Even more Christmas cheer

Auletta with her grandpa and her great-great-aunt (!)



With Gompa, her grandpa, and her great-uncles and great-aunt:



Almost all the female Schwabs! Which looks like a lot until you see the whole family.

Three months old!

We interrupt our festival of Christmas pictures to notify you that Auletta is three months old. I'm on time with pictures, for once.











The last picture was taken on a quilt we just got today from my Aunt Anne.

More Christmas cheer

All partied out before the party even starts:



Obligatory family photo. Auletta really couldn't be bothered--she was more interested in her fist, which is pretty standard these days.



Napping with Grandpa:

Christmas morning

Right after the kids woke us up to do stockings:



Justin and Auletta contemplate the wonder of Christmas, or something:





The haul:



Auletta with her great-grandfather (note the new Tar Heels jersey over her Christmas outfit)



After presents and Christmas dinner, it's time for a nap with Uncle Quintin:



And Grandma:

Christmas Eve

We had lunch at Gomma and Gompa's retirement place--in our own banquet room, so as not to aggrieve aging people who don't want someone else's 12 grandchildren running around. (There are 16 total but four arrived after Christmas.) Roughly speaking, there was a grownup table, a little kid table, and a big kid table. We sat at the big kid table with, let's say, the other grandkids who are old enough to use Facebook.

I am not sure what is happening here:



Zack and Auletta:



The little kids, unsupervised, were playing with knives.



Everybody loves Auletta!

Gomma and Auletta

So, pictures. This is the first meeting between Gomma and Auletta:



Four generations:



On a side note: I've had an external flash for my camera for a while but have usually been too lazy to use it. (And it draws attention. Now that most digital cameras are so tiny, when you have a digital SLR, everyone's like, "Oooh, that's a serious camera!" and then if you have a larger zoom lens, everyone's more awed, and then if you have a flash everyone thinks you're paparazzi even if you have no idea what you're doing.) I finally used it to take most of the indoor pictures over Christmas, and I'm so glad I did because it makes a huge difference. I like to use natural light, partly out of laziness and partly because it's nicer, but I'm very pleased with the results I got using the flash. In most of the pictures I took, I bounced it off the ceiling to light everything evenly and avoid shadows, which are one thing I hate about using on-camera flashes.

Catching up

Now that things are back to normal after the holidays, I should really be posting again. At the very least, I have lots of pictures.

We spent Christmas in Chapel Hill, as we both have every year since 2003, when we were engaged (and Justin has almost every year of his life). The drive down was great. It's a 10-hour drive according to Mapquest; we did it in 11 hours, including two stops to eat/nurse Auletta and traffic most of the way from DC to Fredericksburg. We left early in the morning, and Auletta slept all the way from New Haven to somewhere around Stafford, Virginia, which is north of Fredericksburg. She is awesome in the car. As you can guess, we drove like bats out of hell whenever we had the chance.

Gomma is still hanging in there. She got to meet Auletta and is still well enough to appreciate seeing her first great-grandchild--she said several times how cute she is, and it's not easy for her to get sentences out, period (it is clear she's still capable of forming thoughts, but it takes a lot of effort to express them). And of course the rest of the extended family got to meet Auletta too. Once again, I didn't get to hold her very much because everyone else was bogarting the baby. She is in a wonderful cuddly stage where she's getting more substantial but is still easy to hold and snuggly, so I can't blame them.

On the way back we stopped in Charlottesville for a night, which was long enough for me to see my friend Heidi and her family, Laura, and all the people at Incarnation I haven't seen since May. I love the drive north on 29 when, just past Lynchburg, you get your first glimpse of the Blue Ridge, and then right as we crossed the Albemarle County line, the sun broke through the trees, angels started singing, etc. Even in the bleak midwinter, it's beautiful. I miss Virginia dreadfully, but that's another post in itself. Oh, we stopped at a great barbecue place in North Carolina on the way to Charlottesville--barbecue, sweet tea, hush puppies, the works. I think whatever weight I gained over the holidays happened there. Yum.

The drive the following day from Charlottesville to New Haven took almost as long as the drive from New Haven to Chapel Hill, because of rain and traffic--Auletta was good, but she was eating at least every three hours day and night for the next few days (she's starting to go five or six hours on average at night), so that was trying, but at least we were home. On the drive back I got the call from my family that my grandmother had passed away. It wasn't really a surprise--I went out to Seattle in June on short notice because we thought then her health was declining rapidly, but she started doing better and was all right until she had a stroke on Christmas Eve--but I feel badly that she never got to meet her first great-granddaughter. We had a tough choice this Christmas, with two grandmothers who were probably not going to make it another year, and we've been so occupied with Gomma's cancer that it never really occurred to me my own grandmother would die first, simply of being old. The memorial service will be in March, when we visit Seattle for Justin's Christmas break. I will work on a tribute to her here--she was a quiet but amazing woman, and probably the best role model I'll ever have.

