The Birth of Hannah Zen

So.  I gave birth.  To a living baby.  6 weeks ago.  Without an epidural.  But with forceps.  After 6 hours of hard purple pushing and 25 hours of labor.  Yeah, I'm tough like that.

Anyway, here's Hannah Zen, looking all cute and sweet and stuff.

Her birth wasn't really what was in my birth plan, but it was still completely perfect.  To start with, I was induced when she failed a non-stress-test at my 38 week checkup.  At the NST they look for a baseline heartrate, and then accelerations.  She showed a baseline and decelerations.  They did a biophysical ultrasound, which she also failed - lack of limb extensions.  So they sent me to L&D for prolonged monitoring, and my doctor, who just happened to be the head guy in L&D that week, mentioned the I-Word.  This had me really freaked out because I had always heard that induced labors were worse than natural ones; it's forcing your body to do something that it isn't ready to do.  More epidurals and C-sections supposedly come out of induced labors.  

Also, I was alone during this time.  J always left my NST's to go to Trader Joe's because they were boring for him to just sit there, and this way he could get groceries.  When I first realized that the test was going to go long, I texted him to tell him that he should take the groceries home so the frozen stuff didn't melt, and then come back for me.  At first the ultrasound nurse said that they'd probably send me down to the cafeteria to eat something, and then have me redo the test.  She even offered me peanut butter crackers, which I wanted because I was really hungry, but I stupidly went to the bathroom first.  My OB showed up to look at the test while she was handing me the pack of crackers, and when he mentioned that I might need to be induced, she yanked those crackers back so fast.  It broke my heart a little because I knew I wasn't going to be able to eat for a long time if I was induced, and dang, I was really hungry and those crackers looked really good.

So anyway, J takes the groceries home, I go to L&D, and proceed to get checked in.  At some point the doctor came in and said I probably was going to need to be induced..  I text J and start sending him my requests of things I need - laptop and charger, birth ball (deflated - I'd been bouncing on it the entire previous weekend trying to get labor to start naturally), my essential oils, etc etc etc.  He was at home running around like a mad man, completely freaked out thinking they were going to start it without him there and he was going to miss everything.

  

Eventually he comes back to the hospital, carrying my labor bag.  The OB confirms that they are going to induce because something had fundamentally changed with Hannah's heartrate, and while it wasn't an emergency yet, he didn't want it to turn into one.  I call work, J calls his parents, and we're all set to go.  Then we wait for the orders to come in to start the pitocin.  And we wait some more.  And a little longer.  

Eventually the pitocin drip starts at 3:15.  I'm having a great time.  Seriously.  I'd been studying self-hypnosis through hypnobabies, and I'm peaceful and chilled out, and I don't even think we need to call our doula.  We're doing fine on our own.  I'm crampy, but hey, it's labor, who isn't, right?  I get a lovely dinner of 3 kinds of juice and broth and jello, and life is pretty darn good.  Even into the night; I'm tired, my back hurts, but hey, it's labor, right?  J really wanted to get the doula in, if for no other reason than to support him, and so she comes around 1:30.  His mom is there, and we're watching funny cat videos on youtube.  I call my best friend in London, Sandor, who is on holiday in Sweden, and we chat for a while.  I'm thinking that this is cake.  

And then they broke my water.

All of a sudden the world started spinning.  My pelvis was being yanked out of my big toe.  There was a wrecking ball trying to come out of my ass.  This was serious. fucking. pain.

I screamed.  I grunted.  I begged for it to stop.  I said I couldn't do it anymore.  I squeezed J's hand so hard I nearly broke his fingers.  When my doula kept forcing me to drink water I thought she was crazy because how the hell was I supposed to have the energy to drink in between these ridiculous contractions?

I begged for an epidural.  Doula and J tried to talk me out of it.  I said I really wanted it.  My eyes were closed and I screamed, "I don't hear anyone doing anything."  So J went and ordered the epidural.  I was 4th in line.  By the time the Traveling Anesthesiologists with their rolling cart of numbing goodness arrived, I was fully dilated and it was too late.

