Luna Bee...

...is one week old!


We are both healthy and well. I will post soon about her birth and more, but right now I'm just coming out of that first week fog of nursing and sleeping, sleeping and nursing.

Pink is the new Spider-Man

Linus' favorite color is pink. It was orange, but some time a couple of months ago, pink moved up. He's pink crazy. Anything pink and he's all over it. He's 3, so he's completely free of any bullshit associations having to do with gender and color, unlike my mother. When I was pregnant with Linus, she and I would go baby clothes shopping and she would be horrified when I would want to buy a little floral shirt or something. I hated that even for tiny babies "boy" clothes were covered with sports imagery, or trains, or bears. All in shades of blue or maybe plaid, of course.

So, for my sister's wedding a couple of weeks ago, Linus decided he wanted to wear a pink shirt. Fine with me. However, we gender-stereotype toddlers in this culture way harder than even grown men and women. I could go into the men's clothing section of any department store and buy my husband a pink button down, or maybe a polo shirt, no problem. But you can not buy a pink shirt for a 3-year old boy. Period. Turn around and face the girl's section and you see nothing but pink. A friggin' sea of pink. But at least little girls can go into the boy's section if they want and buy a plaid shirt or whatever without raising too many eyebrows. Not the other way around, however. The clothes in the girl's section aren't just pink. They also have all kinds of other signifiers of girly-ness; bows, puffy sleeves, lace, "girl"-specific imagery, etc. It's really insane. This doesn't come from the kids, people. This is all grown up baggage and it's gross, frankly. Sure, there are innate differences between little boys and girls, but this clothing crap is all cultural.

I looked in 4 different stores for a dressy pink shirt. The closest I could find was a white button down. Pathetic. And, I knew that wouldn't be sufficient for Linus. I finally got sick of finding nothing, so I went into the girls section and picked out 4 pink shirts of various styles. He was psyched to see them, but one was the clear favorite: a pink thermal with slightly puffy shoulders and a big, sparkly crown printed on the front. He calls it his "princess shirt". Awesome. I'll see if I can get a picture of him in it up later.

My son is pregnant

Linus informed me that he too has a baby in his belly that kicks him. It also tells him to be quiet because it's trying to sleep. So now when we feel my belly for kicks, we feel his belly too. Even Steven.

I sitting here on our back patio watching the chickens stroll back and forth, patrolling the grass for bugs. They must have decimated bug populations in our backyard by now with their thorough, daily searches. They still seem to find plenty to snack on, however. Whenever I get up to go inside for something, they all run over to see if I'm preparing to pass out treats ("treats" in this case meaning stale bread or table scraps). After a couple of seconds, when it becomes obvious I got nothin', they look at me with chicken reproach and resume their promenade. It's quite relaxing, really, watching them. That is until one of them hops up into one of my garden beds, then it's Chicken Hosing Time! They've scratched up my basil more than once this summer and it pisses me off! They also like to eat the kale, when they get the chance. Good thing for them we actually get something in return, or it would be Pot Pie Time!

It's almost dusk now, so they're slowing making their way back to the hen house. We've been getting 4 eggs a day for about a month now; 2 large, pale brown ones and 2 small, dark brown ones. We give about a dozen a week to the neighbors, in case the occasional early morning chicken dust-up disturbs them. They claim not to be bothered, but it sure as hell bothers me! It's was worse when we first introduced the 2 new ones in with the 2 older Barred Rocks a couple of months back, but now they've settled down. The new ones got their asses kicked, or pecked, really, all over the place, but I guess the pecking order has been established.

My belly is huge and I still have +-14 weeks to go. I feel impatient already, like I'm in the last month. I feel fine, no real complaints beyond bigness, and impatience. I have a fairly grueling travel schedule ahead of me this month, and I'm hoping I don't fall asleep during any meetings and snore or drool in front of my colleagues. I leave for a week long meeting in San Jose on Sunday, then I'm back for a week, then to Kansas City for a week to teach in a workshop (the boys are coming with me on that one to visit everyone in Lawrence), then I leave from KC and fly to a week-long brainstorming meeting in Pune, India. I know!

Once I get through all this travel, September is multiple trips to Seattle for my sister's wedding and wedding-related activities, as well as my Gram's 90th birthday. If I can make it through September, October should be fairly low key. Then, a baby! I think it's a sign you're doing too much when you look forward to the arrival of a new baby for a little down time.

More catching up...