Since we got back we've been hanging out at home. Justin's exams are this month, so he is (supposed to be) studying for them, and we've been following the early primaries, which is more interesting than actually voting in them. (We're not registered in Connecticut yet and primaries aren't open here--one reason Lamont defeated Lieberman in the 2006 primary--which as independents we both find annoying, so we might not vote. But this year the nominees might not be a forgone conclusion by Super Tuesday, so our vote would, like, count and stuff. I am kind of excited that as of this week, it seems possible the nominees on each side will be the ones I would have chosen and will give us a positive choice instead of a decision between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.)

I'll try to post pictures every day this week. All the kids are doing it.

Two months old!

I didn't get a lot of pictures on her actual two-month birthday because I was a little busy forcing her to get poked in the thigh. Actually, her vaccinations went really well--she cried while she was getting them and settled down quickly afterwards, and aside from being a little more sleepy than usual the rest of the week (which I don't mind) she doesn't seem to be affected by them.

The many faces of Auletta:







Of course, most of the time I was trying to photograph her, she looked like this:



My stepsister Robyn made the beautiful quilt Auletta's on. I love purple baby things.

This might not be appropriate information to reveal here, but since I know most of my regular readers are women anyway (Ben and Eric, avert your eyes)--guess what event that occurred approximately (and I mean very approximately, for me) once a month until last Christmas started happening again? Even though I'm breastfeeding? So, yeah, we're going to have to deal with that if we don't want Auletta to have a Sibling With Flat Hat in 2008.

Auletta's new skill

She can put her fist in her mouth. This gives her something to suck on, so I don't always have to pop the paci back in her mouth when it falls out.



She also smiles a lot now, not just at me but at everyone, and is starting to say things that sound like "goo" and "ga." She still cannot lift her head when she's on her tummy (she hates being on her tummy), which is a very basic thing babies are supposed to be able to do by the end of their second month, according to the baby books. Oh well.

Auletta's first Thanksgiving

We visited Justin's family in Ithaca for Thanksgiving, which is always an event. I first met his family at Thanksgiving five years ago, and Justin likes to repeat the story of how he went to take one of his brothers somewhere right after we arrived, and when he got back he found me curled up in the bedroom, all fetus-like, in terror. I've gotten used to the chaos since then. Auletta will grow up accustomed to chaos. She spent the entire weekend being passed around among her aunt, uncles, and grandparents like whatever the opposite of a hot potato is.

Harry's an uncle at the age of eight:



This is my new favorite picture of me and Auletta. Of course that is not hard when in all the pictures of us together I'm either 1. exhausted or 2. exhausted from labor and surgery. This is about five minutes before Justin spilled wine on her hat and blamed it on the baby.



Bonus: Our friend Erik drew this map from scratch, like, without looking at another map, because he is awesome.

Randomata

After a trip up the food chain all the way up to Flippery Fish, I'm back to Multicellular Microorganism status. I'm not sure why I evolved and then devolved, but that was kind of fun.

Poop update: We got what we were waiting for yesterday evening. Auletta fussed but stayed fairly sanguine through the poop (which we didn't even notice at first, somehow), a rapid stripdown and wiping while being held upside down, and an emergency bath. "What does it take to get this kid to cry?" Justin asked. She eventually broke down, but we all survived and now we can look forward to another 1-6 days of pooplessness.

Whenever I've taken Auletta out for a walk, I keep thinking I should bring my camera to catch the light on the leaves. Then when I remember my camera there's not much sunlight. And now there are not many leaves. But still a few:



Auletta sports one of her many hats, this one lovingly knit by Anne and perfect for windy fall days:

I want this!

Oh my gosh, there is Very Hungry Caterpillar bedding.



So yes, I skipped decorating the nursery and went straight to planning her big-kid bedroom. I hope I can still get this in two years.

Getting out of the house

I had someone home with me for almost the entire first month of Auletta's life, so when I ventured out of the house I either had someone at home to watch her or help transporting the massive volume of stuff that accompanies a baby whenever it goes anywhere. My sister and I took her shopping when she was a week old, and we went shopping again two weeks after that with Justin's mother and aunt.

Now that I'm home alone with Auletta, I'm figuring out how to get her out of the house on my own. My goal is to go on two walks every day, weather permitting; we usually drive out to a little sort of park with a 9/10-mile loop trail in the morning (I'll sometimes do the Starbucks drive-thru beforehand), and then go for a walk in the neighborhood in the afternoon. On Tuesday I took Auletta as far as a mall about 20 miles away (we don't have a major mall really nearby), and today I went to a new moms group that meets at Panera the next town over. Fortunately Auletta's really good about riding in the carseat--she'll cry for a minute or two and then fall asleep by the time I pull out of the driveway. It pops right into the stroller so I never have to wake her up. It's actually a really nice way to get her to nap. We've been gone as long as three hours without her having to eat or get a diaper change.

(Gross baby TMI warning: around two weeks she started pooping at most once a day. This is apparently normal and fine in breastfed babies, although it happened pretty early with her. It's convenient as far as ordinary diaper changes go, but of course when the deluge finally arrives it's an event. Her last poop was Friday, so I am on notice and rather nervous about going anywhere at all, but if I scheduled my life around her poop I'd never get out.)