Oh, a burst of energy!  It's time to push!  I'm dilated!  Yippeeee!  It's going to happen soon!

At some point I don't remember they brought in a cart with all the baby tools on it, and sat it in front of my bed.  It was supposed to give me strength or something.  They turned on the lamp on the table where the baby would be weighed, and started heating up blankets.

Sadly, they had plenty of time.  I pushed hard for like 6 hours.  Purple pushing, counting to 10, take a breath, do it again, in sets of 3 during each contraction.  I was apparently really tough.  Nurses kept saying what an awesome job I was doing, and what a trooper I was, and how amazing it was that I was pushing for so long. I don't remember any of it.  Apparently midway through my IV stopped working and they had to set up a new one, and my veins were so bad it took three nurses multiple tries till they found a good spot.  I had bandaids down my entire arm, and J said it was the most painful thing to watch them doing it during my 30 second rest breaks from each contraction.  I just barely remember someone poking me.  They wanted me to move from my side to my knees, leaning on the back of the bed, and I can't even begin to explain the herculean effort it took to get rolled over and up on my knees because of the pain.  It was really awful.

I've been told that if my OB hadn't been the doctor in charge, they would have called an emergency C-section from all my pushing.  But my doctor knew how much I wanted to be as natural as possible, and how important that was, and he let me push as long as I could.  During the peak of it I was contracting every 2 minutes and each one lasted 90 seconds.  So I had about 30 seconds off.  That went on for hours.  And hours.  And hours.

They kept telling me they could see the head.  If you can see the head, why can't someone just reach up and pull her out, I wondered aloud.  I was really serious.  How hard could that be?

Eventually my OB finished up another delivery and came in to check on me, and saw that I really was reaching the end of my rope.  He asked the Traveling Anesthesiologists with their rolling cart of goodness to come back in and give me something called a saddle block, which basically numbs all your parts that would sit in a saddle for 2 hours.  It's designed to give you a break to rest before you gear back up to push again.  It was only supposed to take 10 minutes to administer it, but because of all the pain I was in I couldn't sit still, and it wound up taking closer to 45 minutes (my doula stayed with me, and apparently J was having a fit sitting outside freaking out thinking that something horrible had happened because it was taking so long).  But when it took, it was awesome.  Life was good again.  The sun was out.  I felt human again.

The nurses told me to rest after my ordeal of the past 8 hours.  But the doctor ixnayed that idea.  He wanted me to push more.  He was confident that we had 2 hours to work with, and he thought for sure that since I was relaxed and out of pain, I'd be able to push her out.  So he repositioned her and back to pushing I went, this time in sets of 4.  We did that for an hour, and still no baby.  She was just well and truly stuck in there.

So after 25 hours, it all ended quickly with forceps.  The room became a flurry of activity; suddenly there were nurses, assisting doctors; I swear some of the cleaning crew stopped by just to watch too.  But after all that, I got my babygirl, a giant 8 pound 11 ounce ball covered in goop,  crying and gasping, placed on my chest.

After being stuck behind my bone for all that time, and being pushed up against it, she was blue and looked like she'd just fought Mike Tyson and lost, and so she was taken to the NICU where they discovered a little infection (which is probably what made me fail the NST).  So she stayed there for a week getting antibiotics, and we brought her home on August 14.  While she went to the NICU I ate dinner.  I was hungrier than I've ever been in my entire life.  I could have eaten an army of horses.  Food was really awesome after that.  J went to the cafeteria and brought me cartons and cartons of lovely hot food, which I relished.

So that's my birth story, which, like I said, for being completely not my birth plan, was still awesome.  I avoided a C-Section that probably would have been ordered if my OB hadn't been the one in L&D that week.  I didn't get an epidural, even with 6 hours of pushing and an induced labor.   I got a healthy girl.  I had interventions, but they were medically necessary, and I am grateful because if I'd been going through that a hundred years ago, it would not have ended so well, that's for sure. I got to test myself and see how tough I really was, and I know now that I am one tough cookie.  If I can do that, I can pretty much do anything, right?

