I’m pleased to report that not all pregnancy books are flippant, condescending, and alarmist. After my rant about them, I ordered two new books from Amazon. I’m enjoying both of them and am finding that they complement each other nicely. They came this week so obviously I haven’t had a chance to read them in depth but the books I bought are Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy and The Joy of Pregnancy: The Complete, Candid, and Reassuring Companion for Parents-to-Be. The Mayo Clinic book, as you would expect, focuses on the medical information but isn’t alarming or flip. It’s factual and straightforward. The other book has this information as well but, as the title suggests, it focuses a little more on the feelings side of things than the Mayo Clinic book. It was written by a delivery room nurse who is also a childbirth educator. It sounds like she has a lot of experience soothing and educating anxious parents, which is exactly what I was looking for. Between the two books I feel like I’m getting a positive, realistic, and reassuring feeling about pregnancy. Now THAT is what I needed!
11 weeks, 3 days June 24, 2009
Most women I know have a couple of different sizes of clothes in their closets and I’m no exception. I have three sizes in there. There’s Weight-Watchers-worked-and-all-my-clothes-are-too-big size. There’s well-this-is-about-average size. Last but not least, there’s I-got-lazy-over-the-winter-and-haven’t-seen-the-inside-of-a-gym-in-months size. Small, medium, and large! Before I got pregnant I was working my way back down from large to medium and having some success. In the last few weeks, though, I’ve been solidly in the large category. Much to my surprise, I had to retire a pair of pants and some shorts last week because there was no way I was getting into them this summer. Both were in the medium category but I was hoping to make them last a little longer. No such luck.
I wouldn’t say that I’m showing, per se, but my clothes are definitely getting more snug, both in the chest and the belly. To remedy this – and because I was near the outlets in Lancaster the past few days – I ventured out with the idea of buying some bigger clothes. I debated whether to buy maternity clothes or just bigger sizes. I decided that I really didn’t want to risk buying bigger clothes and then growing out of THEM too, so I went for maternity clothes. Yep, I’m not out of the first trimester yet and I actually now own maternity clothes. 2 shorts, 1 caprisfor work, 3 shirts for work, and 2 t-shirts. And all I have to say about that is… ahhhhh! It feels good to have some shorts that fit! All my shorts except 1 pair were in the small or medium category so I was feeling a little stuck for hot weather clothes. It’s so, so nice to know that I now have some clothes that will be comfy AND I’ll be able to wear them for the whole summer. The t-shirts fit now too – mostly becauseheir only “adaptation” for pregnancy is that they’re a lot longer – but everything elsewill have to wait a little bit longer. Glad to know that they’re there when I need them because I’m starting to bust out of several of my work shirts!
It was a little surreal being in the store, I have to admit. This was the first money we’ve really spent on anything pregnancy- or baby-related. I guess that means that I finally believe and am starting to actually trust that it’s really happening! We have our next doctor’s appointment next week. Last time they mentioned something in passing about possibly doing another ultrasound then. I’m kind of hoping that they do; it would be reassuring to see the heartbeat at the end of the first trimester too. Stay tuned – I’ll let you know what happens.
10 weeks, 2 days – In which she rants about pregnancy books June 16, 2009
When Pete and I made the decision to build our family the “old fashioned way” I didn’t bother doing much preparation for the actual process of being pregnant. I knew how to get there and I knew that the getting there is often not as easy as it sounds. Over the last 7 1/2 years of working in adoption, I’ve worked with a lot of families that have experienced infertility. Although I have not been through the pain of the infertility process, I’ve seen many families – and several friends – struggle with it. I didn’t assume that we would be able to get pregnant so I didn’t bother to get or read any pregnancy books or websites. Why fill my head with all that knowledge if I wasn’t going to need to use it?
