Birth Story, Part Three: The Pushening

I pushed for just under three hours, alternating between the birthing stool, and various positions on the bed. Most of the time Nicole had her hand all up in me, pushing back the lip of my cervix. It was not fun. I had heard from a lot of  people that after a tough first stage of labor pushing was a relief or even felt good, but for me it was the worst part. I was still puking through all of it, but it actually felt better and helped make my pushes stronger. It was all water by that point anyway, which makes me feel better about it splashing out of the bowl onto Nicole.

After struggling on the bed for a while I asked to move back to the stool, because my pushes felt much more effective there. Gravity, and things. Kyle sat behind me on the bed and made sure I had access to water and chapstick.  After a bunch of contractions we finally got him past the lip of my cervix. Nicole kept asking me if I wanted to see his head in the mirror or reach down and feel him and I was completely uninterested. I just wanted him out of me.

It was really intense when he was actually in my birth canal. At that point I stopped waiting for contractions and was pushing pretty much continuously because it hurt too much not to. My moans were turning into screams, and Roxanne had to remind me to keep things low. It felt like my clitoris was ripping in two! I was not prepared to feel pain there, and I was scared that I might be doing permanent damage to it. But in between all the pushing and the screaming I would look around at my birth team and my mom and Ashley and I felt very supported and amazing.

It was such a relief when his head was finally out. His cord was around his neck, so Nicole had me breathe through a contraction while she slipped it over his head, no big deal. The rest of him was easy in comparison.

He had apparently passed some meconium during labor, so they had to suction out his mouth before they handed him to me. I was totally agog. Looking down at him he seemed way too big to be a newborn baby, and instead of love I felt disbelief that something so huge had just come out of me. He didn't cry at first, but after a few seconds of holding him and stroking him and talking to him he started whimpering and then let out a healthy wail. He was born at 2:30 in the morning on Saturday, July 23, 2011.

I barely even remember birthing the placenta, but it certainly was no big deal compared to my enormous baby. We got into bed with our son, and my mom called my dad and my sister to announce Tycho's arrival and have them make their way over to the birth center. Kyle called his parents to tell them the news.

Everyone was shocked by how big he was. (Two days previously they had written in my chart that they expected him to be around seven pounds.) We all made our guesses on how much he would weigh, and Nicole was right on the money: nine pounds, two ounces.

I apparently had a pretty huge placenta, too. Nicole did her examination of it and showed us all of its parts. We tried to get Tycho nursing, but he must have been overstimulated, because he would only latch on for a minute at a time.  After some more visiting, everyone left to go home and get some sleep. 

Prologue | Part One | Part Two | Part Four

Overdue

I've been putting off writing this post,  as it feels a bit like admitting defeat, but here I am. Still no baby. My due date has come and gone and nothing really has changed much. Baby boy shows no signs of being ready or willing to come out ever.

40 weeks, this past Wednesday

I am.... barely holding it together. There are lots of tears. LOTS. I think I am dehydrating myself from crying so much, actually. I have a wicked headache this morning. I'm trying to rein it in and get more fluids in me, you know, in case I have the occasion to need to buttload of energy in the near future, but I'm really no match for my hormones and emotions right now. Yesterday Kyle decided that an hour of hysterical wife sobbing was a reasonable excuse not to go into the office and took me to lunch instead. And before he went out in the evening for baseball-related activities, he had me invite myself over for dinner at my parents. They thought it was hilarious that he was having them "babysit" me, but it was probably for the best, since I likely would have otherwise sat at home in the dark crying. Yes, I know I am pathetic.

I also got myself a Frappaccino yesterday afternoon and walked around the lake listening to my labor playlist, and it was very nice. 2.8 miles and it only took me an hour and twenty minutes. It was actually lovely, even though it started raining a couple times. The headphones means that no one talked to me and I got to get some alone time without it making me feel depressed and isolated and helpless. And you know, the walking thing, that's supposed to help, right? I think it's going to be a regular afternoon activity for me until baby boy decides to show up.

My sister is also back from France now. She got in Wednesday night. I'm happy she's here, of course, but I was really hoping to have a baby before she got here, so I haven't been as joyful about it as I perhaps should be. I love my sister, but she can be somewhat emotionally draining for me, and I'm spread thin already as it is. And she doesn't understand why I am so short and so angry and so quick to fly off the handle, that I'm not really ready to spend a lot of time with her quite yet. Unfortunate.

