoral level also -- look at South Dakota. I think that there has been a real retreat from the day-to-day presentation of feminist issues. Think of all the women who won't identify themselves as feminists. Why is that? One reason for that is the word "feminist," but it's also a lot of the concepts around feminism. The basic idea of women being self-directed creatures as opposed to being there to help some man through life and stay with the children and do the cooking -- that idea has been delegitimized; you just don't hear it that often if you live in much of the country.
You have to ask, Why do people make the choices they make? Let's take women being more likely to take their husband's name. Think to yourself, What are the costs of not taking your husband's name? Look what happened to Hillary Clinton in Arkansas! And so I just think that women -- feminists -- need to have the conversation with people who don't agree with us, people who live in places that aren't so cosmopolitan. You need to make the connection between your own personal life and the larger story of what's happening in the country and what we can do to help ourselves. I'm sure someone like Wonkette feels quite feminist and liberated in her own life -- she just doesn't see how what happens to abortion rights in South Dakota has anything to do with her.
Ana Marie Cox's review of your new collection in the New York Times Book Review riled a lot of people by using the words "strident" and "tacky" to describe feminism. What was your reaction to the piece?
You know, to tell you the truth, I didn't study the review closely -- because I'd like to maintain my cheerful disposition! But I think a review that begins "strident feminism" is pretty much declaring that we are in the land of backlash cliché. If you read my book you'll see that I support sexual freedom, I support freedom of speech, I'm not a family-values person at all, and I am not the sort of Dworkinite fuddy-duddy of Cox's imagination. I think the resentment that some younger women feel -- and I don't know how old Wonkette is, or how old she presents herself -- toward older feminists is very interesting. I don't quite understand it except as kind of a kill-the-mother thing. What is this "girls just want to have fun" feminism? It's a very shallow approach to life. And I can't think of another social movement where "strident" is a bad word.
Exactly. Since when is feminism supposed to be all sweetness and light and politeness?
Well, do black people, do Latinos, do workers go around saying, "Oh no! Our leaders are so strident! Someone just wrote a strident book defending my rights!" Even if they themselves are more moderate, they're happy! So I think it's sort of an odd combination.
I was upset by the review because -- as you know -- I spend a lot of time talking about how people don't give young women enough credit on feminism and women's issues. And then some seemingly smart young woman runs out and calls feminism tacky. It makes us all look like idiots.
We discussed this on Feministing when I referred to "young featherheads" who think their abortion rights are secure and aren't planning to vote. And [the thread] was all about how wrong I was to think that young women weren't all that political -- and I hope I was wrong! But then someone said, no that's right -- they are featherheads. And she talked about the women at her school. There are a lot of women who are feminist and who call themselves feminist, but then there are a lot who really don't want that identity. My daughter just finished her freshman year at Wesleyan -- quite a liberal school -- and told me that in her sociology class, the professor said, "Raise your hand if you're a feminist," and my daughter was one of two kids that raised their hands!
When I was in college, a professor asked the same question and the reaction was the same. I remember being so depressed about it. Do you think that feminism has something to offer all young women?
I think that feminism is a social justice movement; that's the way I see it. And potentially every woman and every man should be interested in women being able to take equal part in every aspect of our society. [Right now] there's a funny combination of women advancing in certain areas and their progress being blocked in others. For example, women are advancing educationally; women are expecting to work. Marriage is happening later. So you have a longer time of living on your own and sexual experimentation. There's this general sense of sexual freedom and sexual expressiveness that permeates so much of the media and the society, and yet you still find that women are quite stymied in other areas.
Most of the young women we're talking about grew up under [Ronald] Reagan, in very conservative times. Whereas second-wave feminism really came out of the left. It came out of a moment in the '60s when there were a lot of radical politics around. And that's a very different social and political moment than now. There's this huge backlash going on involving women's bodies and appearance, and the immense pressure to be beautiful and thin and complaisant and alluring. That's what Linda Hirshman and others call "choice feminism" comes out of. Which is just saying, "I'm a free agent. I'm making my own choices, so we don't have to talk about them. In fact, it's insulting if you want to talk about them. Don't judge me."
