Proof that you can't really expect a pregnant woman to have reasonable ideas about what is or is not a "CRISIS"

Yesterday was an intense day of the nesting/OMG-must-get-everything-done-and-ready-right-NOW urge for me.  I was probably being a little nutty, but I have to say it was kind of a nice change from the I'm-so-tired-I-just-want-to-lay-here-and-drool days that I've been having lately.  I decided that it was finally time (!!!!) to start pre-washing baby clothes, blankets, etc.  So I was upstairs in the nursery, gathering up laundry, when I realized that I couldn't find any of the baby socks anywhere.  I remembered taking them all out of their little packages, rolling them into teeny-tiny sock-pair balls, and putting them in a drawer....but then I also recalled taking them back out when Jeromy suggested I wash them first.  I remembered that Jeromy had been helping me carry a bunch of stuff downstairs, including all of the packaging trash from the stuff we had been putting together in the nursery.  Cue the sinking feeling in my already-plenty-heavy stomach.  By the time Jeromy got home, I had looked all over the house: no baby socks.  I was getting pretty upset, and also getting upset with myself for getting upset,  because, hello, they are just socks.  Lost socks does not in any way, shape, or form constitute a crisis--even really cute socks.  But my hormones had long ago zoomed past "being reasonable."

So when Jeromy walked in the door, he was pretty much greeted by a miserable-looking wife who, on the verge of wailing, accused him of accidentally throwing away all of the baby socks.  We both re-hashed our respective memories of what happened on the night in question, but after a few rounds of "did you look in the hamper?" and "did you double-check the closet?", we both concluded that the precious, never-used baby socks were probably chilling at the landfill by now.  

However, after fearfully checking my face for any signs of lip-quivering, Jeromy decided to go check the garage one last time to see if any of the bags we had brought down were still hiding somewhere.  Sure enough, at the bottom of a bag of boxes and packaging, he found the baby socks.  I'm not sure which one of us was more relieved and excited; me, because the collection of adorable socks had been restored, or Jeromy, because a pregnant wife meltdown had been averted.  

RESCUED!!

 

And in other news....

Just kidding!  My last post was a fun little April Fool's blog joke--we will NOT be naming our child Fitzwilliam Darcy.  Did we get you?  Maybe for a minute?

I will admit that I did mentally go through all of Jane Austen's male protagonists to see if there was a good name among them, and Fitzwilliam Darcy IS one of my favorite characters, but I don't think I could saddle my kid with that name.  It's a bit too 18th-century-aristocrat-who-wears-pantaloons, even for an Austen-lover like me.  And those of you who know Jeromy very well should definitely have known that he'd never have agreed to something so formal!

I wouldn't even know how to BEGIN teaching our kid to tie a cravat...

To give Jeromy the credit he is due, the post was his idea, although the fake name he suggested was "Bosephus Rain."  I was pretty sure no one would buy that one for a minute, so I tried to come up with one that was a little more plausible.  I was still surprised that no one immediately called "April Fool's!" on me, though.  I can't really tell how many people believed me, but I am betting that several people were pretty sure it was a joke, but were afraid to say anything just in case I was serious and they ended up insulting our baby name.  

So after that tease, here is the real deal with the baby name.  We do have one picked that we are 99% sure we will use, and I have stepped away from the baby name book.  Jeromy kind of wants to wait and announce the name when Doctor makes his grand entrance, though.  This is apparently partly because he wants us to be able to "reserve the right to change it" if for some reason we want to do so.  We do know of people (including Jeromy's parents) who have had one name picked out, but went with another one after meeting their baby, so maybe he has the right idea.  However, the idea of waiting to decide on the baby's name until I'm lying exhausted and semi-delirious in a hospital bed after giving birth really stresses me out, so I'm really glad that we do have a top pick agreed upon. 

If I start getting really crazy and antsy about announcing our name choice, Jeromy will probably let me do it, but I'm surprisingly ok with waiting for now, even though I had been dying to pick one and and announce it the week of our big ultrasound.  So for now, the suspense continues...

Happy April!

***UPDATE***   My little brother TOTALLY fell for it.  He had even played an April Fool's trick on his fiancee, but since they are in Hong Kong right now, April 1st was over by the time they read my post, and he wasn't on the lookout for more trickery.  He sent me an e-mail entitled "Not cool man".  Luckily, Victoria figured out that it was a joke and reassured Travis that he would not, in fact, have to be uncle to a Fitzwilliam.

