Olivia Update

I am typing with a cat on and off my lap, because Olivia has recently decided that it's important to be on my lap or shoulder whenever I sit down at the kitchen table to eat (or in this case, type). She has also decided that I'm not just useful for petting her during the night, but for sleeping on as well. Her last nighttime visit lasted thirty minutes, and she slept across my neck and face. Mostly, I find her affection sweet and want to respond, so I do. However, I have noticed that she only picks the moments when I am actually busy doing something important - like eating or sleeping - to ask for my attention. (To be fair, she did come and fall asleep on me once this weekend while I was watching Dexter. My biggest hope is that she will want to be affectionate while I'm watching TV, so that's a start. Also she has started hanging out with Dirk and I during evening TV, which is new for her.) I'm wondering if this is just a sign of her growing up and becoming more affectionate, or if she senses that time is running out and my lap will soon be taken over by Blueberry, or if she is training me for the never-have-your-body-to-yourself, learn-to-do-everything-with-one-arm experience that is Mommyhood. I've noticed that when she purrs loudly on me, Blueberry starts poking around. I'm sure she can feel my belly moving underneath her, though she does not appear to respond. It certainly doesn't encourage her to move.

Dirk will tell you that she is primarily attached to me, and often when he wants to hold her, he just follows me around the house so she won't run off after me. This was a somewhat unfortunate choice on her part, though I am fully flattered by it. If there wasn't a baby coming, I'd say she made the right choice because as much as Dirk loves to care for animals, he can't be woken up in the night, and he's not home as much during the day as I am. I am hopeful that she can still get enough attention just being near me and the baby, or still find some space on me that won't overwhelm me. Maybe I can pretend I have twins, knowing that she'll be much less demanding than an actual baby twin would ever be.

Olivia has been eating well lately. She went through a stage in late September where she was only eating about half her food each day. After a few weeks she went into an over-eater mode and finally stabilized. Overall, she is showing more interest in food than she did when she was younger, and there are more indications from her that she is expecting to be fed at certain times of day, or just hoping to be fed. She is still playful, though less so than before. If we open her toy drawer, she still comes running, but the toys don't hold her interest in the same way they used to. However, random stringy things that aren't toys are often quite the hit. She was pretty worked up by my laundry folding last night and this morning. She also continues to get excited for her balls and small items that are scattered about our house.

She continues to be a very clean cat - always preening herself. She has a large, lion-like mane and is super fluffy and soft. We had taken her off of The Litter Kwitter a few months ago because she has stopped pooping on the pan, and started using the floor (or bathroom sink). Dirk recently started her back up again in a pre-stage. I noticed this morning that her poop missed the pan. I'm pretty skeptical about her learning willingness/ability at this point. But Dirk presses on, and since he cleans up after her, I feel I must keep an open mind.

In general, I think she likes strangers less than she used to. To her credit, she did a very nice job with Dirk's mom and grandma this weekend. She sat comfortably with the ladies, even curled up right behind Grandma. I wonder how she will handle Dirk's birthday party. She will never have seen that many people in the house at once.

Well, Dirk's backup alarm should be going off by now, so I think Olivia and I will go bother him for a bit.

Effacement & Dilation

With four weeks till my due date, it's time to talk about effacement and dilation. Our midwife checked me last week (rather roughly, I might add) and told me that I am effaced, but not dilated yet. This doesn't mean too much, other than that my body is preparing to give birth. You can walk around for weeks dilated at 3 cm. I don't fully understand this all yet. Our midwife tried to explain with her hands what it meant to be effaced, but it wasn't do any good. So I found some images that helped clear things up, knowing that those of you reading this blog would be needing to know.

I thought this was the most clear. It seems that the cervix is acting much like it does during the menstrual phase. It comes up and down. When it's high and open, a woman is the most fertile. That's when her cervix feels soft, like your lower lip. When it's low and closed, it feels firm like your nose. You can see the cervix rising in these pictures, becoming soft and effaced.


For this last one, you need to know that "primigravida" refers to a first pregnancy, like mine, and "multipara" means multiple pregnancies. The multipara ones look kinda weird, no?



One thing I don't fully understand (and that others have asked me) is why no fluid comes out when the cervix opens. I'm pretty sure the answer is that all the amniotic fluid is contained in a sac, so until that breaks, you're good to go. And all the blood that comes out with the placenta isn't going to be released until the placenta actually lets go of the uterine wall. And there's a hormonal exchange that starts in the baby's brain and communicates with my body, telling us both to kick start the labor process. So until the baby is ready to go, everything just stays put.

