Internet Grapes

Pregnancy Journal Entry 45 - November 26, 2003

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had our second ultrasound, a Level II ultrasound, last Thursday. This time I got to lay down with the monitor in front of me, so I could see almost the entire time. The ultrasound technician came in first and took some fetal measurements. I'm not sure what all the measurements were, but I know they measured the baby's head, the arm bones, the leg bones, and the overall size. They also estimated the baby's weight. At the ultrasound on Halloween, the baby was estimated to weigh a little over a pound, which was right at 50th percentile for that point in the pregnancy. Only three weeks later, she had grown to just over two pounds, which put her at 69th percentile for that far along. No wonder I'd gained some extra weight - she's having a major growth spurt! She had also moved into a head-down position (instead of the transverse position she was in at the last ultrasound). Of course, there's still plenty of time for her to change positions before her birth, but I was still glad to know that for now, she's in the perfect place.

When the obstetrician got there (she was over an hour late), she checked the baby for things that hadn't even really occurred to me as being possible problems. The baby's lip looks fine (no cleft palate!). Her feet are fine (no club feet!). She has two kidneys, and they're both functioning normally. Her proportions are all normal (the technician did comment that the baby has "some long leg bones!"). After the doctor finished doing the ultrasound, she told us that she didn't see any abnormalities, and that she had been able to see everything that she wanted to see. Geoff told her that the previous ultrasound technician had said that she was 98% sure the baby was a girl, and asked her for her opinion. She said, "well, that would be my guess, too. She looks very...girl-like."

So there you have it. Professional medicial opinion says the baby is girl-like! I'm guessing we won't be any more sure of the baby's gender until after she (or he?) is born. We'll have to set a limit to the purchase of pink clothing, just in case.

Apparently, people at work have started to think about the fact that I will be gone for awhile next spring. One day last week I heard the manager in the office next to mine saying to his secretary, "we'll have to pick up the slack." His secretary responded, "while she's gone having her baby." I figured they were probably talking about me, but I didn't say anything. Later on that afternoon, I walked by another co-worker at the fax machine, who looked at me and said, "gee, I wish I could get pregnant so that I could get time off work!"

I didn't really have a good response - I was a little taken aback, so I just sort of fake-laughed at him and walked away. But the more I thought about it, the more irritated I was. For one thing, the time off work that I will be getting is completely unpaid. It's not exactly the most enviable position to be in. For another thing, if his wife got pregnant again (they already have two or three kids), he would be entitled to the same amount of leave to which I'm currently entitled, even without ever having been pregnant! Wow, lucky guy! And it's easy for him to act like I'm taking advantage of the system by having children now - he already has his children, and his wife stays home to take care of them. Maybe he thinks I should be quitting to stay home with our baby, instead of inconveniencing everybody who has to "pick up the slack" while I'm temporarily gone.

Speaking of my maternity leave, yes, it's unpaid. I'm entitled to the provisions of the Family Leave Act, and that's it. I get 12 weeks off, all unpaid, except for the vacation and sick time that I have to take. At the start of my time off, the company requires that I take all vacation time and sick time that I have accrued at that point. Since I only get two weeks of vacation a year, and I used over a week of vacation back in April, my accrued vacation time will probably be about 5 days. I get one week of sick days a year, and I don't use those very often, so I will probably have about 5 days of those accrued, too. If I want to, I can take additional vacation time that I will accrue later in the year, but I'd rather not do that if we can manage without it. I'm guessing I might feel like taking a vacation later on in the year!

If I'd thought about this well in advance and asked the right questions at the right time, I would have signed up for short-term disability insurance benefits, and I would have been eligible for those after I'd been off for three weeks - that would have paid 65% of my salary for the remaining time off. But the way it works out, I didn't sign up for short-term disability when I first started here. Open enrollment for all benefits is in October each year, and becomes effective on January 1 of the following year. So if I'd realized that maternity leave is otherwise unpaid, I could have added short-term disability back in October 2002 to be effective for 2003, and in October 2003 I could have renewed my coverage for 2004. (Actually, since we got married in November 2002, that "change of status" would have allowed me to have added short-term disability up to mid-December 2002, effective 2003.) Unfortunately, I didn't find out what type of maternity leave the company offers until January of 2003, which meant that the first time to add short-term disability after that was last month, October 2003, for coverage which would have taken effect in 2004. I did apply to add it, but to get coverage I have to fill out an "evidence of insurability" form, and one of the questions on the form is "are you pregnant?" I may be going out on a limb here, but I'm pretty sure that my "yes" answer will mean that even if I get coverage for short-term disability, that coverage will specifically exclude any disability for this particular pregnancy. (Scintillating, isn't this?)

