the conscious objector

i'm afraid milo is going to be one of those kids who fights the seatbelt.

every time i wear one - in the car, on planes - he kicks furiously against it. he doesn't stop until i slip my hand or at least a couple of fingers between my belly and the belt to relieve the pressure. i sat on the runway in newark friday night for almost two hours before our two hour flight took off, and he expressed his displeasure strongly and continuously until i finally got the clear to take off my belt and lurch back to the lavatory, three hours in.

i wear the belt low, at my hips, and now under my belly, like i'm supposed to do, but he likes to hang out as far south as my cervix will allow, which puts him right in the line - or band - of fire. how does he know it's there? it's not like he's restricted. he just senses the lightest pressure. if i rest the laptop against my belly, or even a magazine - boom! - he tries to knock it away. and while it's cute now, it won't be so cute if he's still resisting seat belts when he has to get strapped into the car.

remember when the only people who wore seat belts were anal-retentive, stamp-collecting, pocket protector-wearing geeks? remember sitting on your father's lap while he drove the car - and sometimes he even let you steer? remember being surprised to learn the "kid seat" was actually an arm rest for the driver? anyone out there ever sleep in the rear car window while your dad drove through the night? ah, those were the days.

but these days, none of those things are an option, and milo will have to subject to the belt, whether he wants to or not. i have a gut feeling he won't submit without a fight.

speaking of the birthday girl - learning chinese

I’ve always wanted to be a father, since I myself was a child, but two things over any other convinced me that now was the time: the movie Paternal Instinct and the birth of my pal Richard's daughter, Emma.

The film, seen at Cleveland's International Film Festival, was touching. It spoke of the joy, anguish and uneasy anticipation of becoming a parent. What it meant to be a man, desperately wanting to be a father, the absolute desire and undying love of it all. I had no idea then, that a film about two gay men, seemingly unable to bear a child together, willing to go to such strenuous odds, would resonate so deeply within our own situation.

None the less, as it was, it really spoke to Laura and I - who'd ourselves been talking about whether we would naturally have our own children, or adopt. It was an ongoing discussion; where I was leaning more towards adoption, Laura had an ultimate desire to birth a child of our own.

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I learned to speak Chinese the night that Emma was born. Now, one doesn't just decide to learn Chinese on a whim - and this certainly wasn't at all instant. I'd been studying fortune cookies for ages. I had quite a vocabulary built up, much to the amusement of our Chinese friends.

Beyond being able to order kung pow chicken and beef with snow peas (this, despite my vegetarianism) I'd learned the essentials in modern Mandarin; "hello", "he is tall", "she has money", "he wears pants", "bad", and assorted others.

I was ready for the challenge. Then, unexpectedly, Candace went into labor, days before her mother, Lilly, was set to arrive from Taiwan.

Labor was long, and Lilly was already en route. She would arrive at 900pm, Candace was still not fully dilated, it was expected that Lilly would arrive just in time. I, the best friend of the father, was charged with picking her up from the airport.

Here’s where it gets interesting; I'd only met Lilly once, at Richard and Candace’s wedding. She didn't speak English and I didn't speak Mandarin.... beyond fortune cookie Chinese. So I did what I could. I crammed with my fortune cookie wrappers.

I stood at airport arrivals. It was late, and there was only one flight, a Northwest Airlines flight from Minneapolis. There couldn’t possibly be that many Asian women traveling alone – I’ll just greet her as she walks through the door:

“neee-hi-ma, Lilly”.

“Oh, you’re not Lilly?”

“You’re not Chinese, either? My mistake, I’m looking for a mother of a friend. She’s Chinese”
“No, she doesn’t speak English. Clearly, I don’t speak Mandarin. hahaha”.

“Nee-he-ma, Lilly”

“You’re not Candace mother either, sorry.”

And so it went.

The last person got off the plane. I didn’t see Lilly. Maybe she missed her connection in Minneapolis. Maybe I missed her. I couldn’t have missed her?

Suddenly, I feel a tap on my shoulder from behind;

“I Candy’s mommy – are you Justin?”

She must have slipped past me.

“nii-hi-ma, Lilly”.

“Helllo, Justin”.

And so we walked towards my car, in silence. I later on pointed out the tall man in pants.

In the car, on the way over to the hospital, Lilly asked me in our shared confusion how Candace was doing. She didn’t understand “good”, so I tried to remember the Mandarin word for that, but couldn’t. I did, however, remember that “bad” sounded a lot like “blue howard”, so I told her, “ not boo-how”, but with a smile on my face to suggest “good”, rather than “bad”. She either understood, or just decided that silence and a smile were the best way to make the car ride move along quicker.

