Postpartum Elation...

Unbelievable. Fiona is 2 months old today, which seems absolutely impossible. Impossible that two months could pass us by so quickly, to be sure, but even more impossible to imagine that 2 months and 1 day ago this little person lived inside of me, upside-down, her name and her face (and her sex!) still a secret from us. I can't believe that three and four and five months ago we lived our lives and got along just fine without her. A year ago, this little girl was hypothetical.

But now she's here, and I'm having a hard time remembering how we managed to get out of bed every morning without these *three.*


I've been meaning to post for some time--have actually started a post several times, only to get distracted, or bored, or frustrated and discard it (I'm not a "save-it-and-come-back-to-it" kind of girl)--about my postpartum condition. I'm here for the third time, and yet I've never taken the time to really reflect on the way it is for me in the first weeks and months after having a baby.

I'm not a very emotional person. Or, rather, I'm just a very, very cerebral person. I'm not unfeeling--not in the least. It's just that, when I experience something, whether it's a film, or a song, or a conversation with a friend--hell, even a kiss from my husband--I experience it intellectually first, and my emotion follows. It's sort of like lightning and thunder; both have the same origin, but we experience the lightning before the thunder because light travels faster than sound. So if, for example, I receive bad news, my first response will not be to feel sad, or angry, or afraid, although I might feel any of those things eventually. My first reaction will be to think through how something happened, or why, or what I can do, or could have done, or what ramifications it has for the future. Then, in a sort of second-wave response, I will likely feel something about it.

The effect is that my mind ends up working as a sort of filter for my feelings. If someone says something potentially hurtful to me, I typically process it mentally first, asking myself (and of course there's no "asking myself" anything, as this all happens in the split second after I've heard something), "Why did he say that? What did she mean by that?" et cetera. So by the time I'm ready to make an emotional repsonse to something, I've already analyzed it, at least preliminarily, and interpreted it.

It makes me a very rational person, and it's something most people who know me well point out to me about myself--in one way or another. Some see it in a positive light. I've been told that I am very "stable" and "reliable" and "strong." Others don't see it that way; I've been called "cold" and "unfeeling." My mother has often remarked that "nothing ever gets to me."

But in the weeks and months after I've had a baby (and, to a considerably lesser degree, while I'm pregnant), everything gets turned upside-down. Instead of processing everything intellectually and coming to a rational "decision" about how I should-and-therefore-do feel about a given thing, it happens backwards. I instead find myself asking myself, "Why am I crying about that?" or "Why does that song make me so happy?"

The result of the total disturbance of the-way-I-work is that I cry more, yell louder, laugh harder than I do when my brain is "in charge." A woman expecting a baby a month-or-so after Fiona was born wrote to ask me how long it took my pelvis to heal after I injured my symphysis because she had just sustained a similar injury a few days before *her* due date, and I burst into tears, because the part of me that says, "Oh my god, that was so painful and terrifying and debilitating for me and now someone else is dealing with it" got to be the lightning for a change, and the part of me that says, "Well, let's see...I injured myself on a Saturday, and I was 39 weeks on Sunday, and I still couldn't walk on Tuesday, but I went to the chiropractor on Thursday...so that was...5 days until I felt like I could walk, 8 until I felt like I could have a baby, 14 before I actually had to," just had to stand in line until crying-me was finished.

And I think it's really fantastic, living this way. I'm like Dorothy, falling asleep in black-and-white Kansas and waking up in technicolor Oz. My day-to-day dealings have more texture; they're richer, and fuller, and deeper. What was "provocative" becomes "moving;" what was "interesting" becomes "compelling." And I'm reminded that I am moveable.

I feel really connected to the things and people around me when I feel so freely. I'm less articulate, but more empathetic, I have less perspective, but I'm more present. It's why I posted that elephant birth video recently--I was so moved by it. The birth actually reminded me a lot of Fiona's birth--those early minutes when the elephant calf is limp and not breathing, and its mother tries to stimulate it, calmly at first, but you can see her becoming more anxious, and then she makes that desperate-trumpet-sound, because her baby hasn't moved or breathed and she knows, the same way she knew to push that baby out and the same way she knew to pick it up by its trunk and the same way she knew that that was her baby, she knows that it's getting to be too long and she isn't sure what to do next. And I'm not an animal-person--not at all, really--but in that moment I found myself moved because I was certain I knew what that elephant was feeling, and I knew what it was like to be compelled by so much instinct, to cry out with so much instinct. And I know what a gurgle and a breath and a cry sound like when you've been made to wait for them.

This won't last. It's happened twice before, and as the hormones rebalance, my mind seizes power again and my heart once again does as it is told. And it's not all bad--there is a place in this world for rational thinkers, and in a few months, I will have resumed mine. But for the time being, I'm enjoying my postpartum state, where feelings come fast and hard and without permission from anybody.

Elephant Birth Video.

Apple Picking

Our first-ever family-of-five photo.

Last weekend we woke up to a sort of brisk morning and decided to get a little jump-start on our favorite season by heading out to the apple orchard. We met my sister and her two kids at a favorite orchard and spent the day riding the wagon around the orchard (this place is huge), and picking a very large bag of Golden Delicious, Northern Spy, Gala, and McIntosh apples (and we might have also gathered some donuts and raspberry-apple cider--yes, you read that correctly, raspberry-apple cider--before it was all over with.

Sam, catching a ride on Joel's shoulders.

Lucie, taking a break from the very serious apple picking.

Lucie worked so hard, and for so long, on this apple. I think she sat in this one spot in the orchard for at least 20 minutes.

Sam, enjoying the first of many apples on the wagon ride back from the orchard.

We had a really great day together, and I don't imagine it will be our last orchard visit this fall.

Middle Child.

As I was saying, we all have our adjustments to make now that Fiona has joined our family. As the days pass, though, it is becoming clear that this is turning out to be a more difficult transition for Lucie than for anyone else. It's not surprising: she's the only one of us who hasn't done this before, really--Joel and I have welcomed, now, three babies into our lives. Sam is experienced at adjusting to life with a new sister. But this is unchartered territory for my little Lucie. This fact is compounded by the fact that Lucie is approaching her third birthday (in November) and, if I haven't shared my opinion before, I'll share it now: Three is the new Two. I feel like, if you were to draw a graph representing the degree of humanity of a given person, you would see a steady decline from age 2 to age 3, which would bottom out somewhere around 3.5 before beginning to climb toward 4, 5 and 6. It's just a rough year. And Lucie was getting there well enough *without* anyone upsetting the order of her little world by bringing a baby into the family.
As I said yesterday, Lucie has been exhibiting a handful of behaviors that sort of scream, "I'm a poor, irrational toddler recently displaced by a baby sister who simply cannot get enough attention right now and who will stop at almost nothing to get as much of it as possible." The least subtle of these, perhaps is the pants-peeing. Lucie potty trained last summer, when she was 19-20 months old. A month or two ago, she became very independent about taking herself potty (pulling her own pants/undies up and down, wiping herself, et cetera). I remember remarking to a friend that she was becoming so independent in her bathroom use, and how I hoped having a new baby wouldn't set her back. When I said this, I was envisioning her reverting to coming to get one of us every time she needed to pee, asking us to pull her pants down, waiting for us to lift her onto the toilet. What I was not envisioning was what has happened: Lucie walks out of the room, happily playing and fully clothed, and returns a few minutes later, still happily playing...and naked from the waist, down. I ask, out of habit and not curiosity, "Lucie, where are your pants?" to which she replies, "I peed in them." I say, as matter-of-factly as I can muster, "Okay, you need to go get your wet undies and pants and put them in the diaper pail and get dry ones out of your dresser."
I don't want to overreact to this. I know it's not abnormal, and I know that she's under a lot of emotional and developmental stress right now as she adjusts to having a sister. But as the diaper pail grows full of pair-after-pair of her pants, I grow weary. Tonight we had friends over for dinner and, exasperated, I told her, as I helped her into yet another pair of dry pants and undies, "Lucie, if you pee in these pants, you're going to have to go to bed." She assured me she wouldn't pee in those pants.
It was an hour or so later that I heard Lucie announce from the bathroom, "I PEED!" and saw her walk out of the bathroom, bottomless. One might assume she had peed in the toilet, but she had this look on her face. I said, "Did you pee in the toilet?" "Nope!" I said, "Then where?" She was carrying a large saucepan she had taken off the stove, and it suddenly occurred to me what had happened, before she even explained that she had removed her pants in the living room, peed in the saucepan, and dumped it into the toilet. I took the (now empty) pan to the sink and she proudly put her pants back on, happy to have beat the system, so to speak.
It was an hour or two later that she disappeared into the living room (for 2 minutes, max) and then returned to the dining room (where our friends and we were still sitting around the table)--totally naked and covered, head-to-toe, in Elmer's School Glue.

This is not the little girl I knew a month ago--this was the little girl who could be trusted with things like markers and scissors (and glue!), even unattended, because she just...didn't *do* stuff like this.

I know it's a phase. I know she'll get over it. I know that I just need to be patient, remain calm, show her extra love and attention. But...wow. She's wearing me out.



Here she is, being a robot this afternoon. She had taken stickers and stuck them, in a row, up her arm. She came in and, pretending to push a few "buttons" on her arm, declared, "I AM A ROBOT," in her best robot-voice. I didn't get a clear photo of her "robot buttons" (because she was mechanically waving her arm around at the time), but here she is, in robot-mode:

Two-and-a-Half Weeks...

Man, I love this baby. I can't believe two-and-a-half weeks have passed since I birthed her. And I can't believe that, two-and-a-half weeks ago, she lived inside of me. On one hand, she seems so pure and perfect and brand-new and, on the other, I feel as though I've known her my whole life. The details of her face and body have become so familiar to me in two-and-a-half weeks that I cannot believe I ever didn't know the pattern in which her hair grew, or the creases in her arms and legs, or the dimples in her elbows or the folds in her tiny ears. I don't remember what it's like not to know all her sweet smells--her breath, her skin, her head--or to sleep in the absence of all her little squeaks and sighs. And, yet, it hasn't quite set in that I am the mother of three children now. Nursing Fiona on a bench at the park yesterday, I found myself looking up and checking for only one child--forgetting that I now needed to keep track of two children *in addition to* the one I was nursing. But, gradually, it's coming.
It's an adjustment for all of us, and we all seem to be adjusting in different ways. I'm working on mustering up the courage to perhaps, one day, leave the house with all three children, alone. So far, I've found ways to avoid it--either planning outings when Joel can come along, or managing to leave one-kid-or-another with family (for example, Lucie is staying with my sister tomorrow morning while I take Sam to the dentist, and Sam is staying with her Friday while I take Fiona and Lucie to the pediatrician).
Joel has been really fantastic and helpful, and has really afforded me the time to rest and heal from the birth, and to just sit around staring at this beautiful new baby. Physically, I feel like this birth was not nearly so hard on me as the first two were--and I felt so much better so much sooner than I did with either of the other two that I've astounded myself--but I've had a lot of lingering pain from my unfortunate pelvic mishap, and that has made this recovery somewhat more difficult than the others. Having Joel home was marvelous, though, and I hate that he had to go back as soon as he did (although he took more time off after this birth than after either of the first two).
Sam and Lucie are adjusting to their new roles and are realizing the impact that welcoming Fiona to the family has on them, as well. I'm pleased--though not at all surprised--with the way they love and tend to her. Lucie has always sort of amazed me with her nurturing spirit and her attentiveness to other people's needs and feelings; she has always seemed far too empathetic for her age. Rather than seeming bothered by the fact that Fiona nurses so much, for example, she comes running whenever she hears Fiona cry and is usually quick to suggest that, "I think the baby needs to nurse!" She is gentle with her sister, and kind--reaching over from her carseat to try to hold Fiona's hand, and offering reassurances when Fiona becomes upset in the car. But despite her immediate love for, and acceptance of, Fiona, Lucie appears to be struggling some to fit comfortably into her new "place" in the family, as an older sister and, more importantly, as something other than the "baby." Despite having been potty trained for over a year, she began wetting her pants a day or two after the baby was born. And she's a bit more defiant. Sometimes she asks to nurse in this sort of desperate way, as though she's afraid *this* might be the time I tell her, "I'm sorry, Lucie, you're just too old to nurse." (And Lucie is no stranger to tandem nursing--in fact, she's never had my breasts to herself, so to speak, since her older brother is only now weaning in time for her little sister to have joined her--but more on that another time, soon.) So I'm doing my best to just let her feel all of this out, and to reassure her of her continued importance to me and to our family. (But, seriously, the pants-peeing has me a little on-edge, at least inwardly.)



