4/27/2008

twenty months today for mairin, almost 20 weeks for gus. spring is here, the dogwoods and lilacs are in bloom, most of the neighborhood daffies and tulips are already done blooming. in related news, shannon reports that the twin cities’ opening-season bike race took place in snow. yesterday. part of me doesn’t miss that — a lingering spring is a beautiful thing — but another part of me wishes i still had spring to look forward to, in, say, a month. i’m already getting hot, which is most definitely NOT a good thing. worse yet, mairin seems to have inherited my hot-weather-bad-mood gene.

send your good thoughts to shannon, will ya? it’s going to be a long summer for him.

hey!

what’s wrong with ciaran, folks? It’s a great name, and I like this spelling way more than the more common (in the US) kieran. It’s the first name of one of my favorite poets, the northern irish bard ciaran carson, and it rolls nicely with Smith (not as easy as you might think).

and yet, while “timothy rocco” racks up votes (sorry guys, not happening, if only for the child’s mental health), and even gavin gets multiple votes (come on — I’d never be able to look at the kid without thinking of mr. gwen stefani), my first choice just sits there with one lone vote — mine, of course.

well, that’s it — gloves are off and i’m stuffing the ballot.

(edit: oops! the widget is smarter than i am and won’t let me play chicago politics with it.)

meanwhile, gus is doing great. he’s very considerate, even: carole had a bad dream last night about trying to find the baby’s heartbeat using a doppler for the first time (under the skeptical eyes of several family members). she found the rushing sound of the placenta just fine, and her own aortic thump just find, but she couldn’t find the baby’s heartbeat. and as the family members grew more and more skeptical and got closer and closer to dialing up social services (see, somehow in the dream her ability to use the doppler was a referendum on her fitness as a mother — i told you this was a bad dream, right?), she woke up, naturally a little frightened.

and gus, as though to soothe his mama, kicked ever so gently.

right here, mama.

just fine.

gus!

as you may know from previous posts, one thing has bothered me throughout this pregnancy: the lack of a suitable in utero nickname. i mean, we’ve called the new kid the new kid, and that’s all well and good, but certainly not up to our history: earl, poppy, and slim. the new kid always seemed a bit…anonymous, impersonal even. and even when we began riffing on those initials (tnk) to come up with tink and tank, there was still the sense that we were trying to personalize an impersonal name, rather than ascribe a prenatal personality to him.

the pop psychologist in me is pretty sure that our nicknaming block was a self-protective move; until this pregnancy, we’d been batting .333 on pregnancies that made it through the first trimester (and thus earned nicknames that stuck). while that might put a major league baseball player in the hunt for the mvp in any given year, it’s heartbreakingly far below the gestational mendoza line. so i’m sure there was a little control-freak gnome (i picture the martian in bugs bunny cartoons) in the back of our nicknaming minds shutting things down until we allowed ourselves some unmediated optimism. thus, the new kid.

now, however, we know there’s a boy in there; we can both feel him kick pretty regularly, and things look good. carole’s getting rounder, and happier, and more excited (we walked past a woman with two rambunctious kids yesterday, and as we passed, the woman, without saying hello or anything else, said, “girl, you got that glow,” and went right back to reining in her own kids. we were three steps further along before we both realized that she’d been talking to carole.) i feel so excited that i can put my heart into this in a way i wasn’t sure i’d ever be able to do.

and of course we’re discussing names, and that’s how “gus” came up — we have an idea for a real name (not yet in the poll to the right, but it may show up soon) that draws on some ancestral names in my family. it’s growing on us, but it’s a little, um, polysyllabic, and we’re wondering what we’ll call the kid in daily life. i pointed out to carole that my grandfather’s family had nicknames that had little relation to their real names — in fact, i don’t know some of their real names, only the nicknames. and they’re doozies: dutch and pood, just to name two, and my grandfather, whose real name was roy, was nicknamed gus (“why?” asks carole. “i mean, it’s not like ‘gus’ is shorter than ‘roy.’” one of the mysteries of central ohio, i guess.) so we thought, whatever we name him, however baroque and off-the-wall the name turns out to be, we could always call him “gus.” (the one drawback here is that we know some acquaintances from grad school who did just that: their son is named something ornate, and they call him “gus.” but given that we never see them, and that i’ve got the grandfather thing in support of us, i think we go ahead and do what we want.)

and why not start now? so world, meet gus. gus, you hang on for a few more months to meet the world, but know that they’re out there waiting to greet you.