Shakespeare's Richard III - aka The Victors Get to Write The Story

Still working on my Shameful Shakespeare Catch-up (shameful because it's shameful that so much of my life has gone by without me reading any Shakespeare at all - it's been since college, which, sadly, was fifteen years ago) and today I read Richard III.  I've been so offended with Shakespeare recently, I was thinking I might go for A Midsummer Night's Dream, thinking there would be less to be offended with in that, but I'm due for a history play, and I just watched the documentary on how they found Richard III's skeleton in a car park in Leicester, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

I expected Tudor propaganda simply because everyone thinks Richard was such a terrible person, and there wasn't any lengthy biography of him written before Shakespeare wrote his play, so that must be where the impression of him came from.  I don't blame them; certainly Richard was a ruthless man, and they would have wanted to cement the basis of Henry VII's rule as something guided by God, rather than a lucky Welshman who happened to be able to collect a lot of people who didn't like the unpopular king, and was able to kill him on Bosworth Field.

To understand why the Tudors wanted Henry VII to be seen as the start of this Godly dynasty, you have to go back and have some understanding of the Wars of the Roses.  If you really want to get picky about it, you go back to Agincourt, the high point of England's successes in France.  Henry V seemed unstoppable in France, and it seemed as if the Norman Conquest of 1066 might finally be avenged 350 years later.  Had Henry not died when he did, maybe the French would all be speaking English and would have bad teeth nowdays.

But Henry V died, and his son Henry VI was a minor.  He wasn't a strong guy, and he got pulled in lots of directions, depending on who was talking to him at the moment.  He wound up losing most of the gains of his father (by the time of the Tudors, 60 years later, all that remained of the great dream of England taking France was Calais, a little fort directly across the English channel).

So Henry VI marries Margaret of Anjou. She's a willful high strung French girl who really doesn't like England, and doesn't care who knows about it.  So here's this really powerful woman (who may or may not have had her son via adultery) married to this simpering dolt of an idiot husband who has spells of insanity, is losing land left and right, and is more interested in praying than being a husband to her.  She's been Queen Consort since she was 15 years old, she's stuck in a country she hates, and she's rash and takes way too many chances.

Given her husband's incompetence, some people start talking about rebelling.  One of those people is Richard, Duke of York.  He talks openly.  In fact, he has Henry VI declared insane, and he gets himself named the Lord Protector.  He even had an agreement drawn up saying that he would become King after Henry VI died.  But then he himself died before he had any chance of pressing his case.  Interestingly enough, he's the father of Richard III.  So, you know, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.  

Ok, so all of this winds up leading to the Wars of the Roses, whereby the House of Lancaster (Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI, their family) fight the house of York (Richard, Duke of York, and his family).  There weren't really a lot of battles, most notably Tewkesbury and Barnet, but it did consume people for a generation, and England's economy continued to fail while all the nobles were busy killing each other.

So the Tudors come out of this from left field.  Way back when Henry V dies, his widow, Catherine of Valois, marries a squire in her court, Owen Tudor.  This is Henry VII's grandfather and the great Queen Elizabeth I's great great grandfather - a squire at court.  Catherine and Owen had more children together; half-siblings of the house of Lancaster.  Henry VI had them recognized as legitimate as an act of kindness to them, and tried to bring the blended family together.  So the Tudors get their royal lineage on their mother's side, and it's fairly tenuous as well, but they start to rise through the ranks of the nobility, and by the time of Richard III, Henry Tudor was seen as a real threat to the Yorkist, and was hiding in the Netherlands or Brittany or somewhere across the Channel.