Anyway, the bottom line is that I have no paid time off other than the time I take as vacation or sick time, but that if we can afford it, I would like to take the entire 12 weeks off to which I'm entitled. We've been saving up part of Geoff's salary, and I think we'll have almost enough to cover my paychecks. I think we'll be ok. I'm just sorry I didn't plan far enough ahead to have added short term disability back in 2002!

This Friday I'll be exactly 26 weeks along in the pregnancy, which seems both amazingly far along and not nearly far enough. Lately Geoff and I have been getting really eager for the baby to get here! During certain times in each day, she goes nuts with the kicking and moving around. I don't know if she's moving a lot or a little compared to the average baby (I know every baby is different), but it seems like a lot to me. Usually I feel her moving before I get out of bed in the morning, and then again about mid-morning at work (this morning Geoff drove me to work, and she was moving up a storm in the car on the way here). She moves around a lot not to long after lunch, and then again usually later in the afternoon. Then when I get home and lie down on the couch in the evening, she almost always moves around a lot. And pretty much every night when I go to bed, we can count on her to be active. Lately when I wake up in the night to change positions (from one side to another, since those are my only two choices now), I'll feel a few movements. Luckily, the movements aren't strong enough yet that they have ever kept me awake.

I've been pretty emotional lately, much more so than usual, even. But mostly, although I am emotional, I am not specifically sad, so it's relatively easy to deal with. I cry at about every third commercial, it seems like, but that's not really too disruptive to our lives.

Pregnancy Journal Entry 44 - November 17, 2003

My belly is the new television – or at least it's the new form of visual entertainment – at our house.  I'll be lying on the couch, and I'll feel the baby moving around, so I'll whip back the blanket and lift up my shirt and push down my pants so I can stare at my belly. I'll stare for minute after minute, and I could easily stare longer, if there is any movement at all, without getting bored. (If the baby just moves the one time, and then there is nothing else, then after about five minutes I'll usually start to get cold, and reposition the blanket over myself.) If Geoff is there, I invite him to watch, too, but I'm also content to sit there and watch by myself.

She has been moving so much in the last half an hour, while I'm sitting here at my desk at work, that I am completely distracted from doing work of any significance. All of a sudden, today, I definitely felt part of her moving around underneath my rib cage. And when she pushed at me from the inside, a few inches to the right of my belly button, I pushed back, and the moment I pushed back, I felt pressure on my bladder. She's big enough to stretch from belly button to bladder...and beyond!

Last Friday marks the start of the 25th week of pregnancy - the 27th week is pretty much the boundary between the second and third trimesters, so we are rapidly approaching the third trimester, which seems amazing. Our due date still seems a long way off, but with the holidays coming up, and Geoff's sister Stephanie coming to visit in January, I'm sure at least the next couple of months will go quickly.

The ultrasound on Halloween was actually a little bit of a letdown, because the technician hardly said anything to us, and she spent at least the first 20 minutes ooking at an ultrasound picture that was completely blocked from my sight!  I was lying down, and her monitor was somewhere around my midsection.  There was no second monitor for me to look at, and even though her monitor had swiveling capabilities, she didn't swivel it my way until after she was done with everything she needed to do.  I lay there in near-silence, staring at the dark ceiling, watching Geoff's face and the face of the technician, feeling the technician move the ultrasound wand – also known as the “doohickey thingy” – around on my belly.  I had thought I would get to share that first amazing moment, when she placed the doohickey on my belly.  I imagined that we would all immediately see that there she was – a human being, our child – swimming around inside me.  Instead, I lay in the dark while Geoff, the technician, and the technician’s assistant all got to see the really important things first – there was one baby, with one head, human-shaped, with all the usual appendages, and an amazingly recognizable spinal column.

While I lay there in the dark, the technician asked, "Do you want to know what it is?"  I said "yes," immediately, and she paused and kept staring at the screen and said, "I'm 98% sure...that it's a girl."  I smiled, and Geoff and I smiled at each other, and he held my hand for a minute or two.  I lay there in the darkness and near-silence and felt tears come to my eyes.

