April 24th, 2007
I feel yucky, headachy and nauseous. I really wish I had more appetite on a regular basis. The RNP assured me that not gaining weight is fine for a woman of my size, and I’m not really worried about the baby that much, but I have to think that not getting enough to eat is contributing to how I feel most days.
Anyhow, today I am apparently twenty weeks pregnant. It’s still too cold for our garden to grow most days; the tomato plants are outside but untransplanted and kind of static, and the pumpkin and squash are still inside but growing slowly unless I provide extra heat. I’m still not feeling Zod move on a regular basis– the best I usually get is a kind of super-awareness of my belly and I think that comes more from shifting positions.
We went for a long walk Sunday evening and took a wrong turn. It was a beautiful evening and I really didn’t mind it, until we had to climb some hills to retrace our steps. That made my abdomen give some funny twinges, and Kevin told me, Raymond and the dogs to stay put and then he struck out on his own and returned with the car. It inspired some interesting thoughts inside about guilt and responsibility but the end result was mostly overwhelmed by how cool Kevin is. And it was a great walk until the end.
I finished the Sabriel books and reread Going Postal and Bridge of Birds. An old friend of Kevin’s is in town this week and I think we’re supposed to see him tonight. I hope I feel better.
Categories: Updates From the Void |
Tags: gardens, Me, pregnancy | 1 Comment
April 19th, 2007
I’m all worn out from a grocery shopping trip! I haven’t had a very productive week; I’ve done some dishes, some laundry, showered, and now, shopped. I’ve read a lot– reread some Discworld and the Chrestomanci Quartet and read Sabriel by Garth Nix finally. I started Lirael last night but I decided to put off any more reading until this evening.
The last prenatal appointment was also my monthly deadline for writing. I got a little over 1/10th of the way to the amount Kevin requested. 
At least that means it would be almost impossible to do WORSE this month. But you can see by my progressbar that I’m having a lazy start again.
To be honest, I’ve spent way too much time refreshing the blogs of various people I know, especially (but not exclusively) the people with babies. Why aren’t you people telling me more about your babies? I’ve got one, growing inside me right now!
When I was a kid, I somehow developed the idea that an unborn baby was hooked into its mother’s nervous system: that it would see and feel what the mom saw and felt. Legacies of that idea still follow me; I have to remind myself that if I want the baby to have any chance of hearing me, I have to say words out loud. The baby mostly lives in a little cave inside of me, connected to me mainly via circulatory stuff. Well, a soft cave. Okay, a sack.
Categories: Updates From the Void |
Tags: Me, Writing | 1 Comment
April 16th, 2007
All the cool kids are having boys for their firstborn. Now I can get me some of that action.
The ultrasound was fun. We saw little fists waving and feet kicking. Very satisfying. She took lots of measurements, and next to each measurement a pregnancy weeks estimate popped up. Zod’s head is apparently a bit further along than the rest of him, prompting Kevin to crow about how the baby was going to have a big head, just like him. He also spent some time showing everybody the gender shot. I think he confused the nurses, who kept responding to him as if he were a serious concerned father.
He did ask the RNP (who we saw because our doctor was out delivering three different babies) about my sickness, and she wasn’t terribly helpful. I don’t really like her much, to be honest, but I don’t MIND her because, well, the appointments are so very simple right now. Anyhow, she asked me if I could keep down dairy and I admitted that I loved cheese. She started out with, “Oh, cheese is so very fattening…” and burbled on a bit about eating healthy yogurt and stuff instead, and then midstream apparently what was written on my chart caught up with her (I’d lost two pounds since my last weigh-in) and switched to telling me cheese was just fine. I was actually kind of annoyed by the whole thing, although I can’t quite figure out why. Maybe it’s just my dislike of being bossed around.
Anyhow, after the appointment, Kevin decided to skip work for the rest of the day and we went to look at baby stuff and just sort of think about the baby. At Macy’s, we actually convinced ourselves to buy a couple of outfits– pretty much the first baby things we’ve acquired. Kevin is astonishingly excited. Sometime this week, we should probably put together a timeline of what needs to get done and in what order so that we can be a little bit organized.
Categories: Science Experiment |
Tags: general-zod | 4 Comments
April 12th, 2007
Squash-types have sprouted.
Pumpkins, zucchini, yellow squash. Tomatoes are outside getting hardened. Wish I could tell them apart. May end up planting more than I originally planned in trash bags, just because I can’t tell the varieties apart. At least I labeled the squash-types.
Am I delusional because I’m working on a garden for this summer?
I’ll post pictures of easter cupcakes at some point.
Categories: Updates From the Void |
Tags: gardens | No Comments
April 6th, 2007
I’m busy making egg and flower-shaped cupcakes for a decorating party tomorrow. I slept all day, quite by accident. I slept on the couch last night.
When I just sat down to take a break, I could feel, um, my uterus, I guess. At the bendy point. It was disturbing. Then I ended up looking at pregnancy photos on the web and now I’m a little more freaked out. “Oh my God is that going to happen to ME?” Some pictures were less terrifying than others. But… man. I’m going ‘uh-oh’ now. What the heck have I gotten myself into?