Since we just moved and I don't really know anyone here, I feel like this leaving-the-house thing is really crucial for my sanity, so I'm glad I've gotten into the habit early. I am hoping to start doing some kind of postnatal exercise/yoga/baby activity/etc. thing after the holidays, in order to meet people and of course embark on the great American tradition of reliving one's childhood vicariously through one's own offspring.

Smile!

Auletta is just starting to do real smiles (not like weird grimacy poopy/gassy smiles, although those are cute too). A couple of mornings ago she smiled at me when she first woke up and I got her out of the co-sleeper, which was the best thing ever. This is one of the first smiles I got on camera.

One month old!

Okay, her one-month birthday was three days ago, so I'm behind on posting, but I did take this (and many other pictures--see the SmugMug link on the sidebar!) the day of.

Auletta represents

As you can imagine with our academic family, Auletta already has a lot of collegiate apparel. No pressure or anything. (One of my earliest memories was when my dad told me, "Your mother and I will be very disappointed if you don't go to the University of Washington." I'm not sure he was kidding. This poor kid's going to need to get more degrees than her parents have combined to make everyone happy.)



Obligatory fashion credit goes to her Great-Auntie Ann for the Tar Heels gear and her Schwab grandparents for the stylish Parisian bodysuit.

When Auletta complains that her name is too weird...

We can tell her some of the names we (ahem, we minus me) proposed:

• Aspirin


• Cotton (with our last name!)


• And, while we're on the Mathers, Increase

I will distract you from the fact that the foregoing was not really a substantive blog post, especially after nearly a week's delinquency, by posting a cute picture:



I love how her sleeper says "baby," just in case you didn't know what its contents were.

Boo!

Auletta's first Halloween! Her Aunt Katie gave her the sleeper.

The great-grandclerk

We took Auletta on her first road trip this weekend. On Friday afternoon we drove to an inn in the Catskills, about three hours away from New Haven, where we had dinner with a group of people associated with Cornell Law School and Sandra Day O'Connor. Justice O'Connor was there to go fly fishing the next morning before heading to Ithaca for a visit to the law school next week.

Justin's dad clerked for O'Connor in the early '80s. So Justin is one of the original grandclerks. She now has two great-grandclerks, Auletta, and a boy who's about four months old. Both of them were there. Justice O'Connor assured us that Auletta is beautiful.



Auletta handled the trip really well, which I hope bodes well for our holiday travels.

One week

Auletta turned one week old yesterday. At her first pediatric appointment she weighed 8 lb. 4 oz., six ounces more than when she was born. So this breastfeeding thing is obviously going well. So well, in fact, that I spent yesterday afternoon doing not much else, and decided it was okay to give her a pacifier. I wasn't in a hurry to do it, but I have read it won't lead to nipple confusion once breastfeeding is established, and I don't know how it could be more established. Besides, the hospital apparently gave her a pacifier when she was in the nursery at night. Which I would not necessarily have approved, but at least they use Soothies, which is what I was going to get anyway.



(Thanks to Helene and Michael for the sleeper and my sister for the conveniently coordinating hat. Baby hats are, in fact, flat when you first get them.)

Update: I added a couple of pictures to the story of Auletta's birth and hospital stay, in case you don't want to read the whole thing but want to see pictures.

About her name

Auletta is my mom's last name. Justin has three siblings whose last names are family surnames, so we decided to continue that tradition. Ruth is Justin's Gomma, who is still hanging in there. She got to see pictures of her great-granddaughter this weekend, thanks to the miracle of email and digital cameras.

The birth certificate lady had to check on us three days in a row before we totally made up our minds. We've been calling her Auletta since we found out she was a she, but as her due date approached we started wondering if we really wanted to be spelling her name for everyone (and making her have to spell it) in aeternam. We thought of switching her first and middle names. But we realized several things: 1. We were already calling her Auletta. 2. Word had spread to my mom's family that her name was Auletta. 3. It makes a lot more sense, if we're already calling her this unusual name, to give her a normal middle name she can use if she hates her weird first name than to give her a normal first name and call her by her weird middle name.

And anyway, Ruth might become popular again, but there is no chance our daughter will have three classmates with the same name. Someday I'm going to write a post ranting about some of the names that are trendy these days.

Auletta: The early days

This is the whole birth story, plus first days at the hospital. It is very long.

I went to the hospital Tuesday morning to get the gel to ripen my cervix. The doctor told me that it was possible but unlikely this by itself would be enough to initiate contractions; otherwise I'd go in the next day, probably early, for the induction. While I was hooked up to the fetal monitor I had mild contractions, but nothing that looked like actual labor. I was dilated a centimeter, if that, and less effaced than I had been told I was on Friday (effacement is so subjective that I'm not really sure why they bother, but whatever).

On the way home I picked up Justin, who was tired and figured we might as well spend this last baby-less afternoon together. I started having contractions I could actually identify as contractions as the afternoon went on. By the evening they were regular and getting stronger. I started timing them more carefully around 9:00 and called the doctor twice; the second time he said we could head for the hospital. At that point they were at most three minutes apart and still not very painful, but I didn't want to wait that much longer because they were so close together.

