I'm 4 weeks old today!

Just hanging out in my string bean outfit from Mimi T.

 

 

 

Welcome, Mister Moss

It was you all along.

And you look like Mama,

Baby Calla

Baby Moss

And you look like Papa.

Baby Ben

Baby Moss

Happy 3 weeks!  21 pictures for 21 days... 

One day

Lemon tree, very pretty

Two days

Discovers that sleeves are tasty

Three days

Slept for 3 hours like that

Four days

Sunny funny honey bunny

Five days

How many days, Moss?

Six days

Dad is comfortable if you avoid the beard

Seven days

Post-nursing squishy face

Eight days

Hello doggy brother

Nine days

Dreaming of something complicated

Ten days

First Google visit

Eleven days

You should stop taking pictures and pay attention to me...

Twelve days

Hanging out with Annie

Thirteen days

Angelic in white muslin

 Fourteen days

Meeting Mimi T

Fifteen days

First Moby hug

Sixteen days

Sweet Cali-born babe

Seventeen days

First Moby hug from Daddy

Eighteen days

Mesmerized by pictures on the wall

Nineteen days

Eyes opening wide, getting nice and plump

Twenty days

First bath -- harrowing at first, but ultimately copacetic

Twenty-one days

Settling in

Calla Tells the Birth Story of Moss Teshub

Labor started between 10pm and midnight on Sunday, July 14.  I didn't know for sure that labor had started until about 6am on the 15th, but retrospectively I know I started feeling weird right after dinner the night before.  I think Aoro knew something was up before I did -- I took a bath around 11pm and he not only followed me into the bathroom, he got his front legs up on the edge of the tub and leaned in to kiss my face.  My water-hating dog practically climbing into the bathtub with me, I was clearly acting/feeling/smelling different.

I told Ben I was feeling weird, but that I had no idea if it was just more of the same increasing weirdness, or actual this-is-it weirdness.  I went to bed around 12:30, figuring if The Weirdness was actually labor that it'd be super smart to get some rest.  But really I only slept in 15-45 minute chunks, which now I know is probably because I was having contractions about that far apart.  But at the time I really didn't think what I was feeling were contractions (in fact looking back I'm still not sure that I ever experienced what I imagine a textbook contraction to feel like -- more on that later).  By 4:30ish I woke up and could not get anywhere close to comfortable enough to fall back asleep, so I decided to just get up and watch some TV while I came to terms with the possibility that what I was feeling could possibly maybe potentially be labor.  Aaaand by 5:30ish I was pretty sure it was.  Indeed I was so sure, I went totally outside of my comfort zone and called my midwife and my doula Heather at the uncivilized hour of 6am (I *hate* calling people before 9).

Got the totally reasonable advice to time the "contractions"to see if they were at all regular, and call back around 9 to see if I could sneak myself into the books for a check-up that morning instead of the one I already had scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.  And whaddaya know, between 6:30 and 9:00 they were as regular as regular can be: 6-10 minutes apart, lasting 10-30 seconds, increasing in intensity despite positional changes, a shower, a meal and a healthy dose of skepticism.  

Okay so how were my "contractions" different?  I had been told that while a true contraction is a totally unique and hard-to-describe sensation, it often has elements of menstrual cramping, a wave-like feeling of "tightening" muscles that moves from the top of the belly to the groin, and increased pressure in the pelvis.  For me though, I never felt anything even vaguely "uterine" throughout the whole process.  Pelvic pressure was part of it, but I felt every single one of my contractions completely in my back and never in my front.  Dorsal, not ventral; lower back, not upper belly; tailbone, not uterus.  Even really late in my labor, the pains didn't really ever radiate to the front at all, they stayed pretty much in my tailbone and pelvis.  The strangeness of my contractions compared to what I was expecting definitely lent itself to my skepticism that this was really labor.  As did the fact that I had no other signs of labor besides these weird sensations; no spotting, no water breaking, no other physiological signs that I had been told might help me differentiate real labor from false labor.  The only hints I had were my intuitions and the fact that I had been nesting like a maniac for the previous 2 days (if it was made of fabric and in my house, it was laundered on Saturday or Sunday).