You say in one of your essays that "women have learned to describe everything they do, no matter how apparently conformist, submissive, self-destructive or humiliating, as a personal choice that cannot be criticized because personal choice is what feminism is all about." But in writing about abortion rights, you say that we need to acknowledge "women as moral agents" and trust them to decide what's best for themselves. How do we negotiate those two things?
I think it's like freedom of speech in that the government is not going to make decisions about what you can say publicly, but that doesn't mean that everything that somebody says publicly is a hot idea. That doesn't mean that they're not going to say something and be really sorry later. The idea I find so strange is that because a woman might have an abortion and come later to think, "I wish I hadn't done that" -- that that's a reason to make abortion a crime. That makes no sense at all. What that really says is that women are incapable of making a good decision, so we have to make the decision for them! Because there's only one good decision, and that's to have the baby.
The interesting thing is that you're never going to get women who choose to have a baby to say, "Well, looking back, that was a terrible idea -- that's when my life really went off the rails." And yet I'm sure we can all think of people where having a child with the wrong person, at the wrong time, under very discouraging circumstances, really is a decision that maybe they might secretly wish they hadn't made. So to me abortion rights is a very personal and intimate area of life that involves a lot of risk -- having a baby involves a lot of risk: physical, emotional, social, psychological. And so each woman has to decide for herself because she's responsible for herself.
Do you think it's important that women call themselves a feminist or is it enough that women are doing feminist work -- without necessarily labeling it as such?
I think that conservatives have really done an amazing job of taking away from us all the good words like "liberty" and "freedom" and demonizing the words that are left. Like "feminism" and "choice." And "liberal." I think we can't let them do this forever. If you lose a way to describe yourself, you've lost a lot. If you lose the word "feminism," you are losing the idea that there is anything particular to the way women's situation is structured in this society. I would fight for that word. But it's a losing game in the end. I think we've seen that with "liberal." "Liberal" was a very good word! "Liberal" was a word that put together the idea of our constitutional liberties -- like freedom of speech and the rights of the individual against the government -- with the idea of fighting poverty. Fighting racial discrimination. Once you lose the word, you lose a very good way of keeping those concepts together. And I think the same is true about "feminism." But if people want to start calling themselves women's liberationists, that's OK with me.
It does seem like we spend a lot of time -- and I do this myself -- debunking myths about the death of feminism. So how do we change the conversation so that we're not just constantly defending ourselves?
Well I think that's related to the way that feminist victories become incorporated into society -- they lose the character of being considered feminist. For example, half of all medical students are women, but how many of those women in medical school think, "My presence in this seat is a victory for the women's movement"? How often when people write about this fact do they see that in terms of a social victory for women? People will maintain that this was part of the natural evolution of society, you didn't need a women's movement, that it would have happened anyway. None of which is true.
I think we need to reclaim the conversation in a number of areas. For example, when we talk about abortion, how often do we talk about it in terms of women's lives? As opposed to it being about a fetus being a person. The anti-choicers have so thoroughly switched the conversation over to the question of the personhood of the fertilized egg or fetus that now it's even a person before it's implanted in your uterus! So on the one hand you have that our victories aren't being acknowledged as real victories and that the problem areas are areas of enormous retreat. So I just think we need to start talking more about our own lives as being important. I think that we need to be much bolder.
But all these things aside, you say that you're still optimistic. Are you optimistic about feminism too?
I guess I feel that the rollback of our rights is only temporary -- and I say that in my introduction. That a big modern industrial country like America is not going to become a right-wing Christian nation in which you have to show your marriage certificate to get birth control. If you can measure the strength of an impulse by the ferocity of the opposition to it, I would say that feminism is very much alive. People don't spend a lot of time anymore bashing unions, for example. They don't spend a lot of time bashing the black power movement, but feminism really gets to people. So I think the fact that it really gets to people shows both its relevance and its power.
-- By Jessica Valenti