We got to the hospital around 11:30 and went up to triage, where they have rooms for women in early labor. By that time the contractions were definitely painful, but manageable. A resident did an internal, the most freaking painful internal I'd ever had (no doubt because it was during a contraction, ouch). I was dilated two centimeters. The doctor who was doing deliveries that night came and told me to walk around the floor for two hours and then they'd check my progress and admit me to L&D if I had made enough progress. I wasn't sure I would make it two hours with the pain I was already having, but being on my feet instead of lying on my side attached to the fetal monitor was more comfortable, at least in the beginning. But after 45 minutes I asked Justin to see if I could get any sort of pain medication at all or have another internal. The nurses said I could have an internal, but if I hadn't dilated enough I might just be disappointed and still in pain. Fortunately, I had dilated to 3 or 4 centimeters and could be admitted to L&D, and the doctor asked if I was interested in an epidural. By that time any idea I had of even attempting natural childbirth had gone out the window, so the epidural was arranged.

We walked over to L&D. After this everything went haywire and I don't really remember exactly what happened. In some order, the following took place: I was attached to an IV. I was asked the same questions several times about whether I was allergic to any medications, etc. so I could get the epidural. The doctor broke my water. The number of people in the room increased exponentially. The fetal monitor made threatening beeping noises at wildly varying rates, which was the baby's heartbeat, and the doctor said, at what seemed like really soon after I had gotten into L&D, that they might have to do a c-section. I got an oxygen mask, which paradoxically made me feel less able to breathe, but nobody let me take it off.

I was in awful pain the whole time. Now I don't know if I am just a huge wimp or I didn't practice my breathing exercises or if this was an unusually horrible labor, but it was extremely unfun. The contractions were really intense, which I'm sure is normal, and there was often no time for me to relax between each one. Basically, I think it was like being in the transitional stage of labor (when you dilate from 7 to 10 cm, and which is supposed to be hideous but short) when I was just barely in active labor. As far as I know I never made it past 4 cm.

After some period of fetal distress and various medical personnel acting, in a controlled way, very worried, they decided to do the c-section. I remember the doctor telling me if I had another baby I could either have a VBAC or an elective cesarean, which it seemed weird for him to tell me at that point since either way I had to get this present baby out as quickly as possible, but the whole thing was weird so I didn't really notice it at the time. I signed the consent form at a rare moment between contractions and was wheeled rapidly to the operating room.

Justin, who had been incredibly wonderful and supportive the whole time, was left in L&D to await further instructions. At that point they didn't know if they could stabilize the baby enough to do a spinal block, in which case Justin could be in the OR with me, or if they had to knock me out as quickly as possible with general anesthesia, which would mean he couldn't be with me. I had heard them discussing the possibility of general anesthesia, which kind of scared me (as scary as this all was) because as I understand it, even with emergency cesareans general anesthesia is pretty rare.

Fortunately they were able to get the baby stabilized enough to do the spinal block. It probably helped that I was less frantic by this point, since I knew the baby would be coming out imminently. It took several more contractions for me to be asked the same questions about my nonexistent allergies to medications and to get the spinal block itself, which once it kicked in was the most beautiful physical sensation I have ever experienced in my life. The doctors and nurses set up a curtain between my chest and my abdomen, Justin came in wearing scrubs, and we had a nice conversation with the anesthesiologist about how Justin and I met and where we were from while the medical team delivered our daughter, who came into the world at 1:56 AM on Wednesday. We didn't even know she was out at first because they took her next door to get cleaned up and get her APGARs and all that, but they told us they had delivered her and after a couple of minutes we could hear her cry. And then they brought her out so Justin could hold her, and she stared at us and she was perfect and everything was good and worthwhile.

After they sewed me up (this took a while; Justin heard the doctor say something like "Who has her bladder?" which was a little disconcerting, but I did get it back), they took us to a recovery room. This was probably the weirdest part of the evening. I was extremely cold and shivering uncontrollably. My temperature got down to 94.2. I didn't know it was possible to be that cold and be, like, not dead, but apparently it is. So they put a warmed blanket over me, which was nice but kind of lame under the circumstances, and then put this weird sort of inflatable blanket hooked up to an air hose with hot air coming into it, which was less lame but still didn't heat me up as quickly as I would have liked, which was immediately, or at least soon. We were in the recovery room for probably an hour and a half; the baby had to be warmed up too, although Justin got to hold her a lot. The spinal block, which was a darned good spinal block, took several hours to wear off, so I was still flat on my back at this point. There was a nurse in and out of the room, but otherwise we were alone, which seemed kind of bizarre. Eventually they got the baby to a safe temperature and me up to 96-ish, which for being two degrees below normal body temperature was pretty great under the circumstances, so they brought us up to our room on the maternity floor. I got to hold the baby, kind of, in the crook of my arm. We got there around 4:00 AM. The baby had to go to the nursery to be weighed and measured. We sort of slept for a couple of hours.



