Epiphany.

I was tie-dyeing some orange onesies for my friend and decided to throw a couple in there of the newborn variety for myself. It wasn't until I pulled them out of the dye and finished undoing the rubber bands on the first one for baby Stock that I swear I heard a firecracker go off in my head all glowing and sparkly like that said HOLY CRAP OUR BABY'S GOING TO WEAR THIS!

And then I started grinning and got really, REALLY excited :)

Growing Pains and Beauty Secrets

We all know about the crazy transformation a uterus goes through when it's housing a developing baby...LOTS of stretching and growing, which in theory is a magical thing. In practice? It's a little uncomfortable. Not in a bad way really, but in a I-just-spent-the-afternoon-at-Salt-Lick kind of way.

I know that stretch marks are a genetic inevitability for me, but that hasn't stopped me from getting some of the Mama Bee products that Burt's Bees put out - I picked up their peppermint leg and foot cream, body oil, and belly balm. I tried out the leg cream this morning after my shower and the tingly peppermint felt sooooooo good, because usually in the summer I am a furnace anyway and now I have this whole other circulatory system going on in my body so I'm ROASTING kind of all the time, so with the fan on and the tingly lotion...it was awesome. 

I have been a LUSH fanatic since before it came to the US, and when my sweet sister came into town last summer we discovered our mutual love and she shared her secret to beautiful skin which I have since adopted:

Burt's Bees Body Oil + LUSH Buffy Bar. Start at your feet and apply some oil then go to town with the buff bar, working your way up your body, scrubbing in circular motions. Rinse. 

I do this about 1-2 times/week.

Finally, every night right before going to bed I bust out the belly balm. Like I said, there's nothing to be done about stretch marks except nourish your skin, drink lots of water and love on it while marveling about the amazing stuff it can do (like make room for a whole other PERSON!). The massage also helps the oh-so-slow digestion (according to a massage therapist I talked to, you're supposed to top right to top left, down, and then from left to right).

Definitely enjoying this pregnancy thing a whole lot more these days :)

Thankful.

You know what? Thank GOD for the second trimester. If I felt the way I felt a couple weeks ago? We'd be having the one kid. In fact, the women I've spoken to who have thrown up "all day every day" for 9 months (their words) have a total of 1 child. I totally get that.

We got a juicer this weekend, which has coincided with me being JUST SO FREAKING EXHAUSTED and I think it's because the babe is wicked excited to be getting lots of delish nutrients and is busy growing and therefore wearing me out.  The latest concoctions have included variations on the theme of spinach/cucumber/apple/pineapple/strawberries/fresh blackberries/oranges/lemons.

In other words, there's a party in my tummy.

I threw up on my laundry today.

Hey, strangers.

I've felt a little disconnected from my whole enjoying-the-pregnancy thing because I've been trying to get my head around work and every wonderful and sometimes really difficult learning experience, so I decided to get back to my love of journaling. I have a brain drain that I try to write a couple pages in every night to empty everything out so that it doesn't keep me up at night. Working like a charm. Handwritten journaling is so my anti-drug.

I am feeling tons better, thankfully. More the mental aspect than anything, because sometimes I get queasy, and every weekday, without fail, I puke. Sometimes once, sometimes twice, always stomach acid. I've gotten to the point that I kind of look forward to it because I feel really, really good afterward. But today, I decided that maybe I should put some clothes in the wash before going to work. So I bend over to put the clothes in the washer and before I could stop it, I puked a little on my clothes. That were about to go into the washer. So you know, no harm no foul.

I'm deliriously sleepy - I played really hard today, so I'm going to put myself in cozy cozy bed and I promise I'll be a better blogger soon :) It's inevitable: the next 4 weeks are about to be filled with George Lopez, Bob Schneider, Train, Asleep at the Wheel, Rhett Miller, and Imogen Heap. 

"I can tell you're feeling better because you're crafting."

Oh, Candace knows me all too well.

I woke up Sunday morning a new person, nesting in FULL EFFECT. It's like my brain went: 

UH HELLO we've got SIX MONTHS to get your crap together before this baby shows up! GET UP!

Thankfully I was feeling like I had finally turned a corner. Thus began The Great Nesting of 2010. A lot of my friends have had babies recently and I owe pretty much everyone a gift. Here are a few things I've been working on:

crochet baby blanket for a little boy...need to run and get more gray. 

I found the pattern for this blanket here.