And the boy child shall be called....

After several months of lists and discussions and pouting, Jeromy and I have finally agreed on a name for our son:

Fitzwilliam Darcy Smith

 Distinguished, right??  For those of you who don't know, Fitzwilliam Darcy is the name of the "hero" in one of my favorite books, Pride and Prejudice.  Jeromy wasn't so sure about the name at first, since it's pretty unusual, but I slowly wore him down won him over by pointing out how many less formal-sounding nicknames we would have to choose from (Fitz, Fitzy, Willy, Darcy, etc.)  We plan to wait until after he is born to decide which nickname seems to suit him the best.  

We can't wait for everybody to meet him when he arrives in just a few short months!

Because babies are just like inanimate home decor objects

One of my recent sewing projects was to make a few flannel swaddling blankets:

When I was done, I was really excited to practice using them, but of course we don't yet have a baby to swaddle, nor do we have any life-sized baby dolls lying around the house.   So after prowling around the house looking for something roughly newborn-sized, all I could come up with was a decorative vase:

Hopefully this will help the vase sleep through the night without crying. 

This is your brain on baby

Someone needs to do a Public Service Announcement about "Pregnancy Brain" syndrome.  It is real, people.  Or at least, I hope it is, because if it's not, my I.Q. is just dropping like Charlie Sheen's credibility. (And yes, that is the best simile I could come up with.  Deal.)  I've already written about how I'll get distracted in the middle of doing something.  Well, it seems to be getting worse.  I forget to respond to e-mails and text messages, obsessively check my calendar because I can't remember what is happening when, and find myself going upstairs to get something and getting occupied with something else for a good half hour.  Jeromy has started to mutter about me need a personal assistant just to get through my day.  He does, however, love to reminisce about the incident a few weeks ago when I put my fingers straight into the dish of guacamole without getting a chip first.  He started laughing so hard, he was pretty much crying in the middle of Chipotle. 


Anyway, I also forgot to write about a few more updates in my last post.  They aren't huge earth-shattering events or anything, but I had intended to write about them, and it's been bothering me that I forgot.  So here they are:


First, we went on our hospital tour a few weeks ago.  My OB-GYN delivers at a small, quiet hospital in South Austin.  I was a little nervous that it doesn't have a NICU, but my doctor reassured me that if they are worried at all, they have you deliver at one of the bigger hospitals.  We weren't really sure what to expect on the tour; I'm sure Jeromy was envisioning a walk through a hallway of screaming women and crying babies, but the place was pretty much silent.  We got to go into a few of their delivery/recovery rooms, which made it all VERY real, even though most of the machines are kind of hidden away behind paneling.  Some of the rooms have bathtubs, which I'm excited about, not because I want to do a water birth or anything, but because a warm bath is supposed to help with pain management.  Probably the best part of the tour was when the nurse flipped up the leg braces on the bed/delivery table.  They were at a crazy angle, and Jeromy got very wide-eyed.  He leaned over to me and said, "umm, I think you're going to have to do a LOT more yoga in order to be able to use those things."

Another thing that we have checked off of my intense To-Do-Before-The-Baby-Arrives List is finding and meeting with a pediatrician.  I was worried about locating one that is nearby, since we don't live very close in to town, but luckily there is a practice about 7 minutes from our house.  I also thought it was a good sign that this particular pediatrician has been chosen as the Chief of Pediatrics at the hospital that is being built a few miles down the road.  What I did NOT expect was that the pediatrician would be so young.  And by young, I mean about my age.  Obviously I know that there are doctors my age, but it still felt really strange, and I had a hard time resisting the urge to tell her that she was very cute, but where was her mother, the real doctor?  I mean, who has gone to med school, had three children, and been named the Chief of Pediatrics by her early 30s??  The real-life, female Doogie Howser, that's who.  


That said, she was very friendly, and had good answers to all of my questions, so we're going to use her as Doctor's doctor.  Who knows, maybe she and I will bond and end up getting main/pedis together someday.