Sam seems to be exploring what this big change means for him, too. He seems to really embrace his status as "eldest," and enjoys some of the "privileges" that come with it. For example, we moved his carseat to the third row of the van in anticipation of Fiona's birth, and he seems to find that exciting. (And it works out perfectly--as the only forward-facing child in the car, he sits in the back talking to Fiona and Lucie, and he enjoys unbuckling both of them when we arrive wherever we're going.) He's a pretty independent person, and I feel like I have to be careful not to let the introduction of a new baby push him from "independent" to "isolated." He's quite happy to play by himself, and often doesn't bother to come around us unless prompted to do so by Joel or me. He's also *very fond of* (read: addicted to) all things electronic, and there's been some struggle to keep his "screen time" moderate since Fiona's birth. He is aware of the added time and responsibility that comes with having a baby, and he uses that to his advantage when he (quietly and secretly) helps himself to my laptop, cell phone or iPod--opting to "beg forgiveness" rather than "ask permission." He knows that I'm likely to let more things "slide" right now, and often just...ignores me...when I talk to him or ask him to do/not do something. (And if there's something that drives me even more crazy than the repeated peeing-of-pants, it is certainly the blank look on the face of a child who hears me, understands me, and simply has no intention of doing what I'm asking.)
But bringing a new person into our home and our bed and our lives is a really big deal, and I get that. So I'm trying my hardest to be patient with all of us and to forgive Joel his inability to call Fiona by anything but *Lucie's* name, and Lucie her near-constant wetting of her pants, and Sam his indifference to every word I say. And I'm trying to forgive myself for sometimes *not* being so patient with any of them.
All-in-all, though, it's been a good two-and-a-half weeks, and I emerge from it hopeful and happy and confident that we, the five of us, are going to be okay and that sometime--sometime soon, even--this is all going to feel normal, and we will resume using the toilet, and leaving the house, and listening to one another. I think it's going to be all right.
And one thing is for sure: we all love this baby. Very, very much. And I think she's beginning to like us, too.

The (Unabridged) Story of the Birth of Fiona Bee.

Saturday morning began the way mornings generally begin in my house, with Lucie crawling into bed with me and asking to nurse. While she was nursing, I had a sort of crampy feeling, but it didn't prevent me from dozing back to sleep while she nursed. I awoke to these cramps once or twice, and it occurred to me that this could be very early labor, but shortly after getting out of bed, it became clear that it wasn't going to go anywhere.

The crampy feeling never entirely left me, but I didn't pay much attention to it, either. In a moment of absolute insanity, I suggested that we should run (read: drive an hour each way) to IKEA (on the last Saturday before most colleges in the area began classes) to make a couple returns and to look at dressers (we recently moved Lucie's out of her room and into ours to use for the baby's stuff, and we needed somewhere to put her clothes). In a moment of weakness, Joel agreed to the plan, and we headed out with the kids.

The day was relatively uneventful, really. The crampy feeling stayed, and I told Joel that I suspected that I was either (a) trying to get something going, labor-wise or (b) getting a UTI or something. Occasionally I noticed a contraction, but it was never enough to even warrant looking at a clock.

I realized I was in labor some time between 9:30 and 11:30 Saturday night, when I laid down on my couch and happened to glance at the clock for three consecutive contractions and realized they were five minutes apart, which led me to actually time them for a little while. After I laid there for an hour or so, I went to the bathroom and had a good bit of mucus/blood (the first I'd had). So at midnight I called to give Stacia, my midwife, a "heads-up," and told her I planned to go to bed for a little while from there, and that I would call her if-and-when things picked up. We got off the phone and I was about to go to bed when I thought, "No, I should get a few things ready first." So Joel and I started sort of bustling around--I unloaded/re-loaded the dishwasher while he inflated the pool, et cetera. He kept saying, "Okay, let's get to bed," and I'd come up with one more thing we needed to get organized first. So finally, at about 1:00 or 1:30, he said, "Okay, seriously, we *need* to go to bed." And I was like, "Um, Joel? I don't think we're going to bed." The look on his face was priceless.

My labor was strong, but really very manageable. In a total afterthought, I had noticed my mom had bought an exercise ball recently, and asked if I could borrow it. (I wasn't into the birth ball during Sam's or Lucie's labor, but figured, what the hell?). I ended up spending almost my entire labor sitting on that ball, with my headphones/iPod on, bouncing and swaying to some good music. At 2:45, I finally decided to call Stacia. When I was having a contraction, things felt super-intense, like I should call her, but I was still totally conversational (me!) between contractions, and that made me sort of leery of calling too early. Finally, I had resorted to timing contractions for a bit again, and realized they were coming 2-3 minutes apart and lasting nearly a minute, so I decided to call her (since she had almost an hour-long drive ahead of her, too). So I called and told her what was going on and that I thought she should come, but not hurry. She said she would eat breakfast and be on her way. I also called my friend Kelly whom we had asked to come over for the birth.

Kelly came over around 3:30, then Jamie (an apprentice from another local midwifery practice who was helping out at my birth--and who was actually serving as primary-under-supervision at my birth) arrived at about 3:45, and finally Stacia at 4:05. In some regards, I felt a little weird about everyone being there, because I didn't really need anything in particular and I sort of felt like everyone was just sitting around my living room waiting for me to do something.

I had been thinking of how nice it would be to get in the pool, and it had been ready for a while, but I felt as though the warm water was sort of the best pain management tool I had available, and I really wanted to "save" it, so to speak. I was really afraid of getting in too early and then having my labor really pick up and sort of already have played my "best card." So I told myself wouldn't get in until 4:00 or when Stacia got there, whichever came first. So after Stacia got there, I took one last trip to the bathroom, had a couple contractions, had a contraction standing outisde my bathroom, and then climbed into the tub at about 4:15. Right away I had a contraction, which felt nice in the water. Then I had another, stronger contraction that produced a little more pressure. Then two more really intense contractions that made me think I should probably try a different position (I was just sitting in the tub), but I was at a bit of a loss for what might feel any better (I had found sitting upright--mostly on the ball, but also on our couch for a while, to be the most comfortable position in which to labor), so I just stayed put.

As I anticipated this labor and birth, and thought about how it might be different from my experiences in the hospital, one thing I thought a lot about was the way pushing would feel--or, rather, how the urge to push might feel. With Sam, I had a very medicalized birth--a failed induction that began on my due date and lasted about 28 hours, followed almost immediately by another induction which resulted in Sam's birth about 20 hours later) and elected to have an epidural. I felt absolutely nothing during his birth, but sinply waited until I was told to push and then pushed just as I was instructed. With Lucie, I remember doubting I would know when to push, but recalled hearing that the urge to push was often confused with a need to poop, so when I felt what might be interpretted as a little rectal pressure, I told a nurse what I felt, a midwife checked me and offered to hold a cervical lip back so I could try pushing. So I began pushing and Lucie was born 15-or-so minutes later.

Having witnessed quite a few natural births--and home births in particular--over the course of the past year-or-two, I felt pretty familiar with the way a more natural second stage of labor usually looks from the outside, which gave a starting point for imagining what it might feel like from the inside. Typically, when a woman is left to labor relatively uninterupted, we will first notice a change in the way she sounds during contractions--perhaps moaning or otherwise vocalizing through the contraction, then sort of giving a little "grunt" at the peak of the contraction. She'll often do this for (sometimes quite) a few contractions before we hear the grunting/pushing noises beginning earlier in the contraction and she is pushing through the entire contraction.

So, as I anticipated that stage of my own labor, I imagined a subtle impulse to bear down--one that would grow with each contraction until it became so powerful that it could no longer be resisted.

When I got in the pool, though, pushing was the last thing on my mind. As a matter of fact, it had never even occurred to me to wonder how dilated I might be or when I might start pushing. I just...wasn't there yet. Not really. I was still just sort of taking the contractions one at a time as they came. I do remember wondering if I would start to feel "transitiony" soon--maybe nauseous or spacey or something--but I dismissed the thought as the next contraction came and demanded my attention.

Joel and Kelly were just sitting in nearby chairs, and Stacia and Jamie were sort of chatting quietly in the corner about something, when I got my next contraction. I'd been in the pool, at this point, for maybe 15 minutes or so (it's hard to say; I wasn't paying attention). And seemingly out of nowhere, every part of me was pushing, full-force, with absolutely no control on my end. I hadn't made a sound my entire labor (well, during a contraction--naturally, I was running my mouth in between contractions until the very end) until sort of moaning through those last two intense contractions, but if I had a dollar for every profane word I shouted during the 8 minutes that followed that contraction, my daughter would have a respectable college fund underway. To say it was "intense" is a gross understatement; "unexpected" is purely insulting. I twisted and contorted--braced my feet against one wall of the pool and my shoulder against the other in a sort of anti-gravitational side-lie. I grunted, cursed, and tried desperately to sputter the phrase, "This is coming out of NOWHERE!"--an undertaking far too ambitious for the occasion and a sentiment obvious enough, given the circumstances, as to not require explanation. Still, I tried unsuccessfully several times--punctuating each attempt with a different obscenity: "This is coming--SHIT!...This is com--FUCK!" (You get the idea.)

Again, my sense of time as I recall all of this is unreliable at best, but I feel as though that contraction lasted two minutes or so. What I can say with certainty is that, if it was two minutes, it was the longest two minutes of my life. If it was four minutes, it was the longest four minutes of my life. And if it was 45 seconds, it was the longest 45 seconds of my life. I could feel the baby's head moving rapidly through me and reached one hand down to support my rectum and perineum and the other to support my vulva and recently injured pelvis. Eventually, the contraction concluded and I took a good, deep breath and exhaled: "That came out of nowhere."

