and bask in the undeniable truth of the pregnant woman's intuition!

IT'S A GIRL! weeee :)

yes, i dreamed of boys, but even so (as you may go back and read at any time) i felt it was a girl from the very beginning. i'm amused that the psychic was wrong, and interested to re-interpret my little 'king of wands' incidents... i already have a theory on what that might have meant since baby is a girly girl.

props to my mom, lauren, traci, and everybody else who said they thought it was girl too.

now a brief rant/concerned discussion about what happened during the ultrasound appt:

i was scheduled at 4pm but the doc (this is the guy who backs-up EVERY midwife in gainesville) had a couple of unexpected surgeries so he didn't actually see me until 830... i have heard amazing things about him from so many people, but frankly i was not impressed. i didn't even really like him at all. i found him condescending and completely uninspiring (strike 1).

then all he wanted to talk about was my blood thing. he said 'you have factor v leiden, heterozygous?'--"yes"--a disbelieving stare, then, 'how do you know that?'--UHHH let me check... a psychic told me? (strike 2) --"i was tested at shands hematology/oncology last may." wtf? then he got all concerned, wanted my history and my dad's, and basically said in no uncertain terms that he couldn't believe the birth center didn't risk me out (strike 3). so my defenses shoot up and i am internally cursing and screaming at myself for even setting foot in his office, knowing that anything he says to the midwives comes down like the word of god. i just fucked my chances and i know it. so i start explaining that the hema told me it's fine, blah blah, i'm getting a letter, the BC wasn't worried; trying to salvage any hope i might have of him NOT ruining my birth, despite the fact that he was obviously not hearing a word i said. he also kept using phrases like "required to be on prophylaxis (ie, heparin)" and all i could think was 'REQUIRED?! who the fuck is going to force me to take it?' but of course i just tried not to bare my teeth at him instead. really bad start for this guy.

now i realize, i really do, that he is used to sub-intelligent, docile women who believe "doctor knows best" and expect him to tell them exactly how to wipe their asses properly, so i don't totally blame him for his flippant attitude... but it was 100% the wrong way to approach me, and if he had looked at my face just once he would've caught that and maybe our relationship could have been saved. but he didn't. and i'm not like the women he is used to.

on to the ultrasound... wow!! she is huge! perfect little legs and arms, she was moving and kicking all over the place, organs in the right places, she sucked her thumb, and at one point gave us a gorgeous profile shot too. as for the indication of her sex... no question there! it was clearly a girl's apparatus. i was so happy... we'll be getting the pics as soon as i bring in a usb drive for them. he altered my due date to may 7 but we're pretending like it didn't change since it's so close to the original estimate anyway.

so, then it's over and instead of politely giving me the towels to wipe the goo off my partially-exposed pubic area, he roughly starts rubbing it off for me. WTF? i already didn't like him, i don't like male doctors, i don't want them touching me even if i DO like them, and he's literally centimeters from assaulting me. it was not a good experience but in the end it was worth knowing she's a girl. and by the end of the appt he basically said he was going to do his own research on fvl and then talk to the BC about it. so we'll see what happens...

today i saw the BC and talked with them about the labor-monitoring situation and the dilation checks, and have good news on one side (dilation only *has* to be checked twice) and neutral news on the other (doppler legally required every 5 min during pushing). so. at least i know what i can say no to and what i have to endure if i stay with them.

matt keeps being really helpful and telling me if we end up at the hospital that he won't let them do anything to me i don't want... he says "i'll bring a gun if i have to" and i laugh, knowing he's only half-kidding. at least he means to protect me at all costs. it is comforting. but i don't know how to tell him i'm having it at home with no help before i will go to the hospital... that won't fall into his comprehensible paradigm of possibilities: how can he protect me if it's just me and the baby, no antagonist? something tells me he will be really uncomfortable with that.

last night was good though, in a 3 of swords sort of way (thanks baby); it was like the final test to lay it all out there and see what the powers-that-be decide about my fate, and whether i will go along with them or not. i think my decision is made, and i have acquired a pretty fatalistic attitude about the whole thing: if they say no BC, i say no help at all. if the BC is ok, we'll do it that way either at home or the center. it feels like the right way to decide it--let the universe take over.

matt was cute when i told him it's a girl... he didn't seem disappointed like i was afraid he might. though he did say we'll just have to make a boy next time :). he said he hopes she looks just like me "but a smidge taller and she'll be perfect." lol.

ahhh! halfway! i can't believe it's already here. part of me would be fine staying pregnant for a while longer... though i'm sure i will not feel that way once i'm another 15 pounds heavier and 20 inches rounder, lol.

oh and WE FIND OUT THE SEX TODAY! at 4pm. i am so freaking excited i can't put it into words. i promised i would eat sugar and caffeine right beforehand so the baby is wired for the ultrasound and not sleeping with its back turned or something absurd like that. seems like a good trick. (of course it's moving all around now so i'm sure by 4pm it will be sleeping soundly no matter what i do.)

yesterday i got a kick that was so forceful it startled a squeak out of me! totally out of nowhere and much harder than any previous pokes. it was cute. and i've noticed a really uncomfortable sensation when i try to ride my bike, like the baby is getting squished against my pelvis >< so i think i might not ride it anymore unless i absolutely have to.

oh, and on friday i found myself in the ER again, thankfully for a false alarm that turned out to be a pulled muscle. i have hypercoagulable blood (which is a big deal during pregnancy) and was showing all the signs of a potential clot in my leg, so i consulted with my dad--who's had four serious clots--and was advised to go to the hospital right away. i did, and it was nothing but a wasted 6 hours. annoying, but worth it.

boy? girl? today it will have additional identifying characteristics for me to associate with it! not just "small" and "human!" *squeal*

i realized i only know a few lullabies and i don't like any of them, so i am now endeavoring to learn a few that i DO like. the problem is they keep making cry! i am soooo sentimental these days.

but i am singing them because it's the best way to memorize them and the baby is totally kicking. i don't know if that means it hates it or likes it though, lol. its auditory system is developed enough to be able to hear me now...

a-z lullabies with some midi files to hear them
folk lullabies

oh wow--when i was really little i watched "empire of the sun" and there is a song in that movie sung by a boy's choir that i LOVED and never knew what it was... it's on the folk lullabies page. it's a welsh lullaby called 'suo gan.'

fyi: there are a few tori and iron & wine songs that make really great lullabies!

finally i managed to get a pic of my enormous belly for the record. and look how long my hair is! wee...
it looks like i am carrying really high, but i think that's just the photo angle because nate is so tall! i feel the baby below my belly button and on the right side, most of the time. i am sad to say that i am slowly losing my waist, however. i seem to be carrying kinda wide, to my great surprise (my mom was straight out with me--teeny waist preserved the whole time--and wide with my sister).

soon i won't be able to wear those jeans at all... right now i zip them about halfway and rubber band the button hole! lol.

anyway there it is. behold the belly.

holy shit, i never imagined what that could be like. 30 seconds of stabbing, tearing, unbearable, all-consuming agony that i could not alleviate or ignore. i started screaming and begging matt (who was sleeping deeply) to rub it out, and all i could do was yell, my body totally contorted into a stiff arch. seriously fucked up!

upon reflection, it was similar to the worst acupuncture pain i ever experienced--there was a point on my right foot that she would go for sometimes, to my great dread, that consistently felt like a railroad spike being slammed laterally right through my tarsal bones. explosions of purple lighting and white hot fire in my vision and all i could do was arch up and gasp... my foot always ached for days after that point was hit. but where that was like an explosion, sudden and all-powerful and quickly over, this was a rip, like a door of pain opening inside my leg, its contents spilling out to flood the rest of my body until it passed.

i hope i don't get many more of these... i am going to up my vitamin intake, keep up with the magnesium powder, and try to eat bananas (blah).

i found this yesterday on a thread at longhaircommunity.com (yes, i am a dork), and i was really moved by it. the actual film is not released yet, this is just a long trailer.

i think it addresses an incredibly important--and completely unexplored--issue in modern childbirth experience. what is the role of the father? why is he marginalized during the birth process and what does it mean for humanity? for his own identity as a father? for his child's relationship to him?



their blog is here, and contains some other interesting posts relating to birth and human rights issues which we absolutely do not address in our culture... as if babies are "not really human" yet and have no rights... (yes, a post on circumcision is DEFINITELY on the way)

this is really laughable considering i have no intention of being in the hospital, and if i am, it will be for an unavoidable c-section... but nonetheless, here is my birth plan. i hope it helps somebody else make one and not be afraid to be blunt. yes, the hospital will hate me if i end up there, but let them try to mess with me and they will see why someone once told me "you are kali."