Due Date Count Down

99 days left

Soccer Mom

My new Car

And Zidane's shame

Weekend at the beach part 2

Our Weekend At the Beach

Happy Fourth Of July Everyone.

Same Guy or Twin brother who is a Marine?

My Husband, the Native

Spear fishing is a delicate sport. So delicate in fact one must not wear pants.

Rules for Friends of Pregnant Women

1. Never stop me on my way to the bathroom to chat or ask innane questions, or rather, just don't stop me at all.
2. Never keep me waiting for food. In fact it might be good to keep a snack on hand as an offering if it comes to that.
3. Never lean on me, prop your feet on me, or (this only happens to short people) put your elbow on my head to indicate how short i am.
4. Never say (i don't care what kind of voice or intention is behind it) "Look at how big you're getting."
5. Never tell me how much weight you, your friend, your mother, her friend, or anyone you knew or heard of put on when they were pregnant.
6. Never imply or outright say that I am being whiny if i am telling you how uncomfortable I am, how I have a hard time sleeping, how sitting for long periods is uncomfortable etc. Especially if you've never been pregnant before.
7. Never do that "good natured, slightly condescending chuckle and head shake" to try to indicate to those around me as if trying to say, "pregnant women are so silly." Just because I am pregnant and prone to doing abnormal things does not mean I am a 2 year old or blind.
8. Never, EVER, EVER draw attention to my chubbier arms, thighs, or butt. Even if you mean it in a "good" way (yes i know i didn't have much of an ass before and "it's a miracle" but i don't want to hear about it).
9. DO NOT tell me what I can and can't eat or do. I have read the same if not more books, articles, and reports on pregnancy and all the current research. AND even if you see me eatting tuna, a package of smoked salmon, an entire package of cookies, sushi, beef carpaccio, drinking coffee, standing on my head, lifting something heavy DO NOT, I REPEAT NOT ASK ME WHAT I'M DOING! IT'S MY BABY AND MY BODY AND SHORT OF DOWNING SHOTS OF TEQUILA AND SMOKING PACKS OF CIGARETTES IT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!!!
10. If i offer to let you feel the baby move don't act all weird about the belly. If you'd rather not touch it say so, but don't pretend i have lice. Also if i push your hand into my belly slightly harder don't tell me i'm gunna hurt the baby, it's in a sack of water under several inches of fat and flesh.
11. Don't tell me horror stories about birth. I do not want to hear about dying babies or mommies. I do not want to hear ANYTHING about how i've decided to give birth in a birthing center instead of a hospital unless it's supportive and kind.

The "Nesting Instinct" is no myth

I'm am feeling a profound urge to organize everything.

Part of me wants to buy that house just so i can fulfill this odd need to put baby clothes in a drawer and books on a shelf.

"Hey Richard, is this your coat?"

pregnancy hormones, feeling desparate, and a change in the wind

I had a small breakdown yesterday and left work around noon for fear of completely losing it. Fortunately, I did get all my work done before leaving.

Ben had taken the day off to work on his dad's house and was over there so I drove straight from work to there and cried on him until we were both thoroughly soaked. Then he made me a sandwich and plopped me in front of the big screen tv to watch comedy central.

After a bit we went out and laid in the grass under the crab apple tree and talked about our future. Sometimes it just doesn't feel like we have much of one.

The job that Ben and Dad are working on may not be finished until as late as August which will only leave a month and a little bit to work on the Little House before the wee one is born. Which would mean we would have no place to live when the baby was born. or at least continue to live with my folks which i don't see as an option.

While we were laying out under the crab apple tree, Ben's dad came home and joined us.

He mentioned something interesting... that the people up the hill from him were sub-dividing their property and that they're selling the tiny little gingerbread house on the hill.

We walked up and looked at it. It was so adorable and pretty well protected in a grove of oaks...