I really want to have a baby soon. If I make it to my next appointment on Thursday I have to have a non-stress test and we'll sweep my membranes and schedule an ultrasound and I really want no part of any of it. Please please please please please let me have a baby first.

Still here.

Oh hey I am still pregnant. I guess that's not super surprising, since my due date isn't even til Wednesday, but I feel like I've had this baby inside me for pretty much forever, and there's only so long you can go without completely losing your mind.

I think this would all be a lot easier if I could really give into just living in the moment and not worrying about how much longer I have and what plans I have for this week and whatever, but unfortunately the rest of the world doesn't exactly work like that, so it's really hard to just let everything else go. I still have to worry about when I am scheduled at work, and who I have to call to make sure the world doesn't end if I can't come in and that my sister is coming back to Seattle in a few days and that Kyle has a baseball game later, and good lord everything is so damn inconvenient when you are a term pregnant woman working with an even that can happen anytime in a five week stretch. Although I guess at this point I only have to worry about two and a half.

Once labor truly begins, though, time really can stop mattering for a while, and I am so looking forward to that. Once we get there, the only thing that will really matter is what is currently happening, and I no longer have to worry about the rest of the world's schedule. It will just be me and my body and my husband and my baby and our family going at the speed that works for us, and while the world is obviously not going to be stopping also, we can for the most part happily ignore the artificial scheduling of everything. I can't wait for that.

France Update.

So, my trip! Remember that? Yeah, well, after my last post on the subject, things went a little downhill. I did get in a good shopping trip with my sister, and that was pretty wonderful, although all I ended up buying was a pair of sunglasses, because I wasn't really interested in amassing my maternity wardrobe on the Champs Elysees.  But I did find it a little bit difficult to enjoy my time with her on the whole. I think it was because she's going through such a huge life transition right now, but it was making her quite insufferable most of the time, and that was disappointing.

Sis and I before I got sick.

The last couple days of our trip I fell ill. I actually ended up leaving the restaurant in the middle of lunch with my parents and my sister and taking the Metro back to our apartment alone, without a good idea of where I was going because I just all of the sudden couldn't handle being vertical anymore. Laying down in the dark helped, and I napped for several hours. But later when my dad was cooking dinner, and everyone kept coming in to check on my, the smells from the kitchen wafted in every time the door was opened and I lost my lunch. And by lunch I mean a few bites of salad, because that's all I had eaten. And I spent the next twelve hours alternating between bed and the bathroom floor. I didn't leave the apartment for the remainder of our trip. Slept right through New Years Eve, although I think Kyle woke me up at midnight. I also had about an hour of panicked delirium where I was sure I had contacted Listeriosis from the mass amounts of smoked salmon I had ingested and was going to give birth to a baby with three arms and called a nurse-line with the most unhelpful answers ever, and then gave up and figured I'd see my midwives when we got back to Seattle if I hadn't died yet.

I'm pretty sure I had some sort of virus, and not just pregnancy related nausea, although maybe one just exacerbated the other. I think I had a mild fever for at least part of the time. Anyway, it's not exactly how I had planned to spend my time in Paris. And I was just so very relieved to come home. Especially after lugging my suitcase through the Metro system to the train station and eventually out again to the cab because there was an accident and booking it through the airport so we wouldn't miss our flight only to have it delayed, and feeling like I might be about to faint the entire time. When we got to Seattle we just took a cab home without even really considering trying to use public transportation (which is actually very easy here), because neither of is could fathom not getting home as quickly as humanly possible. And then I went straight to bed even though it was only three in the afternoon.

Now I have a pretty nasty cold that I'm trying to get through, and the coughing and post-nasal drip definitely trigger my nausea, so that's less than fun. But I think we're on the upside of all of this. Fingers crossed.

Bonjour!

Greetings from Paris! We arrived yesterday morning after pretty much the best you can expect from an international flight. We flew direct Seattle to Paris on AirFrance, and let me tell you, the French know how to run an airline. There was a real meal that started off with a smoked salmon salad, and complimentary wine, and individual movie screens at each seat.  I think Kyle ended up watching approximately three whole movies, which wasn't exactly in his plans to sleep through the entire flight, but better than being awake and staring at the back of a seat. All and all, it went much more smoothly than I anticipated.