When we arrived at the hospital, Lilly went directly into delivery and a flurry of mother – daughter Mandarin. Clearly, they were happy to see each other.

Laura and I took a seat in the waiting room, along side Richard’s father and step mother. Time sped by, it was late, and we were encouraged by the occasional sound of Candace birthing, and Richards enthusiastic coaching.

When we heard “Oh my god, it’s a girl – we have a daughter!” we knew that the time had come. Richard came out a bit later to announce what we already knew. They’d had a daughter, and her name was Emma. Would we like to meet her?

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Holding Emma just moments after birth, looking into her beautiful eyes, seeing the glowing joy in Candace and Richard: Laura and I came to a compromise. We'd aim to have two children: one naturally, and later we'd adopt another child.

Funny how things seem so easy in compromise, the roller coaster of our life over the next few years not yet considered.

broken record

not much to say this week, because nothing is happening. i'm tired of writing about still being pukey and/or poopilicious - tired of being those things, too. i'm still ecstatic about feeling milo move, but how much can i write about it? want to hear some more about the shelves we've put together? no, i didn't think so. in my waking hours, i feel good about milo's chances; at night, i have nightmares. sound familiar?

boring, boring, boring.

but after being sick all week, i had the first good night's sleep i've had in forever and i feel good enough today to fly, so i'm leaving work early and going down to my mom's tonight. i'm going to take my nephew swimming tomorrow and go shopping for a birthday present for justin's best friend's daughter who is turning 2 tuesday.

she was born on justin's birthday, and we were close enough to the delivery room to hear her dad yell, "it's a girl!" we held her not 30 minutes after she was born. a few days later, we chucked the condoms and conceived hans. this little girl is special. special people require special presents, and i haven't found the right thing yet, despite much looking, so i'm hoping a change of state will present new options.

also, justin has been on a big campaign to lose weight and get healthier before milo is born, so food choices at home have been...okay, let me be honest - there's not as much sugary crap in the house as i would currently like. going to my mom's will mean a weekend of treats!

i wish i was there already.

the boy moved

fealt him move for the first time last weekend, which, considering I never felt Hans move (I always fealt that I'd have years and years to feel him after he was born), is an amazing feeling.

Last night, while Laura was asleep, he danced for me. or, was annoyed that i was interupting his sleep.

nonetheless, we had a few moments. Alone, while I took advantage of Laura asleep.

I was signing his name on her belly, and he was kicking back - "hey, dad, quit interupting me down here".

2gether 4ever

it's amazing to me that after six years together, justin and i are still figuring out how to, well, be together.

justin picked me up from work friday and we drove to pittsburgh, to buy as many shelves as we could pack in our car at ikea and to have what are supposed to be pittsburgh's best pierogies. we spent two hours at ikea and ended up with entirely different shelves than the ones we set out to buy. that justin spent two hours shopping for anything was beyond my wildest dreams, but all of it - the negotiations in the store, negotiating the directions that didn't work because of construction and the utter lack of visibility because of rain, figuring out the delicate balance of assembling multi-layer shelves and how to load a tiny room - it all reinforced what different people we are, how differently our respective logic works. we now have a closet full of shelves and greater capacity for storage and organization than i had dared to hope, but i still understand him hardly at all.

sometimes i think i have him all figured out, how to convince him to do what i want, and just how long it takes, but every time i take such knowledge for granted, he proves to me that i don't know him at all. and maybe it's not a bad thing. i do want to know him, and completely, but if the knowledge comes easily, and quickly, then what? i hope to have another 50 or 60 years with him, and those could be some damn boring decades if there were no questions left.

so i'll take it all - the disagreements about how to arrange shelves (and the living room chairs, and the mixing bowls in the kitchen cupboards, not to mention how to make the bed or fold towels or underwear) and the colorful swearing that goes with it as well as the shared jubilation over finally getting a set of shelves put together or justin finally getting to feel one of our babies move - because they're all a part of us being together, and of the daily choice we make to do it.