At around 9 we all piled into the car to get to the check-up.  I was very peppy and cheerful at that point, probably because of whatever hormone cocktail was brewing away in my endocrine system.  Two midwives practice at my clinic, both amazing but very different.  Maria is jolly but no-nonsense with a German last name, a deep voice, and a presence both commanding and soothing, where Lin is effervescently sweet with a Mary Poppins accent, fluttery mannerisms, and an impossibly reassuring way of explaining all things baby.  Maria was on call for the day, so she made sure to be the one to examine me.  Everyone was making casual chit-chat during the exam, good spirits all around.  She snaps off her gloves and nonchalantly remarks that I'm "3-4 cm dilated, 90% effaced, everything's in order, so how'd you like to meet your baby tonight?"

As my brain slowly redefined the previous 12 hours as true early labor, the thought of "back labor" popped into my head.  I'd read about how sometimes when the baby has the back of his skull positioned towards mom's spine (rather than the ideal position of face towards spine) labor can be experienced more as pain and pressure in the lower back than anywhere else, but in all my past exams, both Maria and Lin seemed pretty sure that he was in the ideal head-down, back-forward position.  (As it turns out, since Moss was so small, he had plenty of room to wiggle around in there, and may have been in several different positions throughout the day, as well as throughout the last weeks of my pregnancy.  But since I didn't have an ultrasound past 20 weeks, only Moss knows for sure what went on in there.)  Maria confirmed before we left that it is indeed possible to experience "back labor" even if the baby is in an anterior position the whole time, so I decided not to worry about it.  Walking back out to the car, the news sunk in.

Then Ben called literally everyone we know, and our day began in earnest.

And it began with a nap.  Heather's advice was EAT and REST.  Done and done.  Somehow, my body managed to rest for a full two hours, bringing us to 2:30pm, or "the more exciting half of the day".

We called Heather around this time and asked her to come over, despite my continued impression that my labor was not progressing typically and therefore that I shouldn't be bugging people with my perceived "needs" and such.  She arrived less than an hour later, just in time to watch me eat eggs and spicy chicken sausage (and to her credit, to not immediately give me crap about my food choices, which we had learned from her class not two weeks prior would have been more wisely selected to be more carb-y and less protein-y).

The following 5 hours or so were fairly uneventful, and each hour resembled the previous one more than I would have liked.  I sort of fixated on this idea that I wasn't progressing "right" -- I still only felt my contractions in my lower back, and although there was a slight increase in intensity over the 5 hour period, they didn't seem to get closer together or longer.  Plus, even by 8pm I still hadn't displayed any other physical signs of labor that I had been looking for -- bloody show, water breaking, crying or losing control, or at least having trouble walking and talking.  Maybe in some way I was confused about why things felt so easy so far.  Looking back, I see that my body was setting every single ounce of Hard aside so that it could cram it all into the final 2 out of 24 hours, but at the time, my experience was not lining up with my expectation.  

From 3pm to 8pm I moved around a lot...

...and even went on a pretty long walk (which was accidentally not photographically documented).  

At one point, I got a little nervous that I hadn't felt as much baby kicking in the last few hours as I would have liked.  

Except I only noticed this right after Heather asked if I'd been feeling the normal amount of kicking, so I was obsessively second-, third-, and fourth-guessing myself about it.  Knowing what I know now about what was going on in there, Moss playing dress-up with the umbilical cord (matching necklace and sash), I wonder if my odd-numbered intuitions of concern were on the right track (although since everything turned out perfectly, that's not a particularly productive train of thought).

A couple of times during this period, Heather warned/reminded that the first few contractions after water breaks can be somewhat stronger than any of the ones before it, since there will be more pressure, more progress, a lower baby, etc.  This was nice to hear, not just because it gave me time to mentally prepare for that kind of shift, but also because it informed me that she expected my water would indeed eventually break.  I was still skeptical that my water would ever break, that I would ever make progress, that I would ever not be pregnant any more, that the ordeal would ever transition into something more real-seeming.