There is also the position of descent, meaning how far the baby's head has descended. Our midwife noted that our baby had descended into the pelvis and his head was more "locked in" than it was three weeks ago, when she could rock it back and forth. She did not attach his position to one of these numbers though.


Last night I dreamed that this doctor man took a device and just put it over my stomach, like a big metal cover, and photographed the baby. The baby was sitting upright, like a little Buddha, and I was upset because now we were looking at a breech birth. His face was pushing out of my belly and I could feel his nose and lips quite easily.

Back to reality, I'm confused about counting pregnancy weeks again. "What to Expect" says that I'm now 37 weeks and full term. But other sites would say I'm 36 weeks, because I just completed 36 weeks. Thus, I have another week to go and then I'll be 37 weeks and full term. I'm going to ask our midwife about that when we see her today because she won't do a home delivery before 37 weeks, and maybe we're in the clear now, or maybe we have to hold on for 6 more days. Not that I really expect Blueberry to show up this week. I'm guessing he'll come in week 39 or 40. This guess is based on the not-so-accurate information I have on my mom and sister's births. I say it's not that accurate only because every baby is different and they don't know when they ovulated, and my mom is trying to remember something that happened nearly 37 years ago.

I have mixed feelings about when I want to go into labor because Blueberry's due date is RIGHT AFTER finals week. I finish finals on a Tuesday, Dirk is done on Thursday, and Blueberry is due on Saturday or Sunday. It would be nice to have the semester all wrapped up before he comes. Otherwise, a substitute will take over for me, (which is nice), but Dirk will have exams to grade, grade to determine and a new baby at home, and then me to deal with - and who knows how I'll be doing? I can be a real whiner you know. However, it would be nice to not be pregnant anymore, so getting Blueberry out with the rest of us is appealing. But as soon as he arrives, I don't have the freedom to just run out to Walgreen's or have coffee with girlfriends. I'll be leaking breast milk, up half the night and experiencing what a true lack of sleep is. Hauling this big ball of belly around just might seem easy in retrospect... On the other hand, we'll have our baby, and wasn't that the point of this whole thing in the first place? Sometimes I get so wrapped up in the pregnancy that I lose sight of the big picture. Obviously, the baby is coming no matter what, so I guess I'll still opt for finishing the semester without a labor and delivery. Not that I have a choice in the matter! :)

Pregnancy Stuff

We're halfway through week 34, or 33 1/2 weeks pregnant at this point. I'm nowhere near as on top of pregnancy reading as I used to be. Reading about the pregnancy week I'm in became less interesting several months ago. At this point, all that's left to read about is how much your baby weighs, how much you may have gained and that your baby blinks now and you may be more uncomfortable and not sleeping very well. I got side-tracked reading about labor and delivery. I haven't done too much reading about raising kids yet - so far I'm banking on my experience with babysitting and all that I've learned from watching my sister raise her kids, and occasionally helping out. I figure there's a lot of that sort of reading in my future anyway. It just hasn't struck me as "time" yet.

I am uncomfortable. I am big and that makes things like bending down or getting off a couch or bed harder to do. Each action requires a second thought. I also feel tired a lot and a kind of nauseous/heart-burny/throw-uppy feeling. I can't say I like it. Also, it seems that I am no longer capable of sleeping more than two hours at a time, if that. But bad days continue to alternate with good days, so for the most part I manage okay. One thing I really LIKE about being pregnant is feeling Blueberry bop around inside me. There's something sweet about it, and it's reassuring to know he's doing okay. I haven't had any painful kicks from him yet, and his movements don't wake me up at night. (My bladder and our cat and my body discomforts wake me up instead.) In spite of my complaints, I also like having a big belly. It's fun to see and be seen with it. There is something that everybody seems to find fun and exciting about being pregnant - myself included. Anticipating a baby is perhaps more exciting to other people than you actually having a baby. I assume for Dirk and I that having the baby will actually be more fun. I will gladly give up my belly when the time comes. But it's totally strange that this can happen to you - just like it happens to all these other women and all the books say it will happen. It's still bizarre when it's your own body.

Today I washed the baby bedding and cleaned up the bassinet we bought. All we need now is a crib mattress and our cloth diapers. The mattress is due anytime, and I just ordered the diapers today. The nursery could use a little more decoration, but I haven't found exactly what I'm looking for yet, and what Dirk will approve of. We also need some kind of net or tent for the crib and bassinet that will keep Olivia from jumping in with the baby. (The crib is in a room with a door, but we'd like to try sleeping with baby in a bassinet by the bed. Keeping Olivia out of our room would be really difficult to do and cause a new set of problems.) I'm also a little bit nervous about "figuring out" the cloth diapers. By that I mostly mean cleaning them.