*****

last night while we were watching the last episode of season two of the gilmour girls (rory kissed jess!), milo was jumping up and down so hard it made me wonder if he had a trampoline in there. i suppose it was hiccups, but his movements were so distinct and lasted so long that i had a feeling this was our chance for justin to get in on the action.

he never got to feel hans move. hans just never cooperated, and justin would tire of holding his hand to my belly and getting no response; he figured he'd feel him move plenty after he was born. after hans died, it was one of justin's biggest regrets.

the tadpole was gone before either of us had a chance to feel it. yesterday was the tadpole's due date, which is a little weird.

milo seems to be much stronger, much more active, than hans was at this point, but until last night, he hadn't cooperated when anyone else but me tried to make contact with him. i pulled justin's hand over and pushed the heel of it into the spot just below my belly button, and a few seconds later, milo pushed up against his hand under mine. justin grinned. i could suddenly imagine a future in which justin grins at every new development he gets to see milo make.

it's damn good for such a vision to not feel like just a fantasy.

payback, or where did all the wiggle go?

i'm sorry i complained about milo poking my cervix yesterday. i would give anything for him to be poking it today, dammit, but no. he didn't do his usual 8:15 am stretches, no after-breakfast gymnastics, no loud music in the car jamming. instead, i felt crampy all morning. i was, ahem, explosively sick last night, so i took the feeling this morning as the result of all that, uh, explosiveness and went to work. all morning, though, i kept getting crampy twinges, and combined with no movement after yesterday's utero-palooza, i started stressing.

so i went home for lunch, trying to talk milo into kicking for the 25 minutes it took to get home. justin was about to get in the shower, but he waited while i turned on and gelled up the doppler. of course, the second i touched the wand to my belly, there was his heartbeat, loud and strong and consistent. after i listened for a minute, i turned it off and started to cry. justin did his own freak-out.

i haven't felt this kind of panic since about nine weeks. it sucks elephant balls. i don't know how to not feel it.

after we got ourselves together, we shared a sandwich and a pear and i took justin to the train before i headed back to work. we decided to try carrying the doppler with me to work, so if i get worried, i don't have to go all the way home. the restroom would be weird, and i can just see someone getting freaked out when they walk past my car in the parking lot and see me in it with my pants pulled down to just above my hoo-ha and using a little wandy thing. i don't need to have to have a sit-down with anyone in human resources, you know? but we have a nursing room, with a key, that moms check out when they need to pump. it's private, and locked, and it has a good recliner in it, which should work just fine. i'm going to check into getting on the approved key checker-outer list tomorrow. they don't have to know i'm a freak; i'm just going to say i need to do monitoring that involves exposing some skin, and i think they'll happily sign me up just to avoid me explaining any further. very midwestern and scared of skin in this building. should work to my advantage.

milo started moving shortly after i dopplered, and has moved - mildly - off and on the rest of the day, to which i say, hallelujah, and yea for the doppler, which kept me out of labor & delivery with my freakout. i guess after all that activity yesterday, he was just tired and needed a good long sleep. i'm going to go home now and get myself one of those good long sleeps, too. worry wears me out.

the wiggler

milo started squirming in the doctor's waiting room this morning (perhaps doing his wake-up stretches?) and hasn't stopped all day. the ob had to chase him around with the doppler to get a 15-second measurement. every time he thought he had him nailed down, *bloop!* he moved away again. measurements were all good, and the ob was reassuring about his heartrate averaging in the 140s these days by reminding me that the bigger the animal, the slower the heartrate: the slower heartrate is a sign that milo's growing.

i was a bit startled to step on the scale last night and find myself up seven pounds, after my weight had remained even the whole pregnancy. i was braced for a lecture today, but my ob was cool about it. not great, he said, but my weight's been stable until now, so it's not too bad. damn easter candy.

in the end, i didn't bring up induction dates. i've cooled off about it over time, mostly because i don't want to jeopardize milo's wellbeing. justin also made a good point this morning - i should save the fussing for when i really need it, at the end. and he is right. i hate that.

so an ultrasound in two weeks, the glucose test and another regular checkup in four weeks - and then we're in the final stretch. hot damn.

milo is laying low today - not laying low as in being mellow but as in swinging as low in my pelvis as he can. on the plus side, it's so nice to feel him moving so much, and to know exactly where he is; on the not-so-plus side, i'd appreciate it if he'd stop repeatedly banging my cervix with his finger or toe or elbow or whatever it is. it's annoying the crap out of me, and he's wasting his time. he can't come out until he's done baking. because i say so, and i'm the mom.

american idle

i've just lost another hour of my life to ryan and simon. i'm not proud. i can't help it, though. i have a problem.

so now that it's out there, let me say how happy i am that miss country pickle flubbed up so obviously. now maybe she'll get the boot and my pain of watching her bumpkin routine every week will be relieved. i can't take any more of the dumbness, whether it's real or not. i thought it was an act at first, but she reveals just how dumb she really is by how little she understands what she's singing. tonight was just bad singing, but the real low point was the night she sang "after midnight" as a power ballad, complete with her feet planted widely and hips thrust forward - it was the same as when she sang "something to talk about" - a completely opposite song.

