yum-o.

this morning, the divine miss mairin was in a fabulous mood, her mother seemed to have slept well and be feeling better, and i was getting ready for work. i needed to iron a shirt and realized i hadn’t made lunch yet, so i took advantage of the prevalent good moods and asked mairin if she and her mama could make me lunch while i wrapped up getting ready.

“yeah,” she said, taking her mother’s hand and heading downstairs.

over the next ten minutes, as i tried not to put extra creases in today’s shirt, i heard various sounds from the kitchen — not all of them reassuring. “oh no, honey — not that,” and “wait! that’s daddy’s!” stuck out in my mind. and when i got downstairs i was told that mairin had added a few “treats” to my lunch, and that i should be sure to notice them.

fast-forward a couple hours. hungry, i decide to eat some of my fruit. so i dig into my lunch bag, find a banana, and discover next to it … a bag of dry cheerios. thoughtful, and kinda yummy. later, i glance at my sandwich, and notice a missing corner on one of the pieces of bread — that’s okay, making sandwiches is taxing work (i think this may have been the cause for the “wait! that’s daddy’s!” comment.) thinking i had discovered my “treats,” i email carole about them, and she writes back: “um, that’s not all.”

sure enough, as i write, i’m happily munching on a turkey, swiss, mustard, and cheerio sandwich.

mmmmmm.

… 33 …

33 weeks today. and as a special treat, here’s another little window into the way my mind works:

33 weeks. c-section scheduled at 39. 33/39=11/13. lemme grab the desktop calculator — that’s almost 85% of the way there. lotsa threes in there. 33 is 11 x 3, so we’re three times further along than we were at 11 weeks. let’s see, at 11 weeks we were right around the end of february, and had just had a mildly frightening but ultimately fine visit to the doctor, and carole was beginning to have those dreams she has. gus was still “the new kid” and not yet gus, and we hadn’t migrated the blog from our old platform. i wonder if at 11 weeks i thought we’d make it this far? i mean, i know my line all along has been that i have to believe this will turn out well, but at that time we were still on the other side of our window of danger, so i imagine i may have been doing some rationalizing. i do know that 11 weeks was about the time i stopped thinking this: if we’re going to lose the baby, make it happen now so that it’s still an “early” miscarriage and not a “second-term loss” or stillbirth. eleven weeks was too far for even my rationalizing mind not to know that i was in this up to my eyeballs.

carole and i have recently begun talking more openly about our lives post-procreation — until recently i’ve shied away from it as a potential jinx, but nowadays i’m cockily reveling in our presumed success (right). last night i was looking at the sharps container on her dresser, filled almost to the top with disposable thin-gauge needles, and next to it the shredded remnants of alcohol swabs, and for the first time i thought, “in a few weeks i’ll never have to look at those again — we can decorate the tops of our dressers, or use them for more typically mundane things than needle containers. cool!” and the change will be so much more, on so many fronts — i can stop hovering over carole, picking things up for her, inadvertently undermining her sense of strength and independence; she can start moving aruond more, and even think about exercising before the end of calendar year 2008; and … and … i know i’m getting ahead of myself, but i’m excited about the next phase of our lives.

oh, and gus is great — non-stress test today: flying colors.

carlos cadel

with mairin waking up every morning for the last several weeks saying in rapid order, “momee! shoes! food! watch bikes!” it seems only appropriate to reward her diligence, not just by dressing and feeding her (if we must) but by naming her brother after some of the dominant names in cycling. not trek (ugh!) or bianchi — or even cervelo — but carlos cadel.