At that point, I felt something smooth just at the opening of my vagina; my amniotic sac was bulging in front of the baby's head. I slipped a finger past it and felt the baby's head an inch or so behind it. When my next contraction started, I pinched and pulled at the sac until I felt it pop and the fluid rushed out of me. I heard Jamie say that she saw light meconium in the fluid, but quickly recognized that there was no sense in (me) worrying about that right now. With the sac broken, the head crowned and with that contraction (or was it the next? This is a bit blurry.) the head was born.



The room was dark, and Jamie kept a light shining on the baby's head. I had wondered to what degree I would be able to turn off "apprentice brain" during my birth, and it turns out...not very well. I stared at the head, watching the color of the baby's scalp and waiting for restitution to occur. The scalp was a bit pale, but this was less troublesome to me than the darkening color I was afraid of. But as the contraction came to an end and I began waiting for the next, I noticed that the head didn't turn. Stacia and Jamie suggested that I sit back (from my suspended side-lie) and helped me open my legs into a McRoberts-ish position. When the next contraction came, I pushed again, but nothing budged. Stacia suggested that Jamie look for a nuchal cord, which she found but was unable to unloop, and advised that she "somersault" the baby out (by holding the baby's head close to my thigh/pelvis, she could allow the shoulders and body to "somersault" out of me without pulling the already-tight cord any tighter/further from my pelvis. She also advised that she may need to help with the rotation of the shoulder.

I don't recall if it occurred to me first, or someone suggested it first, but I turned onto my hands-and-knees before/at the beginning of the next contraction, which allowed the shoulders to rotate on their own. I felt this occur and with a couple more pushes, I felt the baby slip into the water, and Jamie pushed her between my legs so I could lift her out of the water.

She was entirely limp and Stacia helped me unloop the cord from her neck. I brought her to myself but knew she wasn't breathing. I cradled her, talked to her, and rubbed her, but it was clear that she would likely need a bit more help. Jamie suggested holding her lower, so I handed her off to Jamie so I could stand (to get my placenta above her) while Jamie held her close the the surface of the water (it was then that I noticed she was a girl). Stacia said it was time for "a breath," Jamie agreed, and while Stacia grabbed the bag/mask and oxygen, Jamie gave a few breaths mouth-to-mouth. It didn't take too long (naturally, it seemed to take far too long) before she gurgled a little and then let out a lusty, if sort of juicy, cry.

They helped me out of the tub and I sat, holding her on her side, trying to keep her head low to allow drainage. She was breathing and crying, but continued to sound really congested, and Stacia eventually suctioned her airways with a DeLee, after which Jaime followed up with a bulb syringe. From there, she sounded clear.

Her 1-minute APGAR score was a 4. Her 5-minute was a 10. (Thanks, Stacia and Jamie.)

And a perfect 10 she remains.

I Traded My Widget...

For this baby girl!

Fiona Bee was born at home at 4:47 a.m. She weighed an even 10 pounds, is exceptionally cute, and we are very, very fond of her already. Details/birth story forthcoming but, in the meantime, here she is:

"I Wonder If She Hasn't Posted in a While Because She Had Her Baby."

Well, wonder no more. The fetus is tucked safely inside of me, where he or she shows no signs of budging any time before Labor Day.

And that's okay. For now. Don't get me wrong--were it up to me, I think this weekend would be a splendid time to have a baby. But it's mostly okay with me to not. Yet. In another week, I do not promise to maintain my go-with-the-flow mentality, has he or she not yet been born.

And, as I told a friend last night, come August 31st I'm just going to climb in the tub and start pushing. I'm just not prepared to think of this as my "September baby."

Against my better judgment--or rather, just despite my doubtful disposition--I visited a chiropractor a few days ago. Although I was starting to feel quite a bit better, I was still in a lot of pain when I walked, and I had started to notice that a lot of the discomfort had shifted to the back of my pelvis, rather than the symphysis, where I had actually injured it. It occurred to me that maybe I had been sort of holding my legs/hips/back really stiffly in an effort to sort of stabilize my pelvis, and that this could be causing me some of the stiffness and discomfort (not to mention the ridiculous gait I had developed). So I asked my midwife about it, she gave me a couple of names of chiropractors in the area, and I visited one Wednesday evening.

She adjusted my pelvis, which she said was definitely misaligned, and she said she adjust two vertebrae in my back--T12 and L4, if you're into that sort of thing--which she said "communicated" with a particular muscle in my abdomen that I might have pulled (based on how she found the vertebrae, I guess, which is interesting because this was the muscle that my midwife suggested I might have injured back in May, but...who knows; I'm not totally ready to drink the Kool-Aid just yet), and then she adjusted my symphysis and "freed" my sacrum. It felt, to me, like she did a whole lot of nothing, but I didn't feel any worse when I got up, so I thanked her and Joel and I left. As we walked to the car, I sort of felt as though I might be walking a little straighter, but I figured it was some sort of placebo-effect. Nonetheless, I thought I would try to keep from adopting the same crooked limp I had become accustomed to; in the event that she had "fixed" something, I didn't want to undo it.

I was still in a lot of pain as we made our way to run a couple of errands nearby and then headed back to my parents' house to pick up the kids. When we got home, though, Joel went to put the kids to bed, and I assumed my place on the loveseat, and I noticed that I was able to put my feet up without so much discomfort as I had been having. Not one to waste time, I carefully pulled my feet up to my body and slowly let my knees fall apart (keeping my heels together). And it felt okay. I tried moving my legs in a few other ways that had previously been rather uncomfortable and...mostly nothing.

That night, I made my way up the stairs--one foot after the other, not matching them on each step--and slept (wait for it...) in my bed. On alternating sides. I couldn't believe it.

So now, a couple days later, I am feeling *so* much better. I'm still in some pain and am staying off my feet as much as possible, but I can definitely get around reasonably well now. In fact, I did a MAJOR clean of Lucie's horribly disorganized room--complete with hanging things that I've been meaning to hang for months and moving her dresser (which is, amidst cries of outrage and injustice from Lucie, being repurposed for the baby's clothes and diapers) into our bedroom.

So I'm feeling good. In the mood to have a baby.

Speaking of said baby, I'm becoming increasing anxious to meet this one. Not finding out the sex of this baby adds such an element of anticipation to all our waiting! Names are still up in the air, but...I think we're about as close as we're going to get until we meet him or her. We're sort of mostly settled, but then I still find myself perusing baby name websites and throwing totally new names out at Joel now-and-again. And he seems open to considering all these brand-new names. So...we're not that settled.

My midwife has said, repeatedly, that she doesn't think this baby feels all that large. She later conceded that perhaps the baby was "long," but still not "big." Although I have yet to pin her down on just what, exactly, she considers a "big" baby, I think I'm officially ready to publicly disagree with her. I'll be happy to be wrong, but this baby doesn't feel small to me. I don't anticipate a giant baby or anything--I expect it to be in the same range as its older brother and sister (Sam was 9.1 at ~40 weeks, and Lucie was 10.7 at 42 weeks...so I consider them to have been roughly the "same size," given the extra couple of weeks of gestation Lucie enjoyed). I suspect this baby will fall in between the two of them--bigger than Sam but smaller than Lucie. But we'll see. If I'm wrong, and this baby weighs a nice, moderate 8 pounds or something, I will happily recant, rescind, abjure, eat crow. Time will tell.

So that's about it around here. More waiting, less limping, and no Vicodin. All in all, it's not so bad.

This Post Brought To You By...

Gravely disappointed in the performance of this fetus widget. Sunday night, as midnight--and my "due date"--approached, Joel and I sat rapt in anticipation of what would happen at midnight. Would the fetus no longer float in the little amniotic bubble? Would it don a party hat? Would its tiny little cord disappear? At 12:00, I hit "refresh" to see the same fetus, floating around over the words "0 Days Left." Oh. That's it. Okay.

But then what would the widget have to say on the day AFTER my due date? Huh? You can imagine what a long day it was, waiting for the time when widget-watching could resume. And sure enough, come midnight, there I was, only to find this inscription: "1 Day Left." Wait. What?

So apparently the widget is counting up now--an act which I find uninspired, at best.

Nothing terribly exciting going on here. I continue to heal on the love seat. Towards the end of last week, I was beginning to feel as though I wasn't going to be able to heal any more so long as the baby remained in/on/all around this injury, and I began, for the first time, to feel anxious about just "getting it over with." The weekend was really boring and helpful, though--with Joel home, I started taking a half-dose of the pain medication in the middle of the day, as well as a nice, long nap, and I left the couch very little (and the house, almost not at all). By Sunday evening, I was started to feel markedly better. Yesterday, I had to get up and take Sam for a hearing/vision screening (when I scheduled this appointment for my due date, several weeks ago, it seemed like a great idea). I was in a lot of pain, walking with him to the appointment (the good news is he can hear and see, and he enjoyed the screening so much I felt really great about having planned such a fun "outing" for him. He's a bit of a perfectionist, so he took these "tests" very seriously, and beamed when the women doing the screenings told him he "got them all right"), and afterwards I took the kids over to my parents' house for the afternoon and sat on their couch for a while. I noticed when we got ready to leave that afternoon, though, that I was walking considerably better than I have been--the weekend definitely left me in better shape than it found me. So that's exciting.

Joel came home for lunch today (he works just 5-10 minutes from here, so this is typical) and after we ate he dropped the kids off at my parents' house for a few hours so I could rest, take another half-dose of Vicodin (this has the propensity to knock me out, so I don't take it when I'm home with the kids, for fear of what I may awake to if I did fall asleep), and wait for my midwife to come by for a prenatal this afternoon.

I'm not the type of person to give kids gifts on their siblings' birthdays, but I do often like to honor older siblings on the occasion of the birth of a younger sibling--it marks such an exciting and important moment in their lives (just as it does in their parents' lives). As such, I wanted to get something little for Sam and Lucie as a gift when the baby is born. I wasn't looking for anything overly "meaningful," per se--just because I think it might be lost on 2-and-4-year-olds--but I wanted to give them something little to celebrate their new roles as "big sister" and "big(ger) brother." Lucie was easy. She absolutely adores dolls/babies, and is always drawn to a particular "baby" we gave my niece on her first birthday (we got my niece this doll, in pink), so I picked one up for her (in green). This is one of my favorite dolls, too--in fact, I originally purchased it for Lucie's first birthday, but then decided to give her another doll instead--for many reasons, not the least of which is that its clothes don't come off. If I had a dollar for every time I've re-dressed the couple of dolls Lucie and Sam currently have...

Sam was a little trickier. If it were up to him, he would almost certainly receive either a workbook of some sort--he absolutely loves to do the kind of (phonics, especially) workbooks that I have been so deliberate about "protecting" him from when choosing a preschool for him. I was always so careful about *not* trying to push any sort of deliberate "teaching" on him as a toddler/preschooler (not quizzing him, for example, on letters and shapes and colors and "what does the horsey say?" and things like this), instead letting him learn through his own curiosity and everyday life. Then he saw an alphabet video a couple years ago (give the alternatives at the time, it seemed an excellent choice), and almost immediately began pointing out letters and reciting their "sounds." Anyway, I've gone far off track, but all this to say, my son LOVES to sit and do workbooks.

