Baby's sex

Last night, as usual on a lazy Sunday evening, Felipe and I were lounging about in our living area. I was in one of my less hormonal moods, moving between cooking dinner and watching something on Netflix, when he asked me something -- a question I won't quote, since I'm not sure exactly how it was worded -- about whether I thought I'd start crying when the baby was delivered. After making a comment about how I'd be crying for joy once the agony of labor had ended, I realized that I hadn't really put much thought into how I'd feel in that moment at all, other than ripped apart and bloody and regretting intensely my decision to refuse pain medicine from those kind souls who'd so generously offered it. I'd thought about how badly I want my baby to successfully latch, to begin the bond of breastfeeding between mother and child that I've spent the last months reading about and praying for success in. But that moment, the one in which baby separates forever from my womb and becomes its own, semi-independent person, with a social security number and an overwhelming weight of societal expectations placed upon on his or her shoulders? I guess it hadn't really occurred to me what I would feel, but in the back of my mind, I was pretty sure I wouldn't cry. Maybe it's Fergie's fault, with her insistence that big girls don't cry, but I have viewed my own tears as a source of shame for quite some time now, even to the point of masking them with excuses: allergies, spicy foods, or anything at all besides emotions. Which isn't what I want my children to believe, regardless of their sex, and suddenly, I was spiraling hard into a pit of worry that this all could only mean one thing. I'm a bad mother.

So this morning, as I was laying miserably on our sofa after throwing up multiple attempts at breakfast (forget what I say about nausea ending; I don't believe it ever does), I had forgotten all about the event aforementioned. I picked up my phone to see what was new in the pregnancy apps. Lo and behold, there was a post that said, simply,

"gender at birth?
Anyone else waiting tell birth to get the gender"

Despite the poster's lack of punctuation, I was intrigued. I clicked on the subject line and began reading the responses of women who have made the decision to wait for their babies to announce their sex. (And no, I don't agree that 'gender' and 'sex' are synonyms, but I understand that a lot of people do use them interchangeably.) Maybe it was because of my empty stomach, or my hormonal daze, but I suddenly saw so clearly that this is what I've been missing out on. Ever since we found out we were expecting, we've been talking and receiving questions about finding out baby's sex and when we will be able to do so. I read somewhere that over 80% of parents choose to find out via ultrasound, not birth, though I'm not sure how accurate that statistic is, since many people obviously don't have the option for a pre-labor sex scan.

You got it: we have decided to wait until birth to find out this baby's sex. I know not everyone feels the same way, but here is a list of reasons I have for this decision:

1. I cried, quite pathetically, when I imagined that final push and hearing my husband's voice announcing to me whether we have a son or a daughter. And I imagine I'll cry, quite happily, when it's really happening.
2. Labor is extremely scary for me, but when I imagine the outcome as not just holding our precious miracle for the first time, but also knowing that such exciting news will be waiting for us, I feel a whole lot less afraid and way more determined.
3. Regardless of this baby's sex, we probably want to have more children in the future, and buying an array of things that are designed for that specific "kind" of baby would be tempting if we found out pre-labor. This way, we'll have lots of unisex items that can be recycled for the future.
4. There are a lot of gender expectations that we wouldn't want our children to be subjected to while they're still trying to develop into fully-formed human beings, and can't even cry audibly to express their disagreement.

Staying inside, dreaming, and collecting baby items

Since Sunday, I’ve only left the house once. I had a fall walking – or attempting to walk, rather – to the mailbox a couple of weeks ago, and even though I only suffered a mild concussion, I’ve been wary of going out in this cold, icy weather at all. There was a time when being cooped up indoors for this long would have suffocated me, but maybe due to the pregnancy, I’ve just been thankful for the consistent temperature in our home. I’ve been really trying to take it one day at a time and not make many plans, since they have a tendency to stress me out when I’m looking ahead at them, especially since I never know when I’ll have a sudden spell of nausea or just want to go into hibernation.

