Don't read this if you're grossed out by childbirth.

There's something about this pregnancy that I haven't posted about yet, because I was slightly nervous about responses from you, my cherished six readers... We're planning for this baby to be born at home. I know that home birth makes lots of people worried; I fear, actually, that Broken-Butt Lawyer's parents, who have known me since I was 13, will call me and try to convince me to change my mind, purely out of loving concern for me. I also know that lots of my friends, some of whom read this, have given birth at home and are totally supportive.

Anyway, it's a kind of delicate thing to talk about. But I feel weird not mentioning it. It shouldn't be something I have to hide so as to avoid worrying people who care about me. Don't be scared.

So now that that's out of the way, I can tell you that I've got this hilarious list of home-birth preparations from my midwives.* I am instructed to supply the home with a range of items ranging from the cozy (candles)** to the practical ("several bendy straws" and "6 bottles of Gatorade") to the extremely practical ("2 large black garbage bags" and my favorite, "gallon sized plastic baggies for the placenta and other items").***

But back to the home birth choice - since the last birth happened so fast, and the worst part by far was the trip to the hospital (with me kneeling on the back seat, unable to sit down because there was a baby wedged in my pelvis) and the subsequent argument with the emergency room admissions guy who insisted that I had to sit down in a wheelchair to be taken to the delivery ward (with me leaning against a column in the middle of the lobby, lowing like a rabid heifer, because there was a baby wedged in my pelvis)****, this seemed like a no-brainer. Plus, I found it totally crappy to be woken up every hour to have my blood pressure and whatnot checked after I finished pushing a baby out of my pelvis, and I'd rather eat my own food and sleep in my own bed.



*For you worry-ers out there, there will be at least two midwives at the birth, trained in all sorts of handy medical skills, equipped with oxygen. They're even CNMs, if that makes you feel better. I have no plans to deliver the baby myself (and neither does Cook), and we will not hesitate to zip off to the hospital should the need arise.
** Based on my first birth experience, which happened at high speed and included lots of vomiting, I think candles would actually be dangerous, as they'd just get knocked over during my frantic scrambles for the bathroom.
*** WHAT other items!!!???!!
**** I'd just like to point out, as a matter of pride, that I was the one who resolved this ridiculous crisis (between contractions) by suggesting a compromise of having me kneel in the wheelchair. I think I should be able to put this on my resume: "Able to problem-solve with a team even while in active labor."

I have a deadline in 4 hours. I'm procrastinating.

Lately, we've been preparing a bit for the impending baby. We've bought a used bouncy chair and some diaper covers. We've cut up old t-shirts to make butt-wiping rags.* We've bought disposable diapers and wipes** for expeditions and emergencies. I started putting together my going-into-labor bag.

So... this baby really is coming. It really is. Also, I feel like the baby has GOT to be at least eight pounds already, given the way it's throwing its weight around in my guts, so I keep being surprised by the memory that it's not actually scheduled to be born for another two months.

***

*I hesitate to confess this, but it occurs to me that it might be a little creepy that I'm not spending my incubation period curled up under a quilt, maternally MAKING things in preparation for the baby, but am spending my spare time DESTROYING things in preparation for the baby. All this baby's handmade stuff comes from other people who are more creative and nurturing than me. You can call me Kali.
** They were on sale...
*** It's hard, taking a self-portrait of your belly. Also, I realize that all the photos I post have heaps of laundry in the background. Sorry, we're slobs.

Republicans...

...are a bunch of old mean guys afraid of doing anything other than what they've been doing all their lives. Even the ones who aren't old.

Change is really hard; it's not easy for humans to do. I spend lots of time wrestling with this. Urban planning is all about thinking about change, and then trying to convince people that they can figure out a way to change that works for them. It's the second part that's hardest.

This week I interviewed a guy who specializes in How To Plan For An Aging Society. He said the hardest part of what he does is dealing with the fact that nobody really believes that they personally are going to get old and die. He said that he gets best results when he tells communities that they need to plan for old people (ie have houses with one accessible entrance, have sidewalks, include social gathering places within walking distance of residential areas, etc.) because old people might visit them.

Republicans are like that. If we just keep doing what we are doing, except cut government spending more (except for spending on war, of course), everything will be fine. We're not going to get old and die. Oh, no.

Survival

Last night Dutch fell asleep sitting behind me on a chair, leaning against my back, at 6 PM while I conducted a phone interview for a school project and Cook made dinner. She woke up at 7:30 and acted totally crazy (we're pretty sure she was still asleep) until we finally gave up on her and tucked her into bed to sleep for 11 more hours. She's all better now. It wasn't dengue fever after all, or sarcoidosis.