Rhiannon and Matthew X
Due Date: May 11, 2009

Birthing Location:

* Birth Center of Gainesville (unless forced to leave)
* In hospital
o Private room, no more than one staff caregiver in the room at any time
o Access to bathtub, low/no lighting, and quiet, with door closed and electronics off as possible
o Will wear my own clothing
o Access to food and water or juice as desired
o Do not offer medications of any kind
o Minimal to no talking, no touching mother unless asked
o NO IV except in life-threatening emergency or caesarean

Starting/Inducing/Augmenting Labor:

* No induction unless medically necessary and not based on due date concerns. Only ‘natural’ (walking, sexual stimulation, acupressure, etc).
* NO amniotomy
* NO pitocin, cervidil, or cytotec or other chemical induction

Labor Monitoring:

* Minimal – No constant monitoring of any kind.
* Cervical checks only when mother agrees. No routine hourly checks.
* NO internal fetal monitoring.

Pain Management:

* Changing positions, warm bath, massage, hot/cold compresses, mental relaxation, etc
* NO epidural, spinal, narcotics, or other pharmaceutical pain management during labor. DO NOT OFFER.

Pushing:

* Spontaneous or exhale only; no directed pushing.
* Positions – prefer to squat, use ball, open to suggestions. No “stranded beetle” whatsoever.
* Perineal massage (by husband or midwife/doula only), hot compresses
* No forceps. No vaccuum. No fundal pressure.
* NO EPISIOTOMY

After labor:

* Uninterrupted contact with mother for at least one full hour
* DO NOT CUT UMBILICAL CORD. Placenta to be delivered naturally and left intact and attached to baby.
* Skin-to-skin warming of newborn – no confinement, no heated plastic boxes
* Immediate attempt to establish nursing
* NO vitamin K, no silver nitrate, no PKU, no antibiotics.
* Bath after first hour or so, performed by self/husband/midwife
* “Rooming in” – no nursery or separation whatsoever. No bottles, no pacifiers!
* NO CIRCUMCISION
* In the case of perineal repairs needed, localized anesthesia (Novocain, etc) requested prior to stitching

Emergency caesarean:

* ONLY IF MOTHER OR BABY WILL DIE WITHOUT IT. Midwife’s/doula’s input to be considered seriously.
* No general anesthesia; regional analgesia only. Mother will be awake and alert throughout.
* Husband and midwife present in OR
* Immediate contact with newborn, leave cord intact until pulsing stops, shared recovery of mother/baby
* See “After labor” for additional guidelines

more and more as things progress i get the feeling that i don't need or want anyone at this birth. i don't know if it's my own need to be left alone, a sense of overconfidence, or whether it might actually be the baby telling me in no uncertain terms that everything is fine and it would be safer that way. the feeling is so strong... and if it is the baby, i really do not want to express a lack of trust in it by going against my intuition.

it's the same feeling i started to get (so strongly) around the second hour of the waiting room in the ER the night i was bleeding... i freaked at first but after a while i knew it was ok, and i knew the baby was telling me so.

i just don't want to deal with managed care--even from well-meaning, compassionate midwives--if i don't have to. i mean, i know they are trained for things like resuscitation, but other than that, what else can they offer? part of this is that i fear offending them when i say, mid-labor, "stop touching me, stop talking, and leave me alone" and mean it. i already know i won't want them there.

so the question i have been earnestly asking myself lately is, as they put it so beautifully at empowered childbirth:
"Would you prefer a gentle birth and possibly a gentle death for a ... child? Or will you do *anything* to save your child?"

i am a strong believer in the idea that everything happens because it is supposed to happen, so i do realize that no matter what i do, the right thing will happen... and it keeps me from ever regretting choices i make... if the baby doesn't make it through the birth, i will know it was meant to be that way, hospital or not... but the thing that bothers me the most is wondering if i choose a managed birth and end up in the hospital with a c-section (or injured baby, or trouble bonding, or drug injections) for a stupid reason, will i regret that more than taking a chance at home, knowing how strong my intuition towards a safe homebirth is?

i don't know the answer to this. hospitals are really good at manipulating women into thinking "thank god, they saved my baby" even when the problem might never have arisen at home.

edit 12/17: i spoke to my dad last night, who is a retired fire rescue paramedic; turns out he is totally trained in neonatal resuscitation AND has delivered 3 or 4 babies in emergency situations. hmm... between him, my mom (2 natural births) and my doula (2 births of various kinds and several as a doula)... do i need anybody else? btw, the hospital is 3 minutes away from my house...

one more week to halfway! i can't believe how quickly this is going...

nothing new to report except it's obvious that my abdomen is growing as we speak, b/c i have been having a constant sort of "tight" feeling inside like i did at the beginning. my skin on the outside is still nice an supple but clearly some organs are being adjusted in there.

i went to the gym on friday and it felt really good to use my body (for the first time in a few months, ahem). for the first two months i was still jogging almost every day, but once the nights got longer i stopped... but i joined the gym last week and now i am "back on the wagon." the only thing that was weird, other than feeling fat amongst several fit 18-year olds who have probably never seen a pregnant woman up close, was that even though i did a nearly normal workout, i didn't sweat. i always sweat when i work out, though not profusely... but this time there was nothing. so i'm not sure if i just need to push harder or if something weird is up. most women sweat a lot more during pregnancy.

so yeah, nice workout, then the hot tub with my book... ahh. i'm thinking that's the plan for tonight also.

did i mention that i got the "bark" parts of the tree up on the wall? i was inspired on thursday night and just went for it; the whole thing only took me 30 minutes to put up, amazingly. so it looks really cute and now i just have to work on the leaves, flowers(?), and birds/butterflies. but i think i am going to hold out until we know the sex so that i can at least sort of cater it appropriately. i'll take a pic this week even though it's not done.

so yeah.

edit: i forgot, my mom decided to throw another confusing factor into my "baby sex predictions!" yesterday she informed me she had some kind of dream or vision that i was having a blue-eyed daughter. lol. i am soooo confused. when i "talk" to the baby it feels like a girl, but the dreams, and the tarot...

also i did some astrology calculations on friday so that i can have the chart ready-to-go when the baby is born, minus a few critical pieces. i worry that it will be a gemini (no offense, but one in my house is plenty!) but the fact is, the impressions i get of it are way too quiet and peaceful for a gemini. so i think it will be early or right on time...

oh how many of these wonderful, witty, and downright GOOD replies i have found...

for the record: while it is obvious from all sorts of research (and common sense--really) that breastfeeding, and breastmilk, are the best choices available, it is very unfortunately true that some women just can't do it for all sorts of reasons. blame it on their cultural upbringing, our societal sexualization of the breast to the point that we are all closet pervs, their insecurity in the face of criticism, family pressures, or real physical impediments; it just doesn't work for everybody. just because i wouldn't feed *my* baby formula doesn't mean it's not the best option for other people, and that they shouldn't have the right to choose as they like. that is my stance on it--personal choice is everything.

now, having stated my completely truthful disclaimer, let's get down to business! it should be apparent that i intend to breastfeed, at least until i can't anymore. i was a "biter" which is why my mom quit, and i have friends whose kids weaned themselves, and i can imagine i might just get sick of it after a while; i do know that i will not be an extended BFer. as much as i want to be totally open to it, i know already it's not for me... i personally wouldn't be comfortable continuing the nursing relationship past the point at which children start to develop long term memory. i'd be pretty disturbed as an adult if i could still remember my mom's boobs being in my mouth. anyway... back to the point...

so yes, i will be breastfeeding like a champ just like my mom and her mom (thank you good genes!) and naturally this means there will come a time at which i must do so in public. gainesville is a happy hippie place, so maybe things won't be so bad here--however, in addition to the easy-going pot-smoking older crowd, there are also hordes of 18 year old girls and boys who haven't yet developed their neocortexes to the point that they can process complex ideas and register things like boobs do not always equal sex--but i am trying to prepare myself for the most likely inevitable rude comments, stares, etc to a woman feeding a baby from her body in public. so i've been stashing clever responses :)

love these!

responses to "when are you going to wean?" #1 and #2

my all-time favorites:

rude person: Can you please cover yourself while doing that?

proud mama: Oh, I’m sorry. Would you also mind throwing a blanket over yourself while you eat that slab of meat on your plate? (the vegetarian comeback)

***

“I’m sorry that using my breasts for their intended purpose rather than as sexual objects makes you uncomfortable.”

