I'm in a cozy bubble these days, with the "quaalude trimester" (as a friend calls it) officially underway. Of course, that doesn't mean doubts about the health and well-being of the fetus don't creep in, say, a week before I'm due for a checkup. (Why am I not feeling movement? Or am I, but mistaking it for everpresent gas?) I don't have it in me to get stressed out, at least not in the proper (leaving multiple frantic voicemails for the midwife) NYC way.
My coping strategy for sending Jonah off to school so far is to keep bringing up to everyone how sad I am about it, then try not to start crying while I talk about it. I'm getting a bit better at that. But I still haven't perfected in my head the keeping a calm, happy demeanor when I drop him off, that first day. Another coping strategy: distraction via travel planning. We'll spend a week in San Francisco in October, and I'm out of my head with joy since it's one of my favorite places on earth (and because we got free tickets with some long-hoarded air miles).
But the ultimate strategy for making this transition easier is coming from Jonah himself, who seems to be as excited about starting school as he is intent on throwing multiple temper tantrums every day (mostly when his trains go off the rails), and refusing even to consider potty training. By the time Sept 8 rolls around, I may just be pushing him out the door...
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Gestational logorrhea: week 14 (and preschool countdown T-3 weeks)
The heat. The HEAT. I'm so grateful I'm not in the home stretch of this pregnancy in this weather. I met a woman yesterday who was four days overdue with her second kid. Unimaginable.
I may be starting to feel some phantom movement in the belly. It is so subtle and so easy to confuse with intestinal burblings (which are plentiful). The first time I felt Jonah move, I was sitting at my desk at work and I distinctly felt something like a hand brush lightly on my belly... from the inside. It was subtle and extraordinary.
Jonah starts preschool in three weeks. We got a mailing from the school with procedural stuff and a list of things to buy, which is making it much more concrete. I'm hoping that the concreteness also dries my tears, because I've been bawling every time I try to focus on the fact that he'll be missing for four hours of the day, five days a week. Now that we have a schedule, a to-do list, I've been talking to him about school, slowly divulging details, waiting for one of them to trip him up. So far, he hasn't flinched. He is looking forward to having a "cubby." He knows we will leave him there and come back later.
I am unduly worried about the collapse of my influence on Jonah. I've tried so damn hard to shelter him from evil and/or unnecessary cultural influences thus far, carefully cultivating the influences he has had. (Geez, that makes it sound like I've curated him. How calculating.)
I must be an idiot, crying, because it sounds so wonderful in theory, having all that time to myself - more time than I've had to myself since I quit my full-time job. But it's so hard not to feel like I'm being pushed out of a job, or at least asked to scale back my hours considerably. I left my career over a year and a half ago, not at all unwillingly, and this is the first significant change of duties I will have had. Of course, the respite will be brief, since mid-February will bring me back to the trench warfare of newborn care and the various weapons of immediate postpartum: peri-bottle, maxi pads, nipple cream.
I must be an idiot, but I'd be more of an idiot to keep it bottled up and have it come spewing out the day I have to drop Jonah off at the door of his school (after the first week, we are not allowed to follow him in) and tear-stain his brand new experience. I hope I can be a better mom than that.
I may be starting to feel some phantom movement in the belly. It is so subtle and so easy to confuse with intestinal burblings (which are plentiful). The first time I felt Jonah move, I was sitting at my desk at work and I distinctly felt something like a hand brush lightly on my belly... from the inside. It was subtle and extraordinary.
Jonah starts preschool in three weeks. We got a mailing from the school with procedural stuff and a list of things to buy, which is making it much more concrete. I'm hoping that the concreteness also dries my tears, because I've been bawling every time I try to focus on the fact that he'll be missing for four hours of the day, five days a week. Now that we have a schedule, a to-do list, I've been talking to him about school, slowly divulging details, waiting for one of them to trip him up. So far, he hasn't flinched. He is looking forward to having a "cubby." He knows we will leave him there and come back later.
I am unduly worried about the collapse of my influence on Jonah. I've tried so damn hard to shelter him from evil and/or unnecessary cultural influences thus far, carefully cultivating the influences he has had. (Geez, that makes it sound like I've curated him. How calculating.)
I must be an idiot, crying, because it sounds so wonderful in theory, having all that time to myself - more time than I've had to myself since I quit my full-time job. But it's so hard not to feel like I'm being pushed out of a job, or at least asked to scale back my hours considerably. I left my career over a year and a half ago, not at all unwillingly, and this is the first significant change of duties I will have had. Of course, the respite will be brief, since mid-February will bring me back to the trench warfare of newborn care and the various weapons of immediate postpartum: peri-bottle, maxi pads, nipple cream.
I must be an idiot, but I'd be more of an idiot to keep it bottled up and have it come spewing out the day I have to drop Jonah off at the door of his school (after the first week, we are not allowed to follow him in) and tear-stain his brand new experience. I hope I can be a better mom than that.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Gestational logorrhea: week 13
The cat's out of the bag (though the fetus is not, by a long shot). It felt great to come clean about my status, and I stopped short of taking out a full page ad in the New York Times to announce it. I finally got the call back from the midwives I was waiting for, yesterday evening, giving me the results of my screening. As things stand now, the odds of the baby having Down's syndrome are 1 in 620 (better than Jonah's odds were at the same stage) and 1 in 10,000 for another defect called Trisomy 18. I have no further worries, and feel relieved to be able to inhabit my condition fully and without reservation.