What he would really, REALLY, want, though, would be, in his words, "electronics." Sigh. He's four-and-a-half, but it's already started. Luddites we are not--far from it, especially in my (sort of geeky) husband's case--but we try to limit the amount of that "stuff" with our kids. We've always avoided battery-operated, blinking, flashing, noisy toys for them. We have a television, which we keep in the basement and do not receive any "channels" on (except for special occasions, when Joel hooks up his homemade-out-of-clothes-hangers-and-a-2x4 HD antennae (see, a little geeky), reserving it for occasional movie-watching (sometimes with, but more often without, the kids). Obviously we have computers, and Sam is allowed on occasion to visit two sites (to which he expertly navigates himself now): www.starfall.com and www.pbskids.com. And we have been given a couple of handheld video game systems by my nephews (these kids always have the newest in video game technology, and so our hand-me-downs have improved vastly over time--several years ago, my nephew gave me his "Game Boy Pocket." A few years later, he offered me his Game Boy Advance. Around Christmas time last year, my *other* nephew "got over" video games and gave us a Game Boy DS Lite *and* a Sony PSP which was broken, but which Joel has been able to repair, at least in part...I think). So, anyway, the point is that my children are not strangers to technology. Sam has several friends, though, who have recently gotten Game Boys--DSes, in particular--and he desperately wants one for himself. In fact, he does not know that we actually *own* a Game Boy DS (procured from my nephew) and that we intend to give it to him...eventually. We haven't decided when yet. But, anyway, he often talks to us about various technologies and when it might be appropriate for him to own them (he recently asked when he might get his own iPod. When I told him I didn't know, he insisted that "10...or at least 13" should be old enough), and the Game Boy DS is always first on his list (not surprisingly, my 4.5-year-old thinks that five is the magical age at which one should be allowed to own this particular piece of electronic entertainment.

Anyway, I digress--and embarrassingly so. (I will take this opportunity to mention that I *have* recently imbibed that half-dose of Vicodin I referred to earlier, and that I tend to react very strongly to these substances. My sister likes to play a game where she reviews things I have posted/commented/et cetera on Facebook and guess--with unsettling accuracy--which ones I wrote "under the influence" of these pills. On that note, though, I don't want to give the impression that I am drugging myself and the fetus into some sort of stupor--I did look into these drugs rather thoroughly before taking any, and while *my* particular response to them is a little...exaggerated?...they really are quite safe to take in the very low dosages in which I am taking them, and at this particular stage in my pregnancy).

What? Gift for Sam? Right.

So Sam will not be receiving workbooks, because I would feel super-lame doing that. And he won't be receiving "electronics" because...I'm not quite that cool, either. I considered getting him one of these marble runs--something he has seen at friends' houses and would really love to own, but they cost a bit more than I wanted to spend and I'm afraid he couldn't quite play with them independently (when he's played with them at friends' houses, an adult has always been needed to assist in the set-up, and a toddler--Lucie or otherwise--has usually ended up knocking it down in a well-meant but infuriating attempt to join in). So we decided on some Fiddlesticks--like Tinker Toys, but made of wood (like Tinker Toys used to be).

While placing the order for Sam's Fiddlesticks, though, it occurred to me that the baby would probably want his or her mother to enjoy some special gift on the occasion of his or her birth, too--and so I ordered myself a very reasonably-priced copy of Varney's Midwifery, a text I've been wanting to get my hands on for some time. It arrived yesterday, on my due date, and I promptly tore the package open and began leafing through this big, delicious volume. I'm really quite pleased.

If you're wondering if I've forgotten poor Joel in my recent spirit-of-giving, I have not. But Joel occasionally has a tendency to poke his nose around this here blog, and I'm a better keeper-of-secrets than that.

Well. This has turned into quite the run-on-blog-post, now, hasn't it? Soon I hope to be posting stories of labor and birth, walking without crutches or a limp, photos of a tiny(ish) baby boy or girl. But, for now, this is me: sitting on the love seat, anticipating another prenatal visit, head spinning ever-so-slightly from the Vicodin, about to spend a few more minutes leafing through Varney's.

Couchrest

An update of sorts, although I'm mostly just sick of talking about this:

Sunday morning I spoke with my midwife, who suggested it might be time to make a trip to the ER. I still couldn't walk--not a step--and before I did anything like seeing a chiropractor, a more definitive diagnosis might be useful. So we went. As it turned out, they saw me in L+D, and didn't tell me much I didn't already know. I have a rather severe sprain or tear to the cartilage of my Symphysis Pubis. What they *did* do what prescribe me some Vicodin and a pelvic support belt, the former of which I have taken sparingly but with rather convincing results. I've taken it before bed the last few nights, and it has allowed me to sleep relatively well, all things considered, and I've woken up feeling improved every day except, perhaps, today. I'm not sure whether to attribute my lack-of-improvement today to a natural plateau in my recovery, or whether it is because I opted *not* to take the Vicodin last night but instead took Tylenol. When it had been 4-5 hours since my Tylenol dose and I was still lying awake and miserable on the couch, I decided to take a half-dose of the Vicodin and try to sleep the rest of the night, which worked. Still, I didn't get the kind of rest I did the few nights prior, and this may have influenced the way I felt this morning.

Overall, I am encouraged by how I'm feeling in comparison to how I felt a few nights ago, and any apprehension I had about the birth as it relates to this injury is nearly-gone (I can't say I wouldn't prefer to be approaching the birth feeling strong and well, but I am no longer in a state of mild panic over the thought of giving birth in the near future, and this feels an awful lot like improvement).

Anyway, I'm staying down as much as possible, and I feel like it's helping. I'm hoping, perhaps ironically, that I have another couple of weeks to heal before I'll be laboring and birthing, but if it happens sooner, I am resolved to simply face it as it comes and deal with it as it happens, in whatever condition I find myself. I will just do whatever I can do as I handle whatever I must, and this resignation brings me, surprisingly, a lot of peace.

Good News and Bad News...

I have good news and bad news. While I know it is often preferable to lead with the bad news (get it out of the way, so to speak) and end on a positive note, I will do the opposite--in the interest of chronology.

The good news began early Friday morning, around 2:30 a.m., when the midwife for whom I work called to tell me that our client--now 14 days past her due date--was in labor. I rolled my pregnant body out of bed, threw on some clothes and headed downstairs to eat a quick breakfast before heading out. I wasn't particularly hungry, but thought it would be wise to have something before I got to the birth, which I feared might be long. As I swallowed bites of cereal and banana, the fetus kicked and hiccuped in rhythmic confusion at this upset in our schedule.

I live about 45 minutes from this client, and it was a pleasant drive in the dark. Driving to births is often a really refreshing time for me, actually--it's usually dark, the roads are usually quiet, and I'm alone in the car to turn the music of my choosing up and sing along, loudly. This was no exception. I arrived at our client's house feeling good.

Within an hour of arriving, the client (who was in the pool) began to push naturally--grunting and bearing down at the peaks of contractions at first, then growling and pushing through entire contractions after a bit. About 45 minutes later, her beautiful little boy slipped into the pool where his father's hands were waiting to bring him to the surface.

It was a very pleasant and uneventful birth. We saw the client this morning. She told us that she wouldn't have changed anything about her birth, that it was her "ideal" birth.

Having this birth finally take place was such a relief to me--I felt as though I was free to begin really thinking about and anticipating my own birth. And just in time, perhaps--I'm due a week from tomorrow.

* * *
And now the bad news, entirely unrelated:

A friend of mine threw a little party tonight, a "Sangria Party," at her farmhouse just outside town. Although I couldn't imbibe (much--come on, I had to *try* it) sangria, I'm not one to turn down a night of sitting around a bonfire with friends while the kids enjoy tractor-ride after tractor-ride (my friend's father had made this really cool "train" out of four barrels, that hooks to the back of her tractor and can thereby be pulled all over the yard--it was a huge hit with the kids), slip-n-slide, s'mores and bubbles.

Most of the guests were up in the house or on the porch, but several of my friends and I were sitting around a picnic table toward the back of her property. I'm not sure what time it was, but it had gotten dark and Joel and a couple other guys had built a bonfire near the table where we were sitting, and we were having a nice time talking with friends.

Cars had been parked around the perimeter of the yard and, at some point, I turned around to see a car backing out of its spot about 25 yards away. About 8-10 feet behind the car, a two-year-old boy was standing, just watching the car get closer and closer to him. I yelled something--not even sure what--and took off in a dead-sprint toward the boy. About 10 yards short of the car, I felt something in my pelvis sort of "pop" (for lack of a better word) and pain radiated down my legs. I took several more (involuntary) steps as my momentum died, and then I was just standing there, unable to move my legs; it felt as though they were cemented to the ground.

Fortunately, a 39-week-pregnant woman dashing through the yard attracted a bit of attention, and my husband had taken off sprinting behind me. When I stopped, he raced past me and scooped the little boy up from behind the car, which had continued to back-up, obviously unaware of the child.

Joel took the boy inside to his parents, and the car drove off, but I was still stuck, standing in the middle of this huge yard. I tried taking a step and drew in my breath sharply as the pain radiated through my pelvis. I could stand on my left leg, but it was excruciating to bear any weight at all on my right. A few moments later, I saw Joel come out of the house, and called him over to me, while another friend (who had noticed me standing there) made her way over to see if everything was all right.

Eventually, with Joel's help, I made it back over to the picnic table and sat down. I was pretty sure what had happened. The pain was all coming from my pubic symphysis--the joint at the front of the pelvis which relaxes during pregnancy to allow, ultimately, for the flexibility of the pelvis as the baby passing through it during birth. I figured that I had somehow stressed that joint and had injured either the cartilage that composes it or the ligaments that support it. I gave my midwife a call to see if she had any advice or insight to offer.

Her opinion as to what had probably happened confirmed what I had assumed, with regard to the nature of the injury. She said that a trip to the ER would probably only provide ice and pain medication--there was likely nothing they could do to "fix" it. She suggested that I try taking a bath, then alternating ice and heat, and that she would call me in the morning. She said that a chiropractor might ultimately be my best bet, and that she could recommend someone for me to see on Monday, if not convince one to see me tomorrow (Sunday).

I sat at the picnic table (sitting was uncomfortable, but not particularly painful) for a while, until it began to hurt a bit and I needed to use the bathroom. I asked Joel to help me get to the house to use the bathroom, and told him we should probably leave after that. So he tried helping me to my feet, but I found, once again, that my feet were absolutely cemented to the earth. I couldn't seem to lift my legs once I was up. We tried several times and he eventually suggested that he could just go get the car and drive it to the picnic table to get me. So that's what he did and, with the help of him and another friend, I was able to stand, turn, and sit in the front seat of our car. He drove up to the house, loaded the kids into the car, and we headed home. Once here, he moved the sleeping children to their beds and then backed our car onto our lawn, right up to our front porch. About 10 minutes later, we had managed, together, to get me in the front door and to our bathroom, about 20 feet away. I (finally!) peed before Joel sort of dragged me to the armchair he had moved to be right outside the bathroom door. It was clear that I would not be climbing the stairs to our bath tub, nor would I be able to get in (let alone OUT!) of the tub. So we began alternating hot and cold and...here I am now.