***

Q: “Could you possibly do that in a restroom?”

A: “No, but if you don’t like it then you can always go into the restroom while my child finishes eating.”

***

FYI, in florida there is are statutes (383.015, 800.02, 827.071) which explicitly state a few helpful things:

- A mother may breastfeed her baby in any location, public or private, where the mother is otherwise authorized to be, irrespective of whether the nipple of the mother's breast is uncovered during or incidental to the breastfeeding.
- exclude breastfeeding from various sexual offenses, such as lewdness, indecent exposure, and sexual conduct.

apparently a lot of women carry around a card with the laws on it in case anybody tries to make them leave, cover up, go to another room, etc. no one is allowed to make you do that.

of course, i certainly won't be flaunting my bosoms all about town, but hey, babies have to eat too, and i'm glad to know i don't have to hide it. plenty of people walk around in what i consider to be disgusting or inappropriate clothing/appearances all the time, but that is their right--if it bothers me, i look away. they can too.

>:P

(some awkward sentences, i think "laura" is not a native english-speaker)

from naturalmomstalkradio.com:

...Out of millions of women that specific baby has chosen specifically you. So, the main mission during pregnancy would be for our mother to be herself, which means not to be concentrating on the baby she has never seen yet. Of course, she will have her thoughts visiting the baby, but it is her look onto life that she should develop. She should be — I remember when I was pregnant, I wanted to be at my best of my best. Maybe I was 10% of my best, but at least I was striving. I was enthusiastic about discovering even who I was and dedicating that to the making of the baby.

Carrie Lauth: Hmm… Well, this is all very fascinating. So, tell us more about what this means for a mom. If a mom is sitting here listening and she is pregnant, what advice do you have for her? It sounds a little intimidating. I mean would she be concerned about every little thing that she is thinking or every situation that she found herself in? What advice would you have for her?

Laura Uplinger: I understand what you are saying. Yes, maybe the first then advice would be relax woman, enjoy, be happy. Joy is certainly one of the most beautiful things we can offer life to ourselves even if we were not pregnant. When situations are difficult and we are pregnant, it is also wonderful to know that that baby is a companion of yours. It is not a one-way street. Our baby also protects us. So many women — I mean during the wars in Europe I had read a lot of that, but also recently I have heard of women who were pregnant and were able to say that baby was telling me that everything was going to be okay. I could trust and relax. So, open up to your baby.

There are messages also from the womb. Many say that the consciousness of each child is not in the body. The body has been made, maybe even visited by the child as far as consciousness, but as far as our consciousness is not complete in our body, the mother should be very happy of her power over the formation of this body. Yes, it is intimidating. Everything is intimidating when it is well done. I mean I can imagine a sculptor starting a sculpture, or a painter starting a painting, or a writer in front of a white page. Creation is intimidating.

When we form something, it is intimidating, but we can take delight. Maybe the strongest quality for pregnancy, labor and mothering and parenting is surrender. That is something that we, women, love doing when we surrender to a mystery, to a force, to beauty. I believe this conversation we are having is being heard by some mothers who are having kind of a confirmation, their intuition had already talked on that. We were fetuses one day. We were embryos. We went through that. We were born. So, it awakens in us just to speak about this subject a lot of memories even if they are subconscious, they have such an echo in us. I am sure that some are saying “Aha! See, I knew that there was something and everybody around me was making fun of me.”

Carrie Lauth: Yeah. My sister always said that she knew the day after she had conceived the child and everybody would say that she was crazy.

Laura Uplinger: Exactly. Exactly. There are dreams. There are physical sensations. It is a huge science. I would not be into this field if there was not therapy for those who had severe traumas but I also know how much healing we get through a good pregnancy. Then when I hold my child in my hand, a newborn child or a 1-month-old child, the little one I was at that same age is also awakening me. A lot that I will do for that child, maybe that was never done to me because my parents were too busy or this was not the fashion like we would not breastfeed and things like that in the 1950s.

Well, a lot that I will do still can transform this child I was once. I know this is a bit philosophical but it as if there was no past. There is an eternal present. At anytime, I can assess the state of my being and repair, re-edit. Those scars are not like the scars on our skin. They would be like when I put my hand in the water and I take it out, you do not see where the hole was anymore. There was no scar. So is the psyche of the human being. So, psychologically, any gesture, any effort we make towards the well-being of a baby, we also make it towards the baby we were once at that age and that is beautiful.

***

isn't it though?

i have spent the past two days (so far) searching for articles or essays on some combination of 'pregnancy + spirituality or pagan or ritual or metaphysical or academic" and 90% of the search results are either essays on teen pregnancy, abortion, or pagan fertility rituals. ugh! i just want some good essays on the spirituality of pregnancy. i even searched for "pregnancy as liminal state" and all i got were anthropological studies on indigenous tribes and rites of passage. i want to discuss the state of pregnancy as a strange existence in a limbo between worlds... i am so much more open and sensitive (and i am usually pretty open and sensitive) and i need stimulation to explore it more deeply.

but anyway, i have found a nice little treasure-trove of articles from Compleat Mother magazine which i have been enjoying. i've also come across some insightful father-oriented pieces. i think i will just link them here instead of talking about them like i was planning to. but at the end i do want to discuss circumcision, for the record.

thoughts on induction

why men leave

getting fathers involved in pregnancy

love in the garden (husband as gardener--really sweet)

our children's needs

learning through compassion

truth about antenatal testing (by a med student)

righteous anger part 1

righteous anger part 2

trial by fire (really well written birth story with afterthoughts)

ok... i just spent a lot of time doing that and now i have lost interest in finishing this post. circumcision discussion to come later. (mood swing, i feel like crap and i think i am going to cry over something really stupid. damnit!)

geez i can't believe i written 100 posts worth of stuff on here. i hope it wasn't all crap!

so i had another baby dream last night, and this time i was actually awake for the birth. the entire dream was insanely long and complicated with a ton of real people in it, but here's the birth part:

i was in my bathroom and the tub was full but i was just sitting at the toilet (with the lid closed) and i think my mom was there, and suddenly i felt a slight pressure and i knew the baby was going to come, so i got into the bath and it literally just came out of me, no pain, no effort on my part except willingness... it just made its way out, and i picked it up out of the water and it was really small and red/purple, and it didn't cry, it seemed ok and happy to be on my chest. the placenta came out with the baby all in one shot, almost like the baby was holding it. unfortunately i do not know if it was a boy or a girl! that just wasn't part of the dream.

(later, however, i did dream that i was walking along the road with my daughter--she was probably 7--and a friend. it was fuzzy but she had blondish hair and looked a lot like i did at her age.)

i've eaten 4 pieces of gourmet chocolate in the last 15 minutes. i could the whole box right now...

and/but:

"The ebb and flow of emotions that accompanies pregnancy can cause you to turn to food," she says, "when what you really need is a hug."