Richard III was the brother of Edward IV, who was Richard Duke of York's son (and Richard III's brother).  He wound up winning the title of King by fighting for it, and had the Lord Mayor of London proclaim him King while Henry VI was far away from the city.  The whole thing was really messy.  

Edward dies suddenly in 1483 and all hell breaks loose.  His children are still minors, and his brother, the future Richard III, is supposed to protect them until they reach the age of majority.  Instead, they disappear and Richard becomes King.  Yeah, he probably murdered them.  It was so much more convenient than simply asking them nicely to step aside.  

Richard III becomes King, no one really bats too many eyelashes at the missing Princes (except for their mother, of course), and life seems to go on as normal.  But then in 1485, Henry Tudor, not content to let Richard pull this charade, decides that he's going to be King, and he sails from wherever it was he was hiding (Brittany, France, Luxembourg, somewhere) with an army he raised, and he lands in Wales, gathering support as he moves through the countryside.  A bunch of Richard's allies, fed up with his hubris, and smart enough to see which way the wind is blowing, switch sides.

Henry beats Richard at the Battle of Bosworth Field, and declares himself King.  He marries a Yorkist woman to unite the two rival houses, and he really wants to reign peacefully for a long time.  Unfortunately his first son Arthur dies as a teenager (he was named Arthur after the great legendary King, and it shows how much Henry hoped to start a new golden age) and his younger brother Henry, who'd been studying with monks up until now, suddenly has to be groomed to be King.

And then of course Henry the Younger has lots of marriage problems that go on for decades, and each of his three children take turns with the throne, young Edward a disaster, Mary I an even bigger disaster, and then Elizabeth, who refused to marry because she probably had some pretty deep psychological trust issues given her history.  So she never had an heir, and never named one.  

All in all, when Richard III was written, just after the trouncing of the Spanish Armada, things were looking pretty good for Elizabeth, and the Tudor story.  But everyone also knew that the Tudors were probably going to end with Elizabeth, since she had no children.  So they wanted to showcase just how awesome the Tudors had been, and make a case for their having taken the throne in the first place, so that after Elizabeth, people wouldn't talk shit about the grandchildren of squires being too big for their britches and becoming King illegitimately.  Mostly, they also wanted to avoid another Wars of the Roses, and make everyone remember just how awful some of the monarchs were back then, especially the monarchs who were on the other side of the Tudors.

So given that history, I'm not surprised that in his opening monologue, Richard goes on about how disfigured he is (he wasn't too much, really - his skeleton shows he had scoliosis and had some curvature in his spine, but he was still well enough to wear armor, no small feat, and fight in battle) and how he scares dogs and children.  He proposes to a woman whose husband he had killed.  He does all sorts of nasty things.  I'm pretty sure no one who gets to be King is that publicly ruthless before he's King.  Maybe after, but not before.   

I'm definitely not joining the Richard III society any time soon, and I'm not really a huge Ricardian, but I do see where they're coming from - Richard wasn't any worse than anyone else from the time, and others did the same sorts of things he did.  

Not according to Shakespeare, though.  But that's why the victors get to write the history books.  And the history plays.  

On raising a kick@ss girl

Today I saw an awesome ad for GoldiBlox, a new toy designed to get girls into engineering and building things.  The awesome chick who designed it, Debbie Sterling, is a Stanford engineer herself.  She got discouraged by the low numbers of other women in her engineering programs (something around 11% of engineers are women).  So she spent a year researching why it is that, by middle school, girls aren't into science and math any longer.  Turns out, girls like to read while boys like to build stuff.  Boys are spatial while girls are verbal.  This is why, when J tries to explain something he's building to me, I want him to talk about it, and he wants to draw it.  Also, girls like to know the story behind why something is being built.  Boys just like to build for the heck of it.  This explains why, so often, when J tries to explain mathematical concepts to me, I ask what the point is, and he gets flabbergasted with me, saying there is no point, it's just cool.

So simply making Lincoln Logs pink isn't enough to get girls into wanting to actually build stuff out of them.