It's excruciating. Seriously. I have been sitting here for the past several hours trying to envision a birth involving this pelvis in the next 1-3 weeks. The thought makes me shudder. I know that many, many women suffer from extreme SPD during their pregnancies and go on to have fine births--I'm able, if barely, to get my mind around this. But I seriously don't know if I could get myself out of this house if it were on fire right now, so the thought of going into labor in this state is paralyzing.

So I'm trying not to freak out. I'm sitting here with ice between my legs, trying-but-failing to sleep in this chair. The rest of my body is aching in response to my lack-of-movement and poor posture, which I feel incapable of fixing. The baby has adopted some sort of weird (and uncomfortable) position, and is hiccuping quizzically while I try to convince myself that I don't need to pee again, that this is going to be okay, that I'll feel better in the morning.

Would Somebody Please Name This Baby, Already?

So a couple (nearly three, I guess) years ago, while pregnant with Lucie, I sent an e-mail out to a big group of friends, asking for opinions on our top-five names. We knew that Lucie was a girl, so narrowing names down had been considerably easier, but I was curious to get a few last-minute opinions from a wide range of people. As it turned out, I honestly don't recall how influential everyone's opinions were on our final decision, but the responses were many-and-varied, and we saved them all for her to read one day--in the hopes that she would find them as entertaining as we did.

So, here we are again. Except, this time, I've waited much longer, and we're much less committed to any name-in-particular. Largely, I believe, because we don't know whether the baby is a boy or a girl, and the knowledge that roughly half the time we spend ruminating over names will be for naught is just too much for us.

We've narrowed the names down to five-or-so for each sex, although I will say that, in each case, the first two are our most serious considerations. I'd love to hear your most honest opinions on these--no worries about hurting my feelings or anything silly like that.

As a reminder, my other two children are Samuel Emerson and Luciana Hasley Kennard (pronounced, god help us, ken-ARD). Sam and Lucie.

This is your opportunity to tell me that the bully in your elementary school was named _____________, or that you lost your virginity to a ______________, or that ______________ was the name of the kid who puked on your shoes in 7th grade P.E.--all the associations that expectant parents often do not welcome. Tell me if one of these names sounds like a stripper, or a World of Warcraft junkie, or a politician. Tell me if I'm missing a seemingly obvious cultural reference. You get it. Here goes.

I'll begin with BOY names, since, deep-down, I believe the fetus to be a boy:

1. Elliot. This is our current front-runner. I'm aware of associations with musician Elliot Smith and the little boy in E.T. Anything else I'm missing? My biggest concern with this name is that it might be too trendy. The Baby Name Wizard Name Voyager had it at number 332 last year. It's not popularity of a name that I fear quite so much as *trendiness.* Sam, for example, was something like #25 the year he was born--but Sam has been a sort of enduring name that's been around forever and has never fallen entirely out of favor. When someone sees the name "Sam," they won't automatically go, "Oh, you must have been born between 2002 and 2008." I'm not so sure about Elliot. What's your impression?

2. Miles. This is, surprisingly, our only recycled (boy) name from our other kids. Joel favored this name when we were expecting Sam, and I favored Emerson. We ended up settling on Sam (obviously). But we still like the name Miles and, although we *didn't* consider it before we knew Lucie was a girl, it's back on the table this time around. I personally like the imagery it conjurs up, when considered as an improper noun--I think of miles travelled (or "miles to go before I sleep," perhaps?), by foot, or by car, or by bike. That's a really positive association for me; I like to go places (plus Kilometers, I feel, lacks a certain aesthetic and conveys a false European identity that I would hate to suggest). If we don't use this name, it will be in serious middle name contention.

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I felt compelled to draw a little line there, because those really are our top two considerations, and these next three are only marginally still in-the-running, so to speak. But, please--feel free to change our minds. I do love these names, too.

3. Ezra. The top two responses I get to this name are "For a *boy*?" and "Oh, like in the Bible." (often from the same individuals, which I find perplexing). Apparently no one has heard of Ezra Pound. Or they have, but assumed he was a woman? Anyway, the Biblical reference doesn't bother me, except, perhaps, inasmuch as I already have a Samuel and I wouldn't want each name to cast the other in a religious light. As for people thinking it's a girl's name...I just don't know what to make of them (am I overlooking a famous female Ezra or something?). And Ezra Pound is no particular hero of mine--just the first association I make with the name, culturally or historically.

4. Dorian. Joel actually was the first to say, "For a *boy*?" to this one. And while I might have shaken my head at him, I actually met a woman in my ALACE doula training a few years ago named Dorian, and it suited her so well that I wouldn't be entirely *opposed* to using it for a girl. But mostly I think of it as a boy's name. I will understand sentiments to the contrary, but I don't mind the Dorian Gray association, myself.

5. Holden. This is straight out of The Catcher in the Rye, and I like that association. What I don't like is how the name might sound, purely aesthetically (or aurally), in relation to such names as Aidan, Colton, Hayden, et cetera. Divorced from the literary association, does it remind you of those names?

AND...a couple names that are in contention for middle-name-status, only:

1. Fionn. This is our current favorite for a middle name, I think--especially with Elliot. Elliot Fionn. It's nice, right? Our leading girl name, as you will soon see, is Fiona, so I like that about it. Mostly, though, I just...like it. I suppose a Huck Finn association is possible, if you hear (and don't see) it, but...how often do you hear-and-not-see a middle name?

2. George. We like this name, as it is, but it is also Joel's grandfather's name, which is a very pleasant association (as we are quite fond of Gramps). The biggest drawback is that we don't like it quite enough to make it his first name, and we don't like how it sounds with many names, as a middle name. Elliot George is problematic to me because it sounds too much like George Elliot. Is that silly?

And our GIRL names:

1. Fiona. Like I said, this is our top choice. As a matter of fact, at the time that I sent out our name-inquiry-e-mail for Lucie, it was our top choice for her, too. The Shrek association has been brought to my attention over and over and over again--which sort of irritates me, but should also, I suppose, indicate what a common association it is for people. Fiona Apple, to whom I am indifferent, has been mentioned a few times, too. Still, I like it. Thought I wouldn't seek to shorten it, I think "Fi" is cute. Someone recently asked if I would call her "Fi Fi," and I simply responded with the same dirty look I would teach her to give to anyone who ever referred to her as such. Fi Fi is, obviously, what you name a poodle, and I feel certain that I could quickly-and-rudely dissuade anyone who might feel inclined to using such a nickname to refer to my (human) daughter. But tell me if I'm wrong. If I name her Fiona, do you imagine people will actually try to call her Fi Fi?

2. Vera. This was also a strong consideration with Lucie. In fact, at one point during the summer of 2006 (Lucie was born November 2006), when the World Cup was being played, I assigned names to each of the final four countries and declared that the winner of the Cup would determine the name of our daughter. Had I stuck to that, Lucie would be Vera, because that was Italy's name. (For the record, France was Amelie, Germany was Ingrid and Portugal was Sofie or Sofia--I forget which and, besides, everyone knew Portugal wasn't going to win, right?) I like this one. Someone has pointed out the Vera Wang association, an obvious drawback for me, except that I don't make that association myself. Otherwise, there's an Erin McKeown song called "Vera" that I like to sing and play from time-to-time. Not a meaningful song, just a nice one. (If you go to the link, there's a player in the top-right corner.)

3. Evelyn. When I was pregnant with Sam, we were absolutely certain that, if he was a girl, he was to be Eva. Turns out, he was a boy. By the time I got pregnant with Lucie, though, I had started to worry that, with all the Avas around, Eva would get mispronounced and lumped in with that trend--or *not* mispronounced, but *still* lumped-in, in the spirit of Aidan's friends Hayden, Caden and Jaden. But I still loved it, and considered Eve for a little while, thinking that would clear up any confusion about pronunciation. It was my niece who first suggested to me that we could name her Evelyn (which is lovely) and call her Eve or Eva. As my other children's names suggest, I sort of like this idea of giving a kid a name to "grow into," if they feel so compelled. Then, while visiting friends in Virginia that summer (whilst pregnant with Lucie), we stopped to visit our friend's elderly (great?) grandmother--a sort of spritely woman named Eavie (or was it spelled Aevie? I think it's the former--but, regardless, it was pronounced with a short "e," thus making it a more natural fit with Evelyn). We were briefly in love with this name, but some of my in-laws threw an absolute FIT about Evelyn (can you even imagine?!) and said they just couldn't call her Evelyn. And, I let them dissuade me (which is so unlike me). So we dropped it. Now it's back, but with one problem: I would still want to call Evelyn "Eavie" (or "Evie?--we'd have to sort this out later), but I'm not sure I like having both my daughters have a "--ie" kind of name. Lucie and Evie. Might be too much "ie," don't you think? And I could say I was going to call her Eva or Evelyn or Eve...but I just like Evie better than all of these, and it feels more like an Evelyn-derivative.

4. Ingrid. Another "honorable mention" name from Lucie, I forget what ultimately caused us to put this name aside, but I still like it. Ingrid Michaelson is a good association--although not an important one.

And our only middle-name-only contender for girls is:

1. Bee. I like it spelled like the buzzing, flying thing--not like a shortening of "Beatrice." And I dare you to come up with any name it's *not* cute with. Fiona Bee. Vera Bee. Evelyn Bee. Remind you of Bea Arthur? All the better. Otherwise, I haven't thought much about girl middle names. Haven't thought much about girl *names,* actually. I don't know why, but I totally have it in my head that this baby is a boy.

2. George. Okay, I take it back. Joel came up from the basement while I was writing this and I read it to him, and he said, "What about George for a middle name for a girl?" I hadn't thought of that, to be honest, but I'll throw it out there for your consideration, nonetheless. Could be cool, I think.

Okay. So please do give me your feedback--like I said, in addition to valuing a wide range of impressions/opinions as we *choose* a name, I will certainly compile all the responses I get and keep them somewhere for this child to enjoy some day. For as unsure as I am about names this time around, I do very much enjoy the process of thinking about and sort through names. You can leave me a nice, long comment, if it suits you. Or, if you prefer, send me a response at: susankennard@gmail.com.

Creeped-Out.

As a favor to the Middle-Child-To-Be, my sister gave Lucie this set of "I Feel..." stamps at my "un-shower" a couple weeks ago. The kids have enjoyed getting them out and playing with them, but hadn't actually tried stamping them until this morning, when Sam decided to get them out.

(You'll have to forgive me these photos--I was really in no mood to pull out the camera, but felt compelled to share this nonetheless.)

So Sam got them out (as you can see, Lucie quickly lost interest in her Play-Doh and opted instead to join Sam) and began stamping. As he went, he demonstrated his nurturing big-brotherliness as well as his emotional maturity by quizzing Lucie, "How does this face look, Lucie?" She would answer, for example, "Happy!" And he would correct her, "No. Excited."




To be perfectly honest, I probably wouldn't have interpreted many of these expressions quite as they were identified; "Tired" just looks bored, if you ask me. And "Scared" simply looks surprised. Sam interpreted most of the expressions his own way, too (and I had to remind him not to deny his little sister the same liberty).



My favorite, though, was this one:



He said, "Lucie, what kind of face is this?"
She answered, "That's a saaaad face." (According to the back of the stamp, this is a "sorry" face, by the way.)
Sam quickly corrected her, in his best older-and-wiser voice: "No, Lucie. This one is Creeped-Out."