My family held off on "Christmas" until yesterday, although Kyle slept through all the festivities, since he didn't get any sleep on  the plane or the night before we left. There is only a very tiny oven here, so my dad cooked us Cornish game hen instead of turkey, which was wonderful, and we opened gifts, most of which were for my fetus. Baby now has a plate and bowl with animals on it, a stuffed elephant, and bunny slippers, which are possibly the most adorable things I have ever seen.

We are also joined here my some Dutch cousins of ours, and they are pretty much my Dutch mom and dad, so it is lovely seeing them and telling them of my pregnancy. Also, my sister. Since she's been here, she clearly become a classy French woman--it suits her magnificently, but when I am around she devolves into my baby sister, making dumb noises and faces and climbing all over me, and I miss her so much. It's very clear that she loves it here and has no intentions of coming home any time soon.  I told her she has to come visit after the baby is here, but she doesn't make very much money blah blah blah. I'm sure she'll find a way, though. Probably by talking my dad into buying her a ticket for Christmas next year.

We did the Louvre today. Kyle ended up splitting off and hanging out at an internet cafe, which is typical for him, but I figure that whatever keeps him happy is fine with me, as Paris really isn't his ideal vacation spot. The Louvre is kind of disappointing, though, to be honest. It's super crowded, and the collections don't seemed to be arranged with more thought than "this room is shit from Egypt." I think I prefer smaller, more specific museums. I loved the musee d'Orsay when we visited Paris last (I was 15 or 16), but I wanted to see the Louvre this time, since I hadn't before. Some of the Egyptian stuff was pretty lovely, though, and when we found rooms that weren't to crowded it was nice. We also saw the apartments of Napoleon, which is all the original stuff from when the museum was a palace, and that was amazing and definitely worth seeing.

But that picture doesn't even begin to capture the majesty. When you see the ostentatiousness of it you think no wonder they got overthrown. And behind all the walls filled with painting, every room is like this.

After the museum we went to a cafe for lunch. I thought it was funny the French onion soup is just onion soup here, but I guess that makes sense.

Tomorrow is sister time, I think. We're going shopping. I'm not too worried, for once, about spending too much money, since I can't really buy any clothing right now, with the whole maternity thing, but we passed today a lot of adorable expensive looking baby shops, so maybe that.

Like a kid on Christmas Eve...

So you know how the night before something exciting, like your first day at a new job, or say, a trip to visit your sister in France you don't feel like sleeping and you say it's like you're a kid on Christmas Eve? Yeah, I just had that thought. And then I remembered that it is in fact Christmas Eve.

I haven't really been feeling very festive this year. We didn't do any decorating, since leaving three cats alone in our house with a Christmas tree seemed like a poor choice. I'm not exchanging a ton of gifts with people this year, either, and what I'm getting will be for the most part purchased in Paris, so I haven't really done that either. Combine that with the stress of working in retail during the holiday season, and well, you wouldn't be feeling so jolly either.

It's Christmas Eve and I'm sitting in bed waiting for my nail polish to dry before I go to bed. Kyle is out getting a beer with a friend. We had mac and cheese for dinner. It's very unChristmas-y. And tomorrow we are taking the bus to the airport. Wahoo. We don't actually make it into Paris until the 26th, but the family is holding off on the festivities until we get there. So that is nice.

My dad's favorite cousin and his wife are also joining us for a few days in Paris, and I'm really excited to tell them about my pregnancy. When they saw my sister in November (right when I found out), they were asking her if I was going to do the baby thing soon, so they'll be excited. And it's pretty amazing to be able to tell the in person, since the last time we saw each other was at my wedding.

I'm itching to announce it. Now that we've made it this far, there's no point in spoiling the surprise before we get that ultrasound done in January when we get back, but I'm ready to be out. I feel lately like everything in my life relates back to this, and I'm finding it difficult just to carry on normal conversations with people for fear of letting something slip. And the whole growing belly thing is clearly going to become an issue soon. (I went through all my dresses trying to find something appropriate for going out in Paris and nothing fit!) But we'll be able to be out with family this week in Paris, and then we only have a few days after we get back before we can tell everyone. Ready ready ready.