Needless to say, once we had a positive pregnancy test I felt massively behind the curve! I had no idea what was going on!! Within a day or two I had run out to Target and, from their small selection of pregnancy books, selected one that looked good. Before going, I’d read online about some of the books, including the famous “What to Expect when You’re Expecting.” Solidly mixed reviews on that one! That one happened to be one of the books that was at Target. I picked it up and skimmed a few pages. It seemed informative, chatty, and all around pretty helpful. All these years can’t be wrong, right???
Wrong! When I brought it home and started reading it “informative and chatty” revealed itself to be preachy, condescending, and flip. I don’t like the tone and I don’t like the organization. Sure, I’ve gotten some helpful information out of it but only by overlooking the pieces I don’t like. My two biggest complaints, however, are these – it’s incredibly dismissive of the fathers AND it has made pregnancy and birth a time of fear rather than reveling in what your body is built to do.
First, the father issue… I knew I’d hit a stumbling block when one of the questions was something along the lines of “Now that she’s pregnant, my wife is asking for a lot more help around the house. Why has she gotten so demanding?” The answer was basically do whatever she asks, you are her slave and errand boy for the next 9 months. Okay, I understand what they were getting at – she’s tired, she’s nauseous, and she can’t perform at previous levels so someone’s going to have to pick up the slack. However, the answer totally dismissed the reality that, while women are having physical and emotional reactions to pregnancy, men/partners could very well be having equally strong emotional reactions! After all, they’re going to be a parent, too! They’re going to have to support the family while the mom’s on maternity leave. They may or may not know much about baby care. Let’s give dads and partners their due – pregnancy and birth isn’t something that just happens to the mom, it’s a family affair!
Second, the fear issue… The reality is that women’s bodies have been going through pregnancy and birth for thousands of years. We’re built for this. I’ve always joked that I better be fertile because I don’t want to be built like a “Fertile Myrtle” and not be able to use it! I’m grateful that I was able to get pregnant. I want a pregnancy book that’s going to be reassuring, whose message is “yes, women have been doing this for ages!” Sure, I want to know what issues can arise, what danger signs to watch for, and how to stay healthy. However, what I DON’T need is to hear that I’m going to irreparably damage the baby if I don’t eat enough leafy green vegetables for a day or two! I’m starting to think that pregnancy and birth have been pathologized by the medical community so that now it’s seen as a time of danger and trouble rather than a natural process. Yes, I fully understand that there are high risk pregnancies and that things could go wrong at any time. But isn’t that true of pretty much everything we do? Isn’t it safer and better for us and the baby to approach it with the idea that things are going to go RIGHT??
With this in mind, I’m in search of a better pregnancy book. One that won’t condescend to me, one that will discuss the joys of pregnancy, and one that will reassure that, even if I don’t have much of an idea about what’s going on, there is something in my body passed down through the mothers and grandmothers from both sides of my family that knows what’s what to do.
10 weeks June 14, 2009
This morning I had my first dream about the baby. I consider this a momentous step. For the 5 weeks or so that I’ve known about the pregnancy, I’ve had a hard time envisioning the end result. I was so focused on what was going to happen between here and there and so nervous about something going wrong that I had a hard time imagining that there will be an actual child at the end of all this. This is the first time that my imagination wandered into the world of wondering what that child will be like.
I was surprised to find that it was a girl – not quite what I’d expected. She was cute - had a pretty light complexion and no hair. Both Pete and I come from pasty-white European stock but I was born with jet black hair and Pete still has his. In my dream I kept insisting that the baby was 2 days old, although it was more like a 6-month old developmentally. I know exactly where that came from… most of my experience with children starts at 3 months old. I’ve never spent a whole lot of time with a newborn. When I worked in daycare the youngest the children could be when they started was 3 months old. Now that I’m working in international adoption, it is rare that children come home at 6 months even. In the countries where we work most of the children are a year old or older when the come home. (Developmentally they’re typically delayed a bit but chronologically they’re frequently 12 months old or older.) I think my brain couldn’t conjure what a newborn would be like so it went to something I did know.