*sniffle* damnit! ugh! it's true!!

ok, i am grumpy. grumpygrumpygrumpy.

stupid things are setting me off, like matt pausing for too long while we're talking on the phone, or telling me that we "discussed" buying ANOTHER truck (we certainly did not, and this is MY car we are replacing--i don't want a damned truck!), or students asking me the same question 5 times or my friends being antagonistic and annoying about pointless things. i have no patience. and the more i think about it the worse it gets!

motherfucker! i need to go find something funny like NOW.

yes, i said we painted the nursery! it's the perfect color! i found this pic online and it was called "green mist" but i could swear the color we bought was called 'pale meadow'... whatever though, it's the same color i'm sure (the only one from that brand that matched).
it looks so good! so now i am ready to build the paper tree and finish the other fun decorative bits. whatever they may be. *bites lip*

seriously though, what? i'm sure i will let it all evolve naturally once i get started, but i'd like to have some idea. i tell myself it will take me two weeks to do the tree anyway, so by then i'll know the gender (IT JUST POKED ME AGAIN) and we can tailor it to that (AGAIN) with either flowers or bugs for the springtime thing. i'd say the hell with it, have flowers and bugs either way, but matt doesn't want the room to be girly if it's a boy... i can forgive that the first time around.

so yeah, real progress has been made and i am happy about it! keep the steam going...

whew i had a busy weekend. so did matt, actually.

in a combined effort, we managed to:
-print 30 shirts (with different designs!)
-cook, peel, and can all the sweet potatoes from our garden--about 9 jars worth
-get an amazing deal on a huge chest freezer for food storage
-clean out and organize the laundry and printing rooms
-paint the nursery
-cook a whole chicken, make it into stock, make that into soup, and can it
-bake a peach cobbler
-(accidentally) create the perfect facial scrub

...and we still had time to get groceries. impressive, no?

as for the baby update, today i am t i r e d and i'm not sure why. maybe just the weekend catching up to me. i think i felt it moving from outside my belly the other day though--i was laying in bed watching a childbirth course DVD (not a very good one) and i had my hand on my belly, and i felt these two distinct jabs that i am sure weren't gas. gas doesn't poke you! so that was really fun, i just wish matt had been there to catch it. i felt it again in the car on sunday through my seatbelt.

i've been feeling good except for continuing headaches and i've noticed my belly is really growing. it's pretty itchy too even though i keep it slathered in greasy substances. same with my boobs... still tingling, still too big, and now an added bonus (TMI WARNING): i can actually make the tiniest amount of clear liquid come out if i really try. that was a suprising discovery! then i started worrying that if i mess with it i won't have any colostrum left for the baby, but turns out that's totally wrong, and reassuring.

haha. funny things happen when you're pregnant. seriously. but i can hardly contain myself waiting to find out the baby's sex! 2 more weeks. also i've been having some really minor and momentary mood swings, like all of a sudden i'll get bored or tired or impatient about something and just feel snippy. i try not to act on them but matt is psychic (damnit!) so he can tell even if i don't say anything. and then i feel bad for being cranky, which doesn't help. but overall it has been a minor irritation and only when i am not alone. which isn't often these days.

i visit www.babycenter.com almost daily, just to browse around and whatnot, and once a week to get the "development update" for my week. the best part about the whole thing is the user comments and posts.

there is a poll on delivery dates that i thought was pretty interesting though:

How close to your due date did you deliver? It's said that less than 5 percent of women give birth on their actual due date. What about you?

wow. i just wasted some time on a pregnancy forum to see if there was anything interesting i should be thinking about (there isn't, it's all "am i pregnant?" posts as usual), but i've been kind of intrigued by the forums made for new dads... so i spent a few minutes browsing those posts, and about 90% of them are along the lines of: help! my pregnant gf/wife hates me! scary shit.

so i read through a few of them, and man, these poor poor guys are being completely abused by ragingly psychotic hormonal women. kicked out of the house, told they aren't loved, screamed at for nothing... and the guys unanimously say "she is my life, i love her and i'll do anything" in response! but their women just don't care. even the men who sound like they really handle shit and go out their way to be helpful are being treated horribly. and the women who respond to the cries for help basically say, yep, it's hormones, i hated my husband too, just wait it out.

hormones?! if my hormones made me hate matt i would die. he would die. i am suddenly extremely thankful that my mood swings only lasted a week or two and were never directed at matt. i'm starting to think i'm also very lucky that he's not home 5 nights a week. i did get pretty pissy that he stole all the freshly-baked cookies yesterday (and the day before)! but not enough to hate him over it... though if he did it all the time... *twitch*

in other news, the baby seems to be moving a lot more lately, or else i am just noticing it more since it's "about the size of a turnip" ...however big that is! i guess i should call it little turnip now. haha.

and (TMI warning!) this is weird, but i've been noticing that my boobs tingle in response to certain phrases, ideas, song lyrics, etc... even pictures and live babies sometimes make them tingle. i'm sure it's perfectly normal (seems logical to me) but it is odd! i swear it feels like they are trying really hard to do their thing... it's just too early.

i started reading "the scientification of love" by michel odent last night. i quite like him, though the book itself isn't exactly easy reading... his english is fine but i suspect the book was written in french and translated, because it has a slightly unnatural feel to the language, even though it perfectly conveys the message. it's a series of very short, kind of choppy chapters detailing new insights on "the scientification of love" from various disconnected research perspectives, so you really have to work to make the connections yourself; science hasn't done it for you. as he describes it, the subject is like a mirror broken into a thousand pieces and each science has one piece but can't see how it fits with the others. he's trying to fit them together himself.

anyway the reason for this post is that there was a paragraph that really struck me, in which he was talking about how back in the 70s the idea that since no other natural physiological process is painful, birth pain must be culturally created. (i've talked about this before and it made a lot of sense to me.) but he says that's wrong... that hormonally we need labor to be painful so that our bodies will release endorphins which facilitate and possibly even trigger the actions of the more important birth/love/bonding hormones (oxytocin and prolactin). that totally blew me away. maybe birth is supposed to be painful? maybe we should be glad that it is! even after the pain stops the endorphins continue to flow for hours after birth...

it's interesting to me because the "cultural delusion" theory totally made sense to me, and i think in part it is still true... we are super scared of labor and conditioned to expect agony our whole lives... but maybe, rather than creating the pain outright, our fears and expectations simply intensify the feelings we would naturally already be having (and put a scary spin on them).

to be honest, i love the idea that the pain helps make birth more pleasant; because in the end, that is what the effect is. i want to be thankful for all aspects of my birth, however difficult they may be. and pain=endorphins=hormone cascade=bonding=love. it's another great reason not to use drugs in labor... you miss out on the pleasure that directly results from the pain. (of course, you still release the bonding hormones during breastfeeding even if you have an anaesthetized or sedated birth.)

fascinating. odent rocks.

did you really have any doubt that this news would be in the headlines soon? as soon as they found it in "chinese milk products" i knew we had an overarching problem as well.

this is from naturalnews.com:

90 Percent of U.S. Infant Formula May Be Contaminated with Melamine; FDA Abruptly Declares Chemical Safe for Babies

by Mike Adams, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) Up to 90 percent of the infant formula sold in the United States may be contaminated with trace amounts of melamine, the toxic chemical linked to kidney damage, according to recent tests. The FDA's test results, which the agency hid from the public and only released after the Associated Press filed a Freedom of Information Act request, showed that Nestle, Mead Johnson and Enfamil infant formula products were all contaminated with melamine.

The AP is also reporting that Abbott Laboratories conducted its own in-house tests that detected trace levels of melamine in its formula products. Together, these infant formula manufacturers make about 90 percent of the infant formula sold in the United States.

Prior to these test results being made public, the FDA had published a document on its website that explained there was no safe level of melamine contamination in infant formula. Specifically, the FDA stated, "FDA is currently unable to establish any level of melamine and melamine-related compounds in infant formula that does not raise public health concerns."

Once tests found melamine in U.S.-made formula products, however, the FDA changed its story. As of today, the FDA has now officially declared melamine to be safe in infant formula as long as the contamination level is less than one part per million (1 ppm).

Astonishingly: The FDA has no new science to justify its abrupt decision declaring melamine to be safe!

Protecting Big Business instead of American babies

Rather than being based on science, the FDA's decision appears to be based entirely on creating cover for U.S. infant formula manufacturers whose products were found to be contaminated with melamine. The "acceptable" level of contamination (1 ppm) is conveniently just above the levels found in U.S. infant formula products, thus placing U.S. infant formula in the "safe" contamination level category.

And yet the FDA has conducted no safety testing whatsoever to determine whether 1ppm of melamine is safe for infants to consume. There is no science involved in this decision whatsoever. Rather than this decision being based on science, the FDA is once again resorting to politically-motivated decisions that seek to protect the profits of Big Business rather than the safety of infants and children.

Recall that the FDA also recently declared Bisphenol-A to be safe for infants to consume, even while countries like Canada banned the chemical from baby bottles. The FDA, it seems has never met a corporate-sponsored chemical it didn't like.

Where did the melamine come from?