Geoff said later that while he was watching, he had a really hard time telling what any various body parts were, and more than once he'd seen something (that he later thought was an arm or leg) that he thought might be a penis. And when she asked us if we wanted to know, he realized that he was hoping for a girl, and that he was hoping so much that he was suddenly struck by the thought: "Oh, no, I hope I'm not disappointed if it's a boy!" I told him that I'm sure he would have been happy about a boy, too. Earlier in the day, while I was at work, I tested my own reaction in my imagination. I imagined being there and hearing the technician tell us "it's a boy," and the thought made me well up with tears just as happy as the happy tears I cried when the real-life technician said that she was almost certain we will have a daughter.

The technician finally did turn the screen around so that I could see, and she pointed out the baby's beating heart, and baby's face, and the arms, legs, hands, feet, and spine (which actually didn't need to be pointed out). And there she was - our baby - moving around in there, looking fuzzy and black and white and strange, but definitely looking like ultrasound pictures are supposed to look. She looked real.

The technician spent a lot of time moving the doohickey around on my belly, back and forth, often rapidly - I assumed at the time that she was doing that to try to get the baby to change position. Apparently I was right - when Geoff and I went to our latest obstetrician appointment last Monday, our OB discussed the ultrasound results with us, and decided that she wants us to have another ultrasound. The first ultrasound found nothing wrong, but the baby is/was lying transversely, across my abdomen, instead of head up or head down, and she was also apparently staying on my right side, so the amount of information that could be obtained from the ultrasound was "compromised" by the baby's position. The doctor referred us for another ultrasound, this time a Level II ultrasound (better equipment, performed by an obstetrician instead of a technician) - we're scheduled to have that next ultrasound this Thursday morning.

When she first said she wanted to send us for another ultrasound, I felt nothing but excitement. We get to see her again! This time we can bring a blank videotape and see if they'll tape it for us! This time I can ask them to let me see at least the first 30 seconds or so first, even if there isn't a second monitor for me to look at, and then I will feel more fulfilled.

Then later, in addition to my excitement, I got a little bit worried, because what this means is that the original ultrasound didn't really rule out everything I thought it had ruled out. The first ultrasound didn't see anything wrong, but it didn't see everything - we'd been under the assumption that the technician had seen everything she needed to, so knowing she didn't gives us a little more that's uncertain, I guess.

The doctor's visit otherwise went well. Before the visit, I thought that I had gained about 5 pounds since the last visit five weeks before, which would have made a total of 10 pounds. It turned out, though, that I had gained 8 pounds, so my total weight gain is 13 pounds. 13 pounds total doesn't seem bad to me, but I have to admit that the fact that I gained 8 pounds in 5 weeks is a little frightening, especially since I still have so far to go in the potential weight gain department. Surprisingly, though, the doctor didn't seem worried (maybe since I proved that I am not just constantly eating in a piglike manner, when I only gained a pound between the last two appointments?), she just said we'd keep an eye on it, but that it's "no big deal."

My blood pressure continues to be good, and so does my urine (good little urine). The results were back from the bloodwork I had done after my last appointment, and everything looks good there, too.  No anemia, no HIV, no hepatitis, no gonorrhea, no syphilis, no chlymydia (not exactly surprising news, but still good information to have confirmed).  Whatever else they tested for, the results were all good.  The triple screen test shows no increased risk of Downs syndrome or spina bifida.

Not too long after our last appointment, when I got blood taken for the triple screen test, Geoff and I were at a restaurant and ice cream place in Oak Park eating lunch. A woman and her apparently adult age daughter were sitting across from us eating sundaes. I don't know what was wrong with the daughter, but she had definitely been born with some kind of birth defect.  I didn't want to stare, and yet I found my eyes being drawn back over and over again to look at her misshapen but happy face.

I'm sure that mother loves that daughter just as much as I will love any child we have, and I could see that the daughter was at least at that moment enjoying her life.  And I know I don't really have any idea what it would be like to have a child whose face pregnant strangers' eyes are drawn to in worry and fear.  But God help me, I just couldn't help looking at her and thinking, please, please, please, no.  I started to cry while we were there, and I told Geoff, "I don't want our baby to be born like that.  Does that make me a bad person?"

He looked at me, and he took my hand, and he said no. He said that he is sure that that mother loves her daughter very much. He said that he is equally sure that that mother hadn’t wanted her daughter to be born like that, either. 