Oh, and I got the H1N1 vaccine an hour ago. I feel somewhat conflicted about it because I don't think I really know for sure what the right thing to do with vaccines is. Mostly though, guests on NPR convinced me that I should do it. And I really don't want to get H1N1, because it might not be a mild case for me. It might also pass some immunity onto the baby - but I'm not sure if that's pure speculation or not. It still takes 8-10 days to take effect, so I can't go sharing drinks with everybody just yet.

More Communication / P&Q Stuff

Tsjaz commented that he thinks extroverts have more fun. I'm not sure about that because their fun kind of depends on the others around them and what they want to talk about. An introvert would perhaps have a lot of fun just doing their own thing. Many times I would rather do a crossword puzzle than call somebody up. Of course, I like doing the crossword puzzle with Dirk best, so it's still an interactive event. Except I don't usually like that he is so much faster with answers at the beginning than I am. Since I am usually writing, I get annoyed. But I have a work-around to this: I start the puzzle before he gets there so I have a shot at all the easy answers. Then I can usually contribute to my satisfaction after that. Dirk is better at the puzzles than I am, but I come up with some gems too.

I totally switched the subject.

When someone is not talking, I do wonder why. And I wonder what I should do. And I wonder if they think I am doing the right thing. I should chill.

This Just In...

Dirk and I have finished our research and have decided to try for a home birth. I'm still a little frightened even though the data is in our favor, and going to the hospital frightens me too. But we've chosen a course now and I'm happy to be on it. Hopefully things go smoothly and we can stick with our plan.

One More Thought/Question on Communication

I forgot to mention one important thing yesterday -

Tsjaz indicated that he finds it boring to be introverted. This surprised me. I tend to think that introverts have this fascinating inner world that entertains them beyond what current conversation has to offer. I also imagine that they notice and remember everything. (My other brother-in-law is exceptionally good at that. While it seems like he could not care less about anything going on, days later he might repeat a conversation you had verbatim and you never realized he was listening.) But I can see that the flip side might just be that the mind is blank or stalled by social awkwardness or something like that. I worked with a quiet fellow many years ago and he told me that his thoughts were very simple and consisted of things like "apple" or "BEER."

I would also assume that a super talker finds themselves fascinating and can't wait to hear the next thing out of their mouth. However, I suspect that a lot of them are also extremely insecure and talk in an effort to constantly prove themselves in some way.

Communication 101

This post is in response to Tsjaz's post from October 19, which I have reproduced here:


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Social drinking
I have more fun at social gatherings when I drink. I'm pretty introverted in the Myers-Briggs sense that although I can be social in a large group, when the group is mostly strangers it saps my energy. However, at a certain point of intoxication, a switch flips and I want to associate with others and make grandiose plans for future social interactions. This is why the DTH police roundup said that I was trying to get "to Franklin Street." I wanted to go somewhere where I could take advantage of my temporary extrovertedness.

I don't think I was always this introverted. I have some memories of being a little crazy up until about age 6 or 7. But I think was taught in many ways that being quiet was good. Being quiet to a fault. Because being quiet is sometimes uncomfortable, and being uncomfortable around others makes it more difficult to get what you want. And extroverts have more fun.

Why is being quiet uncomfortable? Mostly because of social norms, I guess. With some people it's not uncomfortable to just not talk. I think I'm really bad at small talk, which makes things more difficult. I can never think of something smart to say when someone makes a small talk comment to me about something I don't care about at all.

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This is a topic I seem to care about a lot - at least I certainly devote a lot of time to thinking about it and Dirk has heard me talk/complain about it a lot. Essentially, I have a hard time interacting with people who talk too little or talk too much. I think there are more people in the "talk too much" category and for the life of me, I can't understand why they don't realize that they are incredibly rude and self-centered. Of course, that's just my opinion. But I don't appreciate it when someone thinks that it's okay to ask me to devote my time and energy exclusively to whatever it is that they want to say. I hate being controlled in that way. The only way I have found around this (when I am stuck say, at a dinner table with them) is to exert my own form of control - which is to ask questions. I figure then I can at least get them to sometimes talk about something that interests me. The downside of asking a super-talker questions is that it only encourages them to talk more. But if I've given up on them, then I at least try to get material I care about.