This blanket has taken WAY longer than I expected, 

so the sweet girl will probably get it when she turns 18. Pattern blocks can be found in this book.

I don't know why but tie-dyed baby clothes just make me giggle, and I love giving them as gifts. Here's a stack of some green onesies...I've got some more in the works including orange and pink. If anyone out there wants me to make them something, let me know.

Now, alls I need to do is get THIS mess organized, and I'll be set. Hopefully it won't take 6 months.

the road to the midwifery decision

Well, week 12 starts today and the nasty morning sickness has subsided...not entirely and not all the time, but enough to give me hope. I have moments of normal that nearly take my breath away. I'm having a hard time believing that I'm actually pregnant because I'm not showing at all. Maybe it'll become real with a sono or hearing the heartbeat in a couple weeks at my next midwife appointment :)

I've gotten some funny responses when I tell some people that we've decided to go the midwife route. Things like, "So, you have a midwife...do you have an OBGYN too?" or from my general practice doctor who asks me EVERY TIME I CALL if I want a referral to an OB or if my OB can do the blood test for my thyroid screen or what have you. It was mostly a timing issue...I ditched my old OB after she said that just because all the women in my family have thyroid problems doesn't automatically mean that I'll get them and then promptly refused a test that I requested. But I digress.

Anyhoo, I found out that my general practice doc does well woman exams which I generally schedule around my birthday. Well, we were kind of busy this year what with going to Hawaii and starting a new job, and by the time I looked up, it was a month later and I was prego. I already had a couple months of research under my belt regarding the practice and history of midwifery not because I was pregnant but because I wanted to know what my options were before I got into any sort of place where I'd have to hurry up and make a decision. I'd borrowed The Midwife from a friend and was absolutely fascinated by it, and then I read this post from the Dooce, ordered some more books like this, this, and this, watched Ricki Lake's The Business of Being Born, and it all just made sense.

Nobody can convince anyone else what is right for them, especially in the area of choosing what kind of prenatal care and birth practices are best for an individual, and I'm not going to get on a soapbox about it. Even if you agree or disagree one way or the other, I'd encourage anyone to check out some of the above mentioned resources and decide for yourself. 

If I were going to get anywhere near a soapbox, I would say that the linchpins in deciding for myself that this was what I wanted to do were the statistics of how many births in America are attended by midwives as opposed to how many are attended in every other country in the world, and that the maternal and infant distress/death rates in America are higher than anywhere else, and have remained high and not gone any lower, even though the instance of C-Sections has increased over the last 20 years. It wouldn't be the first time someone called me a granola eating hippie, but...I just don't believe that a woman in labor is something that should be treated as an emergency requiring tons of unnecessary and sometimes harmful interventions. It's a part of life, and I believe that women's bodies know exactly what to do when it's time. Okay. Backing away from the soapbox. But yeah, check out those books and movies, and let's chat :)

So, once I found out I was pregnant, I checked out a couple nearby midwife practices. One was the Allen Birthing Center about 15 miles up the road that had TONS of glowing online recommendations, including a friend of mine who's driving all the way from Arlington to get her prenatal care there. I loved them, but wanted to see if there were any other practices nearby. Kyle actually checked with our insurance and found a midwife that's not only in-network but practices a mile from our house. Bingo.

I suggested Kyle read this book because it was more the brainy part behind the whole midwife decision...a very different vibe from the hippies in Spiritual Midwifery, but I figured he wasn't quite ready for all that talk of birth as a psychedelic trip (although I thought it was fantastic). He was totally prepared with tons of questions for the midwife when we first met with her, and she patiently answered all our questions and spent at least an hour with us. We decided that day that she would be our midwife. 

Since then, I had my first visit which was an hour and 45 minutes at 9 weeks. It included a head-to-toe physical, a review of my overall fitness history and goals, my nutrition, and of course lots and lots of question and answer. I absolutely love how much time I get to spend with my midwife. She's hilarious and real, and what I like most is that she only takes on 6 births a month.  She's totally into the whole empowered woman approach to things, and approaches things like genetic testing or sonograms as such. Basically we're partners in making the decisions in my family's care - she, the educated experienced one, and me the neophyte with loads of questions who she believes is capable of making the sound decisions. She's on my speed dial and I know I can call her any time day or night with concerns and questions. Which I did, especially over the last few weeks.

So yeah - my next appointment is not this coming week but next, and I'm excited to hang out with her again and getting to hear the little one's heartbeat :)