Then my water broke at 8:30pm.  Moss was born at 10:15pm at the hospital, which is a 25 minute drive away from home, if that gives you some sense of how densely the action was crammed into the last 7% of this whole thing.  The first contraction after my water broke was indeed more intense than any of the ones before it.  I'm giggling at how much of an understatement that is.  I asked for "real-seeming", so I guess I should be glad...  Considering the interval from 10pm on 7/14 until 8:29pm on 7/15, my pain level had topped out at around a 5/10.  Then at 8:31pm on 7/15, I realized that I had apparently been using the pain scale represented by the function y = e^x (where x is my pain rating on a 1-10 scale and y is my actual pain experience)...

My memories of the final two hours are best described as "encoded using a strobe light".  When I try to recall the series of events, what I find is more like an disorganized slide show than a coherent narrative. 

• Suddenly there was a lot of crying.
• I asked for a piece of bread and Heather was like, Are you sure?, which caused me to realize that I did not in fact want to eat AT ALL, I just wanted to feel different from the status quo, which "bread-eating" may have temporarily accomplished.
• Heather said if I have one more contraction as strong and close together as the first 3 post-water breaking ones, that we were going to leave for the hospital ASAP.  Then I did, so we did.
• Someone asked if I wanted to change my clothes before we departed, so I started to try, and quickly decided that I did not want to due to the contractions being made of molten lava.
• I sat down in the car and learned that the "seated+immobilized" position was so far at the bottom of the list of Comfort Measures, it was at the top of the list of Discomfort Measures.
• Lurching manual transmissions and speed bumps are also pretty high on the Discomfort Measures list.
• I think there was some very loud, uninhibited car-screaming.  My chanting mantra may have been "Nothing is good.  Everything is bad."
• Arriving at the hospital, things got abruptly scarier-seeming.  I sat in a wheelchair and we went through a labyrinth of doors and halls and dark corners, moving briskly.
• I didn't ever have an IV, but it still felt like I was being "hooked up" to a bunch of crap, which I found extremely aversive.  Blood pressure cuff, pulse oximeter, external fetal monitoring belts, lots of cords and velcro and plastic.  :(
• On the bed because walking?  Hahahahaha no.  Sitting in a reclined position, NOOOOouch.  Hands and knees, NOOOoowww.  Lying on left side, NOOouchie, but that position won given it had the least number of Os.  I remember clutching the side rail of the bed like I would have fallen up and away from the earth had I not.
• Maria arrived, performed exam, 7cm dilated.  I was disappointed at not being any closer to 10 given the overall intensity levels of everything.  Not sure how I was going to make it, but I didn't have a choice, so that ended up being the answer as to how I was going to make it.
• Someone suggested I go to my Happy Place, so I chose a forest (I guess I wanted to see moss...)
• Ben's disembodied head floating above me described a specific Happy forest to me, camping by the ocean in South Carolina, playing on the beach, he got way too sunburned, and we listened to the ocean lull us to sleep from our tent in the trees.  shhhhhssshhhhshhhhhhhhshhsssshhhhh.  He made a pretty convincing ocean sound, which made breathing easier for about 90 seconds.
• Someone suggested getting into a shower or bathtub, which sounded awesome, but also inconceivably far away and impossible.
• Amanda, my first and oldest best friend, showed up sometime after 9 and before 10.   
• I used a combination of English and whatever other communicative strategies I could think of to convey that I really wanted to start pushing.  People said not to, since I had only been 7cm dilated at my last check, which couldn't have been more than 30 minutes earlier (probably more like 20).
• Things I remember saying: "I'm sad."  "Why?"  "*unintelligible whimpering*"  "Nothing is good.  Everything is bad."  
• I think I bit Ben's hand at some point.  Several times.  Such a trooper.
• Second exam confirmed that I was 9.75cm dilated, bathtub idea abandoned, pushing okay-ed.
• I started scream-breathing, gasping in shallow, panting breaths and screaming them out about once per second.  I *really* didn't know how to do anything else.  Heather's disembodied head firmly reminded me that "You have a choice.  You may breathe, or you may push.  You may not scream though, your baby needs you to use your energy, not waste it.  Take a deep breath and let it out slowly, or take a deep breath and hold it in and push."  Somehow that was translated into crazy non-verbal Calla-ese and I semi-successfully didn't scream quite as frequently.
• Not sure how many times I pushed -- more than 6 but less than 15.  The last 3 felt really good, which was heartening.
• It's a boy.

