a big ol’ update

We are back from our crazy holiday trip.  We are both tired and a bit sick with a scratching in our throats that is not horrible but very present.     I am trying to catch up on blogs and commenting.   I hope that you all had a very good holiday season and I am really hoping that 2009 is a really good year for everyone.    In my opinion it has got to be better then 2008.  

We first went out to see H.’s family in the west.    We were there for 5 days and it was wonderful.   H’s brother and his wife (who we stayed with) have 4 kids all under 6.    I love having Christmas with kids around.    The 2 and 1/2 year old only wanted Santa Claus to bring her a big girl bed and he did.    Her face was amazing.   She also was in love with the fact that there is a baby in my tummy.    I think she said it at least 5 times a day and would ask things like “are you tired because of the baby in your tummy?’ or “are you drinking water because of the baby in your tummy?’    It was super sweet.     They also have a 5 and 1/2 year old girl who really got what it meant that we are going to have a baby and a 3 and 1/2 year old boy who is so active and busy I don’t think he even noticed the conversation.   

 H and I were also able to spend a ton of quality time with the youngest who is almost 7 months.    I in particular was able to be with her every morning since she and I find 5:15 a perfectly acceptable wake up time.     She is just so smiley and drools everywhere.    She is absolutely delightful to kiss.    The crazy thing that we kept thinking about is she is as old as our baby will be next Christmas.    So much change is coming I don’t even know how to imagine it… but spending time with her helped a great deal.     H unfortunatelygot very sick with a 24 hour bug/flu so she missed our time to see Olive and Fern who are old friends of mine.   I love them so.   It was wonderful to see them and they gave us some booties that are so cute you just want look at them again and again.     Our sister in law also gave us so many baby clothes.    She is done with her babymaking days and has saved every piece of clothing in huge Tupperware containers in her basement.    It was really fun to sort through it all and take all the gender neutral clothes (i.e. we pretty much just avoided the really girlie stuff)  for 0-6 months.

On Christmas day we flew to see my family.    We have flown on Christmas or Christmas eve every year since we have been celebrating together.   This year was the last of that.     Time with my family was good but we were tired of not being in our own space and I think tired of too much rich food.    We got home on Sunday night and I have to say our bed has never been as comfortable as it has been the last two nights.   

Last night I purchased a folding crib from a parents classified ad in our neighborhood.    H. could not come with me to pick it up which was unfortunate because it was so heavy.     It is for my father’s house so when we travel we don’t have to bring a pack and play – and it is much nicer since it is all wood.     At 50 dollars it was a steal and officially is the most expensive baby thing we have purchased – except sperm of course.      We are going to buy a crib for my mom’s house since we spend a lot more time there.      When we finally wrangled the crib upstairs (we live on the 4th floor)  and set it up in the living room to see its size I have to say it was really weird.    We have a crib in our house.   It will soon be on its way to Vermont but it was a  huge reminder that we will soon have a crib in our house that will contain a baby.   

Pregnancy news is good.   A little uneventful.   Although I just wrote that sentence and realized that I have not written about the fact that I am pretty sure I have felt the baby move.    It feels like a little paint brush that is being lightly dragged on my inner belly.  I have been feeling that for the last week or so.  I have my doubts about the feeling but everyone has said that is the feeling.    Other big news is that my mother, who used to be a homebirth midwife, gave us a fetuscope which means H. can hear the baby’s heartbeat anytime we feel like it.    (for those of you who don’t know a fetuscope is very much like a stethoscope but has a very heavy metal part that you put against the belly. )   Our baby does not like the pressure it seems so s/he is there and you can hear the heartbeat but then it runs/swims away from the weight of the fetuscope.     It is a nice ticking sound that baby has though.    

I am feeling much less sick although I still throw up every so often.    And I am four pounds under my pre-pregnancy weight.    My midwife was a bit worried that I was not eating enough but I quickly told her what I have been eating and she sees no problem.    I am not that worried about it.     I think if you are a bit bigger to begin with you body just feeds on itself a bit.     I am really only supposed to gain 15-20 pounds anyway so I think this is a good start to that goal.  

Alright, I feel a bit self conscious about posting a belly picture but here it is below.    I feel this is the first week that I don’t just look fat but do look pregnant so I am trying not to be self conscious.     People have been saying that I would look more pregnant if my boobs were not so big.   But they are just so big right now.      So here is my belly at 19 weeks.  