Laughingly, the FDA claims the 1ppm of melamine in U.S. infant formula must have come from the manufacturing machines or food packaging equipment. And yet the AP is reporting that the expected level of melamine contamination from manufacturing equipment is only 15 ppb (parts per billion).

But the FDA's own tests on Mead Johnson infant formula reveal it to contain 245 ppb, or 1600% more than what would be expected to exists due to melamine contamination from manufacturing equipment.

There are two really important questions that any intelligent consumer should be asking about all this:

Question #1) If the manufacturing and packaging equipment is contaminated with melamine, does this mean that ALL food products containing milk protein are similarly contaminated? The same companies that make infant formula also make Slim Fast, Ensure and Boost -- all are milk protein-based meal replacement products containing many of the same ingredients as infant formula. Are they contaminated with melamine, too?

Question #2) If manufacturing and packaging machinery should only result in melamine contamination levels of 15 ppb, and yet 245 ppb were found in the infant formula, then where did all the extra melamine come from? The FDA has no explanation for this and seems to hope people will forget to ask.

Two theories of melamine contamination

I offer two theories to explain the melamine contamination of these products. Obviously, the contamination could not be caused by the manufacturing and packaging of the product, because the melamine levels already found in U.S. infant formula products greatly exceed the expected levels from such manufacturing and packaging. The following two theories may explain the additional levels of detected melamine.

Theory #1: The infant formula is adulterated with melamine

This is what happened in China: Infant formula manufacturers added melamine to their milk protein to bulk up the product without adding much cost (melamine is much cheaper than milk protein). Because melamine's chemical profile is strikingly similar to milk protein, it can often fool simple protein analysis tests and appear to be legitimate.

If infant formula products use any milk protein from China, it could very easily have been adulterated with melamine. However, this is just a theory, and NaturalNews has no evidence that U.S. infant formula manufacturers actually used milk protein from China. Thus, we do not believe Theory #1 to be correct. Theory #2, below, seems more likely.

Theory #2: U.S. dairy operations are using animal feed contaminated with melamine

Because melamine is passed through cow's milk, the contamination of U.S. dairy cows with melamine through their feed could result in high melamine concentrations in the resulting milk proteins.

China has already admitted that melamine has been detected in alarming quantities in animal feed there, and tests have already shown chickens to be contaminated with the chemical. The question today is this: Do U.S. dairy farms use animal feed containing ingredients imported from China?

If so, then we may have a problem here that's much, much bigger than infant formula. We may have a dairy industry that's producing melamine-contaminated milk, which could mean that virtually all milk, yoghurt, butter and cheese produced in the U.S. might be contaminated with some level of melamine.

Again, NaturalNews has no proof that this is the situation, but the melamine must have come from somewhere. It didn't just spontaneously generate in the infant formula as the FDA would seemingly want us to believe. If the milk proteins in infant formula are contaminated with melamine, then it stands to reason that the milk proteins used throughout the food supply may also be contaminated.

We may, indeed, be looking at an industry-wide problem here. Powdered milk, meal replacement products and even milk protein drinks may all be contaminated with melamine at levels similar to the infant formula products.

Because you have to follow the logic here: Either the infant formula manufacturers ADDED melamine to their products (highly unlikely), or the entire milk product industry has a melamine problem.

You can't logically conclude that these infant formula manufacturers somehow got all the melamine-contaminated milk proteins but everybody else got melamine-free milk proteins. Milk proteins are a commodity in the food industry, and milk from thousands of different cows can all be mixed together in a single pound of milk protein. What could be happening here is that one dairy farm may have highly-contaminated cows because it used cheap feed fillers from China.

At this point, this is all just a theory, but it's a theory that makes sense. It makes a lot more sense than the FDA's theory that there's no problem and babies should just keep drinking melamine (and Bisphenol-A, for that matter...) and the press should stop asking questions.

Secret tests and public lies

There's no doubt that these infant formula manufacturers are pursuing the very same contamination theories I'm describing here. They're probably scrambling to test their milk protein sources, trying to figure out where all the extra melamine is coming from.

As usual, they'll try to keep the test results secret, preventing this from exploding into a much larger public health issue. The FDA, for its part, will continue to conduct any actual science in secret, preventing the public from knowing the tests results unless it is sued by organizations like the AP.

That's assuming the FDA conducts any science at all, because now the FDA believes it can declare contaminants to be safe at a level it just invents on the spot, without conducting any science whatsoever. The FDA is playing "Wheel of Fortune" with public safety (http://www.naturalnews.com/023681.html), and it's relying on guessing games - rather than actual science - to declare safety levels of chemicals it doesn't even understand.

The upshot of all this is really quite simple: People who feed their babies manufactured, mainstream infant formula products are fools! If there was ever a reason to breastfeed your baby, this is it. And if you're looking for truly safe infant formula products, go with natural brands such as Genesis Organics Goat Milk Formula (www.GenesisOrganics.com) or other "natural" brands that don't use cheap cow's milk proteins.

After all, it's quite clear at this point that the FDA doesn't care about your baby's health. You're the only one who can protect your baby from melamine. The FDA flat out refuses to do so. In fact, it's doing the opposite by declaring melamine to be safe!

So stop buying conventional infant formula products and start feeding your baby what it was meant to consume: Human breast milk from a healthy, well-nourished mom who eats lots of omega-3 oils and superfoods.

That's the best infant formula in the world. And by the way, human babies shouldn't be drinking bovine milk in the first place. The whole infant formula industry was a scam long before melamine came along. Now it's a contaminated scam.

***

while the author is kind of a dick about it, i have to agree... human babies were meant to drink human milk, not cow's milk. if you have trouble breast feeding, contact la leche league or the place you birthed at--they WILL have help for you. and don't automatically believe your doc when he tells you your baby is not getting enough nutrition from your breasts. if the baby is happy and feeding, you are doing just fine. every person is different; all medical standards are the same.

Naturebirth by Danae Brook

synopsis: a woman in the 70s who had a rough first birth experience shares her acquired wisdom after working with an awesome mentor during her next two births. lots of statistical info (now outdated) and really raw, practical, accessible knowledge from a woman who understands what birth is and is not.

target audience: all pregnant women! especially those who want to feel empowered in a real sense, and maybe those who didn't know they needed to. birth partners, doulas, and professionals will benefit greatly as well.

notes: while the title attracts more hippie-type readers, probably, it was actually a very balanced book. she does a great job raising metaphysical questions without being fluffy or flaky, and she really doesn't shy away from the harsh realities of birth, either. everything from breathing exercises to medications/illegal drugs and side effects to whether the manner of birth affects the personality of the child.

rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars because i loved every minute of this book. she is a powerful writer with a valuable perspective on everything she writes about. she really emphasizes the importance of the man's (or partner's) role in pregnancy, birth, and childrearing, giving the partner a real sense of worth and purpose... pregnancy and birth are not about excluding the other DNA contributor, and she does a great job pointing out that pregnant women really *need* their lovers to be around. half a star lost because i got annoyed that she defended episiotomies as a way "to prevent severe tearing" which it is absolutely not. i assume wisdom and common sense have increased over the last 30 years, which is why she only lost half a star for the mistake. overall: read it!

this was the wreck of a space called our "spare bedroom" at the beginning of my revamping process. hell, isn't it? the shot of bare drywall is where matt flipped the closet out of that room into our bedroom (a week after we moved in 3+ years ago). i finished it last month.

as soon as i paint and build the tree i will take "after" pictures. i just wanted to set the mood with these awful before pics first, haha.

i am almost halfway there already! ahh!

this will not be a complaining post, but i just want to reiterate that even the wonderful midwives at the birth center are bottom-line driven by fear of the constraints placed upon them by their "superiors" at the AMA and florida legislature. *sigh* for a second at my last appt the chick nearly freaked that i was able to feel the baby already, thinking my dates 'must be off by a lot' and worrying that we needed to adjust them so i don't end up birthing too early and blah blah... but then she felt my belly and decided i'm on schedule. but she couldn't believe that i might just be feeling it so early. blah... i'm not lying...

so yeah, my belly is seriously growing now. it's the strangest thing to be able to watch your body change and have no control over it whatsoever, and to know that nothing you do will stop or speed up the process. usually you get fat (eating too much) or thin (working out/not eating) but ultimately it's your choices and actions that make the difference. not this time, and it's weird! i mean, i feel like a spectator in some sense... i get to wake up and say "oh, look, it's bigger! funny." and it is funny.

