Where we started
How far we've come....
I don't consider myself particularly vain (and before you think about my prior blog post, nope-I don't think it's vain to NOT want an extra person worth of skin hanging from your midsection if that is what pregnancy, diet, and exercise have left you with)...and, directly related, probably not terribly insecure about my physical self (I mean, I have what God gave me, and I do the best I can with what I've got). I realize often that I don't have any idea if I have crazy hair or visible boogers in spite of the fact that I pee approximately 10,234 times each day in close proximity to a mirror. I literally wash my hands, and am so distracted or deep in thought, that I often don't even look at the mirror two feet from my face. I think that might be weird. We women are HARD on ourselves. While I DO feel like a whale sometimes (a natural biproduct of having to do advanced planning to do something as simple as turn over at night or get out of bed), that doesn't mean that I want to be a minnow right now. Pregnancy can wreak havoc on self-image, I think. So, I have compassion for women that can't embrace the changes it brings on physically. As for me, I am of the idea that being reasonable will always get you within throwing distance of where you want to be. So, I wasn't QUITE as saintly with my diet in this pregnancy, but look where saintly got me before...but, I will have three solid months in beautiful summer to get a jump start on stepping up the fitness program. Yoga five days a week has kept me decently firm and has saved my back, and walking keeps the swelling (mostly) under control and makes me feel better... but I am acutely aware that a good bit of this weight will be sticking around and I will have to work hard to get back to where I was before when the baby is born.
Last night Gillian and I took a bath together, and wore our towels to her room. Her new dresser has a giant mirror that is low enough that she can see herself in it. It also gives an impressive view of someone my height from mid-thigh to shoulders. I hadn't really taken a real look at my naked self with this belly. I have to tell you, it's kind of unbelieveable what I saw. As bloated and swollen as I can get sometimes, The Belly, distended and softly Gaussian-curved, is beautiful. Gillian intimately talking to it is even more so. I mean, I have a love/hate relationship with The Belly at this point...it makes me slower, less graceful. I worry that my skin is going to rip to shreds from all the stretching. It makes it hard to sleep and get comfortable at night. It makes my lower back cry uncle after a good long walk. But, God, there's an almost-full-term-baby in there, and for that I am so grateful.
And, bless him, Sean loves this Belly, and this body, and all the hard work going in there.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Through the Looking Glass
Friday, May 29, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
The Pregnant (and not lithe or delicate) Pixie and the Butterfly Ballerina
Gillian has decided she is a Ballerina. She likes to get inspiration from You Tube videos of Ballerinas, and reworks their choreography in the living room for her own adoring audience. She has a Tutu, Butterfly wings, a Magic Wand, and some $2.50 "Old Lady" (translation: Old Navy) ballerina slippers. She had a heart to heart with the baby in my stomach last night that went something like this:
"Addy, when you get bigger and bigger and bigger and get born out of Mama's 'gina, I'm gonna teach you to be a ballerina, like me, OK? We will buy you a pretty pink dress and ballet shoes and we can dance together!" (insert gentle pat and a kiss to The Belly)
The thing is, she really likes company when she does her ballet, and she likes unconventional ballet music. Well, at ~35 weeks pregnant, I am hardly agile or cute, but I'm a damn good sport. Nonni also donned the butterfly wings in our bonding dance time. And I can honestly say neither of us have ever danced to that Sesame Street song before, so we're branching out.
Nonni has been visiting since last Tuesday and we have been like little elves getting the house in order. It has been luxurious to have so much help. I originally wasn't going to take Thur-Fri off because I have so.much.to.do at work before going on maternity leave, but getting things together is so important too... So, I decluttered kitchen drawers, decluttered all other junk drawers (in guest room and otherwise), decluttered 3 closets and took 10 bags of clothing and linens to goodwill, posted 5 items on Craigslist for sale (selling three, including two pieces of furniture), edited 4 months of Gillian's videos, washed all our baby clothes and cloth diapers for a baby from newborn to 3 months old, folded them... we moved furniture around and put the change table in the guest room (now the change table is Addy's dresser)... we found a very 70s set of children's furniture for $100 on Craigslist and somehow saw potential in it (it really took some optimism). Suzi worked her tail off for three days priming, sanding, painting, and repairing the furniture and putting new knobs on it, and it turned out adorable. Gillian now has plenty of storage, and when the girls share a room later all their clothes will fit in the new dressers. We were up moving art around Gillian's room and cleaning up and finally sat down and relaxed at 10:30 last night, completely exhausted. The only projects left are reupholstering the glider, which we will do this afternoon, finishing the last of the video editing, and filing a pile of paperwork that has accumulated over the past year in a pile. It will feel amazing to know that when Nonni and Grandaddy leave tomorrow, we will be ready for the baby to come whenever she's ready. 