there’s something quite nice nice about the combination, beyond the lyricism and the initials that match my own. cadel evans entered the race a favorite after finishing 2nd last year, and while he scratched the time trial and let carlos sastre outdo him (much to my surprise, and most likely to his as well), he raced terrifically well and managed to stand on the podium on the champs-elysees. (plus, his team jersey is purty.) and carlos sastre — well, he’s on a team with some of my past faves (stuey o’grady and bobby julich) as well as luxembourg’s sweethearts, the schleck brothers. he’s old enough that this may have been his only chance to win it all, and perhaps this win helps spain’s cause, cleansing their image after the contador brouhaha last year. so the name captures style, history, a connection to charming newbie-ness (those adorable schleck brothers — even s has a crush on them) and a hint of just deserts.

now perhaps when mairin wakes up and insists that we “watch bikes! watch bikes!” we can slip in a dvd of gus in utero, pedalling away with his tiny limbs, and teach her that in this case, the cry  ‘dopee! dopee!’  is all for the good. it is, after all, what’s kept the guster going.

(speaking of which: four 17P shots to go, and then i won’t be subject to nurse cheryl’s commentary on my ever-changing hips & a**, which at her last visit she pronounced flabby. sheesh.)

32 weeks & counting

& counting…

we went to see the doctor yesterday, ultrasound included. first thing the tech did was tell us that the baby was head-down (go gus!). then she did an amniotic fluid level check, which is still (or again) low-normal. a bit disappointing, especially after our interim check with dr. l showed higher numbers. on the other hand, carole’s been sick, and nauseous, and had reflux, and generally not feeling like pushing fluids, so we’ll take low-normal for now. and if the doc’s not worried, i’m not worried (riiiiight). she (the tech) also checked the umbilical flow resistance, which was not only better than last time, but in the good range.

then she did measurements. remember, this kid is 32w1d gestational age. femur length: 33w4d; belly circumference: 34w1d; head circumference: 36w6d. (!!!) no wonder he’s head-down – gravity alone is doing the trick on that noggin. finally, there’s some kind of alchemical formula that guesstimates the baby’s weight — it shows up in grams, so the tech was mumbling to herself: “2560 grams…let’s see, that’s … um, divide by what, 500 … and … …. he’s about 5 lbs.”

carole’s eyes bugged out and she just stared at her belly for about a minute. i said, “you go boy!”

of course, when  we reported all this to dr. l, he smiled wryly and knowingly and said “damn machines!” he then measured carole’s abdomen and got (geohde, are you ready for this? i mean, i know you’re sitting down and all, but still) 30cm, but only if he was generous and went over the large bump — in other words, 29. he smiled knowingly and said, “see? a perfectly normal-sized baby.”

something in the air?

for the first few months of her speaking life, mairin referred to me as “dada” and carole as “mama.” a little bit ago, she began calling me “daddy” (more accurately “dad-DEE”), but continued to call carole “mama,” until about two weeks ago, when she started saying “mom-MEE.” all of this is well and good, except that it’s coinciding with several other pleasant toddler-development gems, like:

1. theatrical crying: this one is good: she starts crying in a lower register, eyeballs us through her tears, and if we’re not paying sufficient attention — or if i’m the one paying sufficient attention but not her mother (see #3) – she’ll take the sound up into the yell zone, and then the screech zone, then back down, and up, until she reaches the desired result: to be in her mother’s arms.
2. erratic sleep patterns: a few weeks ago mairin’s daily report sheets from playschool started occasionally showing up with “none” written in the nap slot. this was new; she was usually good for at least an hour, and up to two. when we asked about this mysterious “none,” we learned that she was very good and quiet during the designated nap time, but that occasionally she would just lie on her cot, wide awake, until nap time was over. at home her morning wake-up time has begun to vary a little more widely than we would like, and she’s proven a bit harder to get to sleep at night than previously. (none of this is to suggest that she is a difficult child; i’ve heard enought horror stories about sleepless children and toddler tantrums to know she falls on the “easy” side of the spectrum of behavior. it’s just part of a recent pattern of things being slightly off-kilter.)
3. a fixation on her mother that has continued to escalate to the point where i can barely pick her up any more. in fact, the more gus weighs and slows carole down, the more mairin seems to demand from her. in bad moments, i see my daughter like one of those predators culling a weakened member of a herd, honing in and harassing the poor beast until, desperate for relief, it practically jumps into the jaws of its nemesis. in better moments, i know the poor kid is changing rapidly, and maybe senses other changes afoot, and is seeking security and stability in the place where she needs it most and where she fears losing it most: her mother’s arms.

