The princess and the elves (a long one)

 A friend of mine from my physical therapy/pilates class runs a really neat volunteer program at Christmas time.  She works with a local homeless shelter to arrange for Santa to bring gifts for all of the children who find themselves in the unfortunate position of being there over Christmas.

The super cool thing about it is that the parent fills out a form that says what the kid's favorite colors are, stuff they like to do, clothing sizes, things they really need, and things they really want for Christmas.  My friend hooks up each kid with someone like me who goes out shopping for them.  We then all meet at her house (tonight) for a wrapping party.  The gifts are photographed before being wrapped, and the photo with the gift receipts are then given to the kid's parent ahead of time (so he/she knows what the kid is getting from "santa" and can exchange them later if necessary).

A big stocking for each kid, filled with wrapped presents and topped off with a snuggly blanket (that we made over the fall at little get-togethers, one of which I wrote about back in early October), is delivered surreptitiously so that the parents can give them to the kids on Christmas morning.  The kids never know that volunteers provided them with Christmas, and their parents get to keep face in front of their kids by it seeming like the parent/s made Christmas happen for them.

I really like the way this program works and have so much fun thinking about the little kid I get to shop for.  Every year my friend gives me a little girl, as I have a soft-spot for 'em (in a non-sick way... you know what I mean!).  This year I am an elf for a 5 year old who LOVES the new Disney princess Tiana...

I found a totally cute costume so she can dress up like her, gloves and all.  I even found little panties with Princess Tiana on them!  I got everything at Target so it's easy for her dad to exchange stuff, but since Target wasn't selling Tiana dolls all by themselves, I got her the entire princess collection.  The cool thing about it is that Tiana is the star of the box collection, so it's like this little girl will get her favorite princess, Tiana, and all of Tiana's side-kick princesses.

I love being able to use the "elf" activity as a happy place over the holidays, imagining that maybe this one little girl will squeal with a little bit of delight on Christmas morning during a really, really hard time of her family's life.  

I'll have to figure out how little M and I can do this together once she's here to help me.  But it'll be a challenge not to blow the Santa thing for her in the process though!  I'll have to work up a good story.

I hope all of you have a peaceful holiday.  I'm not sure if you all celebrate Christmas or other holidays, but this seems to be a reflective time of year for most all of us in the western world.  And it's a particularly hard time for those of us who are working so hard to carve out a little piece of family for ourselves. 

Whenever you need a "happy place" please let your mind go to Tiana and princesses in general, and imagine that all of us IF princesses are together in a snowy wonderland laughing and talking and meeting in princess-form to share our love and compassion for each other.  You can even wear a tiara and super cool dress in the happy snowy wonderland place.  Mine will look like Tiana's, as I love green...

Giving up the fight

My belly button has given up the fight. Today it is completely flat with the rest of my belly and has this really soft flaccid-y feel to it. How strange to see a part of your body you know well but never, ever saw the inside of before. The definitely good part of this event is that I have had a pain around my bellybutton (just above and to the upper left) that felt like a nasty bruise for the last 2 months. The pain is now gone completely. The struggle to be an inny is over.

The glucose challenge

I took my glucose challenge yesterday.  The drink itself wasn't like what I imagined.  It was a little plastic bottle of stuff that looked and tasted a lot like sweet kool-aid, and was really easy to get down.  But I do have to admit that after about 20 minutes I started to feel really gross with all that glucose running around my body.  It was kind of like the time I accidentally drank regular coffee after a long break from caffeine.  After sitting in the waiting room for an hour they took blood and urine samples and I was on my way. 

I almost RAN to the burrito place to get something else in my body to try and counter the sugar-yuck feeling.  I then proceeded to spill a big chunk of burrito down my chest, belly, and onto my lap.  There is nothing quite like the feeling of the large breasts, large belly, and food stains all down the front of your clothes.  This seems to happen to me on a somewhat regular basis these days. 

(That's me to the right -- the Venus of Willendorf -- chomping on a burrito with beans spilled all down my front.  Are you impressed with my procrastination skills?  Give me the internet and Adobe Photoshop and I'll kill hours...)

I filed all of my grades last night and now am trying to focus enough to clear off my desk and do some odious tasks that I have been procrastinating from for months.  I wish the world could just stop for a week or two so I could take a break from everything and let my tired brain take it all in and smell the roses (or burrito stains, as the case may be).