So now we're thinking of buying a house after all...

Sigh. We can't make up our minds... we're breaking commitments... we're feeling trapped...

yeesh. How does anyone ever start out?

My Retro Baby

Friday. I get home from work. Two large boxes are sitting on the chopping block in the kitchen addressed to "Libby Jones and Ben Matthew." They are from New England and the return address is none i recognize.

Turns out my bestest friend, Kirstin and her Mom plotted to send me Kirstin's and her brother's old baby clothes. The first thing i pulled out of the box is the cutest Peter Rabbit snow suit from like 1982.

Last Wednesday my Mom's friend Brooke came by and brought her son's old baby clothes, swing, johnny-jump-up, etc, etc...

This Sunday Ben and I are driving down to Virginia to gather more baby stuffs from my Aunt Mary.

This kid already owns more stuff than Ben and I put together. If all goes well we'll only have to buy diapers.

Death Predictor

http://evil.berzerker.net/death_predictions.php

This Website has told me:

"Libby Jones: At age 59, you will die lonely and alone from morbid obesity. "

*is that not the perfect thing to tell a young pregnant woman who is already paranoid about never getting her old body or life back?*

What happens when you swallow a watermelon seed

Life Cycle of a Dragonfly

While fishing down at Frog Hollow yesterday Ben, my cousin Charlie and his wife Sandra and I all got to witness something totally incredible.

We watched a dragonfly emerge from the hardened shell of it's nymph form. Uncurl it's wings and it's long tail, dry off in the sun. Unfold it's wings and take off on it's first flight in it's new body.

Although it makes complete sense, I had no idea that dragonflies started out as beetly creatures (nymphs, just like butterflies, moths and others). The whole process took about three or four hours and during it's transformation it turned from bright green to a sort of transparenty yellow and brown/black where the bracts of the tail and outter armor met.

It was really, really, cool.

Fourth grade science project here I come!!!


We also saw a 5 ft long blacksnake who i named Johnny Sprockets and a big old box turtle named Too Step. Ahh nature! (Oh and Ben caught the biggest fish so far of the season, a large mouth bass).

Easy Soaker Pattern

I was digging through some things this weekend looking for good yarn to make soakers and I found this great pattern that my mother made up. It's a simple, easy Soaker pattern. So, if anyone feels so inclined, I would owe you greatly if you wanted to knit a pair or two of soakers for the wee one.

(for those of you who don't know: Soakers are for babies who wear cloth diapers. They are like woolen underpants that go over the cloth diaper to help hold it in place and to act as another layer of protection against leaks)

Pattern:

You will need: 1pair size 7 needles. 1 yarn needle. 2-3 ounces of wool yarn (Worsted weight or about .5 cm in diameter)

Size: Infant to 6mos. (7mos. to Toddler)

Cast on 30 (40) stitches. Work in K1P1 (knit one purl one) ribbing for three rows.

Fourth row: *K1P1 YO (yarn over: pass yarn over needle one time, forming another stitch). p2 tog (purl two stitches together), repeat from * to end of row. Work in K1P1 ribbing for three more rows. This makes a row of holes for the drawstring.

For the next 3 (4.5) inches work in stockinette stitch (knit one row, purl one row.)

Leg openings and crotch: *K1 slip next stitch with yarn in front. Repeat from * to end of row. Rpeat this row for next 4.5 (5.5) inches. This forms a double panel of fabric that is somewhat narrower than the rest of the garment.

Work in stockinette stitch for antoher 3 (4.5) inches. Work in K1P1 ribbing for three rows. Next row *K1P1 YO P2 tog. Repeat from # to end of row. Work in K1P1 ribbing for three more rows. Bind off in K1P1 ribbing.


Thread a yarn needle with a length of yarn. Sew up sides form top of ribbing to beginning of crotch panel. Weave ends in and clip off excess. Thread drawstring through the holes in the ribbing. (You can make a drawstring from braided or twisted yarn).