partly, i assume that this is all perfectly normal development for a toddler. (warning: i know next to nothing about toddler development, so if i write with any sort of authority, please feel free to dismiss it as pinheaded arrogance, male answer syndrome, or general insecurity.) for instance, she has begun saying “me,” showing a verbal awareness of herself as a separate being. it only makes sense that that awareness would bring about some anxiety about separating from her mother — a kind of vertigo at the possibilities of isolation that are the flipside to newfound independence. hence the hanging-on, and the never-ending recitations of “mom-mee! mom-mee!” — to say nothing of the unpredictable bursting into tears.

but i think she’s also very observant — she’s seen new clothes that are too small for her, and she probably noticed that her mother cleared the clutter out of the cradle and bought a new sheet set-with-quilt-and-bumpers for it (to say nothing of the musical mobile, something completely unlike anything she ever had). her young mind is probably zipping ’round in circles trying to figure all this stuff out: “tiny things? not for me? then for whom? WHOM, I DEMAND OF YOU? WHAT’S GOING ON IN THIS CRAZY PLACE!?!?! Mom-meeeeeeee!”

if she only knew…

i think i’m dying

i have been sick since friday, and if i didn’t know better i would say i’m revisiting the first trimester all over again. i thought it was sleeplessness, then maybe some bad food, then maybe a bug, but no, it appears that i’m simply (still) pregnant.

unless of course i’m dying from acute fatty liver, a rare but deadly disorder with (according to some studies) a 75% mortality rate in mothers and infants.  the syptoms include nausea and vomiting, general malaise, epigastric pain, and/or jaundice. typically a liver biopsy is done to diagnose the disorder, but since that’s difficult to do during pregnany, doctors seem to rely on the presence of the other symptoms.

at least i’m not yellow. which is especially good, since that would really clash with my varicosities.

paul! paul!

it’s not just my great-uncle’s name, or the easiest-for-our-almost-two-year-old-to-pronounce name of a good friend; it is now among mairin’s favorite declarations, ranking right up there with:

“ow! ow! bike!” (while pointing to her elbow or knee), and

“bike! race!” and

“hemm! hemm!” (while pointing to her head), and

“yay!” (while clapping), and

“hoo-woo” (while shaking her wobbly fist in the air), and

“allez da-da!”

who said watching t.v. was bad for kids? last sunday the three (oh, i guess four) of us lounged around watching live coverage of the tour. evans and valverde both had crash wounds on their arms and legs, and every time they were on screen mairin showed high degrees of sympathy for their owies (in addition to praising them for the great job they did with their tumbles, something she knows a lot about herself). she learned some new words (one at least in french, no less) and the appropriateness of cheering on your favorites. and she seems to be half in love with paul sherwen, asking every time she sees the television where paul is. even when it’s off. (which, in case you’re keeping score, is most of the time.)

grandson of statistics

today’s measurements revealed — ta-dah! — numbers in the high-normal range. the doc — funnily inexperienced at taking charge of his own ultrasound machine — thinks his numbers are probably too high, but gus and i have achieved cumulative pockets of approximately 18 cm with a verified maximum vertical pocket of 7 cm. given that our total 5 days ago was about 8.5 cm, i’m thinking gus and i deserve a pat on the back and should be able soon to return to our martini-drinking ways.