18 weeks

it has occurred to me in this last week that i may very well be the most monitored pregnant woman in the state of ohio. (that is, if you discount all the women hospitalized for things like pre-eclampsia, and all the women on full-time bedrest, and all the other women who are more highly monitored than i am — allow me to indulge my über-hormonal fantasy, won’t you?)

i have bi-weekly visits with a perintologist and his office full of fuzzy-screen-reading-experts. my favorite, joan, quips that all her level I ultrasounds are really level II — meaning that instead of just poking around and verifying a heartbeat and maybe measuring the head and tummy circumferences (i like circumferi — can i say circumferi?), she explores all four chambers of bubbs’s heart and shows us the difference between his aortic valve and the pulmonary arch; she points out his corpus callosum and spends some time tenderly gazing at his two cerebral hemispheres; she ensures that his diaphragm is above his stomach (could it be otherwise? asked shannon of dr lum, who threw us a sly glance and said, with devilish relief for all three of us, “there’s so much you two don’t know!”*); she verifies that our umbilical cord does in fact have three vessels and that they are appropriately transporting venous and arterial blood; she measures his kidneys before examining a cross-section of one of them in sepia-toned 4D; and she does all the by-now-totally-boring stuff like measuring femurs and showing us fingers (10!) and toes (10!) and pausing when bubbs does something adorable like, oh, you know, move.

after the fun stuff she insists that i empty my bladder (which means traipsing down the hall with my lower half wrapped in a sheet smeared with jelly) and then checks my cervix. this is obviously not nearly as fun for her but so far it’s been rewarding. then dr siddiqi checks my numbers and says a few nice things and i get congratulated on having a well-behaved cervix and then i get to home.

the day after i visit joan and the perinatologist i get to see dr. lum, who wants a report on the visit. he wants to hear the numbers but he’s most obviously interested in our states of mind. yesterday, in fact, he and shannon were like two grannies in the supermarket. chat chat chat. how to collect yeast for baking from the open air. the necessity of using distilled water in a humidor. the sorry state of our pc culture that keeps men from passing out cigars when their babies are born. they seemed to forget i was in the room, even when i was talking. seems that MY questions about fundal pressure and tummy measurements (mine, not bubbs’s) are just not that exciting after all. harumph. despite my grumpiness, however, dr lum takes the general tenor of our chattiness and good moods to be a great sign. and hey — what do numbers mean compared to all that?

but dr. lum does want to know about my newest caretaker: nurse cheryl from matria. matria is my new favorite healthcare organization (not that the competition was stiff, mind you, but i am nonetheless surprised to find myself writing that i even HAVE a favorite healthcare organization). they specialize in homecare for high-risk pregnancies, and they send nurse cheryl to my house once a week to give me the much-dreaded 17-alpha-hydroxyprogesterone caproate (fondly known in scared-momma circles as 17P) shot. one woman claims the sensation is like what she imagines the rump roast feels when an ice-pick is jammed into it.

you see, the 17P shot is oil-based, which means it needs to go in slowly and it will burn. and it needs to be injected in a special “z-track” which dr lum was going to teach me how to do. seems if you deny the z-track, the oil repays you back by creating a bolus and/or gushing right back out the needle track. and you have to take your time. not like, oh, say, 20 seconds, or even 30, but a generous few MINUTES.