Tsjaz and many others will tell you that I'm a questioner anyway, and this is true. I will also try to use this technique with silent types, like Tsjaz and CHG, because I have a hard time with the silence. I automatically translate silence into "this person does not like me and wishes I would go away." This is likely because my mom uses the "silent treatment" very effectively. To me, silence equates anger, disapproval and a message that I had better try HARD to get back into this person's good graces. To continue using my family-in-law as an example here, this (to me) is a typical dinner out with all of us: Parents, grandparents and myself make random small talk, often repeating ourselves, in an effort to create a sense of comfort. (Or such is my perception.) Dirk, Tsjaz and CHG are mostly silent. Dirk is completely comfortable with this, and I am mostly uncomfortable with this. I really can't tell how comfortable everybody else is. Tsjaz's blog indicates that he may actually find this experience uncomfortable like I do.

Another point regarding conversation: I get the impression that said Parents like to keep it simple. My family, on the other hand, likes to dig into something and really chew on it when the mood strikes. We'll dissect the movie we saw, talk about our personalities, whatever. We'll also sometimes push each other's buttons and create conflict. These things (both positive and negative) do not happen with my in-laws. In both families, some topics of conversation are simply off-limits, which goes back to the supposed lesson (mentioned by Tsjaz) that sometimes it's best to just keep your mouth shut. I can't tell you how many times my mother has advised me to do just that! But blogs are not a place to keep your mouth shut...

So back to Tsjaz's post again - he mentioned that he may have been taught that it is good to be quiet, and Dirk agreed that this may be true. My parents and their parents are actually quite similar in that they are likely all introverts. My parents are self-described introverts at any rate, and they will not volunteer much information about themselves. They will mostly respond to you, unless you ASK them to talk about themselves or if you are an immediate family member. My sister is more extroverted and happy to volunteer information/conversation. I test right in the middle of introverted and extroverted and suspect that I use my questions as a way to promote conversation without having to contribute much to it myself. As much as I think that people should demonstrate interest in me by asking about me, I can also resent being questioned because sometimes I am tongue-tied. This makes me think that others might resent my (question-oriented) approach as well. (And of course, I can be very flattered that someone is making the effort to ask what I think; to get to know me. I do consider that a large component of what communication should be about, a volley of taking turns between two people.)

Then there's a whole other piece - which is how much common interests matter. Getting pregnant created a brand new, overarching interest in my life and while my "never plan on being pregnant" girlfriends are doing a good job at keeping up with me, I know that we both will have to make more concessions moving forward. I'll have to shut up about babies, and they'll have to put up with mine. I still want those friendships, but am also drawn to befriending women who actually want to get pregnant and have babies (or already did). I continue to learn that I don't have much sympathy/empathy (whichever one requires you to relate to another's emotions when you have not experienced the said emotion/event yourself) for life events that haven't come my way. For example, until I got a cat, I had little interest in the pet-obsessed conversation. Now I could talk about cats all day. And I can even relate my feelings about cats to your feeling about your non-feline pet. So I might find someone's conversation to be dull and invasive, but in large part it's because I don't care about the content.

Thus, the problem is twofold: there's communication style to consider and then there's content. There are a couple of solutions that may work here.

With a talker: Some talkers can't stop. They are addicted to talking and there's nothing that will change them. Some level of acceptance is required, and some level of avoidance. "Avoid as much as possible, accept when you are stuck." Other talkers (like my new mom-friend, Patty) can be addressed directly. I told Patty that I couldn't feel good about her talking over me, that I needed her to listen to me, but that I understood that it was hard for her and she didn't mean to disregard me. (But that I FELT disregarded by her behavior.) She really took that in and started working with it right away. I don't expect her to completely change, but she's trying. In return, I agreed to be more assertive when I had something to say.

With a non-talker: Focusing on content seems to help. If you can find a topic they like to dish about, then you've got a shot. But if you don't like the topic, then you're suddenly stuck with a talker that only takes limited direction via questions. Directly talking about it strikes me as harder, since you've already got an indication that they don't like to open up, period. Maybe copying someone's blog post and writing your own blog post about it will make a difference.

PS: There's this whole other thing I wanted to mention, which I think is just about the chemistry people do or don't have together. This past weekend Dirk and I played a game with our new friends, The Stonestreets. It's a game we've both played before, and found to be okay, but not great. But every time we play games with this couple (and a third couple that couldn't make it), everybody seems to have a really good time and the game seems fantastic. What's that about?

Life at Home

Although we did not plan for me to essentially become a stay-at-home wife before the baby arrived, circumstances at my work led that to happen. I wasn't able to get full-time, or even reasonable part-time work this semester thanks to state budget cuts for the state college I work for. I was given one two-credit hour class, which means my work duties add up to six to eight hours a week total. I originally opted to sit in a higher level math course, called Complex Variables, twice a week because it would be good for me to work on my own math skills. However, after four or five weeks I decided that I just wasn't up for juggling the time requirements of this course with all the household duties I had found for myself.