We told Jonah the news last night. It was shortly before bedtime, and he was a bit sleepy, reading a book at the table while we ate our dinner. He listened, then wandered off to play, and came back after a time to say, "It gonna come out?" I assured him that yes, the baby would come out, but not until the winter. Today he stared and grinned at babies we saw at the botanical garden, and said "hi, baby!" to my belly when I reminded him the baby was there. If only it could always be this goddamn sweet. (I guess there's no reason it can't be... eventually.)
We told Jonah the news last night. It was shortly before bedtime, and he was a bit sleepy, reading a book at the table while we ate our dinner. He listened, then wandered off to play, and came back after a time to say, "It gonna come out?" I assured him that yes, the baby would come out, but not until the winter. Today he stared and grinned at babies we saw at the botanical garden, and said "hi, baby!" to my belly when I reminded him the baby was there. If only it could always be this goddamn sweet. (I guess there's no reason it can't be... eventually.)
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
GL week 12.2
It's there, it "looks good" and it was jumping around like a jumping bean. Due date has been adjusted to Feb 14. Praying it doesn't arrive on that precise day, because of the V-day tie-ins. I don't want a co-branded baby. But who am I to complain? I should just be grateful if we make it to the hospital in time. I am wearing a maternity shirt today.
The scan today was at the hospital where Jonah was born. It felt great to be walking back in there again with a similar purpose. The waiting room was stuffed with overflowing bellies and their companions. One couple brought a toddler, and I started considering bringing Jonah to the anatomy scan, at 20 weeks. Of course, he'll need to miss a day of school for it. We'll see how much he's liking school, I guess, and how much it would hurt for him to miss a day...
The scan today was at the hospital where Jonah was born. It felt great to be walking back in there again with a similar purpose. The waiting room was stuffed with overflowing bellies and their companions. One couple brought a toddler, and I started considering bringing Jonah to the anatomy scan, at 20 weeks. Of course, he'll need to miss a day of school for it. We'll see how much he's liking school, I guess, and how much it would hurt for him to miss a day...
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Gestational logorrhea: week 12
Tomorrow I'll [hopefully] clear the first important hurdle that stands before my broadcasting my status to the world - having a screening test at the hospital that will give us the odds that something is rotten in Denmark. I truly cannot believe everyone in the universe has not noticed this belly, which now protrudes menacingly under the non-maternity shirts I persist in wearing. I feel that maternity clothes will signal that I've "given up" and am ready to look the part. I'm not. Also, I have yet to take them out of the torn shopping bag they reside in, stashed since last time around.
My utter exhaustion has been replaced by selective exhaustion and random recriminations. Yesterday, I felt energized enough to murder 15 flies that had infested our home (from an as yet unknown source, though I suspect we're harboring eggs somewhere), armed with a can of air freshener and paper towels, and even felt annoyed when Josh opened the window to let #16 fly free. Today, arriving home after lunch, I found a new colony clinging to the window shades, and decided it was much too much to have to cope with. I refused to kill a single one, or even open a window to let them out. Instead, I decided that we'd spend the afternoon in a state of siege, turning on no lights so as not to attract the filthy creatures to other parts of the apartment. Naptime was fine, as the flies haven't ventured into the bedrooms, but naptime was curtailed by UPS ringing our buzzer, which is loud enough to end all sleep. We made an escape to the corner bakery, where I could not help but notice the flies on the wall, and then spent a good hour splashing in the neighbors' wading pool (well, Jonah did). When we got home to the dark apartment with flies still in the window, I almost cried. OK, I think I actually did cry. Then proceeded to feed Jonah dinner in very dim light. At no point did I consider that I could have gone out to buy some flypaper myself - no, I was waiting for Josh to bring it. I did not know he was wrapped up in a big project at work, and was furious when he came home at his usual time and not earlier.
I hate it when the "helpless" switch gets flipped. I hate it when I use passive voice to describe it. I guess I couldn't have continued my insect-murdering spree for a second day, but I could have been a bit more proactive. I'm lucky to have a husband who lets things like this slide... though not entirely unremarked upon.
My utter exhaustion has been replaced by selective exhaustion and random recriminations. Yesterday, I felt energized enough to murder 15 flies that had infested our home (from an as yet unknown source, though I suspect we're harboring eggs somewhere), armed with a can of air freshener and paper towels, and even felt annoyed when Josh opened the window to let #16 fly free. Today, arriving home after lunch, I found a new colony clinging to the window shades, and decided it was much too much to have to cope with. I refused to kill a single one, or even open a window to let them out. Instead, I decided that we'd spend the afternoon in a state of siege, turning on no lights so as not to attract the filthy creatures to other parts of the apartment. Naptime was fine, as the flies haven't ventured into the bedrooms, but naptime was curtailed by UPS ringing our buzzer, which is loud enough to end all sleep. We made an escape to the corner bakery, where I could not help but notice the flies on the wall, and then spent a good hour splashing in the neighbors' wading pool (well, Jonah did). When we got home to the dark apartment with flies still in the window, I almost cried. OK, I think I actually did cry. Then proceeded to feed Jonah dinner in very dim light. At no point did I consider that I could have gone out to buy some flypaper myself - no, I was waiting for Josh to bring it. I did not know he was wrapped up in a big project at work, and was furious when he came home at his usual time and not earlier.
I hate it when the "helpless" switch gets flipped. I hate it when I use passive voice to describe it. I guess I couldn't have continued my insect-murdering spree for a second day, but I could have been a bit more proactive. I'm lucky to have a husband who lets things like this slide... though not entirely unremarked upon.
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