Twenty Reasons

20 reasons my man is the most awesome pregnancy partner in the world:

1. Despite ever-increasing workloads at the office, he has taken over most of our domestic tasks. He will leave work at 8pm and STILL go to the grocery store, do the dishes, switch out the bags in the mini trashcans (aka, emergency puke receptacles), and make sure the bathrooms are stocked for the night. He doesn't bring home his stress anymore, and I know that has to very difficult for him.

2. He joins me in occasionally breaking pregnancy rules (nothing dangerous, of course.)

3. Even when he's asleep in the middle of the night, he senses my queasiness/offness and reaches over with comforting mini-snuggles.

4. He is ever vigilantly scanning for potential nausea/emotion triggers and immediately counteracts them as much as possible, like a ninja!

5. He is better at gauging my likely reaction to things than I am.

6. He is quite funny and adorable.

7. He nerds out at our birthing class.

8. He brings me surprises...often.

Day 211 of Vomiting

[WARNING: there are like 4 different things in this short post that could leave you uneasy, not excluding a face in a placenta, and my cervix. Whoops! Well, there; you've been warned.]


...and we are on day 234 of the year. That's 90% of 2012, so far.


I worry my gag reflex is going to be permanently changed after this journey through the dark jungles of pregnancy-long morning sickness. (Insert jokes here.)  I feel like I should be reading some Sartre, but I think it could be psychically bad for the baby...and probably me.

I watched some videos of people on ayahuasca. They were comforting. From now on, I'm going to pretend that I'm knocking on the door of the spirit realms when I'm hunched over not keeping my food and drink.  Each puking session could be an opportunity to encounter my true Buddha nature within...? When I see the sparklies floating in my field of vision, I'm just going to tell myself that I'm reaching towards sacredness.

Ok, all this lemons-to-lemonade is making me nauseous now.

As of Thursday, the kid should be baked enough to be a fine human being on his own. We've made it this far.  I can do anything for 1 to 4 weeks.  May the spirit of earlyish babies in my family run strong in me!

As of last Thursday: 
1 cm dilated
50% effaced
baby is locked and loaded in the head-down position.

Hopefully his face's love affair with the placenta is still raging strong, and he'll come out face down as he should.  (Srsly, every ultrasound he hides his face in that thing. I think of them as being besties.)


(36 weeks, 5 days pregnant)

Beaten to the Punch: Baby Dictators

http://urbantitan.com/unique-baby-dictator-clothes/

At that link, you will find a delightful series of baby dictator photographs by Danish artist Nina Maria Kleivan.  My idea to do this series, sadly, was not original it seems. Of course.  But! Look how fun these are. And by fun, I mean amusing while managing to agitate several different levels of discomfort and critique.  I like to remember, also, that her baby is a girl.

                                                       Baby Stalin; Baby Pinochet

POOF!

Seriously, the issue of object permanence (or lack there of...lols) is one of the funniest things about babies to me.

A Quick Note to My Perineum

Hey there, P...how's it goin'?

Listen, lemme start by saying that you've brought me three decades of excellent service--truly above and beyond level, yo. From my being a potty training superstar by 24 months, to an ease with mula bandha control any yogi would be pleased with...you have not once let me down.

But, ahead we have our most harrowing trial yet.

I'm gonna need you to really dig deep and find all your strength and power. Babies run big in my family, and the Buddhism + middle America protestant work ethic of my grandmother + a lifelong fondness for cultural and physical anthropologies are all somehow conspiring to convince me of a drug-free birth experience. So please, for the love of all things holy, please let's keep this an incision-free happening.

Between you, our komrades the extra-wide and flexible hips, and my knowledge of 7 different forms of meditation--y'know, I think we can do this; we can make this happen.

Go team!

<3
--.k.




Note to self: get a small framed picture of an Amish woman plowing...


(33 weeks pregnant...1 month, 18 days 'til D-Day)

The Need to Nest

It's totally bizarre that I have this deep, primal urge to buy/organize/set-up things. I organized a closet the other day that both the husband and I have been avoiding since we moved in almost a year ago...and I enjoyed it. I was gleeful, in fact. For people who know me, the idea of my gleefully organizing my own cluttered space is...completely foreign, I think.

Really what I want to do is open up all the baby things we have (and then buy even more), put them in their places, set up the baby spaces. It's KILLING me.

But, we're Jews, so we don't set up the nursery before the baby is born (long story short: bad luck). So, I'm channeling all this nesting energy into other, totally not as satisfying pursuits. And, I'm trying to only spend money on things we really need.

Luckily, we have a lot of cluttered spaces, and I think everyone would be happier if there were fewer :)

...I'm not going to go to the level of playing with dolls, though.  Nope. Samantha is not coming out of storage. I'm decidedly above that.

*sigh*


(32 weeks, 6 days pregnant....or, 1 month & 19 days to D-Day)

First Baby Shower -- Cirque du Bebe

                                                                                     Mother and daughter

My first baby shower...both as an attendee and as a mom-to-be.

The lovely Tricia Noyola and Kendra Herring, aka my OG homegirls, threw me a lovely shower in San Antonio titled Cirque du Bebe! It was French circusy :) GORGEOUS.

My mom, Aunt Sherry, sister, and brother's girlfriend all came up from the valley. Ellen flew in from Chicago...or really, from Brussels...for the event and a bit of a visit.  Even Nana--Kendra and Tricia's grandmother--came in from Amarillo!

The shower ritual is an interesting one....games, snacks, passing around gifts...it's all about female bonding, it seems. Everyone is there to applaud your motherhood?  Regardless, it was a great time, even if I did get woozy and tired at certain points.

The whole group

                                         Aunt Sherry and I...the 32 weeks & 3 days baby bump