Tada!! You have Soakers!

horrible photos

This is my incredibly handsome Husband looking like someone just dragged his fuzzy ass out of the woods and slapped some amish guys clothes on him. Nonetheless he's a cutie and a half ... Don't be fooled by that psycho-stare he's got going on.







These are the horrible photos (mostly cause i'm making awful faces) of me and my cousin Sarah. She is 28 weeks and I am 19 weeks. Notice how determined I am to avoid maternity clothes for as long as possible.

Shout out to my Homies

I realize my postings have been sort of lame as well as farther and father between. What can I say? I've been feeling antisocial, fat, pregnant, slightly gassy, and homesick for all my homies back in the town of P (not to be confused with pee)

The weekend was good. Nice long one for once I almost felt recharged and ready for the week... almost... I could have used one more day.

Friday night i babysat for some children of a friend of the family's. Way back when I used to babysit for her oldest who was about 6 months at the time. Now he's eleven and bigger than I am on all accounts. He has two younger siblings both of whom are adorable and fun as can be. Jac, the middle of the three taught me a card game called 31 it's kind of a cross between 21 black jack and rummy.

Saturday Ben and I slept in and rolled around admiring each other until the rumblings and cravings of the Belly forced us both out of bed. We snacked and then made our way down to Owings Mills with the intention of getting our oh so late emissions testing done for the car. When we got there they were closed though, due to the holiday weekend... ugh, how frustrating. So we headed over to Hampden to have breakfast with my beautiful cousin Jes, her husband Ian, and Jes's little brother Rico.
After breakfast the boys headed off to make dry ice bombs while the Jes and I (being the responsible wives that we are went to run errands).
After all that fun Ben and I went home and my cousin (from my dad's side this time), Juli came to visit. She lives in Germany with her boyfriend but was in town to study and take her GREs and we had dinner to celebrate her fantastic score.
For dinner we had fresh caught fish from the resevoir that Ben and I caught earlier in the week and kept in the freezer, baked sweet potatoes, green beans and a big ol' salad full of roasted nuts and feta. For desert i made the best cake ever that was soooo oooey goooey chocolatey we may as well have been eating a giant half melted bar of Ghiridelhi (sp?). I decorated it with strawberries, blueberries and mango slices. Man was it ever good. I'm drooling just thinking about it now.
Juli also brought us the entire 5th season of "Six Feet Under." (we're obsessed). THANK YOU JULI!!!

Sunday felt incredibly short. We woke up late, pittered around. Waited for a phone call from a friend telling us if she was coming fishing or not. She didn't end up coming after all. And eventually Ben and I hopped in the car and drove to Keedysville, MD to my uncle's house for a party celebrating all the graduates of the year. I got to see my cousin who is 7 months pregnant and a year younger than I. Everyone took pictures of us belly to belly... next to her I just look like a fat girl after thanksgiving dinner. Then we drove home and snuggled up in front of more episodes of "Six Feet Under."

Monday was good. I woke up totally elated that I didn't have to go to work. Mom and I went for a long walk in the woods and then Mom, Dad, Ben and I all went and saw "The Davinci Code." It was alright... just like the book, predictable and anti-climactic. However, it had Audrey TouTou in it whom i love. Then we went home and took a nap in the swealtering heat/humidity (i can't take this humidity). When I awoke I was incredibly grumpy and Ben forced me to take a cold bath to cool down and re-collect myself. Then we met Mom and Dad at the Trap range for a Memorial Day picnic and some trigger pulling. I didn't do too well but nothing to be ashamed of either (18/25). Mostly it was just nice to pull the trigger and smell the gun powder. I do worry about making my fetus deaf though... Rowen, any advice?

Today i'm feeling oh-so-grumpy. I'm fighting with the people we were supposed to rent that house from, trying to get our deposit back. Mostly the woman is being a bitch. She keeps saying she's sending it but it has yet to get here and continues to tell me that we aren't even entitled to getting our money back... I'm tired of fighting with people. I'm tired of the threat of involving lawyers and what not. Between that accident on New Year's and these Rental People I'm surprised I haven't resorted to fire bombing...

