autism

TV might cause autism.

jeans blues

I haven’t been able to wear my jeans for six weeks. I miss them. Or at least the idea of them.

I have been watching the Gilmore Girls today, and now I want nothing more than to be able to put on jeans and look young and sexy and go drink a glass of wine with my girlfriends, or go to an ivy league and wear boots and short skirts and read books and hang out by the coffee cart. But I can’t put on jeans, I can’t have a glass of wine, I can’t even have a sandwich (not supposed to have any deli meats), I’m tired of being hungry all the time, I’m bored of all foods, and my girlfriends don’t live here, and I’m never going to be young and sexy again, and I’m never going to go to Yale or get my PhD. Instead, I’m just going to get a fat face and swollen ankles, and then for the next thirty years (ok, I realize it’s for the rest of my life, not just until they move out), I’m going to be mom. I don’t feel like a mom.

Don

Tonight, as I’m washing the rice cooker, my Chinese scholar friend Don, who is working on his PhD, comes into the kitchen.  “Oh!  Let me help you,”  he says.  “You know, pregnant women in China don’t do anything.  After a woman becomes pregnant, she is supposed to rest, and her husband and mother take care of everything.”

Oh, to be pregnant in China.

Or not.  Much as I’d like to be laying in bed eating soup and memorizing whole seasons of the Gilmore Girls for the next six months, I guess I prefer my independence.

dreams

I love what I learn about pregnancy by living with Koreans and Japanese. Last night at dinner MY asked me if Americans believe that the mother can learn the baby’s sex by paying attention to their dreams. She said that in Korea, most women have a dream, near their due date, which reveals the baby’s sex (this may be more about her parents’ generation than the current generation). Before she was born, her mom dreamed that she picked a large fish out of the ocean. Her mom told her grandmother about the dream, and her grandmother said, “That means you will have a girl!.” Before MY’s sister was born, her mom dreamed that she picked a strawberry. That, apparently, needed no interpretation: a strawberry is always a girl. Sean, another Korean friend, was eating dinner with us last night too. His mother dreamed of picking nuts, and that’s how she knew he would be a boy.

Gotta start paying more attention to those dreams! MY said sometimes it’s not the mother, but the grandmother or great-grandmother who has the dream or interprets the dream. I told her that my grandmother was pretty sure this one’s a girl. She said she thinks that it’s a girl, too.

I thought it was girl, until last last Sunday when I worked in the church nursery and we had a new baby visiting, the cutest six-month old boy. After meeting him, I suddenly thought maybe mine will be a boy after all.

sleep, sleep

So much for being out of my first trimester! Yesterday morning from 4-7 am I had hot flashes and chills. From 11-12 I had weird stomach pain. At 5pm I ate a WHOLE chimichanga plus the sides of rice and beans (DH was a little bit shocked by that feat, as in the past I’ve had to stop at 2/3). And at 8:30pm, I fell asleep in the middle of a history channel documentary about superheroes, not waking again until 7 am today.

fetal education

Yesterday, in the car on the way home, and after being in the car for an hour, I got angry at a stupid driver who cut me off. MY, my Korean housemate, sweetly asked if I had ever heard of “fetal education”.

I thought maybe she meant Lamaze. Nope.

“In Korea, many women believe that you should spend a lot of time in your pregnancy to read books and educate yourself, so that the baby will be educated. But also, you should try to avoid some negative things like getting angry, impatient, so that your baby will not learn to be angry or impatient.”

Whoops.

nappy

I took a three hour nap immediately after breakfast this morning.

The baby is 2 1/2 inches long now. (Not entirely as a result of the nap, but surely in part.)

twelve weeks

Sigh of relief.  We’ve heard the heartbeat, the risk of miscarriage has gone way down, and for several weeks now I haven’t felt nauseated at all.  All things considered, I must have had an easier-than-average first trimester, for which I’m thankful.  I feel like I’m entering early into the second trimester.

Entering the second trimester feels like the beginning of a big lull.  The uncertainty of the first trimester is over, but the anxiety about actually giving birth is still far in the distance.  For now, I just get to take it easy.  My only complaint is that the “glow” of pregnancy, in my case, seems to mean breaking out all over the place.  Well, and that my allergies seem to be exacerbated by pregnancy (but then, I’ve never lived in this city in the month of July before, so I can’t know if my allergies would be this bad if I weren’t pregnant).  These days, when I wake up in the morning I don’t look very pregnant at all, but by the end of the day I look very pregnant:

So, with not too much going on, I guess now is a good time to review the rest of the books I keep on my nightstand these days (which is also a good way to procrastinate from writing curriculum, which is what I should be doing now).  These books are more mainstream than others that I’ve mentioned, and I hope they reflect that fact that I am not hostile towards conventional medicine, doctors, or hospitals!  While I think some reform in our health care systems, including our system of maternity care, would be a good thing, I know many, many wise and wonderful doctors who do what they do out of sincere care for people.

The first pregnancy guide I got was the only one the library had checked in the day I was there: The BabyCenter Essential Guide to Pregnancy and Birth by Linda Murray, Lean Hennen, and Jim Scott (2005).

I really like the format of this book. It describes what happens week by week, and for each trimester it includes sections on health, nutrition, emotions, and “the rest of your life”.   It’s easy to thumb through,  and informative without being didactic.  The pages are laid out like magazine spreads, with sidebars, short article inserts, and quotes from other pregnant women (taken from the babycenter website).  It’s not too technical, and it’s a good place to start. It’s similar to “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” (which I picked up used for one dollar), but I like it better.  “What to Expect” goes month by month rather than week by week, and its tone is a little too preachy (I don’t like it when a book tells me I can only have one brownie, once a month).   “What to Expect” does include a chapter entitled “Are you pregnant?” whereas the BabyCenter book jumps right in with “Congratulations! You’re Pregnant!”, so if you’re not sure yet, the BabyCenter book doesn’t offer much to help with the waiting.

Finally, there is “Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn” by Penny Simkin, Janet Whalley, and Ann Keppler.

Written by three nurse midwives from the Seattle area, this book is probably the most often recommended in the Pacific Northwest. It is very thorough and informative, and definitely less of a warm fuzzy read.  It’s the most technical and medical of the books, focusing on anatomy, complications, nutrition, the birth event itself (200 pages!),  post-partum care, and breastfeeding.  I’ve only skimmed it, as I haven’t had any complications and am NOT ready to read about labor pains

Oh yeah: I also have “The Pregnancy Journal.”

For each day of your pregnancy, this book offers a short fact about the baby’s development, the mother’s health, and eating for nutrition.  It also includes fun facts about childbirth in other cultures and spaces for you to track your weight gain and the size of your tummy.  This book was a gift, and I’ve enjoyed having it.

Finally, an article about baby names changing dramatically in the last fifty years.  Which ones do you like?