okay, i'm done with her now. i hope america is done with her, too.

milo kicked against the laptop resting against him during taylor's and ace's numbers. my boy's already got good taste.

tomorrow we take milo back to the doctor for a check-up. i've calmed down some about the ob backtracking on the 38 week induction; i've done my homework, and i know it's not a good idea if it's not necessary. but i'm still debating whether to talk to him about suggesting it first before taking it back. it was unnecessarily cruel, even if it was unintentional. would it make a difference to talk to him about it? would he be less patronizing next time? would he be more careful before making someone else that promise? i don't know. i'll probably just hope for discernment tomorrow when i'm sitting down with him.

now we're getting somewhere

tomorrow is 23 weeks. that feels like a substantial number. i've got some progress under my belt. well, it's under my waistband, since i can't wear a belt now.

according to my weekly update with baby center [because i enjoy the torture of being greeted with how many weeks pregnant i am (not) with the tadpole, whose due date would have been this saturday], milo is now more than 11 inches long and over a pound, and regular loud noises he hears now will prepare him to not be frightened by them after he's born. the examples they give are a barking dog and the vacuum cleaner. milo is definitely not becoming accustomed to those sounds, since we don't have a dog and the vacuum...well, it doesn't see much action. hey, most of our house's floors are hardwood, okay?

more likely, he'll be unfazed by police and ambulance sirens and blaring sound systems from cars going 60 mph down our little street. not to mention blaring music from his father's stereo in the living room. okay, i like me some loud music, too, from time to time. hey, milo - if it's too loud, you're too old! or young.

do they make earplugs for newborns? i need to check that out.

*****

i've teetered on the edge but not let it happen, for weeks now. i've been so good. and then today, i did what i feared. twice.

i called milo "hans."

actually, once i called him "hans"; the other time i referred to the back room as hans's room, which maybe isn't quite so awful.

i know it will happen. i hope to god i can keep from calling milo "hans" in his hearing, when he's old enough to know who hans is, but i'm not perfect.

i can see milo in therapy, 50 years from now, sobbing to his therapist that it all began when his mother kept calling him by his dead brother's name. great. this is why i hoped for a girl. it would have been harder to confuse them, you know?

easter pageant

in an attempt to drop out of the running for biggest hillbilly on the street, we did serious yardwork today, enough to give me giant blisters on my thumbs, but we were rewarded for our hard work by all the gorgeous blooms we uncovered. and so, now, for your easter viewing pleasure (and a gratuitious chance for me to show off the new couch), here are the blooms we cut and brought in:

and look - the planter david and toni gave us for hans's birthday is shooting out its first, uh, shoots. yeah, that's the word.

place milo in a bowl

inspired by jill and clare chuckling about our son being named after a chocolate, malt-y, energy drink, i've been researching milo the nestle-oceania product. besides having a fun trick where you can design your own milo t-shirt (or surfboard, or skateboard), their site takes my son's name in vain in ways that make me giggle. quotes from the site:

• MILO was launched at the Royal Easter Show in 1934 (he's kind of an old soul)
• Try this delicious banana Smoothie with MILO! (because food is better when it's shared?)
• MILO contains 6 essential vitamins (among other things)
• Score with MILO and SOCCER (well, not until he's a good bit older, thank you)
• Ever wondered exactly how many different ways you can enjoy MILO? Of course you have! (must. not. make. dirty. jokes.)
• MILO was invented by Thomas Mayne. (won't justin be surprised!)

and my favorite:

• Here's what you get out of a glass of MILO and milk (besides the great taste and crunchy bits!) [i think they're confusing him with his brother hans - he's the one currently made up of crunchy bits...]

*****

i'm kind of manic these days. as if "kind of" could describe any kind of mania. but i'm either up or down, never really in between. crying or laughing. the main thing keeping me from falling off either edge is milo, bless his little marble-sized heart - feeling him move, listening to his heart race and the *bloops* he makes squirming around - these things are the shirley temple version of the xanax-n-serzone cocktail i'd like to be taking.

blame it on the rain

august of 2001, justin and i went to spanish school in nicaragua. the family i lived with had a tin roof on their house, and every afternoon, right after lunch, while i had a little nap, the rain would beat against that tin roof, and i thought i was in heaven - even if i was laying on basically a board with a blanket on it and staring at the pictures of britney spears and korn with which the family's teen-aged sons had papered the walls.