Debbie put together a series of books with building tools, with a character called Goldie, an inventor, who loves to build stuff.  As you read along in the books, you get to build the same things that Goldie builds in the stories.  This. Kicks. Ass.

It kicks so much ass that her project was overfunded on Kickstarter in five days last fall.  And GoldiBlox are out and available for parents everywhere to buy now.  They're for children over 3, but I'm still going to order the first set, just to support the movement.

I think about stuff like this because I don't want Hannah to be a Girly Girl.  Well, mostly I want her to be her, but I want her to be really her, and not the her that is influenced by all the pink shit that the stores say she should want.  I want her to be the her who can decide if she loves technology or Lego's, or American Girl Dolls (and maybe love all of the above) without having choices forced on her by marketing people and society.  I want her to feel free to make up her own mind, and if she wants to be an engineer, I want her to feel really free to know that that's an option that's available to her.

I look at 11% of engineers being women, and that worries me.  It worries me because engineers design the products that we all use, and with only 11% o them being women, it means that I'm probably being shoved a bunch of products that marketing people think I want as a woman, rather than things that were actually designed by women.  A big dislike to that.

I want Hannah to have role models in any of her chosen fields.  There are plenty of female role models in teaching or librarianship or any number of caregiving and nurturing roles where women fit in easily.  I want more female role models for her if she wants to be an astronaut, a computer engineer, a theoretical mathematician.

And I'm sick of all the pink crap that fills the aisles these days.  This is a new development.  When I was a kid, I had a kitchen set that was orange and brown (ok, it was the 70's - I think everything was orange and brown).  Yeah, it was a kitchen set, which, you know, has its own gender-role issues.  But it wasn't pink.  Check out the graphic below.  The toys are the same, except for the color.  Freaking pink.  I'm going to do my darndest to make sure Hannah's room is a pink-free zone - I feel like that's my duty to her.  When I was a kid my favorite color was turquoise.  This crap is just wrong.  So go GoldiBlox, and I can't wait to see a future generation of girl engineers kicking ass thanks to these toys!  And if Hannah wants to be one of them, then I will applaud her (while wearing purple).

The Shakespeare Project: Why I'm not inviting Will to dinner

I'm 33 weeks preggo tomorrow, which is rather unbelievable to me.  I never really thought I'd get this far, to be honest.  

Trying to read lots of books on my Amazon wishlist.  After reading Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare a few months ago, I decided it was shameful that I hadn't read any Shakespeare since college.  So I've been catching up, reading a play every week or two.  And here's what's challenging: I really don't like him all that much.  Oh, I can see the beauty in his writing, and the wordplay in the comedies is amazing.  I can appreciate why he's so special.  But Donald Trump is special too; doesn't mean I want to have dinner with him.  

So what I do is rent the BBC productions of the plays (they do the full script - no editing down for time) from Amazon Instant Video - generally a $1.99 rental for a week.  Then I get a kindle edition of the play with good notes.  I watch the film while reading the play on my tablet at the same time.  Then the next day I also pull up a Librivox recording to listen while reading and see what I notice that's different - they do free public domain e-audiobooks, and are tolerable for being free.  It's all done by volunteers, so I shouldn't be judgmental since they're doing something awesome, but some of the parts are really challenging - like a female Benedick or a Lear with a Southern accent.  Anyway, I go through the play again just listening.  

And I've decided something:  I like knowing Shakespeare, but only so that I can make conversation about him and feel like I've joined the world of People who Know Shakespeare.  But I don't actually much like the plays themselves.  Taming of the Shrew made me want to puke.  Merchant of Venice made me want to cry for poor Shylock.  Watching King Lear descend into madness while his daughters plotted was just depressing.  

I wonder how much of this Shakespeare actually believed.  I've read a lot about how he hated the idea of marriage since he was forced into it when he got an older Anne Hathaway preggo when he was still a teenager.  And he went off to London and sort of abandoned her.  So I don't think he really appreciated the idea of marriage much.