Since it's Friday, and since I'm easily amused these days, I'll end with this funny video.  I'm sure a lot of you have already seen it, but if you haven't, you should watch it.  *I* thought it was absolutely hilarious, even if Jeromy declared that it's "not quite as snot-bubblingly funny" and I found it to be.  Enjoy!

Third Trimester Fun

As of Saturday, I am 30 weeks pregnant; only 10 weeks to go!

Doctor and I survived the blood glucose test a few weeks ago, and we passed!  I was most worried about drinking several ounces what everyone describes as "nasty sugary orange stuff."  I don't have an excellent track record with drinking yucky-tasting medical liquids.  When I had to drink barium for some testing several years ago, I couldn't keep it down, and they eventually had to mix it with Kool-aid for me, like they do for little kids.  So I was a little stressed out when the lab tech set a timer and told me that I had to drink the orange stuff in under 5 minutes, but I ended up having no problem.  No, the worst part ended up being the 4 needle pokes.  (*If you're squeamish, you should probably skip this part.*)  Whenever I get blood drawn, I always make sure to tell the lab tech that my veins can be hard to find so that they give me a minute to squeeze my fist, etc.  Well, I don't know if I psyched this lady out or what, but it took her a full minute to find my vein.  She was twisting the needle ALL over the place in my arm.  I finally had to look away when she had turned it a good 90 degrees.  They had to take blood 3 different times over the course of 2 hours, and THEN I had to get the shot for being RH-negative.  I went in and pulled up my sleeve, but the nurse was like, "oh, no, honey, we do this one in your hip."  For future reference, a shot "in your hip" doesn't really go in what *I* would call my hip.  And it DOES involve pulling your pants down and bending over the exam table.  Consider yourself warned. 

Jeromy and I have now attended our first of three Childbirth classes, which we are doing through our doula collective. It's pretty small and casual; there are only 3 other couples besides us.  We watched the obligatory birth video, so Jeromy is now suitably traumatized.  The highlight of the evening, though was listening to 911 call from when the instructor had to have an unplanned home birth with her second child.  It was actually pretty funny; you would hear the 911 person give the husband directions (clearly reading from a manual), and the husband repeating them to the doula, who is isn't really responding other than moaning and swearing in the background.  The whole tape is 12 minutes long, and she ended up having the baby before the paramedics arrived.  It pretty much made me want to go rent an apartment RIGHT next to the hospital.  

I can definitely tell that Doctor is getting big and strong.  In the fight for space in my abdomen, Doctor is without a doubt winning against my internal organs.  He especially likes to remind them who's boss every night when I'm trying to go to sleep, so my second trimester run of long, easy nights of sleep seems to be at an end.  The little cute little kicks and bubble-like pops that I used to get so excited about feeling have been replaced by aggressive squirming and gut-punches that kind of hurt.  It feels, oddly enough, like there is a smallish person kicking and pushing me from the inside.  When I mentioned all of this to my OB-GYN, she said, "yeah, very few women are ever really comfortable after 28 weeks."  Nice.  

Just in time for me to go to JURY DUTY tomorrow.  Oh yes.  In general I disapprove of trying to get out of jury duty, and always swore that I would always do my civic duty when I had to, but right now I'm just grumpy about it.  If I have to sit in an uncomfortable chair for 8 hours, I will probably start loudly declaring every single person in the room "guilty."  So here's hoping I look super-pregnant and pitiful tomorrow so they'll send me home.
 
Now for those of you who made it this far through all of my pregnancy drama, here are some 30 week belly pictures!

***GEMS FROM JEROMY***

After helping me get up out of my armchair last night: "I'm going to have to start helping you up with the other arm, too, so I don't end up with just one really strong pregnant lady lifting arm."

Mr. & Mrs. Martha

Some of you may have noticed that I haven't been posting on here as much as I used to.  My only real explanation is that with the beginning of my 3rd trimester came the full force of the nesting urge.  I suddenly want every room in the house to be perfect and finished and clean.  I'm sure part of this has to do with the fact that we've had three rounds of fun house-guests over the last month or so, but I don't think I've ever been THIS determined to get the house ready for people before.  I even went out and vacuumed up the dust and spider web corners in the garage, which I usually leave alone as it is part of Jeromy's Man Domain.  

But I'm sure it will come as no surprise to anyone that most of my nesting urges have centered around the nursery, and I am pleased to say that we have made a lot of progress! 

