I appreciate that I have a brilliant husband who pays a tremendous amount of attention to me without assigning negative judgment to what he sees. He can help me figure out my motivations because he doesn’t hand me any of his own baggage in the conversation. There are no sly innuendos in the conversations.
He knows me better than anyone in the world ever has or ever will. Yet he doesn’t give me advice until I ask for it because he respects me. Can anything get better than that?
We just got a care package from Dad. He picked out a bunch of massively cute clothes for Shanna all in six months. Yay! At the rate she is gaining weight she will be wearing them by three months. I think we just tripled the amount of pink in the house. He sent a onesie that says, “Grandpa’s Little Princess” it makes me kind of weepy. My bio-father may be out of the picture but I’ve done well adopting dads. Such a good life.
I was thinking about my paternal grandmother this morning and how I think I am looking more and more like her as I age. So I went and hunted up the only two pictures of her I have. I feel I confirmed my feeling that I look remarkably like her. These pictures were in an album with pictures of me from babyhood. Dude. I was much smaller than Shanna. Shanna at one month looks about how I looked at three months. This amuses me. In looking at these pictures I thought, “ohmygosh I had the cutest little dresses!!” Then I pondered…. “Hmmmm I know I have a box of “baby memories” that my mom put together…” I have the cutest little dresses! They are the size Shanna is wearing right now!!! I asked Noah for his opinion on whether or not I should wash the dresses and have Shanna wear them and he demonstrated that he understands the boy/girl interaction of: if you don’t have an opinion, MAKE ONE UP (preferably one that supports the desires of the girl you are talking to). Noah rocks.
I am now going to go wash the cutest little dresses ever and Shanna is going to wear them frequently in the next few weeks. Cause I bet she is only going to be able to wear them for a couple weeks. Kid’s growing really really fast. If she is still wearing 0-3 month clothes at three months I will be surprised. All of the smaller 0-3 month onesies are already getting pretty snug… in all directions. Ahhh that’s my little porker. 😀
CUTEST DRESSES EVER!!
pictures to come…
“How well are you capitalizing on this year’s unique opportunities, Virgo? Now that we’re halfway through 2008, let’s take an inventory. I’m hoping that six months from now, you’ll look back and make the following declaration: “I’ve learned more about love in the past 12 months than maybe I ever have. I’ve also become far more skilled in the art of making myself happy. And I’ve finally figured out how to purge some of the martyr-like aspects from my generosity, which means I’m better able to give without strings attached and I’m more attractive to interesting people who are inclined to give me things I really want.'”
You mean unique opportunities like having my first child? (Can’t ever do that again.) Having Noah home for six weeks to help me adjust to having the munchkin? (We’ll never get this time back. We need to enjoy it now.) Figuring out how to parent? (Ok, so other people have done it… but it’s still different from the rest of *my* life.) I’ve certainly learned more about love. I feel overwhelmed by the depth of my feelings for Shanna. I am dealing with a lot of exhaustion and fuss and noise that would normally drive me bonkers. Instead I just feel kind of giddy. Yay the baby. And Noah… he continues to surprise and amaze me. I win.
Interesting people who can give me things I really want? You mean like 7 1/2 hours of consecutive sleep? Oooooh baby I hope she can give me that soon. 😉 In the meantime I will not feel upset about the lack of sleep and I will enjoy all the extra hours of the day when I get to gaze at her gorgeous face. 🙂
Oh yeah… bring on the schmoop.
So today we had a weird interaction in the morning. I wasn’t sure what caused it. But I felt like it was hostile. So after I did my withdraw/pissy thing I thought about it and couldn’t figure out what caused it. So I asked.
My wonderful husband then proceeded to explain what he interpreted about my actions and tone of voice and I did the same about his. We were both reacting to unintended slights and misunderstood tones. We apologized for our respective halves of the misunderstanding and fuss. Then we cuddled and renewed our membership in our mutual admiration society.
Have I mentioned that I love my husband?
I was reminded that SJSU posted grades (Thanks Mitrian).
I got an A- in criticism and a B+ in genre studies. Yay! Considering how very little effort I put into the classes I am thrilled. 🙂 This ensures that my GPA is high enough to earn an MA. (Not that I was actually worried…) Now I need to study for a comp exam and study Spanish some more so that I can pass a written translation. I’m really rusty on Spanish, but I figure this is doable.
I’m totally babbling. You don’t need to read this if you are not interested in baby squee.
