pics

So we were too lazy to get Juno costumes.

I was a black cat.  DH drew some baby kittens for my belly.

28 weeks

Yep, I’m in my twenty-eighth week, known to many as the beginning of the end.  Well, the beginning of the third trimester, at least.  And, having gained twenty three pounds so far, which is on the upper end of average weight gain, I’m beginning to get really worried about having to deliver a fatheaded baby. Well.  Beginning to get worried about delivering any size of baby. I mean, I’m not very good at geometry, but I can certainly see a disparity in the sizes of diameters we’re dealing with here.

Ahem.  In other words, I really do want to be in better physical shape for the great physical labor coming up.  Although I walked regularly in my first trimester, my second was busy and tiring, and I hardly exercised at all.  So now that I’m in the third, I am ready to strengthen my heart for the pounding and my thighs for the squatting (ugh, gross, I can’t believe you just said that) and certain other muscles for various other endeavors.  So far, so good:  yoga Thursday, long hilly walk Saturday, and swimming laps Sunday.  So far, with a supportive exercising husband, so good.  Now if I can just lay off the Haagen Daaz.

applique

In preparation for our ambitious wall art project for babygirl’s room, I’ve been doing a little practice appliqueing.  A pillow, a fleece baby hat with a little appliqued heart.

Babysized things are adorable no matter what.

Here are some awkwardly taken pictures of the belly.

frights

Last night at 3am I woke gasping in pain from a calf cramp. DH nearly jumped out of his skin thinking I was going into early labor or something.  Poor guy.

I am nearly into the third trimester, and now every couple of days a stranger feels entitled to ask when I’m due or if it’s a boy or a girl.  I don’t mind it too much, but I’ll tell you what I AM sick of: being asked, “How are you feeling?”  I have to answer this question at least five times a day.  It seem to be the only question people know to ask.  And there’s no good answer to it.  No one *really* wants to hear that my back hurts, I have calf cramps, acid reflux, shortness of breath, etc etc etc.  But if I just answer, “Pretty good,” it’s a real conversation killer.  Any suggestions for a creative answer to turn the topic away from my pregnancy?  Maybe I should just say, “Pretty good…but how are YOU feeling?” with genuine concern in my voice, leaving them to wonder if they look grievously ill.

I think we’ll be Juno and Paulie for Halloween.

25 weeks…more than halfway…

Physically

Yesterday I stepped on the scale to find that I had gained five pounds in two days. Is that really possible? If that’s my actual weight now, then I’ve gained a total of twenty pounds. I feel guilty for eating too many sweets; I mean, I’m definitely not Amy Poehler in “Baby Mama,” slurping down soft drinks and pork rinds, but my breakfast (a latte and some homemade chocolate chip pumpkin bread) isn’t exactly raw wheat berries sprinkled on plain yogurt, either (gross).

I felt exhausted for most of September. Going from my easy summer teaching schedule (9-2) to my full-time fall schedule (7:30-3:30) proved to be a real shock to my system, and jet lag from our trip to Georgia the weekend before school started wore me out more than I’d expected. But I’m starting to adjust now, and not feeling as tired, although I still can sleep nine hours per night without any trouble. My only other physical complaints this trimester are: an aching back (probably due to my weak muscles and bad posture), getting out of breath quickly, and more acid reflux (which I can usually prevent if I just eat smaller meals). Well, and it’s getting harder to bend over. I’m done painting my toenails for a while.

Emotionally

The weather has changed, in Seattle, and the dark, wet days leave me craving flannel, fleece, and boots; chicken and dumplings, wood fires, and pear gingerbread. The change in weather has also awakened me to the passage of time and the realities of the decisions DH and I have to make in the next month or two. For the first time, I’m stressed about not knowing exactly how it will all work out.

It looks like (shhh, don’t tell my boss yet) I won’t try to return to work next semester. Fitting my work schedule with DH’s school and work schedule so that one of us is always home with babygirl is just too complicated. Not to mention (I am, though, aren’t I) the fact that I don’t really want to pump milk out of my breasts everynight. But there are so many details to work out…how long will my insurance coverage last if I don’t come back to work? Can I switch over to DH’s plan? When do I do that? Do I try to pick up some tutoring hours in the neighborhood after the girl’s born?

And emotionally, how well am I going to handle not having a job? I always feel filled with grand ambitions when given freedom, time and space of my own: I will sew, I will cook, I will write a children’s book; I will study Biblical Greek, start a book club, read a daily liturgy, finish compiling readings about living in intentional community.

But in the reality of unstructured time, I find instead I am beset with acedia: boredom with with dailyness of life, listlessness (from the verb “to list,” which means “to desire”; a lack of desire for anything) that leaves me watching tv, consuming instead of creating. I stop caring about the things on my list. Without the requirements of a job, I fall to pieces and make nothing of the time I’m given. Maybe this will be different with a baby. Maybe she will provide the structure that forces me to make the most of what free time I have. Maybe I just need to grow up, to learn self-discipline.

I used to think that I would also struggle with my sense of identity if I quit my job and became a FTM. I’m not as sure about that as I used to be, primarily because my sense of identity has been in flux for years. In highschool, and maybe college, I had a strong sense of who I was: smart, bookish, independent. I saw my future clearly: I’d live in an apartment in downtown Chicago, work for a publisher or on my PhD, go to jazz clubs and keep company with “Beowulf,” a grey cat with a spiky collar. In reality, when I graduated from college I moved not to Chicago but to the middle of nowhere. I became almost completely divorced from contact with my family, friends, culture, and native language. I began the process of finding out that I was not who I had always been.

{“You only need to lose track of who you are, or who you thought you were supposed to be, so that you end up lying flat on the dirt floor basement of your heart. Do this, Jesus says, and you will live.”
-Barbara Brown Taylor, 2006}

I had loved language, most of all; but teaching esl in a foreign country removes your language ability more than enhances it, as you start speaking in the most simplified English imaginable and forget all words of more than three syllables. I had loved serving God as a teacher and mentor; but a year later I lost that role and I haven’t regained it since. I had always been independent, fairly disinterested in marriage and family, but a year later I started dating DH and didn’t care about anything more than I cared about marrying him. Suffice to say, the life I’ve been living, the life of a married ESL teacher, is not exactly the fulfillment of all my career dreams, and so it’s not going to be too earth-shattering to give it up.

{Postscript: I don’t mean to imply that I’m unhappy about my life now not being the fulfillment of my adolescent imaginings.  I enjoy my life, and I”m thankful to have a husband who is willing to work and who also values playtime. I’m just saying that maybe the transition to being a mother won’t be challenging in the ways I used to think it would be… and that’s a good thing.}

sports

My uterus is the size of a soccer ball.