but i got some cute sweaters to fit over the expansion so i am ready for winter! now i just need a few more warmish skirts and i'll be set :)

no new reminders (aka symptoms) lately... headaches remain pretty mild but otherwise i feel great. yay!

so last week i bought this adorable dress, and though it was too much money, i love it! i'm wearing it today and it is so comfortable and i feel cute despite having a very visible belly now.

and while i don't think it has anything to do with the dress per se, i am feeling particularly good today. i guess it must be the fact that i am really aware of having a belly all of a sudden, but i feel... fertile... like the way i've always looked at earthy, hippie, pregnant women with a sort of awe and envy, only now i realize that it's my turn. it's empowering to really (finally) understand that me and matt made a baby and it's in my belly. we made life. crazy! i feel sexy.

so yeah. that's been my day :). i need to get some more dresses, lol!

well, i am waiting for nate to send me scans of the polaroids he has been taking of my belly. the last one was pretty disturbing to see! i don't feel that fat, but boy was the picture screaming "look at that belly!" ah well, at least i have proof the baby is growing like it's supposed to.

today someone (who knows i am pregnant) said "awww you are getting a belly!" and i wasn't sure whether to be appreciative that somebody knows it isn't fat or whine that everybody else probably thinks it is. but i am wearing this cute, kinda tight sweater/dress thing with pants under it, and i noticed in the bathroom mirror that my pants are creating an indent around the waistband because THEY ARE TOO TIGHT NOW! cue the rubber band trick (thanks karen)!

babycenter.com says: "Get ready for a growth spurt. In the next few weeks, your baby will double his weight and add inches to his length..." and apparently i am now supposed to be gaining a pound a week for the rest of the pregnancy! i only gained 1 pound between weeks 8 and 12 though, so we'll see on wednesday how much i've gained between 12 and 16. probably 5 pounds. sheesh.

but--completely unrelated to my weight gain--i need to start walking or biking again. since it's been getting dark earlier i stopped my evening walks, but i know realize i can't afford to. my legs are sore as $%^& after an early morning... ah, shall we say, exertion? seriously. my legs should not be this sore from that. and i've noticed that i get really dizzy and winded walking up stairs. my heart pounds.

i know this is all normal pregnancy stuff but i should be helping by getting more exercise. and i need to eat more veggies. this baby is really into protein and fat, so those tend to be the first things i reach for when i get hungry!

and i have become officially--and intimately--acquainted with that thing 'they' term "pregnancy brain." oh yes. like the world just broke apart into puzzle pieces and i am a monkey with 5 thumbs who can't figure out how to put it back together. logic no longer travels in a straight line. all is confusion and befuddlement. it would be funny if i wasn't most definitely frustrating the people around me... haha.

so. we're going down to west palm beach to hang out with matt's mom, brother, his new wife, their new baby, his kid, and her kid for thanksgiving. it should be interesting... the family just went from one grandchild to 3.5 in a matter of months! but we are renting a car so this might end up being the first comfortable drive to south florida i've made since lauren moved to texas. plus it will be a nice holiday just to get out of the house for a few days... maybe i will get to stick my feet in the ocean for once... *yearn*

this is supposed to be matt's responsibility--and i know he will stubbornly refuse my ideas!--but somehow, a name wormed it's sneaky little way into my head today and now it IS the boy name. kinda like lily fell from the sky. damnit!

i was listening to some goofball new age radio station on itunes and when i looked at the title of a really pretty song, there it was. Rowan. best part is, it was on my list already (just like lily) but it didn't hit me until now.

*sigh* i know matt will hate it. but it is the name. rowan matthew. yep.

i kinda like how they are both plant names :). but really, a taurus named after a tree is very appropriate. and if you look up rowan in the celtic tree signs you get this:

---
"the thinker"
Celtic tree astrology recognizes Rowan signs as the philosophical minds within the zodiac. If you were born under the Rowan energy, you are likely a keen-minded visionary, with high ideals. Your thoughts are original and creative, so much so, that other’s often misunderstand from where you are coming. This sometimes makes you aloof when interacting with others as you feel they wouldn’t understand where you are coming from anyway. Nevertheless, although you may appear to have a cool exterior, you are burning within from your passionate ideals. This inner passion provides inner motivation for you as you make your way through life. You have a natural ability to transform situations and people around you by your mere presence. You are highly influential in a quiet way and others look to you for your unique perspectives.
---

sound like the king of wands, anybody? 'burning' 'passionate' 'creative' 'inner motivation' 'transform' 'influential'...

awwww i am so bummed. i wish it hadn't come to me... i love it! and i just know matt will hate it.

ok these are really cool and SO easy:

and these blocks rock!


ok and i just found like 50thousand more amazing kid stuff sites, starting here. i need to spend some serious hours browsing!

it occurred to me yesterday that i can't just design the baby's room how i want it to be... i have to take into account the fact that this kid will (probably/hopefully) be a taurus, and they have specific tastes! my whimsical, wild faerie theme may not be the right sort of thing for a steadfast and practical earth baby. taurus like lavish, comfortable, and warm surroundings.

the elaborate and textured tree still works perfectly, so that's great, but i realize i have to modify the plan with regards to painting all the froud creatures. while a taurus will certainly "get" the woodland creature thing (being an earth sign), they are just too ephemeral, i'm afraid. and i was planning to paint them all about in a random way, which is again not very taurus-friendly.

so: rethinking in terms of structure, balance, and just-so-ness. lucky for me i share the ruling planet of venus and all her preference for comfort and beauty, so we're on the same page there. i just have to tone down the random factor. the main thing is that i'm thinking this should be a springtime woodland, not fall (as is MY preference). baby is a spring baby, not an autumn sign like me. so the tree needs new growth, pretty green leaves, and maybe even a couple of flowers.

the problem is what, if anything, do i use to create interest on the other walls? the tree will be one entire corner plus wall and ceiling space on each side... is that enough, with a few framed photos on the other walls? i don't want to crowd the space, but "lavish" is important.

the color scheme is really giving me trouble too. taurus is great with earth tones and pastels, so that's easy enough, but i can't decide whether to paint the walls a pale green (my preference) or a blue. definitely not tan; i will incorporate plenty of earth tones via furniture and other stuff. so overall i'm thinking dark browns, tans, and pale blue and greens... i just can't decide on the wall color.

i'm also thinking that hanging little birds above the crib would be good. i will have some kind of mobile strung up anyway, but i think floating birds would be a nice distracting and sweet addition. and i have to remember to add blocks to my registry--taurus "the builder" will want some to play with. what a perfect son for matt, to share his need for (and skill at) material creation.

well, we did the spread i mentioned in an earlier post and got some really interesting answers! the reading was so ridiculously clear i'm finding it hard to believe it. we used the mythic tarot, as always. best deck ever.

i'll go into the details now:

(1) father's gift to the baby - 9 of wands
... basically summed up as "the ability to keep going in the face of difficulty even when you think you have nothing left" --reserves of energy/life/creativity when you thought you were spent.

(2) mother's gift to the baby - 9 of pentacles
... essentially, "a sense of deep, internal self-worth that is not reliant on outside judgments; the ability to know you are worth something and accomplishing things despite what anyone else says." --true internal independence and understanding of one's value.

(3) baby's greatest strength - 3 of swords
... this one is tricky. the 3 is usually a painful, traumatic card, but when framed as a strength, it becomes something along the lines of "the ability to go through difficulties knowing that they are necessary and that you will be stronger afterwards"--to transmute pain into growth, sort of; to bring things out into the open and deal with them even if they hurt, so that healing can follow.

(4) baby's greatest challenge - ace of pentacles
... turning ideas/dreams into reality... i saw this very strongly as representing the actual birth of the baby... its greatest challenge right now is the process of fully becoming material and physical, and literally materializing outside of the womb.

(5) baby's mission on earth - ace of cups
... embarking on the path of love; seeking emotional intimacy; trusting intuition. the baby is probably developing an emotional awareness if it doesn't already have one!