Now we are Six.

Six weeks today. Time is starting to pass at a more regular pace. I took another "belly" shot this evening, but I have no desire to get out of bed and get the camera and cords and what have you to post it, but it will be here eventually.

I've been spending a lot of time in bed. The other day when I was apparently looking extra pathetic, Kyle suggested I take the laptop to bed with me, and here in the  bedroom it has remained. And so have I. I'm not feeling completely wretched. The morning sickness is getting progressively stronger, but I still have managed to avoid actually barfing thus far, so I think we can count that as a victory. It seems to be much easier when I am allowed to sleep in, and don't have to get up at the behest of my alarm clock.

Speaking of sleeping, I don't want to do much else. I've never been a morning person, and getting out of bed has often been a struggle for me, but I'm usually pretty good at facing the day when there are places (work) I have to be. Getting out of bed hasn't been this hard since I was a teenager, battling serious depression. Or maybe it's worse; it's hard to remember through the fog of the years.

Yesterday was my day off from work, and, I'm embarrassed to admit, I spent a good majority of it in bed. I got up a few times, to brush my teeth and take my prenatal, so fix myself a snack plate (that I could nosh on from bed, of course), and to do a single load of laundry, lest I have no clean underwear for work today. And I feel embarrassed about this, and I feel bad that my house is a mess and there are dishes to be done, and that I didn't even manage to fold that load of laundry, but I was feeling good and didn't want to, ahem, over exert myself and lose that feeling.

My work days are hard too. I manage to hold myself together okay while I'm there, because I have to, but it takes a lot of energy to think and stand and wear pants and to just be and when I get home I just collapse, often literally.

I hope this lifts soon. I wonder often if maybe it's all in my head, if maybe it's not really that bad--I know there are pregnant women that have it worse than me, women who are actually vomiting, perhaps, women who already have children that they have to chase around, tired or not, yet all I can to is fall into be at 3 'o clock in the afternoon.

It will be all right, I suppose. I should try not to feel too bad about how pathetic I've become. I supposed I'd rather err on the side of caution anyway.I do, though, hope I get my sea legs somewhere in the next couple of weeks, because I truly do not want to sleep away my France trip and my sister time. I miss her desperately. More so now also because she is somebody's auntie.

Confirmed!

So, wow.


I started with a negative test on Saturday, but I wasn't super bummed out because I was pretty sure that I was in fact pregnant, and it was just too early to tell at only 10 days post ovulation. And I was right. I got that super faint pink line yesterday. Kyle didn't really believe me that it counted. I told him that any line, no matter how faint means I am pregnant, but he seemed to think that I was saying that out of wishful thinking. But the digital test this morning is loud and clear.

I'm pregnant. Pregnant. I'm so happy and my body is positively humming with excitement and I don't want to work or sleep or talk about anything else. At the same time, it all feels very casual and comfortable to me. I am almost positive that I felt implantation as it happened, and when my breasts started hurting I knew. And even when I got that negative test I still knew. So when I did get the positive it was almost old news. Almost. Clearly, I am thrilled, but I also feel very calm and prepared, even though I know I can't possibly be. I'm just so ready. I have had so long to think about this, and honestly I'm not really scared or nervous. Just excited. It's wonderful.


How in the world are you supposed to keep this a secret? I'm doing okay so far. I've told my sister and both my parents, and Kyle called his mother today. But I feel like that's pretty standard. I'm going to tell BFF as soon as we can get a lunch date scheduled, but if that doesn't work out in the next week or so the phone might have to suffice. I'm trying to wait until Thanksgiving to let the cat out of the bag but who knows. My dad said his money is on everyone knowing within a week. Oh well. It might be nice, because it was so hard not to say anything today at work. I wanted to respond to all the "how was your weekend?" with "ONLY THE BEST OF MY LIFE" (in all caps like that, you know), but then clearly they would ask why and where would we be then? I'll likely tell my boss as soon as I have symptoms which might start interfering with work, though. We'll see.


According to my calculations I am 3 weeks and 5 days pregnant. 36 weeks and 2 days to go! And I thought waiting for ovulation was hard... I can't wait to start seeing changes and I can't wait at all to start feeling my baby and talking to it, because I will all the time I know, and just wow. Wow.