       

WTF?!

I was intending to post today with a happy update about our appointment yesterday with the midwife, but hearing the news that Ob*ma choose R!ck Warr.en to give the invocation at his inauguration has replaced my happy feelings with feelings of deep disappointment and sadness (don’t worry, I  am still very happy about Sprout).  I know I don’t need to get into a long rant here about this, but I just can’t bring myself to believe it.  Or I don’t want to.

I assume you know who R!ck Warr.en is, but if you don’t, he is an evangelical preacher in CA who was outspoken in his support for Pr*p 8.  He equates LGBTQ people with pedophiles and perpetrators of incest.  To him, gay marriage is comparable.  Now, its not like this comparison is new, and frankly I can’t care too much about what R!ck Warr.en thinks.  What I care about is that Bar.ack Ob.ama has chosen him to participate in this incredibly important, historic event.  The Ob.ama camp has said that they want the inauguration to be inclusive and while Ob.ama does not agree with Warr.en’s views on gay and lesbian rights, there are things that they do agree on.  I know in my heart that if Warr.en replaced “LGBTQ” with ANYother group, there would be no way in hell he would be participating in the inauguration.  Can you imagine?  “Sure, he thinks Jewish people/Black people/people with disabilities/illegal immigrants/Asian people/Muslims/etc are the same as pedophiles and sex offenders, and while we don’t agree, there is a lot of common ground between us. ”  Yeah right.

I was so hopeful about Ob.ama, and now I just feel foolish for believing that everything would be different.  I have always known that he does not support marriage equality and that was a huge hurdle to me getting excited about him in the primaries.  But I got caught up in the surge of hopefulness and belief that our country was changing.  Of course, that belief was tarnished by the passage of Pro.p 8, and now this.  It all just makes me feel sad and tired.  I have gone from feeling excited and teary about Obam.a to wary and teary about Obam.a.  I am angry because L and I worked to get him elected.  We went down to PA to canvass, we made calls to VA, we  believed in him.  It feels like a kick in the face.

Trucking along

Hello from babypants land!  We have been really quite over here as you may have noticed.  I guess its because we are doing fine, trucking along, and it does not seem like there is much to report.

Sprout seems to be doing great.  We have another midwife appointment next week so we will get to hear the heartbeat again, which will be really wonderful.  (A great birthday present for me!)  L keeps asking me if I think that Sprout is doing well.  Judging from how L’s body is changing (which is all we have to go on on a daily basis), I assure her that Sprout seems just right.  L’s bre.asts are ever larger.  It seemed like they couldn’t get bigger, but they have.  Then there is the growing belly.  Now even someone who didn’t know her would assume that she is pregnant and not merely a beer guzzler. 

We are both feeling really good about how things are going in general.  When it comes to Sprout, we are both going with the assumtion that everything is fine unless proven otherwise.  I think this is  in large part because of L’s mom, who was a home birth midwife and is totally zen about pregnancy and birth.  It feels good to trust that things are going well.  If we find out  later that there is a problem we will deal with it then, but for now it is nice to relax into the pregnancy a bit. 

We took a tour of the birthing center where we plan to meet Sprout face to face for the first time .  It was really nice and we both feel good about our decision to deliver there.  Hopefully we will be able to stay in the birth center where I would be able to spend the night with L and Sprout, and we could have whomever we want in the room with us when L delivers.  However, if we do have to move to the labor and delivery floor for some reason, it is still pretty nice and they are open to people having as close to their desired birth as possible.  It was exciting to take a tour.  We have to take a class in Feb about the birth center in order to deliver there, so that is the next step on that front.

We have been slowly accumulating baby things.  This is in part because we are excited, but more than that we are trying to practical by jumping on great deals and give aways from a kid’s stuff version of craig.slist.  It has felt good to start gathering things for Sprout, but now we need to figure out how to store it.  We have exactly as much stuff as out apartment can hold (as is true for most New Yorkers I suspect) so bringing in baby stuff has tipped our delicate equilibrium.  We have been getting rid of stuff to fit the new stuff, but have more to do on that front.

Well, I think that is all that is going on over here.  I am so thankful that things are going well enough for us to just be relaxed and happy. 

(L may feel less blissful because she’s the one having sleep struggles and ligament pain, but she’ll have to write her own post to talk about that.)