One of the notable things for me was the lack of panic about how to care for the child. If you take the premise that the baby actually WAS 2-days old, then I should have been feeling a little overwhelmed about what to do with this new little life that’s dependent on me. Instead, I was feeling calm, cool, collected, and competent. What a reassuring message to get from the recesses of my brain!!
8 weeks, 4 days June 13, 2009
First ultrasound – 6.4.09, originally uploaded by heatheracarter.
Written on Saturday, June 6 – Two days ago we had our first doctor’s appointment. Oh my lord, that was amazing! I know the photo is a little hard to see but if you look really carefully you can see the what will be the legs, the head, and – if you look REALLY carefully – you can almost see the little arms crossed over the chest. Hint – the legs are in the top right corner of the blob in the middle and the head is at the bottom left corner. The dark circle is the amniotic sac where he’ll be growing for the next 7 months (no, we don’t know gender, we’ve just chosen to use “him”).
We saw him first but then we heard him. There was the heartbeat going 160 beats per minute. I know everyone’s reaction in that moment is different. Mine was along the lines of, “Oh my god, I really AM pregnant.” I’d been too scared before then to really believe it. I have too many people in my life that have had difficulty getting pregnant or who have had miscarriages that I know sometimes this doesn’t go smoothly. Working in adoption you no longer take fertility for granted, that’s for sure.
We learned at the appointment that I was 8 weeks 4 days on that day and that our due date is January 7, 2010. Hmm, Christmas is going to be interesting this year!! This kid will join a bunch of friends and family members with January birthdays – Pete, Aaron, Chris W., Aunt June.
Now that we know everything’s okay, Pete and I are having a hard time keeping our mouths shut about this pregnancy. We’d planned on waiting until the end of the first trimester to tell folks but we just can’t hold it in any more. 
8 weeks June 11, 2009
Written on Wednesday, June 3 – Tomorrow, little one. Tomorrow we get our first glimpse of you. Tomorrow we’ll know for sure that you’re there. I don’t know why it matters more to have a medical professional tell me – and show me – that you’re there but it does. It matters more that the results on the pee stick. It matters more than all the symptoms I’ve been feeling. Tomorrow they’ll do an ultrasound and we’ll see you for the first time. If we’re very lucky, we’ll also hear your heart beat. Hard to believe that you have a heart already and that it’s beating. No wonder I’m so tired! You’ve been undergoing a lot of construction!
One thing to know about your mom, little one… she’s a worrier. I’ve been worried – wondering if the test is wrong, wondering if something has happened. If the Wisdom of the Internet is to be believed, though, I’m not that different than most moms doing this for the first time. Tomorrow they’ll tell us if you’re really there. And then they’ll tell us how to take care of you, how to grow you over the next 7 months. And then we’ll walk out… knowing that it’s true. I’ll try to keep the worrying to a minimum for you; I know it’s not good for you to feel stress. No promises, though, ’cause your mom’s a worrier. Good thing your dad is a little more sane.
When we walk out tomorrow, knowing that you’re there and okay, then we’re going to shout it from the rooftops. We’ve been trying to keep it quiet the last few weeks. It’s really, really hard – much harder than either of us expected. We were going to wait a few more weeks to tell everyone just to make sure you’re okay. But we just can’t – we can’t wait to share the good news of you! Now I understand how my families at work feel when I call them with THE CALL and start with “Are you sitting down?” And then I describe to them the precious little face I’m looking at of the infant/ toddler/ preschooler/ 3rd grader that will soon be their son or daughter. Wow, now I kinda understand.
See you tomorrow, little one.
