New Stuff

Thank you for the concerned comments I got. What happened to me (like, where did I go)? I don't know. Sort of a combination of things.

I have had a very sad past week or so. Since my mother's death, I have gone from devastated to better (like just having crying episodes every day or so), but this past week I just can't get my mind to get on a different track. Part of it is the changing of the season. Easter and flowers remind me a lot of my mom, and everything right now is screaming Easter and spring (flowers). Texas thunderstorms and dark rolling clouds remind me of her (she loved storms), and it's been a week of nothing but. Watching dead things come back to life (spring) has always been my favorite thing. But spring forgot someone this year.

As I am still somehow in this stage of denial (with her having died less than 3 months ago), I have not forgotten that she's gone but I still can't make my heart or mind accept it. I still almost buy a candle for her every time I see a gardenia scent. I still almost call her while I'm making dinner, the time I reserved to talk with her. She's the only one in my life that always wanted to know what I was making. And I struggle endlessly with regret over so many things, but mainly my last weekend with her. I can't express how grateful I am that I saw her two days before she died, but I have a lot of pain associated with that trip. I was a morning-sick holiday-exhausted daughter that was not cherishing the time I was spending with my mother, even if she had just gotten out of the hospital. I wish I could re-write the entire weekend; make myself the heroin that swoops in and makes it all better. But instead, she begged to get out of the hospital too early to come home and be with us (she had been there 4-5 weeks already) and I didn't cherish it. And then she died. Typical mother-daughter conflict that happened that weekend haunts me. I can't let it go. It symbolizes something much bigger than I can explain right now.

There is a new woman that joined my grief group who's situation seems pretty similar to mine. Her mother died after a life of chronic illness, neediness and substance abuse (though she had sobered like my mom had recently). Her mom died just two weeks after my mom died. She told her painful story at the group without shedding a tear, staring at the ceiling while she spoke, still in complete shock and denial that her mother was gone. She's going through the things I went through right afterwords - horrible dreams of a funeral straight from a horror movie - dreams of the suffering that happened right before. She waits, like I did, for her mother to visit in a dream to tell her everything's OK and that she can just live her life. The bad dreams will stop, I tell her. But I'm still waiting on the latter.

We started our new childbirth class this week, and it's funny how unused I am to a classroom/group setting that when we sat down in the circle, I immediately associated it with my grief group. I had the brief thought: thank goodness - finally a group of pregnant women that I can talk to who have lost their mothers and know how devastating it all is. But I quickly realized this was not a place to grieve the passing of others but to celebrate and prepare for the new life inside. Of course, part of my pregnant story has been about losing my mom, so I shared honestly my fear of stalling out during childbirth because of deep sadness (this happens to many women). I'm happy I'll have a place to confront these fears and to work it out (our teacher totally gets it).

Our childbirth teacher is our neighbor - she lives just around the corner with her hip husband and precious daughters (of 8 and 6 or something?). Child art hangs everywhere and their house screams, I have been lived in and I see so much love. Their girls dance around and beg for attention from the pregnant couples, and they peak around the corner to listen to the stories their mom tells us about childbirth and how they came into the world. I have no doubt they will probably sit front and center as we watch childbirth videos as a class, right there in their living room. They enter tid-bits to their mother's stories about their births, adding, The cord was wrapped around my neck and I looked like a big blueberry-face coming out! I love how comfortable they are with the subject. I love that they are our neighbors.

I was surprised that we are the only ones in the class having a home birth. There is a couple that's giving birth in a birthing center, but the rest are headed to the hospital. Our teacher made the mistake of saying that home birth is best, as she then had to backtrack as the class verbally took playful offense to her comment. But I was glad she said it since we're the only ones. She's had a hospital birth and a homebirth, so she would know.

An automatic nursery appeared at our house recently. We went from having one precious blanket that I bought on Craigslist to having an entire set-up for baby. Erik's dad (who has two very young sons and lives in Italy) sent us all of the baby stuff that they recently used. It's all top-of-the-line Italian preciousness. We are eternally grateful. Soooooooo grateful. Thank you, Rick!!!!

Potties, baby carrier-thing, high chair, clothes...

The beautiful cradle that Erik's grandfather handmade for his little brother (his grandfather tragically died in a plane crash last year - he was a pilot).