Story of the afternoon:
(she was officially stalling me from tucking her in):
(Me kissing her freckles, one of which is on her wrist).
Her: "Mama, you can't kiss that freckle 'cause he is running away!"
Me: "Why?"
Her: "Because he's going to the grocery store!"
Me: "Why?"
Her: "Because he wants to buy some bananas and fruits and musics for you!"
Me: "When will he be home?"
Her: "When I wake up!"
Quote of the day:
Nonni: "Gilly, can you get in your stroller?"
Her: "I don't want to do that."
Nonni: "Well, Grandaddy can't bring you the surprise he was bringing, then..."
Her: "What kind of surprise?"
Nonni: "A Food surprise!"
Her: "OH....I figure Grandaddy is bringing me Cookies, then."
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Queen for the Day
Today some friends threw me a party to celebrate motherhood/womanhood. It was lovely. In true baby shower form, we decorated onesies, shared lots of pregnancy/motherhood stories and wisdom, ate and drank, and were merry. Also, Amanda asked everyone present to decorate a square with a wish for the baby that she will stitch into a quilt for her. After most people left, Lara and Amanda made a cast of my pregnant belly...looking at it, I am amazed at my rotundness.
Handmade decorated onesies!
Some of the quilt squares
Newborn diaper cakes in decorative storage containers for the baby's room
Gillian's onesie of her and Baby
My Joplinesque beauty wearing a coronet made by Lara...
I kept thinking that it's really nice for people to make a big deal out of me sometimes (not something I am use to but could easily get use to!). And I kept thinking about how lucky I am to have such remarkable women in my life...
Saturday, May 16, 2009
A Tragedy Begins
A wrong move today and I felt a quick burn. I went home and noticed raw little red verticle lines, tiny lines, on either side of my belly button, that were NOT there this morning. May 16, 2009, a day that will live in infamy. I lathered myself with oil and body butter, but I think this is the beginning of......
......STRETCH MARKS.
I thought I might escape unscathed again this time. I should know better. Mom had plenty of stretch marks from her three babies. I even have some very faint ones on the lower sides of my hips from adolescence, so it's in my jeans. I never got too big with Gillian, so I never got any with her (on breasts or belly), but all bets are off this time. I solemnly asked Sean if he could still love me with ugly stretch marks on my stomach (this was not part of our premarital agreement to love eachother even if: a) he went bald or b) I got fat), and he assured me that he figured it was a pretty real possibility with pregnancy, particularly multiple pregnancies. And (yes, we have had this conversation) he reminded me that we could always "take care of it after all the babies are finished being made" by which he means some skin treatments and a nice tummy tuck. Yeah, I'm not too proud to admit that I would definitely take care of any sag/extra skin business surgically. All that said, I could live with tiny stretch marks that fade to a shiny shade of my current skin tone, but not angry jagged red or purple ones.
I'd like to be able to tell you that I'd be honored post-baby to wear belly stretch marks like badges of honor from a well fought fight...some identification with womanhood, and being a mother, and giving up my body to the greater good. That's a fine, good thing if you really believe it... sharing my breasts to nourish my child for the better part of a year and a half was as much of that as I could comfortably do.