I guess that's part of the whole point, right?  Maybe it’s even the most important part of being a good parent – we want our children to be happy and healthy and whole – we want what's best for our children.  Even when they're not born yet.

We were in Vegas when Geoff first felt the baby move. For weeks I'd been telling him to put his hand on my belly, but over and over, when I'd say, "did you feel that?" he's shake his head and say no.  Then we spent our first night in Vegas at the Paris in a room we shared with Allen & Elizabeth, and when I woke up in the morning, I felt the baby moving around.  I told Geoff to put his hand there, and when the baby kicked, I asked Geoff, "did you feel that?" His eyes were a little bit bigger than usual, and he said, "What was that?"  I smiled, and I said, "that's the baby!" It happened again a few seconds later.  A day or two later, in our own room at our resort hotel, I told Geoff to look at my stomach, and as we watched, the skin rippled and moved. "What was that?" he asked.  "That's the baby!" I said.

So much has happened since the last time I wrote.  There was our trip to Las Vegas with Tracy & Tim and Allen and Elizabeth, some of our favorite friends in the world.  There have been more doctor visits, and my mom has been planning a shower, and my paternal grandpa had a heart attack and spent last week in the hospital (and while I was very sad about that on its own, I also got tears in my eyes at the idea that he might not get to meet his newest great-grandchild).  We're going to spend Thanksgiving with my Dad & Celia, and we're planning a trip to visit Laurie (with Rebecca and Chris) in January, and Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming, and Candace  is engaged! (Woo!)  And yesterday was mine and Geoff's one-year anniversary (one year being married to my favorite person in the world, who knows me better than anyone, and who still loves me with his whole heart – now that's lucky).  My heart is full of joy at all of these things, and sometimes I am full of joy at everything.  My body, on the other hand, is filling up with baby (which mostly brings joy, but which also has a tendency, especially lately, to make me weepy at things that don’t normally).

The biggest change in the last few weeks is that since the ultrasound, and since the increased movement, my feelings about the baby have shifted. I feel like I am starting to know her personality, and there is no longer any doubt in my mind that she is in there. She is no longer abstract theory. She is real.

She moves around so much, in fact, that it no longer seems ridiculous to shop for her – to pick out a crib and a stroller and a car seat (we came close to choosing all of those this weekend) or to buy her socks or onesies or a hat.  (I cannot get over how cute that hat is. It's so cute! I told Geoff it was so cute that now I have one more reason I can't wait for the baby to be born - so I can see her in that hat!) She's with me all the time, wherever I go, and sometimes right as I'm wondering, "Why hasn't she moved?" I'll feel her prodding me from the inside.  Last Friday she was moving around so much that I got up and shut my office door so I could sit and stare, mesmerized, at the ripples in my own stomach.  There were so many in such a short time, and it felt so funny, that I laughed out loud.

I could have watched for a long, long time.  I guess that brings us back to where we started, doesn't it? My belly is the new television.

Pregnancy Journal Entry 43 - November 12, 2003

I had a horribly crappy start to my day.  Want to hear about it?

First, I woke up with a headache and bad-feeling stomach. So I fixed myself two eggs and some toast to eat. I ate the toast & eggs. Then I did some dishes, but some of the dishes had been sitting in the sink since before Vegas, with water in them, so when I went to empty the water, the smell was so bad it made me start retching. And at this point in my life, once I start retching, there is usually no turning back. So I puked up most of my eggs & toast. I was running late and didn't take a shower, so I am feeling gross.

Geoff felt sorry for me and drove me to work, and on our way out the back door, I stepped in dog shit. Both shoes! So then I got to work, and my stomach was empty - since I had thrown up my breakfast - so I ate my roast beef sandwich that Geoff had packed for my lunch. When suddenly, with no warning, I got sick again and started throwing up my roast beef sandwich in the wastebasket in my office! Also, the retching this time was so powerful that I entered the retch-and-pee zone.  So in between retches, I was also busily: 1) closing my office door, 2) hiking up my jumper, and 3) placing napkins underneath my crotchal area (that’s the technical term) to soak up the pee (and then frequently replacing soaked napkins with fresh ones, because the throwing up went on and fucking ON)! And I still got pee on my chair, dammit. So then I cleaned that up the best I could, washed my hands, etc., and an hour or so later went to get something ELSE to eat, because I once again had an empty stomach. As I was trying to leave the office to go downstairs, I got accosted by Sue, the woman who is doing the audits here, who wanted to ask me if we could start my audit this afternoon. I said sure, okay, and she said, in a sarcastic way, that we would try to make it quick, because "I can see how much you're looking forward to spending some time with me!" (Oh, and yesterday this woman asked me about having my audit "later this week", and when I said any time would be fine because I was here all week, she said, "when would the baby like to have the audit?" Lady, baby does not give a crap about you or your audit!)  So she asked if I'd be ready this afternoon, and I said sure, I’d be ready because I had stayed until 9 p.m. the night before the last time our audit had been scheduled, and she said - "oh, you did?" Then she TALKS TO MY BELLY, and says, "Mommy didn't have to do that! I didn't make your mommy stay here that long. That was her choice!" God. So I said, "I don't think the baby has any idea that you or the audit even exist!" and she replies with, "Oh, don't hurt my feelings! Maybe the baby knows who I am!"