this afternoon, it has rained off and on, and even in the crappy office park-y building in which i work, the rain has been loud enough to penetrate the layers of wire and goose shit and whatever else separates me from the sky, loud enough to make conversation difficult at times. every work day should be like this. just so it stops raining before i walk outside, of course.

our bedroom is in what was originally the attic of our 130-year-old house, and when it rains hard enough, or it rains on a day warm enough to keep the windows open, there's no better sleeping. i look forward to a night filled with spring rain. we could both use an extra good night's sleep.

the things keeping me awake at night:

• the amendment to our tax return, with which we have to give the irs back over $4000 in excess refund. at least we knew there was a problem early on and set the money aside. and today, i finished the amendment, so woohoo! glad to have that off my back.
• my grades. i only got an 88 on my make-up exam, which was disappointing, since i thought i did better, but i got a 5 point curve, and it's still better than the 40 i probably would have gotten if i had taken the test unprepared, or the zero if i hadn't taken it at all. i'm surprised to find the academically competitive 15-year-old in me still alive and kicking.
• the physicality of this pregnancy has officially kicked in. my balance is off. if i don't stand up straight, my hip goes - i don't know - somewhere it's not designed to go, and it hurts. when i walk, i feel the pressure on my pelvic bones. and where milo is, my belly lumps up, throwing off my symmetry. i love feeling him move, and feeling him punch back whenever he gets poked, but i had forgotten the physical burden and the weirdness of having an actual living thing inside me. milo is no longer an image on a monitor, waving at us as from a porthole on a ship. he is in me. god or mother nature or evolution or whoever has a bizarre sense of humor.
• the pregnancy-wacko dreams are increasing. many of them involve serious screaming. the weirdest one this week: my sister and i decided to get married. you know, to each other. it was a last-minute, informal thing, and just before the ceremony, my mom and i looked at each other and realized we had forgotten to order the cake. no worries, though - we just asked our friend christina to go pick something up from the store during the ceremony. our friend christina aguilera. and then in my dream i woke up alone in a bed full of water.

too bad i can't drink before i go to bed.

happy birthday strummer!

tomorrow is strummers second birthday. strummer is the first child of deadbabymama, she died shortly after birth.

My thoughts are with dbm, dbp, strummer and owen today.

when strummer died, friends of strummer dedicated the planting of some trees in "rebel woods", a futureforest/carbon neutral project on the isle of skye started in the memory of joe strummer.

dbm & p have talked about going there at some point in the future to see the trees. if anyone is interested in dedicating another tree, there are instruction in the above link.

i hope that they make it there someday to see this amazing project for themselves.

on a more serious note...

let me leave the juvenile snickering aside for a few minutes to talk about this post on broadsheet, the "womanist" blog on salon. if you don't subscribe to salon (and if you don't, why not?), you can still access salon by clicking the link and then watching a 60-second commercial, which will then give you a day pass to the post as well as to all their material.

the post is about the movement to issue stillbirth certificates for stillborn babies. the writer (the blog is maintained by mostly female staff writers for salon) acknowledges the comfort such certificates would give some parents but worries about anti-choice politicians jumping on the bandwagon to add weight to their cause.

after reading the post, there are comments to be read (or you can click here to read them). some are thoughtful, some are as hateful as you'd expect, many are just the product of not having experienced it and not getting what the fuss is all about. i commented (as lauralu) because i care about this issue, and then i commented again to correct the misperceptions of some other commenters because hundreds of people who aren't commenting are still reading, and it's a chance to spread some understanding around. (the human ex-lax rides again!)

if you're interested enough in the topic to read the post and the comments, i'd like to hear your thoughts. hey, maybe we can actually, like, you know, discuss it.

the bright side

if anything freaky happens now, i get to go to labor & delivery (woo hoo) instead of the emergency room. small comfort. but still, a comfort.

regardless of how much i eat (which is very, very much), i still weigh what i weighed when i got pregnant this time. which means after i deliver i'll weigh less than when i started this pregnancy. i gained 20 lbs total with hans, and then weighed less than when i got pregnant after delivery. i'm sure at some point, it will be a problem if i don't gain any weight, but it's not like i'm not trying. this afternoon, for example, i have eaten three candy bars.

according to the rocket scientists at baby center, milo is now about 11 inches long and weighs a pound. i miss the old days, when they described his size in comparison to various food items. it's much easier to visualize an onion or a kidney bean than 11 inches. actual measurements in inches requires finding a ruler, which is always a challenge. still, 11 inches sounds good to me.