I, on the other hand, have slept only 10 hours in the last two nights, which may not sound that bad to you workaholics, but isn't really enough for me even when I'm not pregnant and stressed and sleep-deprived already. I'm barely functioning. Which begs the question of why I'm blogging at the moment and not doing something more useful, like sleeping on the floor of the computer lab.

Why I should spend more time in the real world

As I was procrastinating actually doing my schoolwork, I asked the internet what could be wrong with Dutch (she has bloodshot eyes and flushed cheeks along with her fever, which is new for her, so I figured I should at least look up the symptoms of consumption), and this is what it says she has:

http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Besnier+Boeck+disease

Fever

Dutch is home sick. I'm home with her. I should be using every precious moment to do school stuff, instead of blogging. Dutch is almost never listless and sleepy when she's sick, so she requires lots of attention. Last night she woke up at 11:30, 4:30, 5, 5:30, 6, and finally at 6:30, each time awaking with some sort of chipper announcement like "Mom, I'm full of green soup! I had green soup and that bread we made for dinner!" and a desire to chat. Consequently, I am worn out and not exactly primed for a long day of Florence-Nightingaling my feverish girl. She's sitting in my bed right now, playing with her favorite doll, but I doubt that she will stay occupied long.

She's such a drama queen, this kid. As soon as I told her she was feverish, she went into nineteenth-century-novel mode. "My legs hurt! My belly hurts! Now my forehead hurts! Mama, when will the hurting stop!?!?!?!!" She said she wanted breakfast in bed. I said no. She said she wanted French toast for breakfast. I said no. (I think it's my job to keep her from going all Emma Bovary.*) If it turns out she's actually fatally ill (with consumption, probably, or some other high-quality nineteenth-century illness**), I will feel very bad about this. But I think she's going to be okay.



* By which I do not mean that I expect her to commit suicide. Just the drama queen part of the character.
** It's pretty clear that Dutch subscribes to the Jane Austen school of disease, in which getting caught in the rain is extremely dangerous, and getting cold means you will surely at least come very close to death from a cold.

An appreciation (another list)

Things Cook has done this weekend:

1) Cleaned the bathroom

2) Scrubbed the kitchen floor

3) Closed himself and Dutch in our bedrooms for four hours while I had an endless group meeting for school in the living room

4) Played "horsie" and "black-stripe pirates" and "the English girl from South Arabia" and other weird games for many hours

5) Made three tasty and healthy 

dinners

6) Made bread with Dutch

7) Reassured me, with patient kindness,  that I'm not going to fail one of my classes

8) Grocery shopped

9) Washed lots of dishes

10) Bathed Dutch

11) Made me laugh a bunch of times

12) A billion other helpful, joyful, thoughtful things

He has lots of faults (which, in other moods, I'd surely be happy to list*), and he knows all my faults, but in the end, I find myself awfully happy to be married to a man who says to me from the kitchen, where he's making yet another meal,  "No, wait, I'll take the laundry down. Why don't you sit down on the couch for a little while?" 

It's been a long few weeks. Or wait, maybe a long month. But I'm feeling lucky today.

*For example, he cannot learn to put his glasses in one place consistently, and we're always having to scramble around to find them at the last second. Yesterday I heard Dutch telling him firmly "Daddy, you shouldn't leave your glasses on the floor; somebody might step on them!"

Things (that people have actually said to me in the last week) that are okay and not okay to say to a pregnant woman.

It's okay to say "When is the baby due?"

It's not okay to follow that question up by saying "Oh! Is it twins?"

It's okay to say "You look great!"

It's not okay to ask "Are you married?"

It's okay (but a little weird) to ask "Can you HEAR the baby?"

More joy

Tonight, my little angel is sitting at the dinner table enjoying the handful of tiny candy bananas she got for dessert (Valentine's Day loot!). She lined them all up, and is savoring them one at a time. Each of them cries something along the lines of "I'm gonna die! Wah! I'm really gonna die, I'm in the MOUTH!!!" and then gets crunched.

Joy at 8:30 AM

This morning, Dutch and I were washing our hands in a public bathroom,* and I looked over at her to see her smiling to herself as she dried her hands with a paper towel. "What are you smiling about?" I asked her, and she said, still smiling, "I just... I... I'm just happy!"


* Dutch now goes into her own stall and manages her business by herself, one of many I'm-A-Big-Girl-Now changes she's instigated in the last few months.

Procrastinating!

I really am sorry about this stream of half-assed posts. I've got a billion deadlines this week, and I'm coping with my usual combination of magical thinking, wasting time on the internets, and finally just-in-time-slapping-stuff-together.