I have never felt so much all at once.  In a very early post on this blog, I described my revelation that pregnancy symptoms were not sequential but simultaneous.  The last two hours of labor and birth engendered a similar revelation, but at such an unfathomably higher degree.  The way that last hour felt -- it was made up of many discrete recognizable feelings, hundreds of different emotional and physical states, but they were all at once.  The way it felt is almost within the realm of imagination of someone who hasn't done it, because it's made up of individually tangible feelings.  What is not within the realm of imagination of someone who hasn't done it is what it feels like to feel everything there is in the universe at the same time.  Very dense, and not accessible to language.

Happy birthday, Moss.

Ben Tells the Birth Story of Moss Teshub

Today is Moss' due date, and since he was kind enough to grace us with his presence ten days ago, I guess it's time to get my version of the birth down before it becomes too hazy to reflect properly.

For me, things started on the morning of July 15.  I was getting ready to head to Mountain View for Google breakfast with Calla and then up to San Francisco to hand off my work in anticipation of Moss' arrival when she informed me that I should probably stay home.  Little did I know, she'd been having contractions since 10 PM the night before.  I was aware of the Braxton-Hicks contractions she'd been experiencing the week or so prior, but was kind of taken aback by the fact that she'd chosen not to share the early onset of labor.  I can't say I didn't appreciate her reasoning: at least one of us would be well-rested for the hours ahead.

We headed to Bay Area Maternity for an early check up.  Calla had been scheduled for her weekly exam Tuesday, but things were happening and it couldn't wait.  We went thought the normal set of tests -- finding Moss' heartbeat, taking blood pressure and weight, etc -- but when Maria Gruelich, our midwife, did the cervical check, she discovered that Cal had already dilated to 3-4 cm and her cervix was 90% effaced and "paper thin".  It was official: this kid was coming in a matter of hours whether we were ready or not.  

We weren't...  at least not the way we'd hoped.  For the previous several days, we'd been doing all that last minute staff that we'd been putting off for days or weeks: hanging pictures, cleaning up rooms, trashing stuff we didn't need, and getting Moss' gear ready to go.  We hadn't even packed our go bag until the night before.  Calla's sudden interest in getting the nest ready was certainly an indicator of things to come, but we figured we had a little more time.  

Driving back home from BAM, the contractions continued to come every 6 to 15 minutes.  While uncomfortable, things weren't yet intense.  Having been up most of the night before, Cal decided to lie down for a bit.  I joined her and together (through her continued contractions) we slept soundly until a little after 2:30 that afternoon.  I have no doubt her body, anticipating what was to follow, let her get some rest with the knowledge that it would be sorely needed.  

That was the last time were just a pair in no one's but our own company.  We were hours away from what we knew would be a permanent change in our relationship, our lives, and our responsibilities.  It was a quiet afternoon, regularly punctuated by Cal's contractions, and I couldn't help but feel, when considering whether there were things I needed to do for myself or us before becoming a father, that if there were any things I'd felt really strongly about I would have done it by then.  It was a very peaceful feeling.  

We called our doula, Heather up and she joined us for the remainder of the day.  We haven't been alone since.

Things progressed smoothly if slowly for the rest of the afternoon.  Heather was instrumental.  She was able to suggest what we should do to keep things moving and Calla comfortable.  I admit I was a little skeptical about how useful she would be.  Her classes were very informative, and despite the fact that I fell asleep in all but one of them, I kind of figured I'd gotten what we needed out of them.  I was not correct.  She had Calla walking when she needed to walk, working on the exercise ball when that was more helpful, and changing positions to help move things along.  Her being with us made it possible for me to be more attentive to Cal's needs as she took the lead in guiding Cal through many of her contractions.  As I took a more active role throughout the afternoon, her earlier actions gave me a solid model from which to work.  

The contractions continued regularly but at shorter intervals until 8:30 that night.  Calla's discomfort was picking up, and then suddenly she informed us that her water had broken.  The fluid was thankfully clear, continuing our remarkably good luck with this pregnancy.  This was a major turning point.  As Heather prepared Calla for the upcoming sharp increase in pain and uncertainty, I got the car ready and the house prepped.  We hit the road three or four contractions later.  