That's all for now.

The Waiting Game

I can't make coherent posts when i am distracted by the possibility of pregnancy, apparently.

I've been obsessing over The Preconceptionist's list of early pregnancy symptoms. Maybe my mild constipation these days is related? Every little wave of queasiness I wonder if it's because I am pregnant, or its just the regular waves of queasiness I get anyway, and have been getting for the last ten years. And then I think that if its not worse than normal then there's no way I could be pregnant, and if I was I'd be cowering over the toilet bowl. I am psyching myself out. But I still have exceedingly tender breasts, and the nausea is there, even if it is all too familiar.

I'm not even really sure what I want to turn up on my imminent pregnancy test. All of the negatives I've received so far have be disappointing, but I was always pretty sure that I wasn't pregnant, so I never really had to face the reality of what those two pink lines really mean. But now that I am more sure than not, I am kind of terrified of that positive. Don't get me wrong, I want this, but it's scary to me that if I am in fact pregnant, there's no backing out now.  We can't decide to wait another month or year or three. And that somehow at the end of many month of discomfort that I signed myself up for I have to remove a human being through my body via my vagina, holy crap, am I really ready for this? Well, it may be too late. And that's okay. But frightening, none the less.

On Wednesday night, as my mom an I were eating enchiladas, as we do after yoga class every week, I told her that I think that this time might really be it.  I realized I don't really know much about how my sister or I were born, so we talked. Mom said that she knew right away with both pregnancies. She delivered us both without medication, so that's a relief to hear, but she ended up with an episiotomy with my sister. (P.S. Chrome does not recognize episiotomy as a word.) Her labors were both very short, with mine lasting about twelve hours from waters breaking to delivery, and my sister's was even shorter. My sister breastfed easily, but I was lactose intolerant, so she pumped and added lactaid to her breastmilk for me.  We were both weaned to formula after her three month maternity leave, but this was 25 years ago, when pumping at work just wasn't an option for my career minded mother.

Hearing all of this makes me feel really confident about my own pregnancy and birth, whether that comes now, or further off in the future. I am really lucky to be so close to her and to have her nearby to go through all of this with me when and if I do find myself pregnant.

I am also looking forward to sharing pregnancy with my mother in law. I know she is itching for grandkids. She won't come out and say it, of course, because she's much too polite for that, but the hints have been coming hard. Kyle's parents just put an offer on a house, and she mentioned to me in an email that she is excited to move because she can imagine playing with her grandchildren in her (hopefully) new neighborhood. Sigh. At least I know that when the time comes my news will be good news.


All right, that's all I've got for tonight. Think pregnant thoughts for me. I think.

Sisters

 

Annika and I at my engagement party

So, advance apologies for this way too long post with far too many photos, but this is highly necessary. My baby sister and my best friend, Annika, moved to France on Tuesday. Yes, you heard me right, France. She graduated this spring with a degree in French and International Studies, and she has a job now in Angers, the same city she lived in for study abroad two years ago.

I miss her already. Even though we haven't even lived in the same state for four years now, and even though we've done this before when she was doing her study abroad, this is just tough. She's really moved there. She bought a one way plane ticket! I talked to her this morning on Skype and she already has an apartment. My baby sister is all grown up.

Sweetness

According to my mother, I was not super happy about getting a sister in the first place. I once told her that if Annika had never been born, I would have gotten all the attention.

On our way to summer camp

We didn't always get along super well, especially in our teen years. If our lives had been a bad teen movie I would have been the outcast freak and she would have been the popular goody two shoes. We clashed a lot, but every once in a while when we let our guards down we would have a really good time together. It was just a taste of what was to come.

Once I left home for college things got so much better. We got over the boxes we had put ourselves into, and got to know each other as adults. She became my very best friend. We are very different, yet so alike. I think that though we have different skills and interests, our brains are wired in the same (very strange) way. We really get each other. Most of the time when we hang out we finish each other's sentences and then end up tangled up together on the floor laughing, with no idea how we got there.

At my wedding

We have chosen very different paths in life. I am a college drop out. I married young and I am trying to get knocked up and start my family. My sister is very driven. She graduated from college (where she had an academic scholarship) as a member of an honor society with a double major. She wants to have an important successful career. She is moving to freaking France! She plans to get married and have a family, but someday, in the distant future. Even though we're doing different things, we're very supportive of each other. She is really excited to be an aunt someday soon.