My mom overseeing the crib assembly

The crib finally arrived and has been set up, and we made a big trip to Ikea to get the rest of the big furniture for the room.  Jeromy successfully used his Tetris skills to fit ALL of the boxes into the back of our small/medium SUV; it was pretty awesome.  I'm pretty sure that the lady in the car next to us was wishing that her husband had played more video games, because he was having a lot more trouble fitting all their boxes in, even though their car was substantially bigger!

Jeromy started painting the nursery this weekend.  It took him a big chunk of the weekend to do just the ceiling and crown molding, partly because he is working by himself, and partly because white paint apparently doesn't cover very well and needs at least three coats. So last night my darling husband declared that the prerequisite for conceiving our next child will be that I have to paint the new nursery ahead of time......by myself.  Which is fair, I guess.

As for me, I put the finishing touches on my first crafty contribution to the nursery last week:

 I did most of the baby quilt in one of my sewing classes, and am now feeling like I MIGHT be ready to start some more sewing projects at home, all by myself, without hand-holding from a sewing instructor.  Up next is the crib skirt, pillows, and maybe even another quilt. May the Martha-Force be with me.

I think Jeromy and I truly hit our crafty Mr. & Mrs. Martha Stewart peak about a month ago, though, when we took a knitting class.  Yes.  I know.  My husband willingly attended a knitting class.  I was shocked, too, but also just tickled, of course.  We were both pretty surprised by how hard knitting was at first, but we both got the hang of it after some practice at home:

PROOF!!

Jeromy successfully completed a very nice, manly washcloth, but it sounds like he's not planning to continue in his pursuit of knitting.  Which is ok. He has other hobbies.  I was just impressed that he was willing to try it.  I'm planning to keep it up; it's a perfect fidgety activity for me to do when we are hanging out in the evenings.  Here's my first completed knitting project:

A cozy wool scarf--a.k.a. belly-hider--just in time for.....Spring.

More of those to come soon, too, I hope.  I only managed to learn the one stitch, but I'm going to learn to purl if it kills me. 

One thing that I did NOT sign up for

Parents and anyone else who is in the know about child-rearing stuff: is this a real thing that people do, or is this just a terrible gimmick that the marketing team at Huggies came up with?  Someone please tell me that this is NOT a thing, and that I'm not going to have to learn "The Potty Dance", because I don't think I can deal. 

Memo to Baby Smith Regarding Test Performance Expectations

Dear Baby Smith (a.k.a. Doctor),

Tomorrow is our Blood Glucose/Gestational Diabetes Test.   As your parent, I should tell you that this will be the first of many high-stakes tests that you will experience in your life.  Hopefully by the time you enter school, the era of over-testing students will be over, but we won't count on that.  Plus, you will certainly still have to take your driving test, the SAT, and college exams. They're no fun, but tests are a part of life.   

With that in mind, I feel that I should tell you that in our household, we do our best to NOT FAIL TESTS.  We are not going to be psycho Tiger Mom parents who expect you to get an A on every test you take, but we do expect you to take tests seriously and always do your best.  If we ever find out that you have filled in the bubbles on one of your answer sheets to make a picture or spell out something obnoxious like "Doctor is Da Bomb" like one of my students did, you will be in BIG TROUBLE.  Like, we might make you wear a t-shirt that says, "I think I'm da bomb even though I only got 10% correct on my state-mandated standardized test" to school for two weeks.  And you will have to hand-wash that shirt each night, all by yourself.  I'm sure your future therapist will have a field day with that one. 

We realize that you will probably fail a few tests in your lifetime, and that's ok.  For instance, if you ever have to take a test that involves musical ability or knowledge, you will probably be screwed, because I'm pretty sure that you only have one blood relative that is musically talented, while the rest of us would qualify for music Special Ed services (if they existed).  

But since tomorrow is your FIRST high-stakes test, let's start out strong by not failing it.   Let's drink the nasty orange sugar solution and show the nurse that Smiths are not test-failers, ok?  Ok.  Good talk.