I know! I've barely posted anything in the last bunch of months. Tina asked for an update so here it is:

Ok, first of all, we've changed Skeletor's fetal name to Cindy Pilates. Yes, apparently we're having a girl. What?! A girl?! That's what I said. It was a bad angle on the ultrasound, and the tech didn't sound too confident, so I won't be too surprised if Cindy comes out an Igor, but for now we're embracing the girl thing. Well, at least I'm trying to embrace it. I think I made myself pretty clear that I was hoping for a boy - it just seems so much more straight forward to just throw another boy into the mix - so I was a bit...what? Upset? Disappointed? No, not exactly. Just sort of thrown for a loop. I have a hard time adjusting when I've spent a lot of time imaging just how I think things will be. That's why I never really had a clear picture in my head of how I thought labor would go last time. I knew I'd never be able to picture it, so I didn't want to be all invested in one image and not be able to go with whatever the flow turned out to be. Does that make sense? Anyway, I'm slowly coming around. I'm still completely freaked out by the idea of a tween- or teenage girl, but I'm starting to like the idea of a whole different vibe with this one. Not that another boy would've been boring or routine or something, but you get my meaning. So, a girl.

The name Cindy Pilates comes from my friend Jas, who insisted I was having a girl before we ever knew. Not because he thinks he has any special insight or anything, but he and his wife are expecting a girl next month and he wanted me in the same boat. So, not so much a prediction as a magic spell he cast over and over. The "Pilates" part is because he's convinced that both his wife and I got pregnant shortly after taking up pilates because we'd just taken up pilates Pilates as the magic fertility rite. Of course, I was trying to get pregnant, but they were not. In fact, according to him they were taking multiple prophylatic measures, but pilates triumphed in the end. Don't doubt the power of pilates!

A girl! Whaaaat? I know!

Linus wants to name her Batopat. Or, alternatively, Patobat. Maybe it's spelled Bat o' Pat, I'm not sure. I'll have to check with him.

p.s. Big Bad John, what's your email address?

Miscellaneous catching up

I know, right?

We went camping last weekend. This was our second time out. Most of my best memories from childhood were of family camping trips, so I've been psyched for a long time to take Linus out. We never got our shit together last summer, but this time I knew the window of time in which I'd be able to sleep on the ground was small, so we had to get a move on right quick. I figure that if we work the kinks out early, later when I'm too big with baby to be comfortable the boys can go out for weekend trips and leave me home to nap in peace. Orion and I used to do all kinds of hiking and camping back in the day, but we hadn't been out in years. I don't think we even took our equipment out of storage the entire time we lived in Kansas. No point - you have to drive 8 hours just to get anywhere remotely hike-able. But now we live an hour from 2 mountain ranges. Of course, the kind of camping we're doing now is a bit different - car camping vs. back-country camping. We had to get a bigger tent and a cooler and what not. And, if I'm not carrying it in on my back, I want a dang seat and a big fat sleep pad!

This is all up Linus' alley, what with all the sticks and rocks out in nature. He could spend 3 hours throwing rocks into the river. We roasted wienies on sticks over the camp fire, then marshmallows, of course. He's happy to sleep on the ground and rain doesn't bother him at all, which is good because we got lots of it last weekend. I apparently chose the perfect elevational band for rainfall. A little higher up the mountain, dry, a little lower down the mountain, dry(er). Ah well, we had fun anyway. I think if we go in the next couple of weeks I may have one more trip in me, but after that it's bed only for me.

I'm jealous

At this moment I'm watching Linus sit on the back patio eating a blueberry muffin. He's wearing a Batman shirt, complete with cape and utility belt, khaki shorts, and blue and red monster rain boots. He's quietly singing Twinkle Twinkly Little Star to himself. I think. Awesome!

Hi, Skeletor!

Sorry the scan sucks. You know what the best thing about that image is? The nice, clear, midline down the middle of the skull! That's what I like to see in a developing fetus, a well-defined midline.

1.8 mm

The ultrasound tech took about 4 different measurements of nuchal translucency last evening and they ranged from 1.4-1.8 mm, with a crown-to-rump length of 59 mm. So, unless my blood work comes back really anomolous, my guess is that the probability of any of the most common aneuploidies (or congenital heart defects) will actually be lower than even that based on demographic data (you know, advanced maternal age and all). In other words, YAY!

Even better, everything else looked great too. All kinds of brains, strong heartbeat, 5 fingers on each hand, everything where you'd expect it. Huge relief! The difference between how anxious I was going in vs. coming out of that ultrasound was bigger than even I thought it would be. I didn't fully realize just how wound up I was about it until I started relaxing as we looked around in there. Phew.

Turns out I didn't need to get all chippy about whether the ultrasound tech was going to be forthcoming with information. He was a really nice guy and he took us on a guided tour. Full disclosure, just how I like it. We even got a pretty cool picture of what looks like Skeletor waving at us from inside my uterus. That'll go in the scrapbook. Maybe I'll scan it and post it later.

I unleashed the circus last night by calling all of my family and infoming them. My mother already knew because last weekend was her monthly visit and she full-on asked me directly if I was pregnant. Wtf?! She caught me off guard and I wasn't prepared to lie straight to her face so I copped. She's wiley that one. She was only good for maybe one more day of discretion anyway, so we had to spill the beans.