While procrastinating, I read this article and I just want to say how lucky I am, and how lucky Dutch and Anaximander are.

I half-heard something on the radio the other day about the need to invest in our future as a society ("spending to save" was the theme, I think). We should be investing in education, health care, child-care, and so on. Not in building roads.

More movies. Sorry.

Movies from Valentine's Day, illustrating the kind of mild weirdness in which I am immersed every day:






Here's the link to the screen cleaner, if you want to try it for yourself. Thanks, Santa Cruz Auntie!

How to fly

Today was beautiful, and Dutch and I went to the playground (Cook was off playing frisbee). I walked there, myself. Dutch refused to limit herself to such a plebeian mode of travel.





The "cape" is a tattered remnant of the duvet cover I used as a kid. Dutch has used it for a few years, but it finally gave way and has been turned into a number of amazing things.

Induced demand

I'm (very slowly and badly) writing a paper on road diets and I caught myself humming a song, which turned out to be Little Boxes, by Malvina Reynolds.


I LOVE when my brain makes connections without my help.



Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/yuan2003/1874818708/

"Next in line... yellow!"

Happy Valentine's Day!

Anticipation

I read something (that I now can't find) a while back on happiness. The article said that people's happiness is not so much tied in to the actual happy event, but to the anticipation of happiness, and the memory of happiness. We get much more pleasure out of the peripheral experience than out of the (usually brief) event itself.

Dutch is milking every drop of joy out of her candy necklace. She's had it in her possession for several days, and is fully aware that she doesn't get to eat it until tomorrow, but she likes to take it out of its little box and study it, and yesterday I found her blissfully sniffing it. She talks about it a lot, too, and about how fantastically, unfathomably, deliriously wonderful it's going to be to actually get to eat it.

As the person who ordained that she couldn't eat it until tomorrow (mostly because I wanted to contain The Stickiness), and then waited only until after her bedtime the day the packages came to eat a pile of candy myself, I feel that I should probably be practicing what I preach. I would probably be happier.

the sweetness

We got two lavish Valentine's Day packages today, from some of our loves. Dutch was in paroxysms of delight, saying "Oh! My goodness! I've wanted this MY WHOLE LIFE!!!!" over every other item. Her most treasured goodies are a candy necklace* and a fuzzy hooded sweatshirt with hearts on it.
Early Happy Valentine's Day to all of you. May the universe shower you with whatever your equivalent of a candy necklace may be.


* I think these are totally disgusting, but Dutch has apparently desperately wanted one ever since some moment in the recentish past when Jasmine brought one to daycare and made everybody horribly jealous.

Quick transitions

Last night Dutch complained at bedtime of feeling sick, and she was convincing enough that Cook and I spent some time negotiating who was going to stay home with her for how long.* This morning, she trotted into our bedroom about 10 minutes before the alarm was due to go off, interrupting my dream about trying to set up a trampoline with the guidance of a manual that said on the cover "Required: Lifetime of Construction Experience,"** and she said "Mom! There is a buzzing in my belly, and a pounding in my heart!"

I said "Uuuuggghhhhhh? Hmmmm?" Then she came right up to my face and I squinted at her groggily, trying to figure out if we were in the midst of a medical crisis (ie if I was about to be barfed on), or if she was just making up some spiffy song lyrics. There was a significant pause, and then she beamed at me and said "Hey! Mom! Know what I really like? Bacon! I really like how it tastes, and I love how it looks!"

So I think she's okay.



* "So I'll go in at 7:30 and get some stuff off my hard drive, and then I'll come back and work at home while you go in for the four meetings you have today, and then you should call me and maybe we can swap so I can bring in that report I'm supposed to turn in..." Modern parenting. The Cleavers never had to do this.

** This seems like a seriously unsubtle message from my subconscious that I feel that I am unequipped to deal with some major project on which I have embarked. It's a tossup whether the relevant project is one of the classes I'm taking, school in general, adulthood in general, parenting in general....

Whoa

I'm busy.

Jiggety jig

We're home. There's a huge pile of laundry, grocery shopping, etc to do now, and no time to do it in. Where is my personal assistant?!!

The weirdest part of our trip was that we flew home during the Super Bowl. Most of the passengers were watching the game, and the airline gave out one free cocktail per person. People got a little rowdy toward the end of the flight, which coincided neatly with the end of the game, when there were a few signal interruptions. Steelers fans made some noise, but Arizona fans tended to clap very loudly rather than vocalize anything. 

Meanwhile, Dutch drank sugary  cranberry juice and watched the Puppy Bowl. She was riveted; she even listened to whatever sort of audio went with it on Cook's headphones.