Love, Mom

Joining Team Hippie

If you asked anyone who knows Jeromy and I fairly well to describe us, chances are, they would NOT use the word "hippies."  In fact, I'd bet a lot of money that nothing in their description would even be in that neighborhood.  "Kinda liberal" maybe, but "granola" or "tree-hugging".....no.  I mean, we take our reusable bags to the grocery store, but we drive there in a (smallish) SUV.  We have more than one TV in our house.  And--maybe most importantly-- we both insist on taking showers every day. Hippie disqualification.

The truth is, though, that we do have some secret hippie tendencies, and I think we are leaning even more in that direction now that we have a baby on board.  You might have guessed this if you read the post where I talked about reading Raising Baby Green.  We've been pretty firmly on the organic food wagon for a while, but now there's the whole world of non-toxic toys and organic baby clothes to think about, too.  (Organic baby clothes are pretty expensive, though, so I'm planning to just wash all of Doctor's little outfits in vinegar a few times, which is supposed to strip a lot of the chemicals.  And no, I don't have a scientific study to back that up.) 

There are a couple of pretty big decisions we've made recently that might place us on Team Hippie.  Both of these choices have already gotten some strong reactions from people (positive and negative), so maybe I'm asking for it by advertising them to an even wider audience, but here goes. 

First, I never thought I'd say this, but I'm going to TRY to give birth without any medication.  Key word being "try."  As my mom pointed out the other day, I'm a little less than excellent with pain.  And Jeromy can tell you that the last time I had some kind of 24-hour flu (about a week before our wedding) I kept insisting that having even a sheet over me made my skin hurt unbearably, and that I was almost definitely dying.  So it's entirely possible that when I'm actually in the delivery room, I'll start slapping anyone who dares to come near me without a big fat epidural needle.  We'll see.  I certainly don't think epidurals are bad and evil; I just think they're kind of scary and have some potential risks and downsides.

So, as I've mentioned before, one step that we're taking to help with the no-medication/no-Rebecca-punching-people plan is hiring a doula.  Well, actually, several doulas.  We signed up with a doula collective, which means that the specific doula we have at the labor will depend on who is "on call" when it happens. I've tried to explain to a few people exactly what a doula does, and I'm sure I'm not doing the best job of it, but this is what my understanding is.  Basically, a doula's purpose is to help make the labor as comfortable as possible for the mother, and to take some of the pressure off the father in terms of coaching, decision-making, etc. They come to the hospital with their secret earth mother birthing wisdom, and bring magical doula tools with them, like heat packs and a birthing ball.  Which I think is just one of the big exercise balls, but still, it's supposed to help.  When we went to the "Meet the Doulas Night" back in December, they had a couple who had recently delivered with a doula there as guest speakers.  When the mom described the doula rubbing her back (to counter the pressure of her contractions) for NINE HOURS, I was ready to write a big fat check then and there.  Jeromy can rub my back for about four minutes before his hands get tired.  He'd be in the corner whimpering in pain by the time they got me hooked up to the monitors.  Hence, the doulas are going to be our new BFFs. 

The other hippie decision we've made is to try to use cloth diapers.  I know it sounds a little crazy, and it's something else that I never thought I'd go for.  Cloth diapers have come a long way since the white squares that had to be origami-folded around your baby and pinned, though.  They now basically look and work like cloth versions of regular diapers.  Again, I'm totally NOT judging people who use disposable diapers; I'm sure we will be using them when we're not at home.  But from what I've read, there are some advantages to cloth diapers--fewer rashes and "blow-outs" (eww), easier potty-training, etc.  Plus, it actually ends up being quite a bit cheaper in the long run.  And look how cute they are!

This one is from a brand called Fuzzibunz...

...probably because they are, you know,  fuzzy on the inside

We are still making some other decisions that will probably earn us hippie demerits.  I'm going to give birth in a hospital, where they have lots of nice beeping machines (-10 points).  Our son will be circumcised and vaccinated (-15 points).  We do not plan to have him sleeping in the bed with us (-5 points).  But are we are on our way to earning our Hippie Parents badge?  I think we could be...  

***GEMS FROM JEROMY***

 After waiting for me to finish getting settled in bed with my poufy comforter and body pillow: "Look how much space you're taking up already!  Pretty soon I'm going to need a co-sleeper just for my butt so I don't fall off the bed."

This is a co-sleeper, for those of you who don't know what one looks like....just imagine Jeromy's backside instead of the baby.