Dressed up for a Todd Rundgren concert

In Disneyland this past spring

I will miss being able to call her whenever I want, or being able to take a weekend to pay her a visit. But I'm so excited for her to have this opportunity. And fortunately, for Christmas this year, my parents are taking Kyle and I to France to visit her for a week. I can't wait to see her in her element. 

In a Eugene bar, celebrating her college graduation

To bring this back to my blogging purpose, my sister is the reason why I am definitely going to have more than one child. I can't imagine my life without her, and knowing the wonderful experience I've shared with her, I truly believe that the best gift I could give my child is a sibling. I know that my kids may not end up best friends like Annika and I, but I want to give them the opportunity to have someone like her. She understands me in a way that no one else I have ever met, and in a way I don't think anyone else ever could. Amazing.

With our friends (and a drag queen!) at her going away party last week

Oh, disappointment...

So far, two negative pregnancy tests. I don't know that this really means anything, as I am only 12 days past ovulation, that is, if I actually ovulated at all. Who knows. Since I haven't had a regular cycle in oh, seven years or so, I don't know how long mine is, or when I should be expecting my period, so I suppose I will just keep testing everyday until I get a positive or start bleeding.

For the couple days before I started testing I was so sure that I would be, and now... I'm thinking no way. Logically I know that nothing has changed and I still could be and its so early and I could wake up tomorrow and get a positive... but I'm not feeling optimistic.



I would really like to know something in the next two days, though. Good news or bad. I'm going down with my parents and BFF to sister's college graduation, and I really don't want to be in this limbo while I'm on vacation. For one, I wouldn't have to abstain from all the fun (read: alcohol), or at least I would have a good reason to do so. It will come in to question, I am sure, and I don't want to have to tell my family that I could be pregnant and it is too early to tell, because that is a can of worms that just doesn't need to be explored.

I'm not sure what the plan is for the weekend if I don't find anything out before I leave. I'd like to keep testing throughout, but I'm not sure how I feel about the logistics of this in sister's tiny apartment. And if I get good news, well... do I wait to tell husband in person and then maybe he isn't the first to know? Do I call him? Do I try to keep it a secret? (Clearly, no, since I am terrible at secrets.) I don't know. I asked husband what he wanted me to do and he said he doesn't mind if I have to call him or if someone else finds out first, but I have this romantic vision of it all. I'll probably bring a ton of tests with me and decide when I get there. Or maybe I will find out tomorrow. God, I hope so.



Honestly, it surprises me how badly I feel about possibly not being pregnant. We certainly weren't "trying," and really, the timing for me is less than ideal. I thought I knew how badly I wanted this, but even I am shocked by my longing. Earlier I was looking at Facebook pictures of husband's friend's month-old twins and just... I can't even put it into words.

Please please please please please.

It took me three hours to write this post.

I may be the only one, but I am so glad that the holiday weekend is over. Between working in retail, and my sister being in town, I am absolutely exhausted, and I am completely relieved that it's Tuesday and I can have a day off.

This weekend has been big events! On Saturday husband and I had sex for the first time post-IUD removal. Kind of a big deal, considering I've spent the last seven years taking all sorts of measures to avoid pregnancy.  I had long imagined that having truly unprotected sex for the first time ever would be somewhere in the realm of terrifying, and that I would probably cry, since I tend to cry, well, about everything. But, no. There may have been a smirk, but definitely no tears.

The weather has been dreary lately. Mayvember, we were calling it. My dad cooked us (me, husband, sister, BFF, her fiancé, our other best friend, her boy friend, himself, and my mother) a full Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday night. Amazing. And even better when it is absent the drama and fake religion and bullshit of whatever extended family you are obligated to see and be on your best behavior for. This was just wonderful. My favorite people and the best food and several bottles of champagne and a rowdy and raucous evening, filled with very inappropriate table conversation. These people are my true family. Don't get me wrong, I do love my aunts and uncles and cousins and what-have-you, but with them there are huge chunks of my person that must be suppressed, and God, does that get tiresome quickly.