i’m not needle-phobic (i jam one into my unsuspecting abdomen every morning to give myself the lovenox) but i’ll confess that the whole rump roast thing had me a bit disconcerted. so imagine my delight when i got a phone call from nurse cheryl saying she’d be showing up, at my house and at my convenience, once a week to give me the shot. “oh, no, dearie, it won’t hurt at all.” i told her the rump roast story. she laughed. “really, sweetheart, it won’t hurt.” i imagined her clad in medieval gear rubbing her hands together with ice-pick-y glee: “and after this shot i’ll give you this glorious apple to eat and then you will DIE! mwah-ha-hahaha-hahahaahhha!”

turns out the shot really doesn’t hurt. not even a little bit. and nurse cheryl is short and blonde and so nice that if she weren’t taking care of me i’m sure i couldn’t stand to be around her.

as if the bi-weekly two-doctor visits punctuated by the weekly home-nurse visit were not enough, i ALSO now have my very own high-risk OB nurse courtesy of my health insurance. nurse gale calls to check in on me, sends me information about my questions (or the things she thinks i should have questions about), and has given me a 24/7 emergency number to call in case, you know, i don’t have the presence of mind to get myself to the er. she is very nice but clearly underestimates my mad skills on the ‘net. (shoudl i tell her i’m ready to open shop as “dr. carole, PhD in reproductive medicine” with a lovely diploma created by adobe photoshop and bestowed on me by google university?) so it’s nice and all that she sends me the link to the antiphospholipid foundation (found it three years ago) and such, but unless you’re sending me the serious stuff — the peer-reviewed articles that aren’t published via open access and that, despite my extra-special super-nifty PhD, i don’t really understand anyway — i’ve probably seen it. but it’s sweet of her to try. and i’ll keep that emergency number close by, never you worry.

so that’s me: two doctors, two nurses, one baby boy and the slow return of some sass. i have a feeling (shhhhh) that we just might make it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* dr lum used to like to say — maybe “like” is the wrong word — that we know too much about pregnancy and what can go wrong with it. it clearly gave him pleasure to point to us things we don’t know that we don’t need to worry about, either. hooray for ignorance. i guess.

“Budgie Magoo” makes the ‘net-news!

Our brilliant and fun-word-loving friend, Mark Peters, not only has a re-bionicized word blog but also a regular column, “Jabberwocky” on Babble.com. Check out his column on nicknames, featuring the one-and-only Budgie Magoo. I haven’t done an official word count, but Budgie Magoo may get more digital-space than any other nicknamed kid. And as always, Shannon gets the last word.

i’m not naming my boy mavis, that’s for sure…and other gender-stereotype musings

some of mairin’s crib sheets are pink. so are more than a few items of her clothing. she’s got a handful of dresses in her closet and a gorgeous hand-knitted pink baby blanket. shannon and i both chose newborn outfits for her, one with hot pink whales on it (s’s choice) and the other (mine) a kimono-type top-and-pants set with a large oriental flower print on it. i’ve been looking forward to bringing all these things out for the new baby. but i just can’t bring myself to pass them on to … her baby brother.

i know by now, very well thank you very much, exactly what to look for on an ultrasound picture, and where to look for it, to make sure for myself that i’m having a daughter. so picture me resting on my back, goop slathered on my tummy while the probe slips and slides across my ballooning belly, staring just a few millimeters too low on the ultrasound scrren, looking and looking and looking for those three white lines, wondering if they’re just not there because it’s too early to tell, yet, the baby’s sex, when shannon lets out a WHOOP! and the tech says “um, yeah, i guess you see it, right?” and i’m thinking “see what, you damn fools?” and then i look at the spot where the tech is pointing her cursor on the screen at precisely the same moment that shannon hollers out — obviously trying to project his voice not just across the ohio river but also the the hudson, the thames, the seine and the rhine — “WE’RE HAVING A BOY!”

yes indeedy do, ladies and gents, we’re having a boy. and he’s looking kinda butch already.

and the really beautiful thing about this news is that it’s given us something new, something exciting and different, to think about and plan for. we’ve always prepared for baby girls. pondered girls’ names. worried about how to raise a girl in today’s world. we’ve never given more than passing thoughts to those questions with boys because, well, we didn’t ever need to. but now we do, and we’re both giddy with delight at having this new excitement to ocucpy our minds. i’ve been picturing our house with two girl-childs running around. life will not be the same with a girl and a boy, and it’s startling and energizing and downright pleasurable to contemplate it.