* * *

So you remember how the baby's head never fully engaged? This probably had something to do with how she ended up coming out. My doctor thought at first her head was smooshing her umbilical cord, which would definitely have explained her distress, which turned out not to be the case. But her chin was tipped down toward her chest, instead of upward, which is how babies are supposed to be facing when they're born, and it was bent at kind of a weird angle. We also overheard the doctor saying something about my narrow pelvis during the surgery. Not that you could ever tell from the outside, but it seems perhaps I am not built to deliver babies, at least this big-headed one. I'm not sure it was a case of true cephalo-pelvic disproportion (which I believe is rare, for obvious evolutionary reasons), but I'm sure that didn't make things any easier. I'm hoping to get a better idea of what happened at my first postpartum appointment. I think the doctor kind of explained it afterwards, but I was not in much of a condition to remember if he did.

* * *

We had four days in the hospital to recover. We probably could have been discharged on Saturday, but we took advantage of the extra day's worth of food (which was room service and generally pretty good), baby help, and rest, sort of. The first day I only got out of bed twice, with the help of nurses, and was still hooked up to an IV and catheter. We got started breastfeeding. I had been worried that since I wasn't able to hold Auletta or even try nursing her for the first twelve hours or so of her life that it might make things more complicated, but we managed fine, it just took a little longer to get started. The baby was sleepy and mucusy her first day, so she wasn't really hungry, but I pumped a little bit to keep up my supply and kept encouraging her to feed. And whatever I might think about Yale-New Haven as far as the scheduling of my induction, they have wonderful breastfeeding support, so I got lots of help from all the nurses and lactation consultants. I especially adored one of our night nurses, Caren, who was a sweetheart and helped out with our first successful couple of feedings the first full night we were there. Once we got rolling things just went incredibly smoothly. I had very few expectations about my childbirth experience, which is good because none of them would have been met anyway, but I really wanted to breastfeed and had myself mentally prepared to stick it out through days or weeks of pain and frustration if it turned out to be difficult, but it wasn't. So I'm really happy about that.

Justin's mom spent all day at the hospital on Friday. (She'd tried to get there on Thursday, but it didn't work out. Another U.S. Air-is-evil story.) This is when I discovered for myself one of the advantages of breastfeeding, which is that every couple of hours people have to give you your baby back. His mom and dad both came on Saturday and spent the day fighting over the baby, which was very cute. She's their first grandchild, and the first girl in their branch of the Schwab clan since Justin's sister was born twenty years ago, so they're really happy to have her.



I think I'm recovering pretty quickly from the surgery. Actually I felt better in the hospital, but they kept loading me with Percoset and I didn't have to do as much there as I am doing at home (although my sister's visiting so I have lots of help). After the first day I was moving around slowly but without much pain.

We came home Sunday morning, which is when my sister's flight got in, so I'll have help until Friday, and then Justin has the next week off. We are probably doing Auletta's first road trip--a short one, for us--this weekend; more about that later.

Baby With Flat Hat is here!

Auletta Ruth Schwab was born on October 10, 2007 at 1:56 AM. She weighed 7 lb. 13.5 oz. and measured 19 3/4 inches. Her big brainy head was 14 inches. She is perfect and we adore her. I'll post more details later this week.

How induction is a lot like spontaneous labor

They don't tell you when you're supposed to be induced until right before it happens, apparently. The hospital is still having trouble fitting me in for my cervical gelling tomorrow, so they're supposed to call in the morning and let me know if 1. someone has canceled (i.e. delivered) or 2. the on-call doctor can take me. I'm set for the induction itself on Wednesday, but I won't find out until tomorrow evening when I'm supposed to go in for that. So it's all a big fun surprise!

Meanwhile, I'm entertaining myself by going to the baby chat boards on thenest.com. This isn't really making me feel better, though, because I've read so many posts from women who are 37/38 weeks pregnant and disappointed that they're not dilated yet, and it's not charitable but I want to kick them.

The good news is, I think the baby's been putting more pressure on my bladder, which is manifesting itself in frequent but not always timely trips to the bathroom, so maybe she's dropped a bit.

Baby With Flat Hat update, part the gazillionth

Today I spent several hours at the university health center (and environs, since I needed to eat at some point) attending three inconveniently spaced appointments. Scheduling anything related to this baby seems to be like herding cats; more on that soon. Anyway, first of all I had the nonstress test, in which I was hooked up to a fetal monitor and asked to press a button every time she moved to see if her heartrate went up when she moved, which it's supposed to do. It facilitates this procedure if the baby moves. My daughter is not a morning person. The nurse gave me some grape juice, though, at which point she perked up and said "I love JUICE!" and had all kinds of heartrate-boosting movement, some of which I even felt. So that is good.

I ate lunch, then went back for a short ultrasound to check my amniotic fluid level, which is fine. And she's still a girl, or if she's not they decided not to disabuse me of that notion before I find out in person.

Then I went upstairs very early for my 41 week appointment, was surprised to be admitted to the exam room early, and then less surprised when I ended up sitting there for half an hour in a stuffy room on the edge of the exam table with a glorified paper towel over the lower half of my body and my back hurting like crazy from the exam table's failure to be a comfy chair like the ones in the waiting room I'd rather have been sitting in. Maybe I should bring this up in the telephone surveys I keep getting from Yale Health Services about appointments I can't remember because they were short and three weeks ago and I've had other appointments since then.