(insert juvenile snicker here)

i have had the sense of humor of a twelve year old boy the last week or so. last week, for example, i reviewed the background of a person whose first name is a diminuitive of richard, the one that's a synonym for "penis." his last name was the same as the famous golfer arnie, which means the first syllable was "palm" - which made me giggle when combined with his first name. then i looked at some official information and saw that his middle name was a homonym for "hairy". too much for me. in my defense, i have an ever-growing, youthful, male energy now present in me; if you average milo's sense of humor with mine, the twelve-year-old humor level makes sense, right?

the after party

i survived the shower. i did a little better than survive it, actually. i was there so long justin got worried and started calling his mom's house, where the shower was held. i slipped right in with justin's aunts like their youngest sister, just like always used to happen when i was alone with them. i actually enjoyed myself. it was all okay.

except for the one icky moment when my sister-in-law's batty aunt asked me take a belly-to-belly pregnant picture with the sister-in-law - to send to the aunt's best friend in some other state, whom i met exactly once, when i sat across from her at the brother- and sister-in-law's wedding. i'm sure she'll be thrilled to see me again??? whatever. i was oh so happy for a comparison between me and my 5 ft/90 lb sister-in-law to be captured on film for posterity.

in other happy news, i've started feeling milo from the outside. i love, love, love that. the first time was friday night, after we went to bed. i was laying on my right side, with my left arm cradling the lower part of my belly, and then he made my arm move. so, so cool. yesterday, a friend of ours dropped in on us, and we were sitting in the living room yakking, and my hand was resting on the middle of my belly, and he started kicking against my hand (how do they know? do they feel pressure there?). he did it off and on for a half hour. our friend asked if she could feel, but he would never kick when her hand was on me. does he know my touch? freaky.

this morning i decided to listen in on him to bolster my confidence before i went to the shower, and i started to freak out because i couldn't find a heartbeat in the usual place (my lower left abdomen) or anywhere in the vicinity. finally, i found the heartbeat, all 155 bpm of it, on my lower right. milo is on the move!

where do gifts for dead babies go?

i'm obsessed lately with what happened to the gifts people had for hans that they hadn't given us yet when he died.

we know they're out there. justin's aunt (the nutty one) brought with her to the shower the almost-but-not-quite-done blanket she was crocheting for him. what the hell did she do with it? it would make me laugh if she gave it to us for milo. justin's second cousin asked for the spelling of johannes because she was having something customized with his name; it must have been hard to return that one. maybe whatever it was is languishing on the company's clearance site, hoping that someone else with a child named "johannes" will come along, to which i say, good luck, suckas!

our friend's mom, who lives in another city, had brought something for hans and left it with our friends the week before he died. they told us they had this gift for us, and then he died, and we never heard anything more about it. was it something their own child, 5 months older than hans, could use? i hope so.

my now-sister-in-law's mom also told us she had something for hans, and then we didn't see her again until after hans died. what is the psychology in this situation? how do people feel about gifts they already had in hand for someone who died? do they debate whether they should give it to us or not? do they assume it would be painful for us if they did? do they throw these things away, or give them to goodwill, or give them to a friend's child? and how do you feel if you get a present originally intended for someone who died before they could accept it?

i don't want to make any of these people uncomfortable, but damn, i'd like to know how these things panned out.

there's a pile of wrapped baby gifts on the floor next to me as i write. today is the sister-in-law's baby shower, and we got the baby tub and ducky bath robe and towel they registered for and the crazy cat with all the buttons and zippers and ties and buckles (the modern, sexless replacement for dapper dan and dressy bessy) that they didn't ask for but we wanted for our niece. we thought about getting her the t-shirt that says, "if you think i'm good-looking, you should see my uncle!" but we decided that though it was funny, my sister-in-law's family may not find the possible implication that my husband possibly fathered her child as funny. some people have no sense of humor.

i have some trepidation about going. i feel it's important that i go, to support my sister-in-law, and to keep justin's extended family from clucking about how difficult it all must be for me. i skipped the girls' weekend in florida with my family because i couldn't have gotten back in time to make the shower today. so it's important and shit, but i still don't want to deal with it. i haven't seen much of justin's family since last easter, and even his grandmother i've avoided since the fall.

look, i felt crappy on the fourth of july and justin was working, so i skipped the family cookout at which everyone acted weird to my mother-in-law before breaking down in tears and telling her justin's cousin was having a baby. we skipped town for thanksgiving, and by christmas we knew we were pregnant but weren't ready to tell, and we didn't want to take the spotlight away from justin's brother and sister-in-law. we hid for the first few months of this year. i didn't realize that i had avoided almost all contact for a year until now, which just makes it worse.