Categories: Updates From the Void |
Tags: holidays, Me, pregnancy | 4 Comments
April 5th, 2007
Yesterday, I took a frisbee out back and threw it for Dante. After a few times in which he tried to chase it like a ball, he started paying more attention to how it flew, and he caught it a few times! And did some of those amazing mid-air twists that frisbee dogs manage. By the time Kevin got home, Dante was too worn out to make much of an effort towards the catching or retrieving, though he still liked the chasing. But still! I was very pleased and impressed. Hannah never really figured out catching on her own, although once she saw Dante do it, I think she suddenly understood, because she at least made an effort occasionally.
Now, however, my shoulder hurts. This is not because I threw a frisbee a whole lot, because I didn’t. Only a few times. Honest. I think it’s because being pregnant isn’t just a party in your tummy, it’s a whole body experience. Those hormones get everywhere. Apparently pregnant women undergo a metamorphosis as thorough as a mogwai turning into a gremlin.
Categories: Pets |
Tags: dante | No Comments
April 4th, 2007
In the beginning, I was careful to not let myself get too attached to an embryo. It was important to me to not be too attached. Not all seeds sprout, after all. And I’d rather live in uncertainty than fear.
I have this anxiety problem, see. When it flares up, I can’t help but pair positive and negative emotions. Wild happiness is always tainted by the dread that it’s too good to be true. Deep love is twinned with a horrific and inescapable fear of loss. I don’t mean passively; I mean anytime I feel a good and strong emotion, I immediately start getting the butterflies of a dramatic anxiety attack. So I encouraged the uncertainty of early pregnancy to blockade the progress of a greater and more debilitating fear. It made sense to me. If I’d gotten attached to anything, it would have only been the idea of being pregnant, of being a mom in eight months. I didn’t want to get attached to that.
But that couldn’t go on forever. Some seeds sprout.
Or rather, it could go on forever, if I kept pushing the ideas away. It’s something I’m very good at. The core emotional center of me is well shielded from big impacts (though the little ones can leach through–song-sized sentimentality). A baby’s a pretty big impact, and an absolute magnet for anxiety. But letting an avoidant fear of a crippling fear control me would be as much of a tragedy as anything more biological.
I’ve talked about this with Kevin. And I’m getting closer accepting a baby person in my life. I can see the looming iceberg* of the most crippling fear I’ve ever felt on the horizon. But today, feeling little whooshes inside, I will not let it sink me. ‘Cause suddenly I really know that a baby person is cooler than fear is frightening.
*The iceberg of fear is an illusion. It’s not there if we can’t see it. Most of the time, disaster is a submarine, not an iceberg. I’ve been telling myself that for eight years or so, and I don’t know that it’s worked much when push comes to shove, but I didn’t have medication then.
Categories: Science Experiment |
Tags: general-zod, Me, pregnancy | 2 Comments
April 4th, 2007
You know, I wonder if these leetle tiny pains that spark all over my uterine region intermittently the last few days are the baby moving. It’s like being kneaded by cat claws, through several layers of fabric.
Categories: Science Experiment |
10 Comments
April 3rd, 2007
So, as anybody who peeks into this mess of a blog knows (including long-lost aunts), being pregnant has made me sick. Sniffly sneezing coughing sick, with added side effects of what I like to call ‘linked biological functions’. One of these links is a link between coughing and vomiting.
However! Yesterday afternoon I started feeling actual nausea, much like back in the good old morning sickness days. Except it wasn’t just some of the time. I managed some toast last night before bed, and I choked down a bread roll earlier today, but more recently, even a cracker was too much. It was bad. In fact, I don’t know that I’ve had this kind of stomach upset since I was a small child. I’m trying hard to stay hydrated, and inject calories when I can, because I’m starving. If it goes on another day or two, I will probably have to call a nurse and find out what to do to prevent my body from doing something horrible related to the pregnancy. Meanwhile, I’m drinking miso soup and ginger tea and water and trying to be very very careful how I move. And also being bored. Chores are piling up. Errands need to be run. I guess maybe I’ll order groceries online from Safeway and renew library books online as well, in case I don’t feel better tomorrow.
Something upstairs is beeping like it needs a battery replaced. I wonder if I’ll lose my mind or something else before I find it.
Categories: Updates From the Void |
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April 3rd, 2007
I’m still playing World of Warcraft. Disgaea 2 is on hold because Kevin absconded with my PS2 so he could play God of War II. I was not as happy with God of War II as I was with God of War, but it was still worth watching.
Anyhow, my WoW playing is slow, because I mostly play on weekends. It’s so easy to play on weekdays… all day… that I have to be careful and have some disciprine. Plus, I prefer to play with rested XP. But I finally have a character over level 40! That means she can ride around on her riding wolf, and I can play in areas I’ve never seen before. But that’s just my first character, and she’s really only level 40 because she’s been around for a very long time. I’m a wizard at getting characters to level 12 quickly… and then from 12-24 takes forever, and then…. nothing. Well, we’ll see if that remains true. I’ve got this new character, see… and I’m sure she’ll work out! No, really. Because she’s based on a similar character from a different server and a different faction that I actually pushed to level 30 pleasantly. Woohoo level 30!
I wish it wasn’t so expensive to move characters between servers. It costs as much as some game expansions do, and while I suppose it’s an equivalent experience in some ways, it’s just… annoying when you’re trying to save money but you’d also kind of like to see old friends again.
Categories: World of Warcraft |
Tags: video-games | No Comments