Ugh. Stretch marks.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Monday
Today I am 32 weeks 5 days pregnant according to my charts and 33 weeks pregnant by my doctor's estimation. I had an ultrasound today that showed a healthy little baby girl who is in about the 45th percentile for growth for her gestational age, and who was practice breathing (I could actually see her doing it while watching my belly in the waiting room, but didn't believe that's what I was seeing till the tech confirmed it). Her little cheeks look kinda chubby, even! Her weight as estimated to be 4 lbs 12 oz "give or take 12 oz." She now officially weighs more than Gillian weighed after spending 51 days in the NICU. It blows my mind what a difference a couple of weeks makes.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
The status of things
Things are a-changin'. Gillian has caught some scent of that in the wind, or something. We have had some issues with control these past couple of weeks that have to be coming from somewhere. First it was holding her pee until she went on the floor (she refused the diaper and also told me she had a "booboo on [her] 'gina"), which initially looked like it might be an infection...so off to the doctor we went. Just as they were about to insert the catheter to extract a sample (Gillian, a 25 lb toddler, had to be restrained by four adults), she peed and peed and peed. Like a scene from a sitcom, I dashed over, grabbed the bucket from her training potty and caught some while she peed all over the examining table. Even though the urine looked clean, the doc sent out for a culture to make sure and sent us home with some antibiotics (there was no infection). I put some A&D on the outer nether region to make a big show of fixing her boo boo, and we maintained our "no pressure" stance with the peeing, and I think we're finally out of the woods. She's back to the potty, happily, with no more talks of boo boos.
Two weeks ago, we started having departure and sleep issues. We go to our birth class on Wednesdays, and our neighbor (who Gillian adores) watches her for us, feeds her, bathes her, plays with her, and gets her to bed. Gillian barely notices most of the time when we leave, but two Wednesdays ago she decided she didn't want us to leave. She cried and threw a fit when Sean left the house. She wouldn't get off the bed for an hour and a half. Darla called to ask what she might try to do in this scenario. The right answer was to ignore her. Eventually Gillian came out of the bedroom and joined her for dinner and then got in the bath, happily spending the rest of the night with Darla. For good measure, she gave Darla plenty of hugs and kissed and made sure to say "I Love You" as much as possible before bedtime. We had a similar display last Wednesday, except Gillian was so upset she vomited on me...but, apparently, that time as soon as we left, she was fine. Luckily we only have a few classes left, but still.
At bedtime, she has started calling out for us more and more after, say, 2 am. Just the right time to completely kill any restfulness sleep holds for us over the course of a night (especially sine I get up at 4:45 to do my yoga every morning). I went to work three times last week with about 4-4.5 hours of sleep, which isn't working for me right now. Among the stories of why she wouldn't go back to sleep, we had the infamous "the bad monkey bit the fan and now it's broken" or "there's a pink Ra-Ra" or "the Blue Monster ate all the Letters". At the end of the day, I think she's procrastinating, not scared, especially when she charmingly invites me to "rock her in the rocking chair", like it's a priviledge and treat I should be dying to take advantage of (usually true, but not at 2 am on a week night). When she started calling out for Sean only to ask him to pick something up off her floor for her, it became clear that this has nothing to do with being scared, and everything to do with being able to make us come at her leisure. So, we had a heart to heart with her yesterday about how we aren't going to come anymore when she calls us at night. When I tucked her in, we talked about everything in her room being OK, nothing being scary. The "pink RaRa" turned out to be the pink blanket on her book shelf that obviously looked scary from her bed. The fan we turned off and back on. I even put a magic fire truck-(I found it in the grass, but it works) that can squirt anything scary with it's special fire hose and make it go away- next to her bed for good measure. I reiterated that we weren't coming in unless something was really really wrong (which we had just established was not the case), and, like magic, she came out of her room at 7 o'clock, just like she was asked to. I would hate to make this bigger than it is, and hope appealing to her reasonable nature (we all need to sleep so we can play and work well tomorrow) might keep us from having to make this a true power struggle (like revisiting sleep training, for example).
In better news, the weather is finally magnificent and we spent the morning at the beach/playground in the sunshine. In spite of the break in temps the past two weeks, it has pretty much just rained and rained and rained. I was feeling a wee bit frustrated...but today is making me forget all that. Gillian found a ladybug that was docile enough to just sit on her hand for the better part of a half hour, which delighted her (the one that wouldn't sit still did not delight her). She made sand angels (I guess Anna taught her to make snow angels, and that transferred) she commandoed across the sand, fully clothed (who was I to deny her after our beach hiatus??), and we soaked up some vitamin D like sponges.
Current favorite thing: Puzzles. And she's really good at them. 