Anyway. At some point during the meal I excused myself to go to the bathroom. And by excused myself I mean I probably unpolitely announced that "I HAVE TO PEE!" and galumphed out of the room, but who can really remember. Champagne, you know. In the bathroom I was greeted with a revelation between my legs. Behold, fertile quality eggwhite cervical mucus. The first time I have experienced such things when I would actually be able to recognize them, and Oh. My. God. I had a moment in the bathroom with myself. Adding it all up... no birth control... sex last night... fertility... HOLY SHIT!  So I quietly return to the table, and whisper the contents of my underpants to BFF, who was seated beside me. And as the rest of the table was tipsy and boisterous, no one really noticed our not-so-quiet discussion of possible impending pregnancy.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this.  I started taking prenatal vitamins yesterday,  but possible conception didn't keep me from a couple of vodka tonics when we went out for karaoke last night. Hopefully that doesn't come back to bite me in the ass. How bizarre would it be for me to get pregnant the first time I've ever had unprotected sex? I'd feel like some awful statistic from some 90s teen magazine. Also, how the hell am I going to wait out these next two weeks until I can find out what the hell is going on?

The cat's out of the bag.

So I didn't intend on telling sister or our parents that I am not using birth control anymore, but sister is home for the long weekend and I was at my parents' house for dinner last night and holy hell am I ever terrible at keeping secrets. Sister is angry at me because she wants me to be unpregnant to come visit her in France. According to her, it is impossible to have a good time in Europe unless you are drinking wine.

My family also fails to understand the difference between us forgoing birth control and actually, you know, trying. With the having sex all the time and on the appropriate days and all that business. So they gave me a hard time about that. And about the hypothetical baby names husband and I have agreed on and hey, I guess this is why I didn't plan on telling anyone until I had good news(!!) to share. Too late now.

In other news, husband and I ventured back to my dear gynecologist to discuss "family planning," as the nurse so politely put it. After which she remarked how young we are. God, I get tired of hearing that. Doctor assured us that getting pregnant should be quick and easy and we talked about all the thing I already know, like how sushi is verboten, so yesterday I most definitely ate sushi for lunch. I probably will continue to do so on a regular basis until there is a possibility of pregnancy because sushi, you will be greatly missed. Now I just need to get me some prenatal vitamins.

Meta-Blogging and Other Things

So it seems that blogging is not quite as much fun if you don't receive any comments. It's probably why I can never consistently keep a diary or a journal for more than a week. I suppose if I am uninterested in my real life peeps making their way here then I will have to comment on other people's blogs in the hopes that they find me even the slightest bit interesting and maybe sneak a peek over here and then don't think I am totally and incredibly boring.

I've never really fancied myself a writer. I know I'm not a bad writer by any means, but I'm pretty sure I'm not in really very spectacular, either. It's more stream of consciousness, and I think I write exactly the way I talk. I've been told once or twice that I talk the way I write, but I'm pretty sure it's the other way around. Either that or I end up sounding like a stodgy British professor man. But that's mostly when I'm writing a paper or something. Gosh, it's been a long time since I've had to do that. Thank Jesus. And by Jesus I mean that I'm pretty sure that he had all of nothing to do with it, or really anything that ever happens in my life, but his name is a convenient place holder when I don't believe in any sort of deity. I guess I could say "thank nature" or something, but that just seems wrong to me. Yeah, so for future notice, invisible blog readers, any invocation of God or other such theological character is purely a literary device.

See? Stream of consciousness. Actually, that is probably why I like blogging, rather than paper-writing, or like, trying to write a short story or a book or really anything with a plot.

Speaking of, recently sister and I were going through cabinets in our parents house and discovered a pile of "books" that we had created via school projects. Most of hers were hilarious kindergarten through second grade masterpieces, which are funny and embarrassing of course, but in the way that you can completely disregard because you were six years old when you wrote them and no one should be judged by what they wrote at age six.

My book, however, was a collection of works that I created in the first weeks of my sophomore year of high school. While that was approximately nine year ago (holy cow!), it is still recent enough, and fifteen is still close enough to adult, that the secrets contained within said book are truly terrifying to me. I am really bad at judging my writing. Either I think it's totally and completely the best thing ever written or I think I might be struck with lightning to dare write such horrible crap. Either way I'm about 95% sure I am wrong, but you know. Or maybe you don't.