Is she insane, do you think?

Anyway, so she came to audit me at 2 this afternoon, but then at 3:30 some other guy came over to ask her some questions, so she went off with him to make a conference call, and here I am! It has NOT been a stellar day. Although I didn't puke up the danish I got from downstairs after Sue finished talking to me, so that's good. And I think my headache is gone, so that's good. And Geoff felt the baby kick like 3 times in a row last night, although he still kind of doesn't want to believe that's what it is. He sat right there with his hand on my belly, and she kicked, and he didn't say anything until I said, "did you feel that?" "Yes," he said. "Why didn't you SAY anything?" "I wasn't sure," he said. "It's so gentle!" Nut.

Later this afternoon, I knocked my can of diet Coke over on my desk.  I didn't ruin anything, but my reflexes are not exactly cat-like, so it took me seconds to figure out what was going on, and by then almost the whole can was empty, mostly onto the carpet (and a little onto my poor soiled chair and jumper).  Luckily, I did not get any liquid in the keyboard or on any important papers.

Then Geoff picked me up from work on the way out to choir practice, and we went to Wendy's to have dinner.  While he was ordering, I went to the bathroom.  After I came out of the stall, I went out to the sink and wanted to get something out of my purse (I don't even remember what), so I set my purse in the sink in front of me.  While I rummaged around in my purse, I sort of had the vague idea that water was running somewhere.  It occurred to me that maybe the faucet in the sink was dripping, so maybe I should move my purse.  At this point I noticed that the faucet was not just dripping, but wholeheartedly running, because it was one of those automated faucets that turns itself on when you put your hands under it.  Except in this case, instead of putting my hands under it, I had put my purse under it.  I rescued my cell phone (still dry!), rescued my purse (dripping all over the floor for several seconds), washed my hands, and left the bathroom.

An additional discomfort of my day (but unrelated to my own airheadedness or clumsiness): my feet were so swelled up by 10 a.m. yesterday that they were hurting. I kept taking my shoes off and putting my feet up on the box under my desk (it helps a little, but it's certainly not getting my feet up above heart level), and maybe the swelling didn't get a whole lot worse, but it was bad all day long. When we got out to church, early for choir practice, I lay down on the couch to read a magazine, and each person who came in had to laugh at me a little and say, "Well, aren't you comfortable?!" They are all nice people, and I explained to them that I was trying to bring down the swelling of my feet and ankles, but still I was feeling kind of pitiful by then, and so the repeated assertions that I was mighty "comfortable" made me a little grumpy.

When we got home from church, at about 9:30 at night, I left my shoes off (I'd taken them off in the car) and walked barefoot through our back yard and into our building. "All I need to make this day complete," I told Geoff, "would be to step in dog shit now!"

I guess it's just as well that I didn't.

Pregnancy Journal Entry 42 - November 4, 2003

According to the ultrasound, everything looks good with the baby!  Only one baby (we had a small and probably irrational fear of twins), one head, two eyes, a nose, a mouth, two hands, two feet, two arms, two legs, a spinal column (we could see pretty much every individual vertebrae - the spine was probably the clearest part we could see), and a heart beating inside her chest!

Oh, yeah, and as you may have guessed from that "her," the technician said that she is 98% sure that we are having a baby girl! (I think she said 98% instead of just saying for sure that it's a girl because she wasn't able to get a still shot of the Girl Parts.  The baby just never happened to settle down in a good position for her to see them and take a picture.)

We're excited and happy, and it's nice to have a pronoun to use to refer to the baby! I had a great time in Atlantic City, and we're going to Vegas tomorrow!