At this point, even the tiny imposition of six to eight hours a week seems like a big dent in all I have to do at home. Dirk has pointed out that I could be less ambitious in my cleaning plans, but I tend to disagree with him. He has been very happy with my cooking plans however, because it's nice to have food in the house when you come home and leftovers in the refrigerator. I am also creating a storage of food in our new deep freezer, which I hope will tide us through the new-baby phase. One thing I'm finding is that cooking every day is hard, if not nearly impossible. It takes a lot more time to plan, shop and execute a meal than I would've thought. There are days when my other duties swamp me and I still want to make popcorn for dinner, just like when I was working full time. The other big time sink has been the yard, and I'm completely grateful that winter is coming to take that away from me. I still need to plant garlic, harvest the potatoes and pull as many weeds as I can before it gets too cold. Oh, and the gladiola bulbs need to be dug up for over-wintering. But that is coming to a close.

Of course, the baby is a big area of focus. I've moved on from reading about pregnancy, to reading about labor and birthing. There is a long list of decisions to make regarding how and where you'll give birth and what you'll consent to letting the hospital do to your newborn. I've yet to read about infant care because I'm just not there yet, and I hope what I learned from my sister will carry me through most of what I need to do. As for preparing a place for baby, my parents were in town last week and they did a huge amount of work on the nursery, for which I am completely grateful. There is still a lot to do, but I can handle what's left. I could not handle the other stuff on my own. I absolutely required help. I've also been told I should be doing other advance planning, like making a list of baby-announcement recipients. All of these things will be harder to do once the baby is actually outside of me. Baby stuff will of course lead to child-rearing stuff, researching pre-schools and attending baseball games. If things go as planned, there will be two more lives to attend to. (Meaning two kids, not three.)

Shopping is another chore. It seems like I am endlessly bringing large quantities of items into our home and disposing of similar quantities. At least we're not pack-ratting too much. We don't spend excessively either. It's mostly food, baby stuff, and house stuff that I'm trekking through the door. On Tuesday a new washer and dryer will arrive so we can wash all those diapers we decided to invest in, and soon we'll be installing toddler-friendly blinds. I sold our old washer and dryer on Craig's list (which excited me to no end) and that left a nice dirty floor for me to clean.

Then there's the finances. As I mentioned above - I no longer bring home a real salary. This semester I'm bringing home some lunch money and that's it. So it's time to get serious about budgeting and planning, something we both want to do but have trouble finding the time for. I've made some headway on assessing where we are, and where we've been, but little has been done to solidify a smart financial future. We almost have our wills taken care of though, and I'm pretty proud of getting that done. Most people I talked to have had kids for years and still haven't gotten around to that. Then there's the detail stuff like tracking down insurance payment errors and the like. The time spent waiting on the phone is always fun.

So my big ticket house-wife items are: cleaning, cooking, shopping, gardening, baby education, making a place for baby, and short & long-term financial management. All things on this list have required planning and organizational skills. I like to think I'm an organized, efficient person, but running a household is making me step up to the plate more than I thought it would. At this point, I'm pretty convinced that you can't run the kind of household I imagine and work full time. You'd have to compromise quite a lot.

A big plus to this has been that not working makes my home ambitions achievable without causing me to expect as much from Dirk as I did before. He was never crazy about all the expectations I placed on him since his ambitions for home were much simpler than mine. In turn, he has more ambitions for himself at work than I ever did with my career. It feels good for both of us when I can back off.

Another discussion could be had about where these ambitions of mine come from and how they interfere with my outside-of-home ambitions. I'm pretty certain that I believe I can organize the hell out of my house and then our finances will be settled, the house will run like clockwork and I'll have time to take Complex Variables or start a new career. Part of this thinking is likely plain delusional. I paid somebody to clean my house for the last four years because I knew my time was worth it to me. Someday my fascination with my efficient household will likely end and I'll have to let a few things go. Someday might be sooner than I think, since I want to spend plenty of time with my kids and not view them as projects to be managed as well. It all depends on how committed I end up being to my stay-at-home-wife-and-mom career.

I'm writing today from the perspective of someone who feels overwhelmed. But I haven't had that perspective for all of this fall. I'm just not in a great head space today. Mostly I feel grateful that I have the time to maintain a garden and learn to make tomato soup. Things have just been a bit hectic lately with big-ticket items like setting up baby's room and buying new appliances. It makes the to-do list seem so much harder.

And I forgot to mention managing our social life! At this point, I'm afraid my post is going to sound like one long complaint, and I really don't want it to. So I think I'll pause and go grocery shopping.