Speaking of hibernation, I dreamed I was a bear last night, and I curled up for a six month nap to wait for Baby to arrive. I also had several less cozy dreams, but I won’t go into those – vivid dreaming is definitely one of my prominent symptoms, and it started a few days before I even took the pregnancy test.

We haven’t bought much for Baby yet, but I thought I’d mention the fun items we have purchased/received so far:

1. Love You Forever was a very special Christmas gift from my cousin Nicole and her boyfriend, Matt, as her mom read it to her every night when she was a child.

2. No picture to illustrate, but my mother-in-law and sister-in-law sewed us three beautiful burp cloths with fabric cut outs of elephants, since we've chosen elephants to be our child's favorite animal. (Or at least the theme of their first bedroom.)

3. The Vera Bradley Happy Snails Baby Bag, which I bought with gift money from my in laws after Christmas. I love it! A little on the "girly" side, but I'm sure if we have a baby boy, he won't notice/mind. I watched several reviews of it before purchasing, and I saw several positive ones with mothers who cloth diaper, showing how many stuffed all-in-ones they could shove in there with cloth wipes and homemade wipe spray. It just seemed like the perfect choice, so now it's sitting atop the china cabinet, waiting to be used.

 

4. Another Vera Bradley item, my mother-in-law put this adorable bunny blanket friend in my stocking for Christmas. It's anxious to be covered in Baby's spit up!

5. A few onesies and newborn outfits from Goodwill, where I discovered people discard their never-worn newborn clothes (a common phenomenon, I'm realizing!) for thrifty people to scoop them up for spare change. I shared this with my mom, and she has her own stash of freshly washed, like-new clothes waiting for Baby to stain up upon arrival.

 6. Though not intended for this particular baby, Felipe gave me this Little Miss Austen version of Pride and Prejudice before our wedding, because I'd seen it at Barnes & Noble and fallen in love. I'd stashed it away thinking it would be several years before anyone could chew on its pages, but turns out we'll have a use for it soon enough!

Concluding the first trimester.

This morning, I had an 8:45 appointment with Dr. Subit at Women’s Care. Since I didn’t have to get the pap test, it was very quick, and I was all dressed again and ready to go by 8:57. They took a urine sample when I first arrived, then the nurse took my blood pressure and I waited for the doctor to come in. He showed up pretty quickly, and after our introductions, his first question was whether I wanted a boy or a girl. I laughed and said, “Well, I’m supposed to want a ‘healthy baby,’ but I wouldn’t mind if it were a healthy baby ____.” We’ll leave that blank in case baby reads this someday and isn’t the sex I mentioned, in order to avoid hurt feelings, but those of you who know me can probably guess what was said. Of course we’ll be happy regardless of the outcome. We listened to baby’s heart beat for a bit (160 beats per minute!), and he did a vaginal culture swab. He asked if I had any questions, and I mentioned that every book I’ve read says we pregnant ladies need to sleep on our left side, so I wondered if this was true/when I would need to start doing so. His response was that no studies have actually shown any particular sleeping position to be better than another, but sleeping on the back/stomach later on in pregnancy, once I’ve blown up like a balloon, could cause discomfort or increase swelling during the night.

My next appointment is in four weeks, and I'll be seeing another doctor then, as a nurse recommended I meet all of them since there's no guarantee as to which one will deliver Baby. I'm not sure exactly what will take place during that visit, since I've opted out of the majority of tests they do, and the next thing on my list is for an ultrasound at 19-23 weeks.

Can we just skip all the icky stuff and get straight to holding that precious baby in our arms?

Holiday overview

Christmas Eve was spent with my mom's side of the family, where we had a delicious meal, exchanged gifts, then watched Christmas Vacation until we were too tired to stay any longer.

We spent Christmas morning at my parents', late morning/early afternoon at Felipe's parents' and the Kowalkas' home, then had the workers over for dinner. There are no pictures of any of those events, probably because Patrick wasn't around to create a G+ event and make us all join party mode so that photos are auto-uploaded (so convenient!).

On the day after the day after Christmas, Felipe took to me our favorite Woosterian restaurant, Broken Rocks Cafe.