A Current Favorite...

If you know Joel and me, you likely know that one of our favorite things to do is to play board games. About a year ago, we became acquainted with a whole little world of really fantastic board games and have spent many hours (and quite a few dollars--these games, typically available online or in specialty shops, are often on the expensive side) playing some of our new favorites.

Lest I give the wrong impression, I should clarify: I'm talking about really fantastic, sometimes complicated, strategy-based board games. I'm not deeply familiar with "role playing" type games, but I'm aware enough of them to feel compelled to differentiate between them and the games we play.

Some of our favorite games--which I won't try to get into explaining, but which you can Google if you're interested, are Ticket to Ride, Power Grid, Stone Age, For Sale, Pandemic and, a favorite most recently, Agricola.

Last Christmas, we gave Joel's parents a game called Carcassonne: a game played by laying tiles to create cities, farms, roads, rivers, et cetera (there are too many variations on this particular game to even go into it) and won by scoring points by strategically placing little wooden figures (called "meeples") in those various features.

To our delight, our 4.5-year-old Sam (and, to a lesser degree, 2.5-year-old Lucie) enjoys board games with more enthusiasm, I think, than any of us. He will play for hours--literally following me around some days with his Memory cards or Trouble game, waiting for me to pause long enough to engage me in one or the other. He loves all sorts of games--some of our favorites have been (in addition to Trouble and Memory) Guess Who?, Connect Four, and Tier Auf Tier (a wooden animal-stacking game made by the German toy company Haba). Sam also loves to involve himself in the "grown-up games," often taking the role of train-placer in Ticket to Ride, or joining an adult "team" in other more complicated games. When we began playing Carcassonne, though, we quickly realized that he was very capable of playing along. Although following the rather complicated (for a 4-year-old) rules required most of his attention and he wasn't quite ready to strategize, per se, he enjoyed playing along, and we were happy to have him join us.

You can imagine my excitement, then, when the makers of Carcassonne recently released a version of the game intended for children aged 4-and-up, called The Kids of Carcassonne. The game is played similarly to the standard version, by laying tiles to create roads and placing colored "meeples" on the roads to score points. Although Sam could handle something slightly more complicated, the very simple gameplay of The Kids of Carcassonne allows him to begin focussing on strategy (something the more complicated "adult" version did not) and, as an added bonus, his little sister is able to enjoy playing as well. The game is designed to take about 20 minutes to play, which is another nice feature for kids. Depending on how you play the regular version (you can purchase additional "expansion packs" to make the game more interesting, but they add time to the game), it can easily take more than an hour to complete, which can be a stretch for even the most avid 4-year-old gamesman.

A few weeks ago, I took pictures of a game of The Kids of Carcassone between Sam, Lucie and myself.

The kids, ready to dive in. You can probably read Lucie's irritation at me wanting to photograph the box before allowing her to dive into it:



The set-up is simple: each player chooses a color of "meeples" and the cards are placed in piles, face-down, around the perimeter of the playing surface. On his or her turn, each player turns over a tile and places it on the growing system of roads in the center of the space. In the kids' version, the tiles are all designed to "fit" wherever you place them--unlike the regular version, where you must align the different elements (city, road, farm, et cetera) in order to place a tile. As you can see, there are differently-colored people pictured on the cards.



When a road is completed ("dead-ends" at both ends into a city, lake, tree, et cetera), players place "meeples" of the corresponding color onto the people pictured on the roads. The first person to play all his or her "meeples," wins.



In this case, that was Sam. Early in his game-playing career, Sam's grandparents taught him to shake his opponents' hands at the conclusion of a game and to tell them "good game." Sam takes this ritual rather seriously, and we are often very impressed by his mature acceptance of the outcome of a given game--regardless of having won or lost.



We hope that, with time, we will be able to say the same for Sam's little sister, who still feels the burn of defeat rather...poignantly.



Anyway, if you're sick of Candyland and want to try something a little more interesting, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of The Kids of Carcassonne (and, while you're at it, why not a copy of Carcassonne for yourself?!) and give it a whirl. A very cool game, indeed.

Full Term Musings...

(It occurred to me that a pictureless post is really quite boring, and so I tagged this on at the last minute--it is, admittedly, just over a month old, taken at 32 weeks, 5 days, but it's a photo, and really...I don't look *that* different, I'm sure. I'm a bit bigger and I really need a haircut, but that's about it.)

As of yesterday, any aspirations I might have had of giving birth prematurely (okay, I had none--but still) went out the window when I reached the end of the 37th week of this pregnancy. It might seem late in the metaphorical game to be saying so, but it's starting to really set in that we will soon be introduced to a new family member, another tiny person to spend the rest of our lives loving and admiring and generally disbelieving we could have had any real part in creating. Occasionally, this realization brings anxiety, as I imagine the potential inefficacy of our "divide-and-conquer" strategy as we become outnumbered by the kids and envision, instead, the kids using their numerical advantage to compensate for their deficit in physical stature and cognitive maturity, until eventually we are prisoners in our own home, where only refined sugars and pre-packaged entrees are allowed, where the television plays non-stop, in a high-traffic living space (and actually receives *channels*), and the pajamas all have licensed characters on them.
Most of the time, though, it is with pure joy and absolute wonder that I imagine that there will be one more of these amazing little people with whom to share our lives. I remember when I was pregnant with Lucie, looking at Sam and feeling such an intense love for, and commitment to, him that I worried that perhaps I wasn't cut out to have a second child. I hated to admit it to anyone, but I was really fearful that I simply wouldn't like my second child as much as my first. Those days, when I thought about Lucie, it was only in the context of how her existence would affect Sam--would he feel jealous, would the adjustment be difficult for him, would their spacing serve his personal development well? It was as though I couldn't quite consider her as a real person, with needs as real and as important as Sam's. I remember recalling Sam's birth, those first moments looking into his face, and the immediate familiarity with and recognition of him that I felt--as though I had always known his little face, had often stroked his wrinkled feet and grasped his tiny hands. I was afraid that Lucie would feel, by contrast, like a stranger to me.
You may have guessed, though, that it turned out to be all right. In fact, I forgot to notice it at her birth, and instead realized several days later, "Oh, thank god--I'm totally in love with her." And her birth was no less magical, and our first moments spent gazing at one another no less sweet or familiar. And at no time since her birth has one of my children seemed any more-or-less a part of me, or like anything less than the most important things in my life.
And so as I await the birth of this third child, I'm not at all worried that perhaps this will be the child that doesn't evoke the outpouring of love and emotion, the one who really will feel like some sort of interloper in our home or our lives. Even though I can't imagine what it might feel like to love a third like I love my second and my first, there is no doubt in my mind that, in a matter of weeks, I will wonder how we ever survived without this person.

I ordered my birth supplies and they arrived, and my thoughts were thus directed, in many ways for the first time, to the details and logistics of the birth itself. It is my preference to keep my contemplations of the matter sort of loose, not in such a way as to leave me unprepared--far from it!--but to allow my birth to unfold as it will, without the rigidity of some sort of structured expectation on my part. So while I enjoy the task of preparing supplies and organizing what may be needed, I am keeping my thinking about the birth as broad as possible. It has occurred to me that this must make me appear unprepared to some friends who ask, "Will you have a water birth?" or "Where will you set up the pool?" or "Will your mother/sister/kids attend the birth?" or "Is someone taking pictures?" I've sort of envisioned my birth all sorts of ways--in the tub, in my living room, in the tub in my bedroom, on my bed, on the floor, in the bathroom, on the couch. I picture my mom or my sister or both being there when the baby is born, and I picture a more private birth with only my husband and midwife. I've imagined it happening quickly, in the middle of the night, before my midwife can arrive or my kids be taken to my parents' house (where they have indicated they would prefer to be during the birth--Lucie reminds me that the new baby will "cry so loud" and Sam speaks knowingly of the way newborn babies often spit on or lick (?) people shortly after their births, and both think they might prefer to avoid these insults and--particularly because their preferences align nicely with my own, but even if they didn't--I plan to honor their requests that they go elsewhere until the baby is born). It's not entirely intentional, that I see my child's birth so differently each time I imagine it. I guess it's just that, when I began to go down that particular path of thought, I do my best not to steer too much, but to instead just let the story unfold for me. And it always seems to unfold differently. And my suspicion is that, when the time comes, my birth will unfold in some entirely different way that I haven't yet thought to consider.

Un-Shower...

My kind and generous sister threw a little party for us today--an "un-shower," as she called it. It was very informal, quite small, and exactly the kind of gathering I favor. I really enjoyed myself. So much so, in fact, that I didn't take a single picture, despite thinking several times, "I should run upstairs and get my camera." I didn't do it. And I'm not sorry. But if had taken a few pictures, they might have the following captions:

1. My guests, from left-to-right--my sister, a few friends who live nearby, one friend who drove a bit to be here, and one friend who drove a mighty long way to join us today (and who just found out that she too is expecting another little one--hurray!), my niece, and my midwife.

2. The food table. My sister instructed everyone to bring their favorite pregnancy craving. We had: tacos and seven-layer dip, bruschetta, German potato salad, puppy chow, m+m's, fruit, a variety of olives, tortilla chips and sour cream, and ice cream with a wide variety of toppings.

3. The calendar on which my guests wrote their guesses for the date and time the baby would be born, along with what they supposed the baby's weight and length would be. They wrote their guesses in pink or blue to indicate their guesses as to the baby's sex. As you can see, the guesses are weighted somewhat heavily in favor of Sam and Lucie having a baby brother, and no one suspects I will give birth on my due date (thanks, though, to the two optimists who chose dates two and four days *before* my due date; you're kind). The range of weights ranges from 8 lbs., 13 oz., to 11 lbs. A couple months ago, Joel and I also made our own guesses:

Mine:
A boy, born August 29 (I forget the time, but it's written down--early afternoon, though), weighing 10 lbs., 2 oz. and measuring 22(.5?) inches.

Joel:
A girl, born August 22 (forget the time...afternoonish, I think), weight 9 lbs., 10 oz. (and I forget the length, except that his original guess was 17 inches until I explained that that would be a rather short baby for that weight and reminded him that our other two children were 22 and 22.5 inches long).

4. The kids, playing in the backyard. That would be my nephew who has turned the hose on and is soaking the other young guests and turning the sand table into a mud table.

5. The generous gifts brought by my thoughtful friends: a lovely muslin sleep sack and cute onesie, the most adorable knit longies that ever I have seen, a super-soft fleece blanket, a glass bottle with a cool silicone cover on it, a giraffe made of natural rubber, a natural diaper-rash balm, and a very cute little stuffed frog, and the most beautiful baby book ever (I couldn't possibly forsake this beautiful book--even if it is my third child) for the baby. For Sam and Lucie, bubbles, hand-made bracelets, an activity pad and crayons and, for the middle-child-to-be, a set of "I feel" stamps like these.

Seriously, the photos hardly do it justice, but it was a very nice day, and I really enjoyed myself. I'm not a big baby shower fan, but I always feel a little sad that second and subsequent births and babies don't receive the sort of attention that first baby does. As I record the details of today for my third child (in a really gorgeous baby book, perhaps?), I hope I will be able to convey the kind of support and excitement that surrounded us and we anticipated him or her.