Every single person we've told so far has said they're hoping for a girl. Friends too. Even Orion. In fact, even Linus! I asked him yesterday if he'd rather have a baby brother or sister and he said, "baby sister" (though then he said he didn't want to be a big brother he just wanted to be "a Linus", so take that how you will). Apparently I'm the only person I know who'd like me to be carrying a boy. Defer to my wishes!! We didn't find out the sex yesterday. It was a little early anyway and Skeletor wasn't cooperating.

I refuse

I'm letting you all know that I refuse to call a seminar broadcast on the internet (or intranet, as the case may be) a "webinar". I just won't do it.

Just so's you know.

Back! (and pregnant)

I just ate a turkey burger in, like, 20 seconds. I'm not kidding. I fucking INHALED it. Why? Because I'm pregnant, that's why, and I've reached that stage where I'm no longer in the driver's seat w/r/t food intake. This phase should last about another 6 months, then I'll be in charge again.

That's right, I said "pregnant". I'm in my 13th week, which means that horrible 1st trimester sleepiness should abate soon (at least until it comes back in the 3rd). We finally decided last November to try again, after many months of:

"Should we?"
"I don't know, what do you think?"
"Well, I guess I kinda feel like we're not done yet, what do you think?"
"Yeah, me too, but are we ready for it?"
"I don't know, what do you think?"
"I'm sleepy."
"Me too."

Repeat.

We started trying to get pregnant that December, until I realized that would mean no drinking over the Christmas holiday with family coming to visit. I put the kibosh on that right quick. Tried in January. Nothing. This caused me to immediately assume we'd waited too long and we'd never get pregnant as I was clearly no longer ovulating. I proceeded to pull a bunch of papers about pregnancy and insemination rates and what not. I know. It's what I do, ok?

Did you know that even in healthy couples trying to get pregnant (that is having daily sex at the right time) there's only a 37% probability of conceiving, and a 25% probability of having a live birth. That means that even if absolutely everything goes right, you have a 1 in 4 chance of getting viably pregnant on any given month. (I'm getting this from Wilcox, et al. 1995, "The timing of sexual intercourse in relation to ovulation" N Engl J Med 1995;333:1517-21) Most of the difference between conception rates and live birth rates happens before you even know you're pregnant. Essentially they had 221 healthy women who were trying to get pregnant pee into a cup every morning and record every time they had sex. This way they knew exactly when they ovulated, conceived, miscarried, etc.

This kind of blew my mind at first. Only 37% of women conceive even when the stars are aligned, and only 2/3 of those conceptions end in live births? Doesn't that figure seem low to you? And this was in healthy women trying to get pregnant, not any ol' women. Now I get why you have to be trying unsuccessfully for at least 6 months before the medical community will even begin to think you may have a fertility problem. Even though it is a low probability in any given month, another way to look at it is, even given that low conception rate, the probability of you not conceiving a viable pregnancy after 6 months of trying if you and your partner are healthy is only 18%. So, once I read all this I calmed down a little bit. February, we got pregnant.

Ok, enough statistics (for now). I'm due November 12th. Like my pregnancy with Linus, I feel good about this one. But given our history, I'm not going to relax or fully embrace it until I see that everything's ok. I did get to hear a heartbeat last week, and that was good, but I'm really waiting for today. Today we go in for a nuchal translucency ultrasound. This is a non-invasive, 1st/early 2nd trimester screening proceedure that they've recently started doing in this country (they've been doing it in the UK for quite awhile now). They take some blood and then measure the fetal nuchal translucency (fluid at the nape of the neck) via ultrasound. Really, anything above 2mm or so for the nt measure is associated with higher rates of some chromosomal anomalies (including trisomy 21 - Down's Syndrome) and/or some congenital heart defects depending on gestational and maternal age, and some blood chemistry markers. Blah, blah, blah, I want a nt <2mm. AND I want to see everything else looking good and that nice butterfly shaped higher brain development. That's what I'm looking for.

I'm not really worried about chromosomal anomolies, even given my "advanced maternal age" (all of 38) (mofos!), but fears about a repeat of pregnancy #1 lurk, especially given that we never found out what went wrong exactly.

And I'm not leaving that examination room without knowing the crown-to-rump length and nuchal translucency. I hope the ultrasound tech doesn't try to get all cagey about it. I get that he can't diagnose, but he can give me the friggin' numbers. There will be trouble if he tries to deny me.

Those dastardly Mooninites!

We are big Aqua Teen Hunger Force fans in the McNyset household. I laughed so hard this morning while listening to the report about how the Boston terrorism scare turned out to be a gorilla marketing campaign featuring replicas of the Mooninites that I almost drove off the road, but not as hard as I laughed when I asked Orion, "How could anyone think it was terrorists?" To which he replied;

"'Oh my god! Al Qaeda is giving us the finger before they blow us up with Lite Brites!'"