A SWEET buggy-stroller-pram!

And a swing...

And a crib (and a play pin)!

And we've been working on the house a little.

Remember this?

Little better now...

And we got on the roof and cleaned out leaves from gutters and places...

See him?

Puppy says, "Hi!"

And Firecracker says hi, too.

Meet Firecracker

Drinking

Thumb-sucking

Face shot

Feet!

Sweet little baby :)

Howard Brown

A year ago in February, I served on a jury that convicted a man of second degree murder for beating his grandfather to death. We spent several days listening to the gory and heart-wrenching details that not only described a murder, but that also described a very broken home. As each person took the stand, their words were their truth, and their truths wrestled my brain to the ground day after day. Their personalities were animated and strong, and their faces hung in my memory long after the trial, like distant relatives I had just met at a family reunion. Each time someone took the stand, I would retrace the details as to where I had heard mention of them in earlier testimonies and how they fit into the complicated puzzle.

Thank goodness for my co-jurors, all great people faced with the same complicated obligation. Such an interesting experience to be thrown into a group of people of all different backgrounds, ages and ethnicity, all charged with deciding the fate of a man. Not your typical group project in college. As a group, I felt we were quite lucky to have the personalities we had - we all got along for the most part, and we had a good time over drinks (hard not to do). I have a feeling that were we not in a government building and someone would have passed a joint around, we may have all stayed friends for life. They made as great an impact on me as the witnesses and the accused (and the dead). I looked forward everyday to hearing about the previous nights of my co-jurors, catching-up over coffee breaks and lunches. With the stresses in all of our lives, our [forced] time together seemed like forever at the time, but it was very short looking back. Now that I have moved away from those folks, it is a greater possibility that I will never see them again: not the new-mom broker or the landscaping dad-to-be, not the pilates chic, not the bad-ass chef/mom/restaurant-owner/writer, not the woman who dressed as if it was Halloween every day.

I will never forget what it felt like to decide someone's fate for the worst. The 911 recording played over and over in my head as I fought the instinct that told me I had no business being there and deciding such a thing. Heavy-hearted, I remember wishing that I could confide in my closest friends (and husband) so that they could help me with this burden I had of deciding what to do. But of course we were all silenced by the law. Thankfully no other opinions could further confuse the already confusing evidence swirling in my brain. In the end, it was the faint voice of Howard Brown himself that told us what to do. After each of us listening through headphones for what seemed like 100 times, we all heard the eerie "Tony did it".

Howard Brown, a man with a "pip in his step", someone who liked to eat pig's ears (or was it feet) when the neighbor's brought it over, someone that wasn't even close to dying - Mr. Brown fought for his life, and his grandson is paying with his life for taking the life of another. The haze of the trial and the sleepless nights finally cleared once I finally moved on from the fact that I did not ask to judge this man's life but was chosen for whatever reason. I did the very best that I could and I only hope that should I ever be in a role reversal, that my life is weighed with as much thought, contemplation and respect as was given by the jury on which I served.

21 Weeks

Isn't it funny how we count pregnancy and babies' ages in weeks? I never understood that until I got pregnant and quickly became aware that everything is measured in weeks because every week is so critical (in an infant's life, too). Every week there is something new and major going on that wasn't going on the week before. And the milestone weeks are the ones you wait for - 14 or so weeks may bring the hope of morning sickness' end, and 17-20 weeks brings the hope of feeling your baby move.

Last week was the 20th week, and while I waited (bored out of my mind) in the Dr.'s waiting room (GP, not OB), I felt the first little flutters and pings of our child moving around. I was so stunned (as most women are), that I immediately held my tummy tightly with both hands and internally begged for another movement. As I stared intensely into the air, concentrating on feeling something, I felt it again and knew for sure that it wasn't gas or something else - it was the little creature inside of me, finally big enough to be felt. Talk about joy. I stared into space, grinning from ear-to-ear in a waiting room full of strangers that must have thought I was having a secret orgasm or something.