And he certainly seems to pander to the antisemitism of the time.  Benedick is debating whether or not he should or shouldn't love Beatrice, talking about her charms, and the most brilliant conclusion he can come to is, "If I do not love her, I am a Jew."  Really?  And then there's Shylock.  The man loses everything, is forced to convert to Christianity, his daughter is applauded for running away and taking so much of his money and jewelry, and at the end it's the Christians who are supposed to look magnanimous and forgiving.  For the time period, I suppose they were.  But for someone as forward thinking as Shakespeare was supposed to be, I'd expect better.  I've heard some people say that he was holding a mirror up and making a commentary, but I don't really buy that.  If so, then Jessica would have had some kind of comeuppance.  Somebody would have felt guilty about something.  But nope, they just drag him off to be baptized.  

This hypocrisy bugs the crap out of me, especially because Shakespeare was supposedly a Catholic who had to cover up his religious leanings.  Surely he could have some more empathy for others of a different religion.  But nope, Shylock gets baptized and loses his livelihood and daughter anyway. 

I'm going to keep reading Shakespeare simply because of the language and the words, but I'm going to quit thinking too much about the plot.  Different era, different kind of man, and I don't have to like him to appreciate him.  It sure would be nice if I could, though.  

Pregnancy Whinging

Given the fact that we've worked so hard to get pregnant, and been through so much to get to this point, I feel pretty crappy complaining about the woes of pregnancy.  But, what would be the fun of being pregnant if I couldn't whine about it from time to time, right?  Other women may have other pet peeves and complaints, but this is my own personal list of the things that are making me glad that I only have 9 more weeks of this before we get a sweet little Hannahbear.

- Pain in places I didn't know existed:

Before I was 23 weeks pregnant, I didn't know what a Symphysis Pubis was, or why there would be a disorder named after it.  But let me tell you, SPD is no joke.  Turning over in bed - agony.  Getting out of bed without moans of pain - not gonna happen.  Forgetting about it for a second and using my foot to try to squeeze a giant bag of cat food into the bottom cupboard - shooting pangs of pain.  The reason I was even thinking to use my foot in the first place is because bending over hurts so damn much.  And, oh yeah, round ligament pain, where the tendons holding your uterus stretch out to accommodate your growing belly.  It wakes you up in the middle of the night as you're changing position - suddenly just these shooting aches where you're convinced that if you actually continue with the changing of the positions that you'll tear something.  And if  you roll back to the original position you were in, you'll tear something there, too.  So either way you're f*cked.  

- Being unable to exercise:

This is one hell of a vicious circle.  It starts with the pain that makes it difficult to exercise, or do anything besides lay on the couch, very still, and try not to move too much.  This sitting still does not do much to keep one in any kind of shape.  Add to that the fact that your belly is getting bigger, so that when you do finally get a chance to do something physical, it's so much harder than it was before.  Not only are you more out of shape, but your belly is bigger, and you weigh more.  So then exercise becomes more difficult and painful, and eventually your pain comes back, which leads to the still-sitting on the couch again.  And so the cycle continues, until you become a complete whale.  Seriously, I can't WAIT to start walking around the lake again without this pain.  Me and Hannah'll be going around together, breathing in the crisp fall air, Mama getting back into some semblance of shape again.  I am seriously excited for this day to come.

- Needles around me ALL the Freaking Time:

I hate needles.  I hate them.  I hate stabbing pain.  I could never have shot up heroine.  I'd faint first.  Hell, I fainted the first time I got my eyebrows waxed (true story).  And it seems like every freaking time I go to the doctor's, I pee in a cup, and then I either get blood drawn, or I get a shot.  Vials and vials of blood.  Shots galore.  I seriously hate this shit.

- Not being able to sleep on my stomach:

Because there's a bowling ball in there.

- Not being able to sleep on my back: 

Because the pressure cuts off your blood supply

- Not being able to sleep in any position but your side:

I can't WAIT to lay on my belly again.  Like, for real. 