the unsettling part of this knowledge is that we learned it a day early, given that we were driven to the doctor’s office a full 24 hours before my next appointment in order to diagnose the cause of my new, and relentless, pain.  my main concern about the pain was that it wakes me up at night, which was always the “uh-oh” indicator for our ob back up nort’ ‘dere. shannon’s concern was that my placenta was slowly ripping away from the uterine wall and would kill both me and gus. (when he worries, he really worries.)  standing up straight(ish) and tall(ish), i pulled together my most dr-google-inspired tone and pronounced, with certainty, that there is no abruption because there is no blood (hoping hoping hoping all the while that i am remembering correctly that abruptions cause massive bleeding). and hey, i say, quick to make us both feel better: if the doc has to do an emergency c-section, the kid is 31 weeks old and will survive. he can breathe. he may be in the nicu for a while, but, you know, he’ll be fine.

and fine indeed the kid is. the doctor’s manual check gave him reason to suspect fibroids — there seems to be a funny little lump on the side of my uterine wall, and dr. l knows, after much shoving and harumphing his way around my belly, that indeed the pain is radiating from the side of my uterine wall (and not, for example, from my ovaries or my abdominal muscles). but let’s just have a little look-see, shall we? he suggests. and so we trundle off to the ultrasound room, where, before he checks the fluid pockets he attempts to verify his fibroid findings…but no! no fibroids. just an irritating baby’s head jammed into the side of my uterine wall (my oldest nephew had a habit of running head-first into brick walls — could this be a genetic thing?). so, after measuring the aforementioned fully glorious fluid pockets, the doctor tries to “encourage” gus out of his transversely-breach position into the more fetal-appropriate head-in-mama’s-pelvis position. not one to stand for encouragement, gus resists with every ounce of strength his 3.5 pound body can muster, while i am left panting and gasping on the table, grabbing the doctor’s lab coat with my free hand (the other one is covering my eyes because for god’s sake i don’t want to see anything that hurts this badly). but gus stayed put, and i was advised to live with the pain. and not to blame the baby.

so our stats are back to happy, we have them a day early, and now i have to relax because moving really, really hurts.

dog days

it’s not august yet, but i feel like we’re in the dog days — not so much of summer, but of the pregnancy. thirty-one weeks tomorrow, the little guy’s doing fine. his mama’s hurtin’ a bit — some ligament pain on her left side has increased over the past few days, to the point that she was awakened by it several times last night. we called the doctor (risk-averse, people, we are nothing if not risk-averse) and he had us come in (even though we were already scheduled to come in tomorrow for a fluid check). after prodding and manipulating carole’s belly to the point where she was gasping in pain, he pronounced himself not worried. just ligament pain, probably made worse by the fact that gus’s head is over on that side almost all the time. while we were there, he did a quick u/s to check the amniotic fluid levels so we could cancel tomorrow’s visit — the levels are up, and all is well.

but i’m tired. i know gus needs to keep growing, and developing, and getting ready for the outside world, but i find myself wishing that that time would just get here. in a hurry. i’m tired of worrying that something could go wrong with the pregnancy; i’m tired of annoyingly asking carole if she’s okay every time she takes a deeper breath than usual; i’m tired of trying to keep mama’s girl mairin from climbing on her mama too much for fear that carole will strain something, or worse; i’m tired of counting days, weeks, and months; i’m tired of trying to anticipate all the ways i can make things easier for carole; i’m tired of trying to count all the ways i’m failing to make things easier for her; i’m tired of worrying that there might be another shoe out there, ready to drop; i’m tired of berating myself for being superstitious; in short, i’m tired of being pregnant, and i’m not even pregnant. on top of all this, i’m tired of feeling guilty that i feel tired of being pregnant.

so gus, if you’re reading, remember this: ignore your father, just this once. he may seem ill-tempered and short on patience with the seemingly glacial pace of your gestation. but just beneath that veneer of fatigue and impatience, he wants you to keep breathing that amniotic fluid and developing those lungs; he wants you to keep growing, so you double or even triple your weight over the next 8 weeks; he wants you to hang out and hang on so that when you do join us in early september, you’re ready.

