First Movements

So here is my first blog posting. I felt the baby move for the first time this weekend! It was a very wild feeling. It felt like a good solid couple of jabs or maybe an elbow to the tummy demanding some more room. Every thing is moving along fairly quickly now. We are busily trying to get a few things done every weekend on our list of preparations. This weekend we got a new mattress and hopefully will get rid of the old. Here is the latest belly shot, and a picture of our house guest.

Cravings

I have a friend who owes me a little bit of money, and we've been discussing this fact through email over the past couple of days. However, after the 5am craving for ice cream I had last night, I am considering asking for the sum's equivalent in small cups of Mexican Vanilla with various combinations of malt balls, peanut butter cups, and hot fudge rather than some combination of US currency. It's officially my first craving of the second trimester, folks.

I woke up from a dream of ordering ice cream at Amy's (a place I've been to literally three times in two years, but where I would now like to live), sadly, before I could consume said ice cream, and then laid wistfully in bed for twenty minutes, unable to sleep while thinking of it.

During my first trimester, I couldn't get enough of orange juice for awhile, and then it was bananas. Bananas straight from the peel, bananas sliced onto cereal or granola and yogurt, bananas in a bowl with a tiny bit of sugar and rice milk. . . but I now have a sweet tooth like never before. I've been pretty good about soothing the urge for sweets with maple or chocolate yogurt rather than candy bars. But I'm not sure if I can make it through today without a trip to Amy's. I'll just order the smaller than small, "tiny" size, I promise.


Maybe it's just my body's way of keeping me and the baby calm and content. According to
Lise Eliot , "Sweets taste good because it literally feels good to eat them - they induce pleasurable sensations in the body. And it's not just because they give us a big energy boost. The pleasurable feeling associated with eating sweets turns on quite quickly; we don't have to wait for the sugar to reach the gut and be digested. Research now indicates that sweet receptors in the mouth are coupled to brain areas that release endogenous opiates - those natural morphinelike chemicals that induce a sense of pleasure and well-being and even block the transmission of painful stimuli to the brain . . . researchers have found that drinking sugar water or sucking on a sweetened pacifier has a tremendous calming effect on young infants. Sugar reduces crying, lowers a baby's heart rate, and decreases his or her less-coordinated, energy-wasting body movements. . . . In addition to its calming effects, sugar is known to make babies more alert and to encourage their hand-to-mouth coordination."

So basically, a woman with a Ph.D is giving me a greenlight to head to Amy's today. Thank you, Ms. Eliot.

Belly Shot

Here's a picture of the belly right at 17 weeks. Clearly, stretchy cotton clothes are my life right now.

Motion

I just have to post quickly from work, because I am sitting at my desk and the little one is really moving a lot today! It's so exciting I can hardly stand it. I've only been feeling faint nudges and vibrations for a week now, so it's all still very new to me. I've noticed over the past few days that I get a little nudge if I am sitting hunched over, as if the baby is requesting a little more room. I don't know what's going on in there right now . . . somersaults? happy activity because I just finished a cup of green tea and a snack of nuts? Either way, I'm enjoying it.

I did take a 17 weeks belly picture that I will try to post tonight.

Just pictures . . .

. . . of this weekend's road trip.

may may

I check out Nose in Ear almost every day because it's just so damn exciting that a cool lady from my neighborhood is also pregnant, and I really love to see her pictures and read about how she's doing. Today I saw that she tagged me for a meme, which made me feel about 100 years old, because I wasn't sure what that meant. I catch on quick though.

Here's what I learned: "The term "meme" (IPA: /miːm/, rhyming with "may may"; commonly pronounced in the US as /mɛm/, rhyming with "lay lay"), coined/popularized in 1976[1] by the biologist Richard Dawkins, refers to a "unit of cultural information" which can propagate from one mind to another in a manner analogous to genes (i.e., the units of genetic information).

Dawkins gave as examples of memes: tunes, catch-phrases, beliefs, clothes fashions, ways of making pots, or of building arches."

I guess the fun, internet version is a little different than what Dawkins had in mind, but nonetheless, here's my own personal unit of cultural information.


Four jobs I've had.
1. Audubon Society Intern
2. Writing Assistant
3. Teaching Artist
4. Mentor/Tutor

Four Movies I can watch over and over again.
1. The Big Lebowski
2. When Harry met Sally
3. Office Space
4. almost any Woody Allen movie, especially Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters

Four places I have lived
1. Austin, TX
2. Brooklyn, NY
3. Santa Fe, NM
4. Annapolis, MD

Four television shows I love to watch.
(We don't have a T.V., but we do have a Netflix Account and a computer . . . )
1. Lost
2. The Sopranos
3. The Cosby Show
4. My So Called Life


Four places I have been on vacation.
1. France
2. Quebec City
3. Japan
4. the San Juan river, Utah