Since then, I have felt that same feeling pretty regularly. It still feels like little flutters and "rolling" - no real major kicks yet. As my midwife calls me, I am pretty text book in terms of when I hit my milestones and how big I am. Never have I been OK with being so ordinary and not unique. But a way in which I maybe haven't been that ordinary is my lack of obsessing. Many moms by this point have experienced a lot of anxiety and emotional ups-and-downs regarding their pregnancy (miscarriage and other things). Other than my mom's death and the emotion that has surrounded that, I have been very calm and relaxed with it all (maybe too relaxed...?), and haven't really obsessed about anything. I think I am just busy enough with the house and work that I don't really focus on it so much. If anything, I expect that I'll become more and more anxious about a natural birth at home (because of the pain, nothing else), but I'm trying to be cool about it (as I read birth story after birth story about excruciating pain and women having to access their animal brain just to get through it...). Until then, I am more obsessive about finishing the house so that I can enjoy myself when the baby's born. I don't want to be holding a newborn with postpartum depression, and crying about how much I hate the wallpaper everywhere. If I didn't have like 5 rooms left to remodel and decorate, I would probably be more obsessive about my pregnancy, but who knows.

The house is coming along well. I finally finished pulling down wallpaper in one of the bathrooms and will begin painting it soon. I have fun looking online for stuff for the baby room, but everything seems too this or that or too expensive. Hopefully the shipment of baby stuff from Erik's dad will arrive soon (he is thankfully sending us all of his baby stuff that he used with his kids) - that may help me start to figure that room out a bit. All in all, I'm having a good time decorating and figuring rooms out. It's been a little stressful with our budget, but thank goodness for garage sales, thrift stores and Craig's List - honestly, our house would be empty without those things.

The last of the wallpaper (in this room...).

Our Chinese torture tool.


The pregnant contractor (boy, was she slow...).

Erik will be heading out to DC next week for a long 10-day visit. He begged and begged me to go with him for one last hurrah in DC without a baby, but it's just too expensive. By the time we'd buy our ticket and pay for every meal out, it would be like two possible car payments (which we're trying to buy), so it just didn't make sense for me when we're so tight. But I'm sooo excited that he gets to see his friends and family, and I will just use that time to be productive on the house...

Parts of Austin, including our backyard, have started to explode into spring. While many parts of the country are getting hammered with snow and last minute season storms, we are experiencing 70-degree days and blooming daffodils :)

Our daffodils - who knew!

19 Weeks

Little preggo update:

I feel very fortunate to have such a delightful second trimester. They say this is the time in between the two bad periods - the first and third trimesters can be pretty brutal (and the first was). But as a record, I will mention the couple of things that "stand out".

I am having some "round ligament pain" in my abdomen. Essentially the growth of the uterus and the lengthening of the muscles to support it can all create a lot of discomfort (maybe not as much with your second child). This essentially means that every time I move or sneeze or cough I have lots of shooting and dull aching pains on the sides of my abdomen.

Sleeping is getting slightly more difficult. I realized a couple of weeks ago that if I sleep on my right side, my arm "goes to sleep" to the point of almost not being able to "wake it up". Then later I read that some major [pregnancy] veins are in your back and that laying on your back or your right side can potentially slow or block blood to the placenta (and apparently my arm!). So I sleep only on the left side now. It probably doesn't sound that hard, but I'm a person used to tossing and turning pretty much all night long - I get sore if I don't change positions frequently. But it hasn't been too bad constantly being on my left. I have a feeling that will all change in a couple of weeks however...

Some days are more energetic for me and some days I literally work in my jammies all day. I am still dealing with depression over my mom's death (obviously - that will be for a long time), so I never really know if it's pregnancy or depression that makes me so "quiet" at one time or another. But I try not to push myself too much and just let the day unfold as it will. Right when I got pregnant, I developed the urge to be alone A LOT - a general feeling of not wanting to be around people or to be on the phone, but just wanting to "nest". It's more of a content feeling rather than a depression thing. But since my mom's death, it has intensified a bit more - I really have to work hard to get myself out of the house and to hang out with people. I was an introvert before but I may as well be out in the country now. Thankfully I am productive when isolated. I never watch movies (or TV since we don't have one), but instead I do all kinds of stuff on the house and in the yard. I certainly don't prefer house work to company, but they are all things that need to be done...