We had a meal with Felipe's side of the family on New Year's Day, and I beat everyone at Balderdash (no big deal), then we went to my grandma's house. During the visit, we chipped in to help my mom finish hand quilting the quilt she's making for me and Felipe (and, if you remember that long ago, the one I started while living at my old apartment and never finished).

I paused from quilting to watch a very detailed video of a natural birth with Driana and Aunt Lisa. As you can see, I'm feeling very brave about it:

 And to celebrate 2014, Kennedy ate a peach with a movie playing in the background.

12 weeks!

Morning sickness has mostly subsided now, and I'm so much less fatigued. I had my second doctor's appointment yesterday, but with a different doctor's office, as neither Felipe nor I had been very satisfied with the care provided by Dr. Meda at Samaritan Women's Care. During our first visit, she was dismissive of questions, brief, and not thorough at all. I contacted Women's Care in Mansfield and set up an appointment to pick up where we'd left off with Samaritan, and wow, I was impressed. The first step was to talk with the person who handles insurance, and she carefully went over all of the costs and their processes, making sure I knew everything there possibly was to know and seeing if I had any questions. After getting blood drawn by the nicest nurse who didn't leave the tourniquet on my arm for several hours, I was allowed to remove my coat and boots when getting weighed at this appointment, bringing my weight down to 133 from the whopping 145 it had been at my previous appointment. The nurse at Samaritan was in a rush and told me to leave my boots on when I attempted to do otherwise, because it "didn't make that much of a difference, anyway." Accuracy is not their fine point, I guess.

The appointment ended with a 30-45 minute conversation with a nurse about each of the appointments I will have between now and birth, what tests are optional and which are necessary, and some description of the birthing process at MedCentral. One of the reasons I had felt so strongly about switching doctors was a phone call with Dr. Meda's office in which I requested to opt out of the pap test and was told, "you have to have it." When I asked exactly what that meant, I was transferred to a nurse who advised, "Good luck finding someone who won't make you get the test." I cancelled my next Samaritan appointment and decided that even if I was required to have the test, I'd rather have it in an environment where I felt comfortable and respected. Funnily, I hadn't even told this nurse about that issue, and she looked at the paperwork, remarked, "Oh, you're only 20, we don't do pap tests on anyone under 21," and crossed it off the list. When I got home, I Googled "pap test under 21" and found an enormous number of articles on major news sites saying studies have indicated that it is unnecessary and even unwise to test on women before they're 21. In addition, an ABC news article stated, "But they’ve  found that testing every three years prevented just as many cervical cancer deaths as testing every year. But  the annual testing brought on false-positives, unnecessary biopsies, which bring a risk of infection, pregnancy complications and infertility, and, of course, unnecessary stress." I had my last test about a year and a half ago.

I think my husband is getting hungry, so I'd better go help with that, and I promised a trip to the library today :) Hopefully I'll get better at updating regularly.

bananas, steaks, and canned ravioli

The "morning" (aka all day) sickness has kicked in for sure. I don't want to complain too much, but I was trying not to lose a stomachful of Saltines on the asphalt of my college's parking lot yesterday afternoon, so maybe I can just a little?

This morning, I angrily vowed to never eat another banana after I learned that they taste very acidic and creamy on their return trip. And "creamy and acidic" are two things I will never request in a restaurant. For lunch, I munched on a leftover steak, and now just the very thought of meat - beef, pork, chicken, I don't care what kind - has me gagging uncontrollably. Except, oddly enough, for the synthetic-y, probably-going-to-take-several-years-off-my-lifespan meat in canned Ravioli. I just about nearly destroyed our kitchen cabinets searching for a can of that stuff, then sent a text to my hubs asking for him to bring me home 5 cans of it instead of the Buffalo Wild Wings he had planned on. And that is how I really, really know that my life will never be the same.

pregnancy brain

At school today, my professor asked when the baby is due, and I replied, "July... of next year." Because, you know, I didn't want her to think I could travel back in time, or that the Coors/Garcia gestation period is longer than that of the average human.