So, finally a doctor emerged and gave me an internal. I am 80% effaced. Progress! But still no dilation, and the baby's head is still not fully engaged. Well, I wouldn't want to stick my head in someone else's pelvis, either. At this point, if they want to induce me by 42 weeks (remember, ignore the ticker if you're a doctor and all women have 28-day cycles; I was due almost a week ago), they have to schedule me soon. I have mixed feelings about inductions, like 1. I was born four weeks late and I turned out fine, so what's the rush? and besides, I've heard the contractions are worse on pitocin, and they often end in c-sections especially if the baby's not really ready, which she's not, and sometimes they just fail, in like a big icanhascheezburger conehead-cat that can't eat its food FAIL. type of way, and they can take forever (my sister's induction = 36 hours of labor, etc.), and, etc., but 2. gee, it would be nice to have a baby, for a couple of personal reasons besides the obvious impatience with being pregnant and wanting one, some of them not so significant in the big scheme of things (my sister's here from the 14th to the 19th and it'd be nice if I were home with the baby by then), some really important to us (like Justin's Gomma meeting her first great-grandchild before she passes away, which is looking inevitable and soon).

So. At first they were trying to schedule me for another AFI/NST on Monday and an induction toward the middle/end of the week. But apparently the hospital is having trouble scheduling me for anytime except maybe Tuesday/Wednesday. How hospitals have trouble scheduling inductions when presumably they have to accommodate anyone who, like, goes into labor on her own is beyond me, but apparently it truly is that complicated. So now the plan is for me not to have anything on Monday, to go in Tuesday at some yet-to-be-determined time to get gel to thin my cervix, sleep at home that night, and then come back in on Wednesday to get the show on the road. We hope. (Justin has a light class schedule on Wednesday, which is a small perk to this plan.)

If that confused you, imagine how I explained it to Justin, who has a project due on Tuesday and wants to know when the baby is coming. Despite all this attempted scheduling (FAIL.), she is a baby, so I don't know. Maybe before Tuesday. But definitely (probably) within a week.

My ticker amuses me

The Baby With Flat Hat Status Report says

I'm getting lots of sleep, waiting to get out.

Judging by the all-night party in my uterus, she has no trouble passing the time. This might have had to do with my brilliant idea of baking brownies last night, now that I have found my measuring cups. Chocolate, I now remember, has caffeine, which keeps me awake, and apparently like everything else it gives me gas six ways to Sunday so that I had to sit up and burp all night to keep from floating away on a giant internal bubble. Also I seem to have taken up snoring at those times I do sleep. Lovely.

I'm scheduled for a nonstress test on Friday if I don't have the baby before then. My weekly appointments have been so routine, and my progress so negligible, that at my 39 week appointment eight days ago my OB decided to cancel my 40 week appointment and just schedule me for the NST if I didn't have the baby before that. Thereafter I had this odd notion that because I had the appointment for the NST, it would somehow prevent me from going into labor, which who knows, maybe it has. I'm so convinced she's not coming on her own anytime soon that I would be in shock if she did, although that's technically what's supposed to happen.

Rumors of her birth are greatly exaggerated

Justin got a phone call last night congratulating him on being a father. This was a rather weird and awkward call because 1. it was 2:00 A.M., 2. the guy who called is a second-degree friend, so Justin didn't recognize him right away, and 3. I haven't actually had the baby yet. The best explanation I can think of is that Justin mentioned September 29 as the due date somewhere along the line and it was assumed, either by the second- or first-degree friend, that she was born yesterday, because babies always come on their due dates. Of course anyone who's given birth knows that babies rarely come on their due dates--in fact, I had thought anyone who has been born would know this, especially anyone who has been born late and has a Jewish mother. But maybe not.

I am a Cool History/Lit Geek!

I am only a nerd in one way, but boy am I nerdy as far as that goes.





(In the interest of full disclosure, I'm counting immediate access to things as if they were not still packed in boxes. We own atlases of both the Greek and Roman ancient world! Actually, I just realized that since they're Justin's, all this means is I'm married to a nerd. But I'm married, which makes me less of an awkward nerd. I was surprised how un-awkward-nerdish I am.)

Thanks to the divine Madame Meow.

Oh, and I'm still pregnant.

The end is near. Maybe.

I am officially due this Saturday, September 29. I am unofficially due on October 3, this date based on my actually being present at the creation, which the doctors and the charts by which they calculate estimated due dates were not, so I think I am right. Either way, Baby With Flat Hat is going to come whenever she pleases, which I am guessing to be later rather than sooner, because she certainly never seems to tire of using my ribs as a footrest. Also as of last Tuesday I am not dilated or any of those other things you never wanted to know about my cervix. Also I think I can pretty honestly say I haven't had a contraction, Braxton-Hicks or otherwise, except maybe for a couple of times when I've tried to move heavy-ish stuff around the carriage house (don't tell Justin; or actually he knows, and I haven't lately).

I can see now why the last month of pregnancy invariably sucks. I can't really complain because I've had a good run so far. Complain about: the feet, which I think are throwing my back out so it's hard to sit upright for any length of time (makes going out to eat unpleasant); the pelvic pressure (to put it politely) which makes it excruciating to roll over in bed, which I have to do about twenty zillion times a night because of the aforementioned backache; and, um, actually the rest isn't that bad. I had awful heartburn for a while but then I discovered Tums around the same time that I think she moved her head down into my pelvis, which seems not to have made her want to move her feet but at least has taken pressure off my stomach.