It's nice that May is over. It did go pretty quick though.
Now if only June will prove to be just as mellow and quick I will be a happy dear.

As far as Pregnancy news goes, there is none. The baby and I are doing fine. The baby squirms a lot and Ben can feel it too which is nice. We like to lay in bed communing with our little dancing baby. At the last visit i had gained 9lbs, I'm guessing I may be up to 12 now. My belly is changing shape slowly, though it doesn't necessarily feel like it's growing, though I'm sure it is. No major symptoms... I get tired faster but not like the first trimester, and I have a short fuse, but I had a short fuse to begin with.

I did find the cable to my camera so if i can remember to bring it to work I'll post pictures of the little house and my belly soon.

Installment 2 of "Hormones or My Imagination"

About three weeks ago i was in the kitchen cooking and whatnot when the drain board had a slight avalanche and the large glass mixing bowl on the end fell. I was facing the opposite direction and only heard the clatter as the avalanche began. I spun around, reached out, and ended up catching the glass bowl by it's rim on three finger tips...

I put the bowl on the counter and stood there stunned wondering why I was able to do that when four months ago that bowl would have plummetted to it's messy suicide without my even being able to turn around in time to see it hit the floor and smash into a billion pieces.

Over the last few weeks I've been noticing this reflex thing more and more. Mostly it's when things are dropping to the floor. Just now i caught a binder that was falling off my desk, last week a caught a piece of honey-toast with my belly... (okay that was more an effect of the growing belly than reflex but...)

My point being: Is this some sort of effect of pregnancy hormones? Is this nature's way of minimizing the liklihood that I will drop little Bucksnort? Hrmmmm.

Fetal Update

Things My Baby Can Do:
-The arms and legs begin to punch and kick.
-The fingernails are well formed.
-The unborn child can suck its thumb.
-Taste buds are present.
-Male or female gender is evident.
-A protective waxy coating is present on the skin.
-The length is about 5 to 6 inches

Updates and Random bits

1. Apparently Psycho-preggy-lady is a common alter ego that rears her short-tempered head around the 17 week mark. So my homicidal fantasies regarding a certain anonymous co-worker are perfectly normal. Oh and Rowen, I agree about the dangers of directing my alter-ego's incredible super-villian powers at Ben. But thankfully the anonymous co-worker works as an outlet for me to blame things on. So that way Psycho-preggy-lady is all tuckered out by the end of the day and my darling, sweetheart of a husband gets the better bits of his tired and oh-so-silly wife.

2. Steve and Sarah (and their little boys) from Prescott are coming to visit in the fall (around the baby's due date). Steve has a commission for a pool table in Lexington, MA and will be going up there (probably with Ben) to install it. Steve makes incredible furniture and Ben used to work with him occasionally in Az.

3. The bump is growing and i still have as of yet to buy preggy clothes (especially pants). Currently I cannot button ANY of my pants and simply go around with them undone, wearing long shirts so no one can tell.

4. My parents refuse to stop calling the baby "Bucksnort." I asked if it's a girl will they call it "Doesnort." Mom says no but maybe "Squash Blossom." Poor baby.

5. My First Mothers' Day:
After a wonderful morning of sleeping in and snuggling Ben surprised me with roses, a pint of strawberries and a mango. We had a big breakfast with Mom and Dad before they went off to the trap range. I threw on my mud overalls (the ones i wear to play in the mud) and weeded the vegetable garden.
Then Ben and I went fishing and caught four beautiful fish for lunch. We caught more than that but a bunch of them were teeny blue gills and we let them go. We went home and cleaned the fish putting them in the icebox (we don't have a refridgerator) so we could run errands. We went to the movie store and rented a few movies including Alice's Restaurant (Arlo Guthrie) which Ben hasn't seen and I haven't seen since I was in high school. And we stopped by the Goodwill to hunt for t-shirts for Ben and clothes that would fit his ever-growing wife.
We went home and fried up the fish and steamed our fresh asparagus and ate lunch. Then I took a nap and did some laundry then we snuggled in and watched movies until we fell asleep.