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We have a daughter. Her name is Shanna Francesca. She was born at 9:54 May 24th after a 49 hour labor. We didn’t have the home birth of my dreams because after 40 hours of difficult labor and no sleep I was only 4 cm dilated. At the rate I was going I wouldn’t have had the strength to push when I got to that point. I transfered to Valley Med where we had the best hospital experience I can imagine having. I was presented with options and gently encouraged in the direction that the given nurse/doctor felt was best but at no time did I feel actual pressure. When I turned down their suggestions they would very cautiously and respectfully ask if I was sure then accepted my decision without judgment. I am thrilled by how accommodating the staff was. Multiple people were very pro-home birth and understood that I was not gung-ho about the hospital procedures and made every effort to bend or break rules so that my wishes could be accommodated. Really–it was great. Our delivering doctor made the extra effort to find us a private room so that Noah and the baby and I could stay together all night. If she hadn’t then the baby would have been taken to the nursery and Noah would have been kicked out at 10. Really, I’m grateful to the staff.
I find it funny that I was discussing “compassionate epidurals” with someone a couple of days ago and I was less than thrilled with the idea. At this point I’ve changed my opinion. I needed sleep. There were big chunks of labor that weren’t really painful. The actual pushing (I did almost three hours of it) wasn’t terrible–and the epidural was basically worn off. (They had finished my first bottle of medicine and never bothered to get me a second, I was effectively unmedicated for the final hour.) Labor got hard when I was too tired to be coherent and when I became terrified that it would go on for three or four days at the intensity it had. That was a reasonable fear considering how slowly I was progressing.
At this point I am grateful for modern medicine. I needed to use it and everything went breathtakingly well for me. The hospital was good to us and for us. I’m going to try for a homebirth again next time. I hear that once the cervix has opened once it usually is more willing to do so the second time. 🙂
I have no regrets or anger or upset over how things went. I made it through 40 hours on my own. That’s a very long time and I’m quite proud of myself. I pushed for freakin ever and I got my 8 pound baby out. (She’s also 20″ long.) She’s gorgeous. I have been with Noah and Shanna almost constantly since her birth and I may well have missed as much time as I did at home. 🙂 I’m so joyful. This is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. We signed out of the hospital this morning AMA and now we are home.
I am so very lucky. I’ll get pictures up very soon, I promise.
I think that relationships are complicated. When you think about what makes someone “right” for someone else you are looking at a whole elaborate string of interrelated points and it’s hard to figure out what is the clincher or deal breaker. Yeah, Noah is awesome in general and attentive and a good communicator (very unusual) and hot and good at sex and… He’s just a really bitchin package.
But I think I know what the clincher is. See–I have a really clear picture of what I want in my life. Of what the most important non-negotiable thing was in a life partner. I believe with all my heart and soul that Noah will be a good father. He balances me in all the most ideal ways. We’ve already spent a lot of time talking about how we think parenting should look. Yeah, there are going to be surprises and course corrections and there will be things that Don’t Go As Planned–but our overall attitudes and how they work towards dealing with kids is unlikely to drastically change.
I am not the most stable person on the planet. I work really hard at being consistent, but I can only do the best I can do. Noah is incredibly stable and cheerful and good natured. I’m really happy that I can give that to my kids even if I can’t be that. Noah also believes in letting kids do things for themselves and letting them learn how to accomplish things; they can ask for help if they need it, but I think “doing it for them” is a good way to stifle kids learning. My opinion is backed up by a lot of studies. 🙂 There are areas where I am probably inclined to be far more strict than necessary and Noah is good at telling me that I’m being lame and over reacting. (It’s a delicate line let me tell you.) He likes to play and is physically comfortable with touching far more than me which is going to be awesome for our kids. He can make up the best stories. I really suck at making up stories. He’s so willing to try things even if he might suck at them–I spend too much time worrying about looking stupid. Noah will be awesome at reminding me that just because he doesn’t need privacy and it’s ok for me to snoop in his stuff it’s not ok to do that with our kids. 🙂
Noah is everything I wish my father had been and wasn’t. I’m so glad I get to bring kids into the world and have them grow up with him.
Barring Noah saying, “Wow these suck–you need to heavily edit these” I think I am done with my papers. I am turning them (and my huge stack of library books) today. That is it for this semester. I’m sure glad the Lizard didn’t arrive early because so much for my goal of turning in my papers early. 🙂
Now I get to turn my brain towards nesting! Yay nesting!!
Although I get to spend today sitting at the car dealership because the car needs that 45,000 mile check up. Oy.
Noah’s aunt sent us a baby stuff care package. Receiving blankets, clothes, hats, burping cloths, bibs, bath care items, a rather nice diaper bag, an incredibly sweet home made baby book, and a pile of Thank You cards. It is a rather impressive spread of stuff actually.