- Hormones:

Crying at sentimental TV commercials.  Crying at audiobooks about Shakespeare.  Crying at Jason Mraz songs.  Crying when you drop something on the floor (because it will mean bending over to pick it up).  Crying because taking baths isn't comfortable any longer.  Crying because you can't reach to shave your legs easily anymore.  Crying because you feel like a beached whale.  Crying because you're happy thinking about how great fall will be this year with a baby.  Crying thinking about putting together a nursery.  Crying at how cute the cats are.  Crying opening up the package of cloth diapers that arrived.  Crying Crying Crying. I am so freaking sick of crying.

- Food cravings:

I.  Want.  French.  Toast.  Now.

With a side of sauerkraut.  

And chocolate milk.

Now.  

Seriously. 

- Heartburn:

I am going through Tums like there's no tomorrow.

- Carpal Tunnel:
Yeah, so apparently getting carpal tunnel during pregnancy is really common.  Something about how your blood flow changes.  Fortunately I can type all right.  It's writing with a pen on paper that kills me.  When I do my Artists Way Morning Pages each day I need to stop every few sentences to shake out my hand.  I was writing thank you notes for my shower gifts this weekend, and couldn't do more than three at a time because of the pain.  Really not fun.

Other more Minor Whinges:
- the constant peeing.
- the insomnia.
- the peeing mixed with insomnia.

So there you go.  My whinging about the things that suck about pregnancy.  Just to even things out, and show that I'm not completely immune to the miracle of the circle of life, I shall write my next post on the things I love about being pregnant.  But I had to start negative.  It's the mood I'm in.  

(and a final disclaimer - none of this should be taken as me wishing I wasn't pregnant.  We worked too hard to get so close to getting our Hannahbear.  I wouldn't change it for the world.  But man, I'm ready for August.)

Where has the time gone?

Somehow I've got a belly like this now:

I'm almost 31 weeks.  It can't get any bigger.  It just can't.  

In other news, I've been nesting.  The house is filling up with baby crap.  Bouncer.  Exersaucer.  Co-Sleeper.  Swing.  Cloth Diapers.  Clothes.  Tiny bathtub.  Who knew babies need so much crap?  

The Sickies

So you know what's not funny?  What's not funny is when you lost a baby at 20+6 because of an infection, and you wake up at 20+3, and you feel sick.  That's really not funny.

That was last Friday.  I'm now firmly past 21 weeks, which is the longest I've ever been pregnant before.  Random fact: I have now been pregnant for almost 51 weeks total in my lifetime.  That's one week shy of a full year.  And I still don't have a baby.  Well, at least one who lives outside of me.

Anyway, it feels good to be past 21 weeks, but I'm also still fighting off this cold, which wasn't made much better by the fact that I had to travel up to San Mateo on Thursday and Friday for a meeting.  THEN yesterday I had this great idea to go to the farmer's market, and do a bunch of shopping, and the whole thing just wore me out.

I'm starting to get to the point in my pregnancy where things are beginning to be difficult.  Things like bending down to refill the cat food.  I get really tired doing things like making breakfast.  I've gained about 17 pounds.  I haven't exercised in almost two weeks, mostly because of this da*n cold.  I really like to stretch out my legs, which is hard to do when sitting down, so I spend a lot of time lately sitting up in bed with my legs stretched out and a lap desk on my lap (duh).  It's where I am now.  I have three cats around me; my kindle, my tablet, a notebook, and my current read, Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra.  (which, actually, I'm really slogging through.  For someone as fascinating as Cleopatra, you'd think the biography would be much more interesting.  This is dull.  Maybe it's just because I don't know much about ancient Egypt.)

Sooo, that's my non-news - I'm snotty, I'm sore, I'm tired, and I'm bored with my book.  But you know what?  I'm almost 22 weeks pregnant, and this will all be worth it when I get to sit here in four months with my bambino.