Maybe it's a symptom of pregnancy

I have a barely controlable urge to beat the shit out of a co-worker of mine. I want to reach out and grab her by the hair on the back of her head and smash her face into the desk repeatedly. I want to strangle her and watch her big dopey eyes go dead in her bloodied bashed-in face.

How is it possible to hate someone this much? I don't even really know her. She hasn't really done anything to me. But every time i hear her voice or her stupid laugh my blood boils...

I'm wondering if i shouldn't leave work early today to keep from doing something I'll regret.

I just wrote the following e-mail to my cousin and bestest friend telling her how our appointment lastnight went. So I thought I'd copy it here for the benefit of all to read:


Dear Jes,

Hi, hi. Sorry, I was gunna e-mail you as soon as i got in but my internet went down for some reason.

Everything is good. We got to listen to the heart beat which was super strong and loud, it was really wild. Mom and Dad came and got to hear the heart beat too.

Did I tell you that the birth center caters to all the amish families in that area? yep, amish, amish everywhere.

All my bloodwork came back good and strong. My iron levels are very high which is excellent, must be all that kukicha and cooking in cast iron skillets...

One minor thing: i do not have a definite imunity to the german measles so I've been instructed to avoid people with spotty deseases. But the midwife also said it's no big deal and that I probably am immune but that modern science can't be sure.

I've gained a whopping 9lbs! It sounds a bit high to me but the midwife said that it's great. We went over my 3 day food log that I was assigned to do and she kept exclaiming how well we eat. She said to just make sure I'm keeping it down to about one glass of juice a day and avoid the high fructose corn syrup things, which i normally do anyhow.

My Leukocyte levels are slightly high but I don't know what that means and she said it's nothing. But i'm gunna look it up today anyhow.

As she was setting up the doppler to listen to the heartbeat she felt my uterus and said, "Wow, the top of your Uterus is right about at your bellybutton." Earlier she said it should be a bout two finger widths below my belly button. I'm wondering if this baby is going to be big.

She said that my stomach muscles are very strong and because of that i haven't quite "popped out" yet. In around 3 weeks my uterus should come out more and allow more room for the baby so it's not all squished in there kicking at my pubic bone.

She also confirmed that I have been feeling the baby move and that even though it's not terribly common for first time mothers to feel the baby move at 14 weeks, it's not indicative of anything either and that I'm lucky and it's a good thing.

The lady that did our exam last time was not one of the midwives, she was the gyn/fertility expert and an RN. The lady we had this time was one of the midwives (of which there are two). She was super great. She's real soft and very funny, great sense of humor. She teased Ben and was very direct and open without being condescending. She was so cute. I told her about the yeast infections and she said, "I know it sounds weird but yogurt sex is an old midwives trick. It works really well and it can be a lot of fun, just make sure you use the plain kind." She kind of blushed when she said all this but was really cute about it.

So from now on we will have one or the other of the midwives to do our exams so we will get to know them both very well and who ever is on call when we go into labor we will have had plenty of contact with.

Dad absolutely LOVED the place, he loved that they catered to the amish population and all the way home was talking about buying bucksnort a little straw hat and suspenders.

Also the birthing center has just moved to their new location. The first time we went it was funny cause basically they were in a trailer in the middle of a corn field. But their new location is really nice, brand spankin' new and huge with a lot of windows. They have two birthing rooms both with their own jaccuzzi/hot tub, big beds, and a very homey feel. They have a kitchen/living room for the family to wait in with a vcr/dvd player and toys. They also have a big lending library of good birthing books they reccommend to their clients.