and of course the doc’s news is all good otherwise, which makes the contemplation that much more real for us. my cervix has stayed long (still >4 cm) and closed, the baby has plenty of fluid. i’m getting all the extra care that a nervous high-risk mom could ask for.

and holy urethra, batman, i have a penis growing inside me.

march madness

I almost forgot — we had fun filling out brackets for the ncaa men’s tournament this year. carole and i each filled one out, then i picked mairin’s winners while carole picked for the new kid. we adult types had filled out “serious” brackets at work, so we had fun going sentimental with our choices at home. as a result, my picks for the final game in san antone were out by the end of the, ahem, second round (clemson and pitt — i was smitten with their performances in their respective conference tournaments — silly boy). mairin’s picks were made on sentiment and uniform color (probably a good thing no team in the men’s bracket sports pink – would’ve been her champion in a heartbeat). as it was, her finalists were louisville and xavier — local faves both. alas, it was not to be. mama went most sentimental with the new kid’s pick, dreaming of a final four with pitt, drake, wisconsin, and louisville — only lousville got as far as the elite eight, so the smallest family member got the fewest points, but had a blast doing so (she began to kick tangibly just before the final four weekend, jumping with anticipation at the four #1 seeds squaring off). carole picked best — she nailed three of the four final spots, but alas, counted on unc and ucla to make up the final two.

nevertheless, her picks were good enough to rule the roost — how do we know? we kept track on posterboard — with stickers! stars, smiley faces, li’l basketballs, and (specially chosen by budgie) hot wheels! each morning following a slate of games, mairin would help her mama putting the stickers up as her dad recited last night’s winners. she especially like chasing mom’s stickers around with her crayons of course, this migh have resulted in some, er, inaccuracies in the reporting of results (i did notice several stickers on carole’s sweaters, for instance, and one lonely star a few feet to the right of the posterboard), but in all, it looks like it was a fair and square contest.

i did win two pools at work — but if you ask me, i had a whole lot more fun losing to my girls.

19 months

the big surprise this month was easter. we planned to trade it in this year, swapping the usual egg-and-chocolate celebration for more of a let’s-try-to-sleep-in sort of sunday morning. but the friendly easter bunny (otherwise known as our neighbor miss liz) had different plans and bright and early deposited a small basket of goodies on our doorstep. i was roused from my semi-conscious state by the thrill of seeing a small egg-shaped container of bubbles, and couldn’t wait to see mairin’s face when she saw gloriously transparent spheres wafting through the air for the first time. and she was excited too, as you can see — so excited that she kept saying “bubba, bubba” over and over before i even got started. damn if they *don’t* learn everything first at school.

don’t miss the opportunity to see mairin’s gorgeously hot lavender mock-crocs and a few other moments that made up her 19th month.

A Checklist

if you look at our widget, today marks the 17-week point in gestation. according to our first checkup, however, that day comes tomorrow. But whatever — either way we’re right at the point where earl died a little over three years ago, and, however calm I may say I am, I’m a little anxious.

Things are going great, though, so I can’t really fall apart. But to ease my mind, I thought I’d come up with a checklist of things — two lists, in fact: one of things that are a legitimate source of worry, and the other of things that are good signs. My hope is (of course) that the second one outweighs the first, and I can sigh deeply, relax a little, and set up camp with the optimists. So here goes:

Legitimate Sources of Worry:

• History — this is the inexorable head-butt in this checklists. We can’t escape the fact that our history includes two second-trimester stillbirths.
• the heparin scare – I’m not sure how much this counts, but the possibility that for much of the first trimester Carole might have been taking faux-heparin for her clotting disorder is a little frightening (and infuriating, but that another rant). On the other hand, she’s switched to another prescription, the stuff is supposed to work quickly, and everything is still showing up just fine. Plus, she’s been taking baby aspirin all along, and that’s supposed to be very helpful as well.