Of placentas and men

1) The ultrasound went great this morning.  No placenta previa!  Yippee!  It was so incredible to see little M again.  She actually looks like a cute little baby now at 2 lbs 10 oz...  opening, closing, and puckering her cute mouth underneath a little up-turned button nose, then covering her mouth with her hand as if she was embarrassed we'd caught her doing it. Yep, I cried.

2) My mom is sending me a little pink polka-dotted moses basket in the mail.  More "sniff, sniff."

3) I am noticing that men who have children treat me very differently than they did before.  One colleague just about hurt himself getting up to offer me his chair when I walked in late to a meeting.  Another hugged me goodbye this afternoon because he's leaving for a year-long sabbatical.  I am not remotely close to either of them.  Older men on the street smile at me a lot too.  Actually, for that matter, lots of people smile at me these days which I really like.  I'm from the south and really miss the friendliness of strangers.

28 weeks

The run-down:

OB appointment today. Weight gain = 2 pounds.  No comment from the dr.  All seems good, little M kept kicking the fetal heart monitor.  (can you say "too cute"?)

In shock that I am at the start of my third trimester. Shock, I tell you.

U/s apt tomorrow to see if my potential placenta previa cleared up. Psyched that I will get a peak at little M. This apt felt so far off time-wise when it was scheduled.

Glucose test on Friday morning. I wish Dh could come and keep me entertained, as I have mixed feelings about the lab where I need to go for it (miscarriage memories).

File final grades on Friday afternoon.

Dh comes home next wednesday.

Feeling very emotional today, teary, like I would really like to lay on my bed and just cry for a while.  I know it's just hormones, but it was a little hard to hold it together when I realized that I couldn't understand the calendar (i.e., I thought Jan 31st was New Year's Eve, and that was the third dumb interpretation of the calendar spoken out load while trying to schedule an OB appointment). 

It is so weird to watch myself become more and more stupid.  I did this years ago when I was taking all kinds of serious pain meds for the herniated disc in my neck.  I didn't like it then and it is the only thing about pregnancy that I don't like now.  It is hard to see yourself not be anywhere near as smart as you know you can be.  In fact I'm ridiculously paranoid now when I drive as I know that I can't really trust myself like I used to.  This must be sort of what it is like to lose your mind, go into dementia, etc.  Soooo frustrating. 

I hope that Dh can take over some of the mental responsibilities when he's back, as it is really taxing me to stay on top of everything.

And just to reiterate the obvious, I am ridiculously in love with little M.  I hope she's happy in there.

A week of weeks

The last week has felt like several weeks.  So many things to juggle, from final exams to last-minute letters of recommendations to the hurried job candidate to had to interview this week because she's 32 weeks pregnant and lives in Norway.  And add in the personal life things, my sister and parents in town, my sister leaving, my parents still here.  While I love them, they need babysitting and that's a little stressful.  Plus, keeping my mom in a good mood is a bit like walking on eggshells.  You never quite know what she wants but if she doesn't get it then she seriously pouts for hours.  And if you suggest the wrong thing...  oh la la.

On top of all of this I am starting to believe that I'm going to have a baby.  Really, deep down believing.  And I am so incredibly happy that it brings tears to my eyes when I have time to think about it.  I would love nothing more than to spend hours sitting on the couch feeling her move around.

I feel wonderful these days.  I have a feeling this won't last as I get bigger, but it is fun at this point to have trouble getting up when I sit on the floor, to be careful about not using much soap in most places as my skin is quite dry, to chuckle a little when my big belly runs into things.  I have to remember to put my feet up on occasion, and to stop and rest.  My belly reminds me when I've done too much.  I get this weird light pain right at the top.  It's external and light and I think it's just muscles and ligaments, and it goes away if I sit quietly for a few minutes.  I think it is a little alarm going off.  It's little M telling me to sit down and pay attention to her, as she always moves around a bit once I do.

I think I've only gained 2 pounds over the last few weeks, and I feel like I'm doing well on the taking-care-of-myself front.  I am not all that hungry these days, but that will likely pass soon too.

And I am so ridiculously eager to reach the end of the semester.  I have zero patience for the complaining students who think they should get a better grade on this paper or that exam because they really like the class.  This seems like a particularly annoying year student-wise.  Not sure if it is them or me.  Every time I turn around someone needs something from me.  A quick tour around the lab, sign a card for this person retiring, a donation for this holiday party, write-up someone else's review, arrange for someone else to get a key to this room, etc. etc. etc.  And I just want to be left alone.    