I am guaranteed a baby by October 13 because I have been told I will not be allowed to go more than two weeks past my due date (the official one). Not that I want to be induced, but at that point I'll probably be ready for anything.

And if the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, this might be necessary. See, for example, her parents' track record:

Justin:
Due August 18 (I think). Born September 5.
Juliet:
Due May 8. Born June 6. (Seriously.)

Today I wrestled with various rather important baby items I ought to have dealt with before, but I am so convinced this girl will be late that I've been lazy about a lot of things. The co-sleeper is now attached to the bed, and the carseat base to the car, although I am not sure how Justin and the baby can comfortably occupy the passenger side of the Corolla at the same time so I might have to start letting him drive more.

My dad is swinging through town tonight for dinner. I hope I can sit still that long. I had sort of hoped that I would have the baby this past weekend so he could meet his granddaughter, but then I would probably not be up for dinner.

Happy/sad

Yes, I'm in Connecticut now, and I'm still pregnant. More about that sooner or later.

Yesterday I was happy for two reasons:

1. My cousin Sarah is engaged. I've only met her fiance once, in March when Justin and I were in Seattle and we were all at my grandmother's 85th birthday party. But the two of them seemed almost giddily happy together, and I'm glad they are planning to be happy together for the rest of their lives. And I love weddings, especially weddings I can attend because I won't be eight months pregnant.

2. My dad is passing through town on business in a week and a half, so I get to see him and have dinner. Assuming I am not in labor or anything.

Today I am still happy, but sad too. Scott Becker (the author of Aufhebung on my blogroll) passed away this morning. He was the assistant pastor at Bethany Community Church, my church in Seattle when I lived there. He left to get a PhD in Christian ethics and was working on his dissertation when he was diagnosed with liver cancer last fall. I haven't really kept in touch with him since I moved away from Seattle, but he was an awesome person and a gifted writer, and as much as I regret his passing, there are so many people who will miss him even more. Richard Dahlstrom, the senior pastor at Bethany, wrote a more fitting tribute to him here.

For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife...

In between our subletted apartment in Ithaca and the carriage house in New Haven, we're staying with Justin's family. There's wireless here, which is why I'm blogging again.

At dinner tonight, Justin's mom was trying to convince Weatherly that she needs to schedule her own doctor's appointments because she's legally an adult now. Justin pointed out that she might be of legal age, but they still claim her as a dependent, and added, "When I became an adult was when I had my wife do my taxes."

Reunion

I had guards like watchdogs, etc.

This is going to be a blog entry about basically nothing.

I didn't go to my 10-year high school reunion, back in 2003, for several reasons:

1. I didn't really have any good friends in my graduating class to begin with. All the people I keep in touch with, or really liked in the first place, were a year or two ahead of or behind me. I found out before the reunion that one guy I genuinely did like had died of leukemia, so one less reason to go, bummer.

2. It was in October. In Seattle. I was living in Virginia and was in grad school. So thanks for that really helpful scheduling.

3. Actually, I did have a reading break that weekend and part of the next week, but I wanted to use that time to visit the guy I was going to marry.

4. It was like $75 plus a cash bar. Dude. And not drinking around these people was pretty much not an option.

But I was curious about what these reunion thingies were like. We were in town for Justin's this summer, he actually had friends in his graduating class*, and it was a lot less expensive. So I encouraged him to go. This is how we dressed (another belly picture, this time at like 32 weeks, if you can see the belly under Justin's hand under my hand gripping his, as in "Act like you like the baby, dang it!"):



We lasted less than an hour.

*He has lots of friends from his graduating class. Unfortunately, none of them came, except Jason, with whom we went and spent a very awkward half hour or so drinking gin and tonics (well, I watched them drink gin and tonics) and looking around the room at the small percentage of Justin's class that showed up, who were apparently (not like I'd know) the last people he would have picked to see again. So after hors d'ouevres (I have no idea to spell that, and frankly if France can't come up with a reasonable language, I don't really care if I'm butchering it), which for some reason involved meatballs but no forks, we bailed and went out to dinner on our own. I kind of wanted to stick it out for the prime rib (I have been instructed to eat more red meat due to mild pregnancy-related anemia), but neither Justin nor Jason wanted to stay, and it wasn't my extremely awkward high school reunion, so we left and had dinner downtown instead.

See you all on Facebook, I guess. It's too weird in person. You know?

Belly

This was taken June 17, when I was about 25 weeks along. This will give you a good idea of what I look like if you haven't seen me in a while. I don't think I've gotten substantially bigger since then. What's weird, actually, is how no strangers have commented on my pregnant belly (maybe I'm still in the "is she pregnant or just fat?" stage, although I sure look pregnant to myself), and certainly no one has made the dreaded "Wow, you must be about to pop any day now!" remark.

The Latin lover

Who ever thought the Roman Catholic Church would catch so much flak for allowing something?

I'm still here

Of course the next question is, where is "here"?