And that’s about it. Granted, the first one’s a kicker, but still, it’s just two items, neither of which we can do anything more about than we already have. And in fact, when I think about it, if we turn to the second list of Good Signs, the very first thing on the list is:

• History — more specifically, this little bit of joyous history is proof that we can do it.
• the Mom vibe — sure, Carole is nervous too, but overall she’s feeling good about the new kid (who has begun kicking noticeably, btw). She has repeatedly claimed that this pregnancy has reminded her more of Mairin’s pregnancy than any other — severity of morning sickness, moodiness (who, Carole?), energy level, appetite, etc. Our doc teases her about the statistically insignificant sample size, but also points out that he trusts maternal intuition more than medical statistics.
• Medical care — biweekly visits to both the perinatoligist and our regular OB mean that the new kid wil surpass Mairin for number of ultrasounds. and the perinatologist is checking out not just the new kid but the surroundings — cervical length, amniotic sac, etc. Short of moving into the office, we’re getting as much monitoring as any worried parents-to-be could ask for. And…
• …the medical news is all good.
• Intangibles — we’re settling in (finally); spring is here; we feel a little more stable, a little more able, and a little more like … ourselves. Not concretely signficant in terms of guaranteeing the success of the pregnancy, I know, but I firmly believe that what the body does is connected to how the head is doing.

By my count, that’s 5 good signs to 2 legitimate worries. And by the evanescent logic of the hopefully expectant parent, I classify the second legitimate worry as a “maybe” that’s not worth getting all het up about. Moreover, the weight of the first legitimate worry is significantly counterbalanced by the first of the good signs.

And there you have it — according to an “objective” “assessment” of the “evidence” at hand, I should relax, be hopeful and excited and optimistic, all with good reason. Thank you for attending my self-therapy session; I’m sure I’ll be back for more.

off the charts!

that’s right yo — my cervix is off the charts.

which is a good thing, if you discount the scary 15 minutes that the doctor and the tech spent examining, in great detail, three different cross-sections of a 3D section of the cervix, all on the screen in front of us at the same time. finally the doc had the presence of mind to say “there’s nothing wrong” and the sighs of relief that escaped our mouths nearly blew the doc and the tech right over. then the tech was summarily dismissed and a new (more experienced? more senior?) tech was called in to repeat the scan.

turns out neither tech could get my full cervix into the ultrasound picture, despite turning the magical trans-vaginal wand until it was nearly horizontal. no, the exterior end was just not going to show up. so they measured what they could see, and that part measured variously 3.99 cm and 4.17 cm, so the doc feels good about my cervix’s length (if not its lack of cooperation).

the new kid was there, too — and was about equally uncooperative. we watched the little dickens pull her hands up over her face every time the tech tried to scan her face, roll over to give us her back every time the tech tried to scan her belly, and pedal her legs like a green-jersey winner every time the tech tried to measure her femur. during the cervical non-measurement the kid was face down against the cervix, occasionally pummelling away at the funny thing poking at the door to her warm little home. i’ll tell you what, the kid’s got spunk. now we just need to see whether she’s got patience.

as for me, i’m revelling in the bi-weekly certainty that it’s okay for me to walk around, to pick things up, and bend and move in any of the other gazillions of motions that most of us get to take for granted. i even stretched yesterday, and am gearing up for (i.e., still procrastinating over) re-starting prenatal pilates or yoga.  all this “activity” is helping me come to terms with my ob’s injunction to get fat and let myself get even further out of shape, to keep my walks to two miles or less, and to let shannon do any of the really strenuous work around the house. (guess my plans to move the piano will have to wait.)

best of all, i’m feeling like it’s ok to think about the possibility of a living babe coming to stay with us late this summer. there are no guarantees, of course, but we’re checking everything that can be checked and coddling everything that can be coddled and anti-oxidating everything that might need strengthening. my body is going to do what it’s going to do, and we’ll never understand it (no matter what it ends up doing), but at least we know we’re helping it do its best. and there’s no small measure of comfort in that.