I am constantly encouraging Erik, however, to make friends and attend meetings. He's been going to several meet-ups and gatherings lately of folks that have the same computer interests. He's really been enjoying all of the different kinds of meetings and communities that exist, and he's working on creating his first presentation for an upcoming meeting (these geeks are pretty organized!).

I have been working on bringing a farmers market to our area. Currently we have to drive about 3 miles to the nearest one, and it's an amazing one - they have everything I need and more. But my goal is to help our own neighborhood become more "self sufficient". We moved here for the promise of how "urban" it was becoming - our house is close to the latest and most environmentally developed parts of town. And while there are many cool things (the park and shopping), there is no farmers market or [good] grocery store within 3 miles. There is a growing interest in our neighborhood for the market, and our neighborhood newletter called out for others to get involved, so hopefully we will make some headway!

Now we are off to our first midwife appointment (the other appointments have been with doctors, but we have stopped those and will only see a midwife from now on). Will report on that next time!

Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Moe...

Yesterday I finally decided on our midwife. I needed to do this last week (and the week before), but I've just been undecided about who to pick. Since day one we've known that we wanted a home birth with a midwife, but with the holidays and my mother's death, we did not have the time to do many interviews. So we've been getting general prenatal care in the meantime while we interviewed and decided on midwives.

The two midwives we interviewed couldn't be more different. One is a young earthy yoga teacher that has delivered babies (and her own son) on dirt floors in Mexico. She's very into the community and has recently opened a hip little office in east Austin that is very close to our house. She's connected to an acupuncturist (more important than it sounds), and she teaches her own childbirth class. She's delivered around 450 babies and is very competent. However, she is all business when it comes to childbirth, and while this works for some women, I think I would like someone with a kinder bedside manner. Her all-business approach seems contradictory to her appearance as a yoga teacher and community person, but that's how she is.

The other midwife is a little older and has about 10-15 years more experience and has delivered twice as many babies (and has 4 of her own). Much to our surprise, she is not a believer in yoga and thinks the book beloved by many, "Birthing from Within", is cheesy. Basically, she kicks it old school: "you can do all of the crazy stuff in the world, but that baby is coming out and I'll be here to help you with that". Her bedside manner is much more motherly and nurturing, something that may appeal to me more at the birth than the other midwife's resume. She is not as technologically savvy, and she pretty much works alone (not all involved in the "community" like the other one). But I like that she's confident and sweet at the same time - not as intimidating. She's much further away from us, but they say it's worth the travel to have the midwife that seems best for you.

To some people, it's a no-brainer that the woman who has delivered the most babies is the right choice. Others would say that someone who doesn't believe in yoga is a nut job. I thought (and still think) both of these to an extent, but I decided to go with the non-yoga lady. Even though I really believe in yoga and mediation (especially for child birth), it is really her bedside manner that I think will be more important to me during the birth and after. It's not like I'm exactly doing yoga right now anyway...

Of course, once I wrote an email to her and pressed send, I started to wonder if I had made the right choice. Maybe it would be better to have the younger yoga-type of midwife that's used to delivering babies on the dirt floor in Mexico; one that doesn't care if I give birth in a birthing tub or on the roof. Or maybe it is better that I chose the older more experienced midwife that will be more motherly (something I'm craving given that I just lost my own mother). I guess we will see!

I am excited to begin my appointments with a midwife, and to end the sterile visits to the OB's office. While the particular practice where I'm receiving prenatal care has been AMAZING (3 midwives on staff), it is definitely set up for a hospital birth, one where you labor for hours under a bright light without your midwife or doctor until it's time to push. For me, it seems so much harder to labor in such an unnatural environment as a hospital, and there is so much anxiety around birth there. While hospitals are incredible when you need them, it is not our belief that it's necessary to give birth there unless we have something wrong. And at that point, no problem - we will be there STAT.

Some family and friends are nervous about our choice to have a home birth. I totally understand that. But we are more and more comfortable with this decision everyday. While I have now been to a handful of home births already, we are still reading every night about what to expect and how to prepare mentally and physically for an otherworldly experience. I am in no way unaware of how painful childbirth can be, and I know I won't get a medal for going through the pain. But I also know that I will have a calmer experience (hopefully) with bringing our child into the world, and won't be unnecessarily subjected to drugs or a C-section. It is obviously very easy to give into drugs when you are in the hospital and they are being offered to you every 5 minutes. I think it's a great way to go for some women, but it's not really the way we want to go.