We moved ourselves, the cats, and way too much stuff that didn't quite make it to New Haven up to Ithaca on May 18, in a caravan consisting of a Jeep packed with book boxes, two cranky cats, and me, and a brand-new Corolla (my mom car! twice the gas mileage of the Jeep! yay!) packed with Justin and more stuff. We're subletting an apartment in downtown Ithaca, the only part of town that isn't hilly. Our intent was, in part, to get me out of the sweltering South during the increasingly gravid part of my pregnancy. Of course now it's like 95 degrees here...

In early June I went to Seattle to see my grandmother, whose health declined rather precipitously but then improved right before I went. She'd been on anti-seizure meds and not really eating, but by the time I'd gotten there she was off the meds and eating ice cream if nothing else. My dad, aunt, uncle, and sister are on rotation to visit during meals and cheer her on while her caregiver feeds here pureed Brussels sprouts and other things I wouldn't eat either. Anyway, I was glad to see her again at least one more time, and I spent my 32nd birthday with my family. Justin planned to come but then got violently ill in the twelve hours before we were supposed to board our flight. Which was delayed. Like, overnight, assuming we wanted to spend the night in Syracuse rather than NYC. And there was a mishap on the way back involving toilets that stopped working (just what a pregnant woman wants!) and a diversion to scenic Buffalo, but I got back okay.

For the first week of July, in what seems to be now an annual observance of our anniversary (#3 this year; thanks for the card, Deanna!) and Independence Day, we went to Justin's grandparents' lake house. Justin's family threw a baby shower for us, which was fun, and we got about a zillion clothes since everyone is so excited to be able to buy for a girl for once. I've been to women's showers and co-ed showers; this is the first intergenerational shower I've ever attended, which was a little chaotic, but one gets used to that and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Now we're back in town. We can only access the Internet from Justin's parents' house, which is why I haven't been blogging regularly.

The baby has been moving like crazy considering how unathletic her parents are, and everything with the pregnancy is proceeding well. I am starting to feel the discomforts of getting larger, but so far they're tolerable, and definitely worth it.

Guess what our baby has two of?

No, not those, silly. X chromosomes. We're having a girl. Who knew it could happen?



I think we woke her up too early.

Memo to college students

If you're going to plagiarize half your term paper from Wikipedia, the other half should be well-written enough that it isn't obvious the only way you could compose a complete, grammatically correct sentence is to copy it from someone else. We professors and teaching assistants may be too lazy to google every suspiciously elegant phrase, but we're not that stupid.

This is what we're doing. I think.

It has been quiet here on Girl With Flat Hat, but not in real life.

Here is what has happened in the past two weeks. Justin did in fact receive official news of his acceptance to That University in Like Connecticut Or Something, the one that is not featured in Legally Blonde because hyperambitious future corporate lawyers go to That Other School while nerdy future federal court clerks and law profs go to this particular school that Justin got into, and had hoped but not quite believed he could get into. So he went there to assure them that if they made the offer, he would accept, and to check out the place where we'll probably be living, a carriage house on the property of a professor who used to work with his dad. We are welcome there but the cats are not, so I am working on alternative arrangements for probably the first year we're there. If you or anyone you know would like to borrow two cats...

But we can't move in till mid-August. Meanwhile we need to clear out the condo as soon as possible so we can sell it. (Turns out Justin was right and we shouldn't have bought it in the first place, but it was a character-building experience, or something like that.) So, for reasons that do make sense but are hard to explain, we are subletting an apartment in Ithaca for the summer (cats allowed). It's downtown, so I can walk around at seven months pregnant and not have to tackle the hills. The only difficulty with this--well, of course there are difficulties no matter what we do--is switching doctors (and possibly insurance) twice over the course of the summer. But I just managed to squeeze in my 20-week ultrasound here in Charlottesville the day our sublease in Ithaca begins, with dire warnings that if I need a follow-up ultrasound (which I assume would only be necessary if the baby is coy and won't show its naughty bits) I'm on my own.

Two weeks ago, we both thought we were staying here. The Law School Down the Street did eventually offer Justin some funding, which, taking into account the cost of living in Manhattan and the upcoming Baby With Flat Hat, made the idea of staying here very appealing, but this is an opportunity Justin can't turn down. Nevertheless, it is kind of scary. I still have a lot of work to do before the end of the semester, and very little time to do it, which is why I haven't blogged much.

Holy Week

It has been very busy and sort of odd. In one day we went from thinking we would stay in Virginia for a few more years and looking for a place with more space to raise Baby With Flat Hat (and possibly his or her sibling(s)) to being almost certain we'll move next year. But not to New York. One state over, or up, depending how you look at it. Justin has unofficially received the best possible news he can receive on the law school front, but it means that we will, in fact, be moving this summer and having a baby in a new place, and spending a lot of money (ours or someone else's) on tuition. In a few years Justin should be able to do pretty much whatever he wants, including (hopefully) moving into a house in central Virginia or somewhere similar with space to raise Children With Flat Hats. For now, we will probably have to sacrifice a few things, including mild winters.

...Or that's what I thought, until I woke up this morning. This is going to be the coldest Easter Vigil procession EVER.