(6) baby's support on earth - ace of swords
... strength in spite of adversity; conflict or struggle which ultimately creates opportunity; emergence of new mental abilities. the baby's brain, memory, and awareness is developing, which totally relates to this. this one also connects back to it's "strength" in the 3 of swords.

so... to have three aces in a reading about a FETUS is too uncannily crazy. and i don't find it strange that the ace of wands was left out at all--the baby was never lacking a spirit, so how could that be developing? but here's the best part...

after that, i really wanted to "ask" the baby to show me something about itself (specifically the gender) in a concrete way... so i shuffled again and asked internally--while it was moving--if it would show me a card that represented itself. i pulled one card, and it was the king of wands.

baby is a boy. dreams, psychics, matt, and the tarot... i can't deny it anymore. he's a he.
if it was a girl i would've pulled a pentacle or a queen, or even a cup. not a king, and not THAT king.

the best part about that card was that i had a reading several months ago, in despair, about my reproductive system and all its woes, and basically just asked what the next 3/6/9 months were going to be like or what would happen with me. i was really afraid at the time of finding out that i am infertile... and the reading overall made decent sense and i was comforted, but the last card, the "outcome" of my reproductive stuff for the year made no sense to any of us. guess what card it was? yep, it was the king of wands. retrospect is a beautiful thing.

so remember what i just said about the ace of wands being missing from the baby reading? well i think it's pretty clear it's because the baby considers itself the KING of wands; not the ace. spirit and creativity are strong in this one and don't need more development, apparently. i also really like the parallel with matt offering the 9 of wands as his 'gift' and the baby showing the king in response, which is basically the 9 exalted... like he took matt's best gift and turned it into something even better.


fascinating stuff, eh?! so i have accepted that baby is a boy, but i'm holding out on the 'he' business until i see a penis. but that's just for mental convenience in case the whole universe is totally sending crossed signals...

and for the record, i'm developing the suspicion that this baby might end up being born in aries. but we'll see.

i have been having the worst fucking headaches lately! it's pretty much constant... i mean, i get a break for a few hours at a time but then it comes right back like nobody's business. and it's not like it's excruciating and warrants bed rest, it's just bad enough to disrupt my mood and daytime activities without being a good enough reason to go home. right across my forehead like someone has a too-tight strap squeezing around my skull.

and of course, i won't take meds for it... though i must say, shocking as it was to me, that crazy 'head on' stuff--you know: APPLY DIRECTLY TO FOREHEAD!!!--actually seems to help. it's homeopathic, which also shocked me, but it definitely helps lessen the discomfort, if not remove it all the way.

i'm starting to wonder if it has something to do with my eyesight. i have been wearing my glasses more often, but still not 24/7. maybe my brain is confused.

on another note, i feel the baby pretty frequently nowadays... :)

while at ward's over the weekend i realized i needed to stock up on snacky foods that are really healthy so that when i find myself starving at work i don't eat the cookies sitting on my desk... so i picked up a couple of raw revolution bars (which totally rock) and as an experiment, i decided to buy a belly bar too. turns out it's really tasty! 'burstin' chocolate' (deep chocolate orange)... mmm mm.

these things have 200% folic acid, 100% iron and B6, and lots of other vitamins, which is awesome for days when i forget my prenatal vitamins. they also have 8g of protein, wee!

of course i decided to research the company before i posted anything about it, and i'm not totally in love with them... basically a couple of marketing-industry vets with a good idea they knew would "sell"... but they did pack a shitload of nutrition into a really tasty bar, meant for women with annoying cravings vs. a need for health, and i can appreciate that.

on another food-related note, i made the fish broth over the weekend out of a florida mangrove snapper, and MAN did that stink! the house still smells like fish. i froze it and haven't used it yet but i'm thinking miso soup is in order tonight, so i really hope it doesn't taste how it smells. good nutrition shouldn't be painful!

i came here intending to write about the full moon gathering last night that was really awesome despite me not actually wanting to go initially... but then there was a comment waiting for approval which completely threw me off track.

i realize that blogs are public entities and i have deliberately allowed anonymous and unregistered commentary because, well, why not? but i am surprised that someone would come here, read my (mostly very personal) posts, and then decide to leave a nasty message about how i'm crazy for having a preference in how my baby is born. or that a friend has emotional difficulties with the experience of the birth she just had.

i know there are plenty of flamers (as in those-who-inflame, not gay men) on the internet, but for some reason i just didn't expect that here. is there really so little respect for other people's perspectives? and so little compassion for someone dealing with a traumatic experience?

while of course, a healthy baby and healthy mom are the goal of every birth, it's not always just about the end result. the journey DOES matter--to some people, at least.

please comment freely, and honestly, but please do it respectfully. that isn't too much to ask--and after all, you are on MY blog.

over the weekend i thought i felt something, and then again on tuesday sitting in the tattoo shop with matt... but today i KNOW i felt it!

funny little butterfly tickles way down in my pelvis :)

it happened while i was racing around the building gathering things to be delivered someplace, and i was hungry... so i guess the baby was rustling around in frustration wanting me to eat and stop stomping around! i felt it off and on for a good 30 minutes. it's really cool! very tickly, like there's a little bug crawling and i want to shoo it away.

*laughing* now i feel it again! it knows i am thinking about it... (ergh i wish i could stop saying "it!")

update: it would appear that all is well, mostly because as matt put it "you are way too good of a sister" (matt feels he would never talk to his brother again if they had a fight like that). but we had a few email exchanges and she apologized... so i let it go, and she seems not to mind anymore if i use the name. we'll see when i talk to her in person.

***
i am so hurt right now. my sister sent me the nastiest email i have ever read in my life, and i just spent the last 35 minutes sobbing to my mom on the phone about it. at work.

i'm too upset to go into detail right now but suffice it to say i "stole her girl name" and instead of telling me how much it meant to her and talking to me about choosing something else, she decided to lash out hatefully via email.

bottom line: lily will not be my daughter's first name.

last night i had another dream about having the baby... it was on-time, not early like the last one (i don't think i blogged about it).

in the dream i woke up and realized i had slept through the birth and the baby was already clothed and separated from me, and i was pissed and asking for him--it was a boy--and really confused why i had been asleep... i was so upset i missed the experience, again. and that he was handled right away by people who weren't me or matt. i kept thinking "what about the skin-to-skin contact?!" and getting upset. ah, dream logic.

so that's the second time i've dreamed of a boy baby whose birth i "slept through" or just couldn't remember. i can think of a few reasons for this:

1) since i don't know what birth will feel like, my brain doesn't want to guess and so conveniently makes me just not remember in the dreams,
2) i am having a premonition of an anesthetized birth,
3) my deepest fears are simply expressing themselves in my dreams.

if i find out it's a girl, #2 will not worry me at all! lol.

begin "official" 2nd trimester!

friday night nate came over to start the polaroid project and ended up making me feel much better about my body than i expected to after staring at a large belly for far too long. i was talking about how it's fat and not baby and he laughed as if that was the most ridiculous thing i ever said and told me i'm not even close to fat. it was suprisingly nice. anyway, i think the project will come out cool.

saturday we continued the remodeling projects going on around the house and recruited a friend to destory one of the walls, which he did amazingly efficiently (it took him 2 hours to do what took us about 5). then cleanup, and putting up more drywall and a new window...

sunday we finished the seaming the drywall, moved the piano, cleaned, i made a pie, made kendra a soup, made matt a soup, and that was it. long productive weekends, yay!

this morning traci and i were at maude's as per usual and we had some of their hash brown casserole, and holy crap--for once maude's has done something REALLY well! (other than my vegan desserts, of course.) it was sooo tasty. so if you go there in the morning and want yummy food, i highly recommend it. i'm totally going to steal the idea and make that for myself ASAP.
yes, i have been fantasizing about cheesy hashbrowns all morning. and will continue to do so for the rest of the day, i'm sure.

also(!!) i came into work this morning and the maintenance guys were here ready to fix some peeling paint we have in our 100+ year old building... so they put on their masks and start scraping away at the wall and what i am very sure is layers of old lead-based paint not 6 feet from my desk. paint chips hit me in the head more than once. my desk was covered in a thin layer of white dust after 5 minutes! so i said "uhh, guys, is this paint lead-based?" "no, they haven't used that stuff in like 20 years" (actually it's more like 30, but whatever) "well this building is more like 100, you know..." as they shrug and keep scraping, safe inside their face masks. so i said "well i'm pregnant and i'm not sure this is ok for me to be around" and i marched into the other room and called environmental health and safety, who promptly told me he would check if our building had lead on last year's survey (it did) and come right over to chew out the maintenance dudes for "not following procedure with lead-based paints." uhh... thanks. all i wanted to know was whether i should leave the room! apparently the answer was YES. they could have at least offered us masks too... i mean, if they need them, don't we? wtf?!