But anyhow, dear anonymous internets, something I wrote in high school:

Aurora

When I awoke it was dark in my room. The hall light was not on like usual, and I could barely tell where my room ended and the next one began. My bed was hot and my face was sweaty. I rolled over onto my side and tried to fall asleep again, but my eyes would not stay shut.

 Slowly I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stretched my arms. Out my window I could see the lights from the buildings downtown. Their reflection on the thick mass of clouds blanketing the city turned the sky an eerie orange color, one that shouldn't be seen in the middle of the night.

 I had to check my clock to make sure that it was not morning and that the orange color was not just the beginning trace of the sunrise. The numbers glowed red in the darkness of my room, cutting through the dense black atmosphere. 1:59 the read. It was much too early for a sunrise.

 Although I understood the phenomenon causing that orange hue to illuminate the sky I couldn't help but feel that something terrible was about to happen.

Wow, so it is really hard to resist the urge to edit the shit out of that. But still, I think it is pretty awesome. It's probably not, but whatever. And let's please ignore that it was written in silver gel pen on black paper. I was creative, okay?

Hello

Hi, Blog!

I am A, nice to meet you. So it's been a long time since the days of LiveJournal and the high school attention-whoring that I participated in there, but I thought it was time again. I am kind of a scientist, I guess, in the sense that I dropped out of college where I was studying biology, and I own my own microscope and I like to catch insects and put them on pins and identify and label them and keep them in well organized boxes. So basically not really.

So I may in fact write about my science-related interests, but honestly it will probably be a lot of me waxing poetic on how much I want a baby. (I reallyreallyreally want to have a baby, by the way.) But still, I didn't want this to have some horrible, vomit-inducing, cutesy baby-blog name, so yeah. Making a baby is kind of an experiment in biology and psychological development and all sorts of things, right? Maybe.

But anyway, perhaps I should complete my introduction post by actually introducing myself. live in Seattle, and I am going to be 25 this year. I didn't quite finish my Bio degree because I realized I didn't really want to make a career out of it, even though I love it as a bug-catching kind of hobby. I work full time in retail, but not the selling part of it. I am a visual merchandiser--think mannequin styling and window dressing, and other such beautiful things. I am a little bit crazy, and I mean that in a good, but still serious way.

Here are some people that will probably be recurring characters in my blog:

Husband: I married my beautiful amazing husband in the summer of 2008. He hails from Ohio. We met online (clearly!) when I was still in high school, and finally met in 2004. He moved here to be with me in 2006, we adopted three cats, and the rest of history. Well, at least with some fun break-up type bumps in the road on the way there. Husband is a unique combination of nerd and athlete, but he is more multi-faceted than just that. He wants to have babies too, but he is a little more freaked out about the actual reality of them, so we're working on it.

BFF: My best friend, obv. We started using all these internet acronyms and abbreviations ironically, but they kind of stuck and I'm not sure it's ironic anymore, but I'm not really embarrassed either. We are in a lot of ways on the same wavelength regarding BAAAAABIIIEESSS!!!! She is getting married this July, and she just found out she is pregnant (OMG!), but shh, don't tell anyone, as it's still new news, so still a secret. I am very happy for her, but also kind of a little jealous. And by a little I mean a lot. But whatev, I am excited to be an auntie soon.

Sister: My baby (well, three years younger) sister. She is my best friend also, but in quite a different way than BFF. (Actually we are collectively besties altogether.) She is probably the only person in the entire world that truly understands me. Our brains work in the same really bizarre way, and when we are together we can be our truly crazy selves. Sister is amazing and magical. She is graduating from college soon, and then she will be moving to France for a job in the fall. Her job is only nine months in duration, but I wouldn't be surprised if she figured out a way to extend it, and lives there forever. I would miss her, but then I will have somewhere cool to visit. She is not baby crazy like me and BFF, but she works in an infant daycare and really is excited for me to have one so she can be a tante (Dutch for aunt, of course--did I not mention that we are Dutch (half) and really into it).

Um, so I'm not a super social girl, I guess, and these are really the three major people in my life. I hang out with other friends and such periodically, but I guess they will be introduced as we meet them.

Ok, that's all you need to know for now, I think. Some content soon, I hope.