🙂 I can take a hint. I will never neglect sending her a thank you card again. 🙂 There was no snark or hostility in the present at all so I feel like this was actually a really awesome way for her to express her preferences. 🙂
Maybe I should meet this relative. She lives in Davis.
Today I managed to get multiple errands done. I went to close out the storage unit and found out that if I waited until tomorrow I would have been charged an extra month. w00t. Glad I caught that. I went to Home Desperate and got stuff for the Noah. Then I wandered through REI and found a neat messenger bag that will function quite nicely as a diaper bag. Then I noticed that it was on sale. Then I went to the register and found out that the sale price was less than half of my dividend for the year; so I didn’t even have to spend real money. w00t again!
I find that if I do a lot of housework/moving around in a day I tend to spend the next whole day sitting on the couch kind of wasted. I moved around a lot yesterday. Books are in the locations I want them to be in. Yay! And fiction is alphabetized. Not that I’m neurotic or anything. *cough* Most of what is left to unpack is clothing and glassware, neither of which I’m stressing over.
And I did all this today in a Twisted Monk “Trust Me” tanktop. It’s the only tanktop that still fits. It makes me smile. Children, don’t follow that link or your parents will get upset. No really.
Last weekend Noah and I put together two dressers for the baby’s room. (Not that the kid will sleep or do much of anything in there for years…) Now the baby clothes can actually be sorted by size and I will be able to find various blankets and diapers and so on. Yay!
Then yesterday Miss Jenny came over early in the day and helped us with an Ikea run. We bought dressers for our bedroom and one bookshelf. At this point we expect to need three more bookshelves but we were out of room in the vehicle on that run. 🙂 I’m not 100% certain how/when the other three sets will be purchased because one set would fill our car and three runs to EPA would a pain in the ass. *grrrr* Hm. Must ponder. So Miss Jenny helped put together the first dresser. Then James arrived! He put almost all of the second dresser together by himself as Miss Jenny helped with other assorted box stuff and putting together drawers. Yay! So excited.
Then we went to the Laura Antoniou class on Protocol in Relationships. She is a very entertaining speaker. 🙂 We are going to try to get to her class tonight on Edge play. 🙂
Last night I talked to a guy I have known in the scene for years and years and he is going to come help us move stuff this weekend. Yay! So far it looks like just Cyrano is coming over on Sunday (we have tons of boxes, no really). With luck we will get all the heavy lifting stuff done. *cross fingers* Yes, Mo! I will probably delighted to have you come over on Tuesday (Monday is my class day) and help if you are able.
I have told Noah that whatever we get done as of Sunday is the end of what he needs to do for big stuff. My baby (uhm, the big one) is getting pretty badly wore out trying to keep up with his job, basic house chores, and doing the projecty stuff that I am focused on doing. It’s not very fair to him. Soon the Lizard will be here and we will both be wore out as we focus on that. I need to give him time to rest up.
Which means that progress next week is going to be very very slow as I move at a snail’s pace. 🙂
So I’ve been feeling boring lately because all I write about is complaining about boredom. So I’ve been thinking about things.
This is what it feels like to have everything I always wanted. I have the best husband ever in the history of the world. He is supportive, communicative, willing to do anything I ask, and he’s the best sex partner I’ve ever had. That’s not a combination I thought existed. I win.
I’ve wanted to have a baby for a long time. Ok, so I haven’t had the easiest pregnancy in the history of the world–but by and large it’s not so bad. I’ve actually been aware of the bedrest risk since before I got pregnant. I have Menieres and it’s super common to end up on bedrest. It gets increasingly common as you get older which is why I needed to start having babies fairly young. (I don’t actually think that my preterm labor was related to the Menieres, but the risk was present for me anyway so I’m not as shocked as I could be.) And for all that my pregnancy isn’t the easiest it hasn’t actually been that hard. Given the prize I have at the end of the journey it’s been worth absolutely all the difficulty.
I may not live in the house of my absolute dreams, but I live in a comfortable house. We own this house and can afford the mortgage. We have all the financial safety I ever frantically aspired to. Sure, as soon as my ability to eat settles down we need to go back to cooking and stop eating out all the time, but I won’t want to go out with a baby anyway. 🙂 For now I am getting to eat out as much as my poverty-stricken-inner-little-girl wants to. This is cool.
I have amazing friends. They are supportive and awesome. When I put up a message asking to borrow DVDs within 24 hours I had more than 50 of them delivered to my house. If I were up for being social I could see people seven days a week and have good quality time with each person if I wanted. That’s really amazing to me.
So yeah. I’m happy. My life is really great. Yeah, I get angsty sometimes but that’s becoming a lower a lower percentage of my time because when I stop to think about what I have I am blown away by how awesome my life is.