This is More Like It...

Okay. So a couple weeks ago, I posted the results of my day spent dying diapers and other mostly-baby-related stuff. The word "lackluster" comes to mind. Although I had a great time with everyone at our little "Dyeing Extravaganza," I was rather disappointed in the way everything turned out.

And so I started over.

With my chemist-husband by my side, I went back and re-dyed nearly *everything,* this time following the dyeing instructions to a "T." We generally did only one color at a time--usually late at night, after the kids were in bed (or we'd start it, and I'd sit and stir while he put the kids to bed). It was laborious and tedious and time-consuming...but I couldn't be much happier with the results.

Here's what we did, more or less:

1. First I organized all the diapers/clothes into piles of what I wanted dyed what color. At this time, I also tied-up any garments that I intended to tie-dye.

2. Starting in no particular order, I weighed the clothes for a given color (on an infant scale, which made it extra fun, because my scale weighs in grams, and my dye recipe was for a pound of dry fabric. The scale also had to be re-calibrated nearly daily--which is to say, between every color--because my children found it an irresistible plaything when I left it set-up on the dining room table). So I weighed the clothes, making adjustments in order to get as close to an even pound-or-half-pound mark as possible, and occasionally having to prioritize which items would make it into a particular color, as I was running low on dye (remember--this was my *second* attempt with this particular order of dyes).

3. Using the following formula, I mixed my dye in a large tub (I used the same Rubbermaid-type storage tubs that I use to store all my kids' outgrown clothes):

For every pound of dry fabric, mix:
3 Gallons Warm (~105*) Water (some colors called for hotter (130*) water in order to achieve accurate color results)
3 Cups Non-Iodized Salt
1 Tablespoon Fiber-Reactive Procion Dye
(For the record, the colors I used were: Truffle Brown, Hot Pink, Chinese Red, Deep Orange, Bright Yellow, Bright Green, Turquoise, Brilliant Blue, Grape, and Imperial Purple.)

(I mixed the warm water and salt until the salt had dissolved. In a separate container, I mixed the dye with enough hot water to create a "slurry." Once the salt was dissolved, I added the dye and mixed it until it appeared even.)

4. I submerged my diapers/clothes in the dye, on item at a time, until everything was in. I stirred constantly or nearly-constantly for the next 20 minutes.

5. Meanwhile, Joel mixed (or, if Joel wasn't here to help, I did this in advance) 1/3 cup Sodium Carbonate (we used Arm + Hammer Washing Soda) per pound of dry clothes with hot water (again, the amount of water wasn't extremely important--just enough to dissolved the sodium carbonate completely).

6. After 20 minutes, I held (wearing gloves, of course) all my fabric to one side of the dyeing bin, and Joel added roughly 1/3 of the sodium carbonate solution to the dye (keeping it away from the clothes and mixing as he poured). Once it was added, I mixed the fabric back into the rest of the tub. We did this again at 25 minutes, and finally at 30 minutes.

7. After the finally installation of fixer (~30 minutes after having initially added the clothes to the dye), I continued stirring as constantly as I could stand for another 30-60 minutes (depending, primarily, on the shade of the dye--darker colors require a bit more time and lighter colors, less).

8. After that additional 30-60 minutes, I wrung the fabric out, piece-by-piece, and transfered it to another (dry and empty) tub. At this time, I removed rubber bands from the items I was tie-dying.

9. When everything was wrung out and untied, I put it in the washer for a short cold water cycle (to rinse off the salt and other chemicals) and then, using a little bit of special detergent, washed it on the longest, hottest cycle my washer had to offer. Most of the time, this was sufficient for removing all the extra dye (which I verified by watching during the rinse cycle to see if the water ran clear). If it didn't, I ran it a second time.

10. Once the water was running clear out of the washer, I dried the clothes (I used my dryer, because (a) I was growing very impatient for this process to be over, (b) it was usually between 12 and 2 a.m. by the time I was doing this and (c) the weather has been rather cold and damp lately, but line-drying would work just as well).

I have yet to learn how to re-size my photographs so that Blogger will let me add more than five to a given post (I'm pretty sure that's the problem, anyway), so this will just be a sampling--a smattering, if you will--of my dye results. But here's what we have:

In addition to the large stack of prefolds (24 each of newborn, infant, and standard size), I dyed some newborn-sized fitteds that I picked up used. I also dyed and tie-dyed a few covers--one came free with the Kissaluvs fitteds, and the other two were leftovers from Lucie's diapered days:



I dyed roughly a billion old onesies--most of which were originally Sam's, handed down to his cousin Luca, who returned them in time for Lucie to wear them, before they went back to Luca's house for his little sister Annika to enjoy. My sister lives in the country, and her water turns everything a sort of dingy grey color (this is what she tells me, anyway, though I suspect foul play). To put it lightly, these onesies were disgusting. Putting them on an innocent little baby would be entirely unconscionable. But a little (lot) of dye took care of that, and they're looking good-as-new.

In addition to many, many solid-colored onesies in every color under the sun (too boring to photograph, but you can imagine), I dyed several of these in two tones by simply hanging them over the edge of the dye bin and allowing only half of them to reach the dye:



I tie-dyed several others; these are a few of my favorites (the one in the middle is my very, very favorite, I think:



And I also bought a few blank garments from Dharma Trading Company, just for dying. Many of these are not pictured (not because they aren't nice, but because that would make for six photographs in one post, now, wouldn't it?). Here are a few that I liked. The green and yellow shirts on the right of this photo are actually the little t-shirts we took from the hospital when we had Lucie; I bought the pink and green shirts on the left.



Perhaps when I have a chance, I'll post some pictures of the also-very-cool stuff I dyed for Sam and Lucie (who were not about to be left out of this process)--several shirts, dresses, a couple pair of PJ pants, and even a fitted sheet for Lucie. But not today.

Why Ultra-Pasteurized Milk Freaks Me Out...

I had a prenatal visit today, here at my house. It's only the second "official" prenatal I've had with the midwife for whom I work (and who, I suppose, works for me), but I see her often enough at *other* people's prenatals, births, and postpartum visits to feel like she is adequately caught-up on the goings-on of this pregnancy. In fact, it was sort of funny having her out for a prenatal for me--it just felt like we were in between appointments or something, waiting for the client to arrive.

Nothing of particular interest happening on the clinical front, I suppose (and this is one case where I have a preference for the uninteresting). I'm 32 weeks tomorrow, and the baby is still quite moveable--a fact that I am well aware of every time I make a big position change, like lying down or rolling over in bed. The baby seems to adjust make him or herself comfortable. When she palpated my abdomen today, the baby felt sort of oblique, but squirmed into a vertex position shortly after she began (going, it seemed from OP to LOP to LOT in the time it took her to palpate). When she went to listen to heart tones, she gave a little push on his or her legs/feet, and he or she quickly turned more LOA so she could listen through his or her back. So...plenty of room, which is not surprising. I'm 5'10, and most of my height is in my torso, so there's plenty of room for a baby to sort of...sprawl. She said the baby felt "normal-size," which isn't high on my list of concerns, but is nice to hear, nonetheless. My first two kids were big, but not record-breakingly enormous (9 lbs. 1 oz., and 10 lbs. 7 oz.) and I don't have any reason to suspect that this baby will fall significantly out of that range. And I like that range.

In more interesting pregnancy developments, Joel informed me today that I'm beginning to "look pregnant everywhere, and not just in your belly," as if that was something to be excited about. "You mean fat." I clarified. "No, not fat--pregnant...just, you know, like your face is sort of filled-out, and your arms and thighs have gotten bigger, and your feet are swollen." Apparently this means something other than "fat," though; interesting. It's okay--I'm pretty comfortable with my weight (don't get me wrong; I prefer non-pregnant numbers) and he knows that. And he's pretty bad at articulating such observations without sounding offensive, and I know that. It works.

I noticed this morning that the milk I bought a few days ago expires August 12, just 5 days before my "due date." This is my first real indication that the baby will be here soon--when the milk's expiration date approaches (and eventually exceeds!) that of my pregnancy.

When I was pregnant with Sam, I was seeing an OB at a small, local hospital, and was induced on my due date (despite the fact that I showed no signs that I was ready to go into labor and Sam showed no signs that he wasn't a happy and healthy remaining on the inside for a couple more weeks--don't get me started) and I gave birth to him 3 days later (again, don't get me started). Lucie came, of her own volition (with a gentle nudge or two from my uterus), exactly 14 days after my "due date." So I'm not anticipating this baby arriving in a particularly punctual manner. Although I generally frown on this sort of thing, I remind myself that he or she is only a fetus, and I have years to indoctrinate him or her with a favorite adage: "To be early is to be on time, and to be on time is to be late." Actually, with regard to pregnancies and due dates, I almost feel as though the opposite is true--to be late is to be "on time," and to be "on time" is to be early.

We haven't given too much serious attention to naming the baby--I suspect because we've decided not to learn the baby's sex. We have a couple boy names--one that was a leftover from my first pregnancy and one that we tossed around during both pregnancies, but never considered very seriously for either (but that, for whatever reason, we've grown to really favor this time around). I'm pretty sure that, if the baby is a boy, he will bear one of these names (or both of these names, in one order or another, perhaps). We feel like both are really good names that we like a lot, and we'd be satisfied naming our son either. Girl names present more of a problem, for some reason. We also have two girl names that are currently contending for the top slot on our list, but I sort of have this feeling like we're deciding which girl name we dislike less sometimes. It's not that exactly--I like both names--it's just that neither feels like I like it so much that I want to name my daughter with it. Perhaps it's because I feel inclined to think--for no particular reason--that the baby is a boy, and that makes it harder to really picture this child with any "girl name." Not sure. But that's where we're at. Both of the girl-names were names we considered for Lucie. In fact, we always sort of regretted not naming her one of them (we've often lamented that she just doesn't actually feel like a Lucie, now that we know her), which makes it hard, in some ways, to think of naming another child with this name, as though it somehow "belongs" to Lucie or something.

I'm not being secretive about the names--I just realized I haven't mentioned any of them. Our top boy names are Elliot and Miles (in that order), and our current favorites for a girl are Fiona and Vera (in, right now, no particular order). Other boy names we've tossed around, but that I'm pretty sure will not gain enough favor in the time it takes for our milk to go sour to replace the others, are Ezra and Dorian. Other girl names: too many. Sam was going to be an Eva, had he been a girl. (Lucie was going to be a Henry, incidentally). Lucie's first name that I really thought might stick was Amelie. We also considered Evelyn (calling her Evie), Silvia, Ada, Vera, Fiona, Beatrice. Beatrice, Ada and Silvia have been left behind, Evelyn *mostly* left behind, which leaves Vera and Fiona. Anyway, that's where we are with regard to names, and I suspect that's about where we'll stay until something compels us to make a decision. Something like a baby being born.

As for the birth itself, I haven't done a lot to prepare for that, unless you count growing the baby--which is a really imperative process with regard to the birth, really. I did buy a fishy net the other night at Meijer. I was looking for a hose adaptor to make get warm water into my dying buckets much easier when I stumbled upon the fishy nets and thought, eh, I'll go ahead and pick one of these up. Joel joked that he should probably "practice" before the birth, so I offered to hold unannounced "drills." I told him that, whenever he hears me taking a bath, he should poke his head in from time-to-time to make sure everything looked all right--ready to spring to action at any time.