I wish there were more positive images of birth portrayed on TV and in the media. We are mostly exposed to images of women in the hospital under a bright light, screaming and yelling, saying mean things to her husband and demanding an epidural. Many people are not at all exposed to the beautiful images of natural childbirth, laboring at home surrounded by people you love, and then giving birth on your own terms when your body is ready. In the hospital, there is pretty much a set standard that you need to give birth within 24hrs of going into labor. But some women's bodies labor for a couple of days, stopping and starting again, and this is all very natural. OB's and nurses are wonderful at what they do, but if your labor lasts longer than even 12 hours, they start to pressure you with the options to speed it up or to get it over with.

The best analogy I've heard so far about labor and birth is that it's like peeing: it is sometimes very hard to pee in front of people or on demand, and birth is similar - it's very hard to deliver a baby when there's a room full of strangers YELLING at you to PUSH. Just not what I want. But I TOTALLY respect that choice for other women. I respect the choice to want to be in the hospital if something goes wrong, or even just to have access to the drugs. I don't judge other people's birth plans (it's hard enough to judge your own). Women will do what's right for them and that's all that matters. At the end of the experience, we will all have a baby in our arms no matter how we got there.

I am realistic that anything can happen and that our expectations of having a home birth might be dashed. But that will not keep me from trying. I am open-minded about what I may HAVE to do for the safety of our baby, but I will strive for what I'd LIKE to do. You can't get what you want if you don't try!

Firecracker

18 Weeks

I went to my mother's house in Houston this past weekend to begin cleaning out her things, and on the drive back, I dropped "something" under the seat (OK, a Hershey bar) and I couldn't get it... Not because it was too far away but because I have passed a particular point of being able to painlessly bend in half and look under the seat that I'm sitting on. There is suddenly so much pressure and a feeling of constant "fullness" in my belly.

Heartburn has definitely set-in. I used to skip those chapters in the preg books and think, Goodness...I really hope I skip that phase. But no. I mastered it instead. I have FINALLY learned the art of eating smaller meals, and this really helps. Before, I would just be so hungry and so undecided about what I wanted that by the time I ate, I was starving and would end up eating a big meal. Now I try to reach for small things all day, and it's been kinder to me than the big meal. Not being sick has helped this progression.

Last Week

In all honestly, I wish I had my old taste buds back. I need to stop eating some of these crazy things I crave. For instance, when is the last time you had a frozen chicken pot pie? And how many times can I eat pasta per week? Endless. We have really begun to buckle down on our budget, so we're cooking every meal at home. But I am still having a slight aversion to my old style of cooking. No longer do I want beautiful greens and stir fry with chicken. I want comfort food that packs on the pounds (I don't want the second part but it's unavoidable). Mashed (or baked) potatoes, casseroles, hamburgers...things of this nature. Salad is slowly making it's way back into my life - the only problem with salad is that it's not very filling unless there's chicken or something on it. But a preggo can't eat cold ck/meat (and who wants hot meat on a salad?), and I can only have salmon once per week. And no feta. So salads are kind of lame right now. I need to get more creative with the beans and lentils, but honestly, lentils make me want to puke right now.

I'm still figuring out the food thing to say the least. But the overall pregnancy has been a joy and has been very smooth. We heard the heartbeat again very recently and everything is checking out.

It's so hard to have those "milestone' appointments and not be able to call my mom and tell her about it, but I still tell her in my heart. The other pregnant woman in my Motherless Daughters support group found out this week that she is having a girl. She is also struggling with going through these huge milestones without her mother even though this is her third child. I am lucky to have found this support group of women that understand the devastating loss of a mother. They understood when I shared how hard it was to clean out my mom's make-up and toiletries this past weekend. With every bottle I threw away, I shook with sobs and sadness. It seemed somehow disrespectful to be filling trash bags full of things she used and loved everyday (hair products, her favorite body powder, thoughtfully chosen lipstick). There is just nothing easy about this process and it's nice to have a safe place to talk about how painful even the smallest of things can be.

Erik's grandfather and grandmother said it best in the card they sent: We have been sent a baby to focus our love and attention on. Count your blessings; cherish those who love you.