so i managed to 1) get some guys in trouble 2) freak myself out and STILL breathe in paint dust 3) halt all the work being done in our office for at least today. awesome. and then when they come in to paint over the work they will have eventually done, i'll have to complain about that too, or most likely just take the day off. if i can't paint my own nursery i'm certainly not exposing myself to cheap industrial paints like they use at UF. *grumble*

the good news is someone brought in holiday cookies for us :)

so... my body is telling me i do not eat enough protein. i'm not sure how i know that--it's not that i've been craving it horribly--but i just know. the problem is going to be how do i address it?

the last two times i've eaten eggs i felt like crap afterwards. the baby doesn't like eggs. i don't love peanut butter. hummus is great but it's not high enough in protein, nor can i eat enough of it to get the 80-100g of stinkin' protein i need every day! nuts are fine but again, i'd have to eat 3-4 cups of them to get enough...

so on an average day i eat:
bagel 3g
cream cheese 6g
oatmeal/cereal 6g
almond milk 10g
muffin (or something) 3g?
apple/orange/other fruit ?
hummus 6g
carrots ?
tempeh/bean-based dinner 15-20g

grand total: only half what i need to be eating! *ugh* but i know my calorie intake is fine...

clearly i will need to perform a diet revamp this weekend before i go shopping.

on edit: it occurred to me that perhaps the problem is in fact the prenatal vitamins i am taking, not the eggs. i'm pretty sure that i've taken my vitamins both times i ate eggs recently... and i know they made me sick over the weekend when i took them on a (stupidly) empty stomach. and eggs didn't bother me when i was on my first bottle of vitamins--a different brand. so i will also be experimenting with vitamins this weekend. it is so miserable to be nauseous all freaking day again!

i was NOT informed of the potential risks of having been shot up with rhogam, NOR the reasons why i probably didn't need it! motherfuckers!

it's preserved in MERCURY for fuck's sake! and it can cause permanent immune system damage! I FUCKING HATE HOSPITALS! *scream*

let the birth center just try to give me that shot at 28 weeks without proving i need it...

today during lunch i went (with another pregnant co-worker) to visit a friend from work who had her baby last month. it was an interesting experience... she wanted a totally natural birth but ended up with an emergency c-section, so it was really good to talk to her about that. her son is totally adorable and healthy, btw.

she told me, as she cried, how she was overwhelmed with feelings of having "failed" as a birthing woman by allowing the c-section to happen. she never wanted that and felt a lot of guilt (and what i think was a sense of being cheated) over not living up to the expectations she had placed upon herself, and she said she is only just now getting over it and coming to terms with the fact that it's ok.

i mentioned how i am afraid of the same thing happening to me... for me it's not a sense of failing to live up to expectations though, it's much more THIS IS WHAT I WANT and i am afraid of the disappointment and of not getting to experience what birth is *really* like if i end up with a c-section. also the threat of never getting to have a vaginal birth if i consent to a c-section is huge. this is a real problem for me; i need to learn to accept the possibility before the time comes or i am afraid i will be a mess afterwards, should it come to that. i worry about it a lot.

she said her recovery was fine, she had no horror stories about not being able to hold the baby or get out of bed or anything, so that was reassuring, but still. the sense i get for myself is closest to resentment, i think--i would be so angry and resentful for having birth taken away from me, i can't imagine getting over it. i think i'm a little bit crazy!

for her it was a result of the usual cascade of events (in my opinion)... she went to the hospital dilated to 3cm and they let her labor as usual until she was exhausted, then her midwife suggested an epidural so that she could rest. then they broke her water which was stained with meconium, and after that, pitocin was brought in and she dilated to 6cm. but the baby wasn't doing well with the contractions at that point and his heart rate dropped to 50bpm, which is when they decided on the c-section. totally understandable decision... however, one has to wonder if the pitocin is what distressed the baby in the first place.

everyone has to wait until they are there in the moment to really know what will happen, but from far away it is so easy to see how these things spiral out of control... it's a good lesson, i think.

somehow i am going to have to come to terms with the potentiality of not having a natural birth.

#1: it occurred to me yesterday that my moodiness is totally gone. apparently. i haven't been in very many anger-inducing situations lately so maybe i'm just lucky and avoiding it! but seriously i feel pretty even-tempered and human again... it's nice.

#2: again with the boobs... since i think about them all the time (because they tingle and twitch and ache and jiggle) i remembered that back when i had my nipples pierced years ago, the piercer told me they were "a little bit inverted" which i realize now he was totally wrong about but it gave me a complex for a short period nonetheless! they are SO not inverted at all. these days they stick out like 20ft, too... even slightly inverted nipples do not do that. it just kinda pissed me off that he made me feel 'different' when i'm not, and never was. noob.

#3: i found a really amazing tarot spread for "communicating with an unborn baby" today. it goes like this:
1...............2

3...............4

..........5

..........6

(cup/uterus shape)

1 = the father's gift to the baby
2 = the mother's gift to the baby
3 = baby's best strength
4 = the baby's biggest challenge
5 = the baby's mission on earth
6 = the baby's support on earth

isn't that neato? i'm excited to do it. i need my spiritual cohorts (*ahem* karen, traci?) to properly execute it though, so it will have to wait for the right time.

#4: i went to bed at 630 last night--yes, 630--and i was still tired this morning. 11+ hours of sleep. still tired. wtf??

#5: all i can think about today is the veggie chili i am going to make after work. that and ice cream. mmmmmmmmm chili...

#6: so nate is obsessed with this and i have agreed to participate for both our benefit. (does there need to be an "s" in there somewhere? seems like it.) he wants to do them in sequence of rainbow colors with the last one of baby+me being white... it'll be another cute thing to hang on the wall in the nursery, AND it will save me from having to take more awful pics of my own belly. woot!

ok people, i need help. matt keeps coming up with insane, definitely-going-to-be-made-fun-of style names for the baby should it end up a boy. it's clear he wants something unusual, possibly historical, and somewhat dramatic... but i draw the line at 'biblical.' no way i'm going there.

so far he has suggested:
dorian
abel
malachi
gabriel
aidan
...and something else crazy that i can't remember.

clearly aidan is a fine celtic name, and if i have to settle on dorian i will, but he is really into "abel." you know, like the pacifist first child of adam and eve who was killed by his evil brother. not quite the sort of association i'd choose for the name of my son...

but matt--of course--doesn't seem to like anything on the long list of reasonable names i have compiled.

so if anybody has any relatively-odd but not totally lame ideas that you wouldn't mind sharing please do! preferably nothing that makes us seem like we're amish or mormon. thanks :)

yesterday:
approximately 3:00pm headache commences.
3:00pm-7:00pm headache continues with little change.
7:45pm headache intensifies to the point i was told i was being "unrefined" and "weird" at a restaurant.
8:45pm-12:00am i feel like my head is going to explode, can't sleep. it's like a hammer smashing against my skull over and over in the same spot.
2:20am break down, get out of bed to hunt desperately for analgesics, which i can't find.
2:30am wake matt up to help me look for pills (or go get some if we're out). he produces a new bottle of advil, i take half of one pill.
3:45am headache finally stops and i get to sleep. freaking night from HELL.

today:
MY UTERUS ISN'T BIG ENOUGH FOR THIS BABY! i can feel it stretching. it's not comfortable at all... it's like a pulled muscle only duller and it doesn't go away. strain. ache. i think this is what they call "round ligament pain..."
and my boobs are growing again. they hurt and they're bigger and in another week i swear i am going to need larger diameter nipple rings because these are pretty much hugging my newly-enlarged nipples! too much info, but wtf, this is a pregnancy blog right?

the idea that i am any less pregnant than before (or having a 'threatened miscarriage') is almost comical at this point. if anything i think i am/was having a surge of extra pregnant-ness which probably caused the bleeding.

my belly is getting bigger too. i need to take a new picture.