i do not want to be an object of attention at my sister-in-law's shower, but i'm afraid it will be uncomfortable.

it's not that it's not within my power to not go. but the longer i put it off, the weirder it will be. i might as well get it over with today, right?

ugh.

baby me ***now, with update!***

the day at home yesterday was bliss. we slept in. we laid in bed and talked about weighty matters. we went to our favorite deli for spinach salad and potato soup and chocolate raspberry cheesecake. we bought a dustbuster and a new microwave (in red!) to replace the one i've had since i first lived by myself (1993!) and which lately has been taking twice as long to cook and has developed a bit of rust on the door. we watched "high fidelity" for the 80th time or so. we took naps. i studied for my exam while justin watched the cavs' heartbreaker, with a brief interruption for the second half of the idol elimination show (mandisa? are you kidding me???). all day, justin babied me, which is exactly what i needed.

and so today, i'm on a more even keel. i started the day by listening in on milo and by eating the bowl of cracklin' oat bran justin fixed for me. work has been fine - the crap infuriating me on tuesday just doesn't matter today. my prof said not to stress about the class and to meet him early tonight to take the test. after class, i'm making a cake for tomorrow night, when we're coming to our house for dessert after dinner out with friends. saturday, if flights look good, i'm flying to my mom's for the night for a girls' weekend with my grandma, my aunt, my cousin, my sister and my mom. life is good.

*****

update: i think i aced the test. and i got back my last paper, on which i got a 100! the professor's comments:

"A first-rate analysis! Well done. I do hope you're destined for the social sciences; you have a real knack for it."

life is even better.

anal glaucoma

We've both called in today. Anal glaucoma. Neither of us could see our asses going into work.

It's been a stressful year, apparently, to the day. When i called in, I asked when the last time was that I had called in sick. 5 April, 2005. Wow. A year today.

I'd been back to work for two weeks, since having had a month and a half off after the boy died. Laura was still out for another few days. The stress of avoiding contact at work had worn me out, so I'd decided to take a three day package, the last three days before Laura returned to work.

We did a whole lot of nothing; grabbed lunch out, took a nap, watched a few movies, maybe played scrabble. That was it.

And this is today.

in which i continue to unravel

still stewing about just which piece of my mind to give my ob (i've got two weeks until i see him next, so plenty of stewing still to be done), and absolutely boiling today over a quarterly meeting at work in which all of the reasons i need to get the hell out of finance, and in particular the division in which i work, were on parade. said boil-fest reinforced my will to work hard and get through school as quickly as possible. except that i'm fucking up school. fuck!

i walked into class tonight with my assignment in hand, the maximum number of items completed, sorted into groups with colored paper clips, in a nifty folder, ready to wow with my presentation. immediately after class, i was to begin studying for thursday's exam.

but when i walked in, only a third of the class was present, and they were all hunched over copies of the exam review. i had switched the dates. i started to have a panic attack. flushed, throbbing, pounding (oh, if only i were describing fucking instead of the realization that i was fucking up!), i pulled back on the coat i hadn't even finished taking off and ran out of class, down four flights of stairs, across the six blocks to the car. i started sobbing as soon as i shut the door. i couldn't dial justin's number correctly. finally, i reached him. he comforted me some but encouraged me to not go back to take the test while i was feeling this way. he was right, of course, but it sucks.

the thing is, as the buspar has worked itself out of my system, the fucking up has been increasing. i am struggling to keep it together. anxiety is making it difficult for me to concentrate or to finish anything. it's not that i'm so much immediately anxious about milo; well, maybe some it is. okay, i'm immediately anxious about milo 20 times a day, but those times are broken up by feeling him move, bless his little pea-sized heart. but that intermittent anxiety spills over into everything else. i'm anxious about things i've never been anxious about before. and i'm freaking out about how i'm going to get through school when i can't get through this one class that's the only one i'm taking right now.

i am home now, out of the clothes soaked with tears and in my red fuzzy robe, curled up on the couch upstairs in our bedroom - safe, in other words. the textbook and exam review are in front of me, ready to be read as soon as i compose an e-mail to my professor explaining what a freak i am and begging for a second chance to take the exam. i feel small, shitty, incompetent, an excuse-maker. i could keep my pride (and the knowledge that i am a mess without the meds) to myself and not ask to make up the test; it's 15% of my grade, so i could still pass, but i couldn't make an A in the class. i can't even read a calendar, and i'm worried about making As - clear evidence that i need to be back on meds.