Four of my favourite dishes
1. Chile Rellenos, but they have to be New Mexican, with Christmas chile
2. cheese enchiladas, beans, and extra crispy potatoes from Horseman's
3. black beans and arroz amarillo with lots of garlic, hot sauce, tostones, and a
cold beer
4. Matt's patented meal: half an avocado, half a tomato, half a baguette, warm, melty
bucheron, pickly things, olivey things, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and
pepper, and whatever other herbs and good things are in the kitchen
4.5 sushi and miso soup from Musashino

Four Websites I visit daily.
1. NY Times
2. The Superficial
3. The Aeneid
4. Wikipedia

Four Places I'd rather be right now.
1. on any sunny beach with cold water and a dearth of jellyfish, or at least on a
foam noodle in Lake Travis
2. my 20 week ultrasound
3. Tunja, talking to Juliana
4. Ben's house - it would be after
midnight and he would be in the kitchen making guacamole for a bunch of scrillers.

16 Week Doctor Visit

I had my 16 week prenatal visit today. I didn't see the Nurse Practitioner I was originally scheduled to see; instead, I saw a very sweet nurse and an NP-in-training who is also 15 weeks pregnant and who seems very eager to be an expert OBGYN Nurse. (Make sure you infuse a little sarcasm into that last clause as you read it.) We had a really good discussion in general, and she was great about answering some questions I had and helping me organize business-y matters I need to be thinking about over the next few months. But, I almost sent her running from the room when she asked me if I had started thinking about childbirth classes and I said I had been thinking about the Bradley method of childbirth. My friend Beth emailed me about it recently, and therefore I have been thinking of those classes, but I'm still undecided, and Matt and I will most likely attend the classes given this coming fall by a Nurse at RWG. Apparently, though, some of the OBs at my doctor's office have had unpleasant experiences with women who have taken Bradley classes, (I can only imagine what the NP-in-training meant by that) and they are not supportive of that childbirth method. The NPIT was adamant about getting that message across.

I feel frustrated by that attitude, but also by the attitude of the non-traditional birthing communities - not as a whole, of course, but with the tendency in both camps to be so extreme in their views. I feel like practitioners on both sides can be quite dogmatic about their way of doing things, and I find myself somewhere in the middle: supportive of natural childbirth, interested in reading about the Bradley method, gettin' my prenatal yoga on, not wanting to be constantly held down by a fetal heartrate monitor and I.V., but also being very supportive of the hospital environment and the expertise of the doctors who work there. Dr. Neyman said that we could do intermittent monitoring, a heparin lock rather than an I.V., and that I could choose what position I would like to deliver in; I feel like she's right there with me in the middle ground, and I like that. But I also left today's visit feeling very committed to writing up a simple birth plan to have on file and to bring with me to the hospital in case she is not on call when I go into labor. There is some tricky territory to navigate in this whole birthing business, and I can't even decide what diaper system to use, much less who is "right" in this whole debate that pits traditional hospital births against less conventional birthing methods.

Most importantly, though: I heard the baby's heartbeat again, and I was so thrilled. I just wanted to lie there and hear it for hours. It was in the 150s this time, which the nurse assured me is a normal variation from the last reading. My blood pressure and urine sample were just fine. Only four more weeks until the big ultrasound!

Django and I are off for a walk to the farmer's market that just set up shop near our house every Wednesday. We are both looking forward to next week when Matt will be out of school and can come with us.

My Belly

Well, here's a picture of my belly at fifteen and a half weeks. I just got back from yoga, hence the yoga pants in the picture. Django greeted me with a guilty face and a half-eaten YogaYoga summer schedule. I guess that's his way of saying he does not approve of me traipsing off to class at night while Matt's at school. Our pooch does not enjoy being left alone, even for brief periods. Hopefully no one has told him about the internet - if he knew I could access the schedule online, he'd probably choke down about half of my laptop as well.

Here is his guilty face:

In Between Time

Right now is an in-between time for me. I'm fifteen weeks along, and my nausea - the one thing that made me feel something huge and mysterious is taking place in my body - has dissipated. I'm kind of twiddling my thumbs waiting to feel pregnant again. I read today that at fifteen weeks the baby is the size of an orange. Reading that fostered a strong urge to buy an orange at the store and sit it on my desk and just stare at it. I want to see if I can discover some little zen pathway into feeling pregnant and connected to the baby again.

I'm definitely showing, but not quite enough that people who don't know me would think that I am pregnant. I do feel the occasional pain of my uterus growing larger, which I enjoy. The twinges are exciting little reminders that the pregnancy is, in fact, real. But other than that, and the slightly alarming flattery of my new maternity swimsuit, I feel this week that I'm in a waiting room, just outside the pregnancy.

I'm counting the days until my next OB visit when I will hear the heartbeat again. After that visit, only a few more weeks until the Big Ultrasound. Matt and I have grand plans to purchase a digital camera this weekend, so I have no doubt that belly shots are imminent.