I love that place. I feel like i couldn't have picked a better place to have Bucksnort (which is what Mom and Dad have named their first grandchild). Everytime i leave there I'm so happy and excited to give birth. I feel like embracing the whole world. Nothing like feeling like you're in competent and loving hands for something that could be potentially scary and traumatizing.

At dinner Mom and Dad regaled us with stories of having Miah at GBMC and how awful everyone was to them and how they should have had us at the birthing center (which has been open since 1978), but how they didn't know about it and thank God for the internet...

Dad was on cloud 9 all night after our visit. He kept saying, "I'm so happy for you guys! I almost want to have another baby myself."

Oh, and the front desk lady (who i think is part amish???) always has her little baby with her, actually he's not so little he's maybe 8 months. Anyhow, mom walked right in and grabbed him from the desk lady and was instantly in love. Dad was crawling around on the floor with him and even Ben held his arms out to the wee one and wanted to play with him. Ben needs more baby time. I'm thinking of taking him down to Mary's to play with Tieggy, you should see his eyes light up when he holds a baby.

Did I tell you that the other night when we were babysitting for Brooke's boys that I couldn't get Grifffin to go down but Ben could?? I could get Griffin to fall asleep in my arms but I couldn't lay him in the crib without him waking up and freaking out. After I tried a couple times and got really frustrated I handed the sleeping kid off to Ben who had him in his crib and snoring away in no time. It was incredible. What a man, my man.

Anyhow, the visit was great and if you ever want to come with me sometime to meet everyone and watch and learn how to get there (since you'll be at the birth) just let me know! I'd love to have you along.

My next visit is set for June 13th. And sometime next month or the month after we will schedule our ultra sound (no, we're not finding out if it's a boy or a girl) i'm just excited to see our little Bucksnort.

love you!
-L

Baby Check-up this Evening

BEST WEBSITE EVER

This is the greatest thing ever. You should all register now!!

https://www.donotcall.gov/default.aspx

What a Rotten Morning!

I wake up 1/2 hr late and run around like a mad woman and then can't find my wallet which I finally find in my car anyway.

Traffic absolutely sucks and I end up at work late

I get to work and there are a whole slew of post-it notes from stupid Copier salesmen who want to sell us a new copier.

The giant rubber ball i use for an office chair has a hole in it cause I ran over a staple and now i don't know if it's patchable. It's pretty new too... And now I have to sit in a chair all day.

Dear Gerbil Baby Growing in my Belly,

You put the "us" back in Uterus.

Love,
Your Mama

PS: Can you start craving things like raisins instead of icecream please?

The Fatty Blues

If someone says to you:
By having sex there is a good chance you will end up having to spend the better part of a year

-gaining loads of weight
-being REALLY gassy
-eating everything you come in contact with
-crying at the drop of a hat
-Laughing hysterically at inappropriate movies
-either completely uninterested in sex, or overly interested in sex
-swollen feet, ankles and sinuses
-avoiding alcohol, smokey rooms, loud music, and anything that requires you to stay up late
(which just happens to be where all your friends are)
-having to pass up your favorite foods
-getting stretch marks
-getting vericose veins
-worrying that you'll never be sexy again
-getting nose bleeds
-interminable headaches (for which you shouldn't take pain killers)
-shortness of breath
-aching back, neck, and every other part of your body
-long sleepless nights
-general discomfort
-being woozy
-being mean
-being either way hotter or way colder than everyone else in the room
-not fitting between the driver seat and the steering wheel of your car
-looking like a hippo
-having strangers touch you
-getting unwanted advice from complete morons and strangers and strange morons
-and worrying that you're doing it all wrong

Then all that will end with an episode of more pain than you could possibly ever imagine. You will be ripped in half starting with your vagina just to allow this little tyrant out into the world and then for the next six months you're going to have cracked, chapped, sore nipples and feel like a dairy cow and at any given point in the day be covered in shit, piss, sour milk, vomit, or otherwise... and then you will spend the rest of your life scared shitless for this little being...

Do you think it'd make a difference? You're right...probably not...