so how cruel is it that when drugs - prescription or otherwise, or alcohol for that matter - are most vital, they're most prohibited? the world is upside down.

the monkey suit and other frippery, the joy of cooking, and the winkie

justin recovered the camera, and i'm avoiding a paper due tomorrow (justin, i still need help with song lyrics that objectify men...tonight), so here are some pics of recent wardrobe acquisitions for milo:

the monkey combo:


pjs i had to have (again, with the pockets):


the golf ensemble (for when he wants to rebel against his father's principles):




*****

i just spent a hundred dollars at the grocery store. i know, i know - that's nothing for most people, but i just never buy that many groceries at one time. honestly, we eat out or get takeout awfully frequently, and i have a hard time dealing with cooking smells when i'm pregnant (although not a hard time eating, apparently), so i've been cooking as little as possible. also, i have a "no more than i can carry" grocery rule, and what i can carry is usually about $20, or what i need for that particular meal.

i broke down tonight and went to the suburban yuppie store by my office and abandoned my principles by having to use the grocery valets. it was pretty horrifying, but i got the strawberries justin requested plus groceries to last...well, days, at least. i'm going to give cooking another shot; it's not like we can eat on the fly every night once milo's born, right?

*****

i'm going to give posting justin's picture of the winkie picture another whirl. you'll have to squint hard and look for the arrow.



and be sure to tell my son, if you ever meet him, that you saw his penis when it was 3 cm or so.

who stopped the clock?

how is it that i'm still two days away from 21 weeks??? the first trimester zoomed by, and i practically leapt over the first half of the second trimester, to 19 weeks, which was supposed to be my halfway point, since my ob discussed an early induction ("a couple of weeks early") at my first appointment of the current pregnancy. when i suggested my brother's birthday, 17 days before the due date, he thought that sounded fine. "sounds good to me," he said. i wish i had gotten it in writing.

at 19 weeks, he suddenly backed off. the bastard. oh, no, you don't want an induction. too much risk. too much chance of having to get a c-section. c-section is too risky. you don't want to do that. ho, ho, ho, the earliest i'd think of inducing is a week before your due date, and even then only if we did a late amnio and the lungs were completely mature.

i'm a little angry. it's not like i made up what he said. he acted like i was talking out of my ass. (wouldn't that be a nice show for him, next time i'm up in the stirrups.) it's not like i want to jeopardize milo's or my health, but as soon as we're ready to go, we need to get going, dammit. i nearly came undone the first time around during the last month, and i didn't even get how bad it could be - and was. when he backtracked on me, i deflated on the spot, and i still haven't recovered. i've tried to distract myself with house-purging and baby clothes-shopping, but it's not helping. i am completely blah.

because when all of the sudden i wasn't at the halfway point, everything went into slow motion. i thought 20 weeks would never come. and now i have been 20 weeks for a month, i swear to you. there's a roller coaster at cedar point, an ohio amusement park, that takes off like a shot with what is supposed to be enough force to propel you over a giant, upside-down U, but the engineers needed to smoke a little less crack, because the cars kept not making it over the hump. i've stood in line for two hours, watching car after car hover, hover, hover over the middle before sliding back to the beginning, which always ends in them closing down the ride when i am within five minutes of getting on it (never mind what it says about my mental capacity that i wait to get on this piece of crap). top thrill dragster is what it's called, i think; i'm not sure, because i haven't been there in several years, what with being pregnant for three consecutive summers.

i feel stuck on the top of the arch without the thrill, just the drag.

oh, my aching back!

we went to a friend's party friday night and then spent all day yesterday working on our house, and i haven't had time until now to take pictures of the monkey suit (the cool one, not the satin one), and now i can't find the camera. it seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle of finishing reassembling our bedroom yesterday. any ideas, justin?

we have loaded still more crap for goodwill into the car and gotten our friends to carry away an isuzu rodeo full of throw pillows and the giant baskets that big flower arrangements and food gift baskets come in, as well as our old mattress and box springs, but our new couch was delivered yesterday, and we ended up with a very full target shopping cart of things to bring into the house. three steps forward, two steps back. the target purchases, though, were things that will make life better, like bins for sorting socks in our dresser drawers, and frames for joaquin torres garcia prints we bought at his museum in montevideo on our visits there two and three winters ago, which have been collecting dust and taking up valuable closet space.

one way or another, this process has to be done by the end of may, when my mom comes, because then we need to focus on milo's room, but it would be nice to get it done sooner, because i can't take many more weekends of heavy manual labor.