and even a little deeper down, he knows his first sight of you, his first touch of you, will erase all memory of these dog days.

son of statistics

it’s been a long time since we’ve paid attention to gus’s numbers. i haven’t been to the perinatologist in over a month, and during that time there has been little to count, measure, or round up or down. but statistics will rear their ugly head. they’re back.

at a routine u/s on tuesday — presumably simply to check gus’s growth — the tech said chirpily, “now, why are you two here again?” i told her that i had been monitored all through the second trimester by the mfm folk because i’ve had premature ruptures in two earlier pregnancies. she started nodding her head, as certain of her understanding as if i had revealed the key to all mythologies. “ah, well, then, let’s take another look at this baby’s fluid levels. i thought they were a little low.”

what? of course his fluid levels are not low. that’s never been a problem, and we are currently only accepting problems with which we have a previous acquaintance. our problem-dance-cards are full, thank you very much.

“have you felt much leaking?” she asks, while scanning my insides for a measurable site. “um, no, not at all.” “not like last time?” “last time? are you kidding? i’ve never leaked. i gush. i stand up and – phwoosh — out it all comes. i’m not sure i would know how to identify minor leaking.” thinking all the while of sitting on my porch learning from my ob how, precisely, to identify minor leaking, and wondering if i’ve somehow managed to quit paying attention and if the gods are angry and will soon be taking their revenge.

after a few more measurements and a very lively description of all the places she would like to be seeing nice dark areas around the baby but isn’t, the tech determines that whether i’m leaking or not, it’s true that the baby’s fluid levels are low. shannon’s hand, already squeezing mine hard, starts to feel a little clammy. my heart rate stays pretty low, though. i’m the all-too-confident mom who knows that her baby has hiccups several times a day so he’s obviously swallowing plenty. i am determined not to worry.

s and i get sent to the waiting room (empty when we left it, now unpleasantly full) while they prepare a room for the doctor to see us in. (the nerve of the doc’s office to choose this week of all weeks to repaint and redecorate.) shannon looks at me and says “are you worried?” “not really, i say.” “why not?” he asks. “what other choice do i have?” i respond, thinking the whole time “well even if i were, i would not admit it here in this waiting room full of other pregnant women while i am holding u/s pictures of my baby and they’re all silently wondering what in the world we’ve just found out and hoping against hope that whatever it is that i’ve just learned about my baby isn’t contagious, that they aren’t also about to hear something terrible about the fetii they’re carrying. so am i going to say anything? hell no.”

the doctor, when we see him, is appropriately calm and reassuring. he likes to see a range of 8-18 (those are cumulative cms of fluid pockets). twelve is average. gus has between 8 and 9. all it takes is the doctor saying “he’s normal. low normal, but normal. there’s nothing to worry about yet,” and s and i are back on track. gus is fine. everything is fine. the only thing that needs is to change is that i need rest more, stay out of the heat, and drink as much as possible. “i guess you don’t mean martinis,” quips s, letting me know through his off-handed comment that he’s almost, but not quite, feeling better. the doctor laughs and recommends straight-up h20.

as we agree to set up a follow-up ultrasound early next week, i ask the doctor what will happen if the fluid level has dropped by then. “oh, well, then, we’ll probably put you on bed rest.” seeing a longed-for opportunity, i ask him if it would be better for the baby if i worked more from home so i can rest and hydrate. “sure, if you want to,” he says, and when he sees my facial expression he says “that’s probably a good idea.” shannon confirms how much happier i would be how much better off the baby would be if i stayed home, so we agree to work that out.

so for now, we have medical permission not to change our philosophy, medical reasons not to worry, and pseudo-medical reasons for me to spend some of my time (as i did this a.m.) feet up in the shade browsing my way through some take-home work.

and the guster, measuring in at a very acceptable 65th percentile for overall weight and size, has been squirming and kicking and hiccuping all the more. apparently a wetter, more relaxed summer was just what he had in mind.