It's funny, this is my first home birth--Sam and Lucie were both born in (different) hospitals, with an OB and CNM, respectively. But out-of-hospital birth has become my "normal" over the past couple of years, so it is actually easier and more natural for me to imagine giving birth at home than in a hospital, even though I've never done so before.

I don't feel particularly anxious or nervous about the birth, despite a run of sort of difficult or abnormal births I've attended lately. As much as these situations do occasional inspire "what if...?" type questions with regard to my own birth, I'm a rational person and I know that these things happening does nothing to increase (or decrease) the likelihood of them (or something else) happening to me or my baby. They do cause me to think through some scenarios that I might be able to ignore were I in a different profession, but I don't regret that. Anyway, I feel good about my upcoming birth and confident in the people who plan to attend it. And I'm looking forward to it--I very much appreciate the tension between the predictable-and-unpredictable that labor and birth create, and I'm looking forward to experiencing my baby's birth as it unfolds.

Pregnancy-Induced Homeschool-Fantasy?

Sam, to my surprise and my delight, is shaping up to be more of a language-guy than a math-guy. I recognize that this could all change, but it's been a sort of shocking development over the past several months. I guess he just *looks* so much like my chemist-husband that I didn't think there was much chance he'd turn out to be a language-lover like myself. About this time last year, though (perhaps a couple months later) it came to my attention that he recognized all the letters of the alphabet, and knew the phonetic sounds associated with most of them. Terrified that I'd make him hate reading forever, I *really* let him set the pace as I helped him to learn the sounds he didn't know, and began teaching him slightly-more-advanced phonics. A couple months after he became so very interesting, he lost interest just as quickly, and we just let it go. He didn't really show much interest in this pre-reading stuff again for several months, until one day a couple months ago he pointed out some word (I feel like maybe it was "fast") and said, "ffffff-ah-ah-ah-ssssssss-tuh. Fffff-ah-ssss-tuh. Fassssss-tuh. FAST!" Since then, we've worked here-and-there with him, teaching him a new phonics rule here ("silent e," or "when two vowels go a walking..."), reading BOB books there, but mostly just waiting for him to take the lead in going the next step. It remains really important to me that he do this all at his own pace, because it's really important to me that he enjoy reading. The funny thing is, he is absolutely averse to learning the simplest "math." He counts to about 15 reliably. Sometimes 20, but not always. He learns "math" on a needs-to-know basis. He LOVES, for example, to play games. When we started playing some game or another with him that used dice, he quickly learned to count to 12. For the longest time, he could only count to 12. I forget what prompted him to learn to count to 15-20, but I think it was his desire to play hide-and-seek with a slightly older girl at the playground at the zoo a couple months ago. I recall that, when they played, he would only count to 12 on his turns, and she would count to 20 on hers. On the way home from the zoo, he wanted to rehearse the numbers from 10-20. The other day, he was doing a phonics workbook (another thing he loves is any sort of "workbook"--phonics, mazes, dot-to-dot, et cetera...anything but numbers, of course), and the activity was to write the first letter of the picture above the line. He came to a picture of a dime and asked me what it was. I said, "It's a dime." "D-d-dime...D!" he said. I continued, "Sam, you know what a penny is, right? So if you have ten pennies, it's the same as having one dime." He sort of waved his hand at me, as if shooing a fly, and said, "Mom...just...don't."
In addition to this interest in letters and reading (especially as it is contrasted by his *dis*interest in numbers and math), Sam is developing a respectable vocabulary for a four-year-old. I love this about him so much. I love that he experiments with vocabulary, trying out new words that he hears until he really gets a good grasp of their meaning. When I hear him say something new or unexpected, I'll often ask him what a given word means--often he demonstrates a pretty accurate understanding of the word, often not. But I love that he cares to implement these new words he is hearing into his own lexicon. I've recently overheard him threatening to "obliterate" his sister (charming it is not, but he defined it rather nicely), another time, to "analyze her brain," (his definition of this was rather far off). He told me he was a Star Wars "genius," (definition right on), and, comparing his grandparents to two Star Wars characters, said, "Grammie is sort of like Gpa's apprentice" (definition way off). When I poured a cup of water on his head to get his attention in the bath, he told me I had made "quite an impression." Tonight, he asked his dad to "supervise" him while he tried out a new recipe. It's not that his vocabulary is so large that warms my heart--it's that he isn't content to say "kill" when he means "obliterate," or "beat" when he means "defeat," or "defeat" when he means "annihilate." I love that he is experimental, and not overly cautious, with new words.
A couple days ago, he had some paper that is intended for preschoolers to practice writing the letters of the alphabet. So the first page had a row of solid "A"s for him to trace, the second row had dotted "A"s, and the third row was blank (for him to practice, theoretically, writing his own "A"s). He was looking at the book, but instead of practicing writing, he was "reading" a story that he was making up as he went along. He did this for over 10 minutes, after about 5 of which it occurred to me that he was doing it all in iambic tetrameter. "da-DA da-DA da-DA da-DA/da-DA da-DA da-DA da-DA." Sometimes he worked rhymes into it--often he had to use nonsense words in order to do so, and he often dragged a word out into additional syllables to make it "work," (I heard him say, at one point, "The circus is such fun indeed/The dogs can do cool tri-i-icks"). Again, it just did my heart good to hear him playing with language and imitating the sort of simple, sing-songy "poetry" found in a lot of children's books we've read.
Of course, all of this awareness of language comes at a cost. While we were up north a couple weeks ago, my sister was telling a story that involved her husband using a German slang word that literally means "snail," but that is apparently used by German teenagers, at times, to refer to a woman's vagina. She said, "It would be sort of the same connotation as using the word 'pussy.'" Sure enough, the next day when Lucie came into the house crying, Sam followed her, explaining that "She hurt her pussy, Mom." Rather taken aback, I exclaimed, "Sam! I don't want to hear you use that word--do you even know what that word means?!" He said, "Yeah--it's another word for 'vulva.'" (We've since talked about the fact that I would like him to just stick with "vulva," and he has agreed).
All of this recent interest in language has stirred up a little feeling in me--one that occasionally surfaces and which I am usually able to suppress--that I would really like to homeschool/unschool Sam. The thought of turning his curious little mind over to the drudgery of public education makes me feel a little uneasy. He seems so eager to learn what he wants to learn that I hate to think of forcing the "other stuff" on him before he's ready. (I suspect that a dismissive wave of his hand and a "just...don't" may not go over so well when his first grade teacher tries to teach him addition).
More than keeping him out of school, though, I get really excited about all the things we could do if he were home. The things I would love to read with him as he gets a bit older, the places we could go. His interest in reading came earlier than I anticipated and it has encouraged some semi-formal educational moments between us (by which I guess I just mean times when I am *deliberately* teaching him things) and I've been pleasantly surprised by the way the relationship seems to work.
I don't know. As I've confessed before, pregnancy sometimes stirs up some uncharacteristically crafty ambitions in me (see here and here and here), and it's possible this is just more of that hormone-induced-creativity carrying me away. And it's all a very overwhelming prospect for me, to be sure--it leaves me feeling so unsure where to begin. But, for now, I'm just going to carry the idea around with me for a bit, and see how it develops (or doesn't) with time. And if it passes with the placenta, why then, so be it.

Diaper-Dying Results...

Okay, so I made my first dying attempt a few days ago (as in, adding color to some uncolorful garments, not suicide). It could have gone *better,* but I'm not completely unhappy with the results, and I feel like the things that turned out poorly are salvageable. I had intentions of taking lots of pictures to document the whole day/process, but there simply wasn't time or energy for such a thing. I didn't even get any "before" pictures--but you can use your imagination. Mostly stuff was white. I had a few friends over to make the day more enjoyable, and it certainly did. At the end of the day, as I surveyed the results, I was able to dismiss any artistic shortcomings by virtue of the fact that I was in such good company--even if said company did not improve my artistic aptitude or mathematically prowess.
So, here's what I learned:

1. Trying to dye in 10 different colors at the same time is simply too much. Next time I'll stick to no more than half that--and if I really feel compelled to create an entire rainbow (an understandable compulsion, no?), I'll break it up into two or more dying sessions. It was really difficult to get 10 color buckets set up, to remember what colors I had what soaking in, to remember to stir each of 10 bins often enough, et cetera. Too much.

2. Perhaps the most important lesson of the day: When the instructions say "1 Tablespoon of dye + 3 gallons of water + 3 cups of salt for every 1 pound of dry clothing," this should be interpreted to mean, "1 Tablespoon of dye + 3 gallons of water + 3 cups of salt FOR EVERY 1 POUND OF DRY CLOTHING." It looked like plenty of dye for the amount of fabric we were dumping into it, so we just assumed it was enough dye for the amount of fabric we were dumping into it. And the interesting thing is, the first, well, pound-or-so of clothing that went into the dye turned out brilliantly. The rest...didn't. The funny part was that it all looked good hanging on the line--you couldn't tell what went in first or what went in later, really. But when I rinsed it all and washed it, the things that were thrown in first remained deep and vibrant, and the other stuff washed to either a much lighter shade of the same color (think half-saturated or less), or, in some cases, washed totally clean. The good news is, I have more dye, so it should be pretty easy to just re-dye the stuff that didn't turn out like I had hoped.

3. Do this on a Saturday, when Joel is home to watch the kids. Inviting friends over was a great idea, but each of those friends brought offspring, ranging in age from 5 months to 6 years--a total of 8 kids, including my own. Shouting for my niece and nephew to stop digging in my vegetable garden, putting out fires between 2-and-3-and-4-year-olds, taking Lucie potty, and turning a blind eye on the number of Freezy Pops these children were consuming turned out to be rather distracting. My kids did enjoy dying some things later on (unfortunately, these were among the "washed nearly clean" items), but when everyone was here, it was just too chaotic. And don't get me wrong--I appreciate a little chaos now-and-again.

Okay, well, without further explanation or excuse, here are some pictures--it's an overcast, thunderstorming kind of day, but I wanted to take the pictures in natural light to get the colors as close as possible. The fitteds are the closest representation of the colors, but even that one didn't turn out perfectly. The really dark ones are "imperial purple," and they look more purple in person than in the picture. And the green ones are a little more of a "bright green" than the sort of minty color they appear. But, anyway, you'll get the idea.

Some of our dye buckets in action:



I bought these Kissaluv fitteds (the teeny-tiny newborn sized ones) used from someone online. They were mostly the unbleached color, but some of them were pastel purple, blue, peach or yellow. I was happy with how these turned out.



Some newborn prefolds--I actually dyed 24 of these, but this was a sampling of the colors that actually took:



Some regular-sized prefolds (I did 24 of these, too):



All my prefolds. I dyed 24 each of newborn, infant and regular sized. Some turned out, others didn't. I'm going to re-dye the ones that washed to a really pale color or white.



Overall, my first attempt at dying was a success--if not because the results were exactly what I desired, because I feel like I learned enough to possibly do it well the *next* time I try. And that is shaping up to be very, very soon...