While I yearn for some quiet alone time, I also know that it is better for me psychologically to have so much going on.  I only have enough time to cherish little M and not obsess about all of the things that can go wrong.  That's a good thing.

3 days away from the 3rd trimester. 

And the day is only half over...

So far today I have:

Taken my neighbor and her dog to the vet's because I accidentally hit the dog (crazy-ass dog that ran into my car, not my fault but hard to quibble with a distraught owner).  I paid the $1,000 vet bill on my credit card anyway, guessing it would go a long way for neighborly-ness...

Learned that the contractor who won't finish my house renovation is an alcoholic.

Dealt with two student papers that were plagiarized.

If I could drink I'd have a martini for lunch, except that I still need to prepare for my final lecture.  I hope the rest of the day does not follow suit.

My heart breaks for Paige

Paige took an amazing and inspiring path to pregnancy, but has faced the horrible nightmare of losing her son at 20 weeks today.

My heart goes out to this amazing woman and I hope she realizes how loved she is out here in blogland.

I did it!

I had a delicious dinner party with 27 friends who were all wonderful and kind and entertaining.  Even my mom behaved.  The party ended up being even better than I had hoped.

AND, more relevant to this blog, you will be amazed by how open little M's impending arrival was discussed (given that I can't deny the elephant in the room anymore).  As I've said, I haven't made any formal announcements.  So many people I know through work stuff either are just suspicious or haven't seen me in a while and had no idea. 

While a few weeks ago I was panicky about this sort of thing, it worked out really well.  Now the cat is out of the bag and it isn't a bad thing at all.

Granted, not a soul from my department was there (I didn't invite any of 'em), but my wonderful colleagues in other departments were, so it was the "good" element of my university and they responded as you'd hope and expect if you were a rational human being who interacted with other human beings rather than biology freaks.

So, I have one more milestone down on my way to March 8th...  and with the scare that Pie is experiencing, I am eager to get going on the logistics of having a baby in my house.  Exciting!!!

turning 40

Tomorrow, Friday, is my 40th birthday. I am throwing myself a dinner party at a wonderful italian restaurant. I don't feel like I know that many people but I seem to have about 30 people coming, which makes me feel like I have many more friends than I realized.

I feel good about it. This is largely thanks to little M, who gives me the most amazing sense of completion. I feel ridiculously lucky, and amazed at how close I was to never having a baby. She came on the last try, and I had started to get more ok with the reality of being childless. But then she came into my life and every day we get closer and closer to meeting.

Dh is in the field and will miss my party, as usual. But that is ok. He is a bit antisocial and wouldn't have enjoyed himself. This way I know I am not torturing him.

He left me a pile of presents and a stack of cards. I read the cards tonight so that I could read them alone. My parents and sister are here. Most of them were funny, one was from the cat, the fish, and little M. I totally teared up. And one was a blank card that he wrote a longer note in. I totally cried as he wrote that he is very happy being my husbamd, my best friend, and M's father...

I am the most fortunate woman on this planet. 40 is going to be good, I have a feeling.

A long time ago my dad told me that life just keeps getting better. And he's right. Each year isn't necessarily better than the last, and I have had some really crappy years recently, but my 20s were better than my teens, my 30s better than my 20s, and I truly feel that my 40s will be better than my 30s. I hope this is the pattern you all experience too, and that the big picture continually gets better and better even though these crappy ass years of IF have thrown a loop into the system.

I love you all.

- InB

where did you find your shirt?

To start with, the health care system was good to me on Monday. By 5:30pm I had seen my primary care physician and had an inhaler for if/when I get an asthma allergy attack again. Turns out that it is pretty common for pregnant women to have worse allergies, and with the reduced lung capacity the situation is exacerbated. All is good on that front now and I feel ok/not panicky when I start to cough, but luckily haven't needed to use the inhaler yet.

Today during my office hours two young women from my class came in to talk and at one point asked me when I am due... they were cute giddy.

At dinner tonight at a restaurant an older woman pulled me aside and said that her daughter in law is 5 months pregnant. She really liked my shirt and wondered where I got it as it would be a great gift.

I must look pregnant enough now that people aren't afraid to hold back.

Oh, and the clown at this thanksgiving party we attended told me that he liked my outfit. Still trying to figure out if that was a joke and if yes, what part of it was supposed to be funny. Hmmm.