7 1/2 weeks June 10, 2009
Written on Saturday, May 30, 2009 – For many, many years I’ve felt like my primary goal in life was to become a mom. From the time I was little I was always one of those kids that gravitated to the babies in the room. In college, my first co-op at Northeastern was at a daycare center. I used to joke that I chose that one because I wanted to be around babies so much that it was either that co-op or make some unwise decisions with my reproduction. (We’ll ignore the fact that, um, I wasn’t doing anything that would risk reproduction at the time…) I think it’s not by accident that I have always worked in jobs that focus on children and their welfare – summer camp counselor for kids with disabilities, day care with infants and toddlers, tutoring, school counselor, one-on-one assistant for deaf kids in a mainstream environment… you get the idea. Even now, my work focuses on finding families for children from overseas and supporting the families once they’ve met their children.
Before we were married Pete and I spent a LOT of time talking about our parenting philosophies and what kind of parents we want to be when that time comes. Given that we’re both in our 30s, pretty financially stable, and the biological clock is ticking away, we decided to stop using birth control shortly after the wedding. We weren’t trying to get pregnant, more like getting out of the way. If it happened, it happened. We went about our business normally and didn’t really watch when would be the optimum times to get pregnant. We didn’t want to start putting that pressure on ourselves. Fast forward to April when, after 5 months of this low key approach, we decided to try to time it just a little. Well, it must have worked because on Monday it will be 4 weeks since we found out we’re pregnant.
I took the test on Monday night, May 4th. I’d planned to wait until Tuesday but it turned out that Pete was going to be away that night and I sure as hell wanted him there to see the outcome. I thought it would be three minutes of waiting and anxiety – what does it say? what does it say? Um, no – I had my answer within seconds. It was startlingly fast. I was stunned. OMG, we’d really done it!
“Pete, come here a second,” I called into the next room. “What?” he asked, sounding like he was gauging whether it was worth moving. I definitely wasn’t going to tell him he’s going to be a dad by yelling through the bathroom wall. “Just come here a second. I want to show you something.” He came into the bathroom and I pointed to the test sitting on the counter. I can’t remember what I said next but there was some hugging and kissing and probably a “holy shit” or two.
It’s taken some time to get used to the idea of being pregnant. For the first few days I walked around trying the words on for size in my head. “I’m pregnant. We’re going to have a baby.” It seemed amazing to me that people just walk around every day doing this, just strolling through their lives gestating. Didn’t they see what a HUGE deal this was??? Pete and I had decided that we were not going to tell people right away just in case something when wrong. This gave me a few days to get used to the idea before starting to share the news.
Turns out that I needed those couple of days. I was vacillating wildly between joy, anticipation, disbelief, and freaking out. I had to wrap my mind first around the changes that would be happening in my body in the coming months, before I could even TRY to envision having a kid at home. To be honest, it took probably 3 weeks before I started believing that I really am pregnant. Before then, I was a bundle of nerves, watching my body for any signs of miscarriage or something going wrong. Even now, I’m only just starting to trust that there probably is a kid growing in there. I’m still having a hard time envisioning the time when the child is actually here, though. That’s still causing me a whole bunch of worries – how will I sleep? how will I manage to make dinner or do laundry? will Pete and I have any time together? how will I manage going back to work? will we ever find a new and happy equilibrium after the kid is born? I know the answer to all these questions is “we’ll figure it out.” However, knowing that and believing it are two different things!
Blog redirected – new name needed! June 8, 2009
This blog started as a place for Pete and I to share information on our wedding, which was held in October, 2008. So it only seems fitting to continue the progression and to change the focus of this blog now that our life has taken the next turn… come January 7, 2010 we’re going to be parents, assuming all goes well between here and there. We found out in early May and waited until the first doctor’s appointment last week to start telling people. Okay, so maybe we leaked it a little before then but, what do you expect, we’re first time parents!!
We can’t change the URL for this blog but we can change the name as it appears on the blog. We’ve been trying to come up with something clever (or even just interesting) but have come to a dead end. So, we turn to you… anyone have any suggestions???
Over the past 2 weeks or so I’ve been drafting a few posts. I’ll be posting them over the next few days. Enjoy!