And now I go snuggle my Noah.
A while ago I squeed about making Noah come with oral.
I didn’t mention a couple weeks when I did it again. But last night I did it again. This means that I have now made him come from oral more times than anyone else!!! I’m number one! I’m number one! *cough*
This wouldn’t be such a big deal if he didn’t announce that he is one of those “Doesn’t come from oral” guys except in freak occurrences. I think it is fairly safe to say that I have figured out the knack. Awesome. It’s actually getting easier because I have indeed figured out the trick to it. 🙂
Have I mentioned that I’m excited that as most of sex is much harder and more difficult I’m massively grateful that something is working better than normal?
Well that went better than expected. Much, much better than expected. In fact, I would go so far as to say that was good.
Awesome.
So there’s this guy. We’ve had a weird/complicated on/off thing for years. I was fairly interested in pursuing him more seriously but he was never in the right place in his life for a relationship so we had sporadic dates. It was nice anyway. He’s a neat person. It was awesome finding out that after not seeing one another for 18 months we met up again and the connection was still there. (This happened a while ago.) He was starting to casually date someone else and after a couple of times of seeing me told her that he couldn’t commit to monogamy because there was this girl…(me). Yay!
Anyway. We fell out of touch again (as we are prone to do) but I saw him on okcupid’s quickmatch about two weeks ago. I grinned and rated him highly but didn’t try to contact him. Lo-and-behold he sees my profile a few days later, rates me really highly as well and sends me an email. He’s thrilled that I am pregnant and wants to know more about the out of state move in the works. At this point going out on a date isn’t an option, but it’s nice to know that he still notices me and thinks highly of me. Yay!
I’m going to grin like an idiot for a while, I can tell.
Saw my midwife for my 31 week appointment today. We got to talk about a lot of different things. Have I mentioned that having a midwife is far superior to having a doctor? We sit around and chat about all the things I have been obsessing about and she is completely relaxed about everything. She gives me gentle coaxing about stuff that I should still work on (eating more vegetables [but they taste bad!] and exercising) but if I tell her that I really believe I am doing the best I can do she doesn’t pressure me or make me feel bad. Go midwife!
We talked about the possibility of laboring in our hot tub but reached the conclusion that the actual birth should probably happen in the birthing tub because you push lots of gross stuff out during birth and that’s not so awesome for the hot tub. It’s also harder to catch the baby in deep water and it’s harder to get out before the placenta comes. (She strongly recommends getting out before the placenta comes.) Seems reasonable and prudent so we will probably treat that as Plan A. 🙂
I’m up four pounds in the last two weeks. She thinks this is fabulous. I have a teeny tiny smidgin of societal guilt over gaining four pounds in two weeks, but mostly I think it is awesome. Maybe I will make it to 20 lbs after all. 🙂 All of my blood work came back as ridiculously healthy. Go me. Not even close to being diabetic. I’m still sorta barely close to being anemic, but when you are pregnant you technically move over on the spectrum and for a pregnant chick I’m doing great. w00t.
I’m still measuring a week big which is completely consistent for me. We talked about the fact that ultrasound due dates aren’t necessarily accurate, but neither are last period date due dates. So we looked at the calendar and decided that as long as the kid is still feeling big (which it is) it will be ok for me to do a homebirth anytime after April 25th. Because of due date wackiness that is a full month earlier than the ultrasound due date. That’s uhh 4 1/2 weeks away. Holy shit. That’s like, fucking soon. Given that the head is engaged in the pelvis already it’s kind of nerve wracking to think about–but in that ecstatically excited sort of nerve wracking way. 🙂 I’M GOING TO HAVE A BABY!!! It’s kind of funny that it is only really hitting me in stages.
Wow. This is so cool.
So uhhh I have had a rather rocky few days. I’ve been really emotional and sad and punchy and difficult to deal with. By and large my friends have been really supportive. I’m glad that I mostly have my friends trained to not tell me to look on the bright side and instead they pat me on the head and validate my feelings. I really appreciate that. Noah is the best husband ever. Even though it was pretty obvious near the end that he was getting frazzled and wore out he was really supportive and awesome. He never put down what I was feeling or told me that I should get over it. (Even when maybe I should.) And so in the end when that string of feeling really fussy and unhappy got worked through I don’t feel bad about having gone through it. I’m pregnant and largely at the mercy of hormones. I have friends and a husband who love me and tolerate my moods. My life is really good.
And then I went and got a pretty neat rocker today from . Too bad I left the cushion at her house. 🙂 Guess I’ll have to see if anyone up in the east bay wants to see me sometime this week so I can make the drive multi-purpose. 🙂
I didn’t even know I needed it.