The drive to El Camino Los Gatos hospital took about 25 minutes.  Things were getting increasingly intense for Cal, and as we found out later, Heather's admission that it was going to be harder following Calla's water breaking was a calculated understatement.  Calla had gotten pretty good at vocalizing her discomfort by this point, and between clenching her teeth and driving her nails into me, herself, and the car seat, she even had time to bite my hand.  I was keeping calm for both us in the meantime and doing my best to continue her breath coaching as best I could.  Heather tailed us in her van all the way there, and despite my being terrible at caravaning, we got there together without any problems.  Contractions were only three or so minutes apart by this point and Cal was starting to look worse for the wear.  As I parked, Heather took Calla through the ER to get her admitted.  It was a little before 9:30.  

I hit the lobby of the ER in time to walk to the maternity ward with Cal and Heather, carrying the suspiciously heavy go bag in anticipation of a long night.  At that point, I didn't realize that it probably wouldn't be necessary.  Heather had done her job well and kept us at the house as long as was safe.  By the time we got Cal to her room, out of her clothes, and into her bed, things were happening very quickly.  The contractions were even closer together and our nurses, Erica and Sharon, were getting the room set up and Calla on the monitors.

Maria arrived shortly thereafter and checked Cal's cervix again.  At 9:30, she was dilated to about 7 cm.  I figured that since she'd only opened up three or four centimeters over the course of the day that we had a while.  Ann was still nearly two hours away, and I was hoping for her and Calla's sake that she'd be be able to make it in time.  Just hours earlier, my mother had effectively pulled Ann off a mountain from a wood gathering trip and arranged to have her on a plane.  It seemed a shame that she might miss it.  Right about this time, Amanda Leitner arrived with her generally calming influence and we got the birth plan distributed to the participants.  We gave her the camera and asked her to start taking photos.  Heather pointed out that she should snap as many shots as she could, since we could always pare down and there wasn't much time.  Calla was yelling every few minutes as her contractions continued to hit her in wave after wave.  

Following another pelvic exam, Cal's increased fussiness over her monitors and heightened pain was pretty well explained: she was at 9+ cm.  She'd flown through transition in a matter of minutes and it was time to deliver.  Maria started working on perineal massage and the nurses buzzed about the problems with the monitors and some increasingly concerning readings.  Cal remained poised and fairly composed given what was happening as Heather continued to guide her through breathing, but that composure started to flag as things progressed.  

She was moving faster and experiencing more pain than we'd thought she would in so short a time.  Only a few minutes earlier, we'd asked the nurses to prepare the bathtub for pain relief during a much longer transition.  She desperately wanted to push that baby out of her, and, stationed at her feet prepared to catch our newborn child, I was almost immediately treated to two things that will stick with me forever: the hair of my child's wrinkled scalp, visible for the first time to the world, and my strong, capable wife at both her most vulnerable and most powerful moment up to that point.  That first little glimpse of our child really drove home the irrefutable fact that I was going to be a father very, very soon one way or the other.

The rapidity with which Cal had moved since arriving was unnerving to the attending nurses and even Maria, whose practice has a remarkably low episiotomy rate, was concerned enough to call for an episiotomy kit.  I'm still not sure if she was actually anticipating needing it, since she said explicitly that she had no intention of using it a few minutes later; I kind of imagine she was giving the nurses something to do as much as anything else.  

Calla had had several contractions without clearing the baby's head.  The nurses were calling for a transfer to the ICU and an immediate C-section because of the baby's fluctuating heart rate and Calla's BP.  The most important item in our birth plan for Cal was having a natural birth.  Going under the knife was a last resort only, and none of us wanted it to come to that.  As Calla strained and screamed, Heather looked her square in the eyes and informed her that what she was doing was wasting valuable energy and time.  She had 2 choices: breathe or push; Cal chose the latter.

The heightened concern of the nurses was not shared by Maria.  She correctly intuited what would ultimately turn out to be the problems with Calla's efforts: our baby was posterior and had its umbilical cord wrapped around its neck.  She continued on, wiping away the various fluids and emissions and preparing for the last pushes.

I wasn't sure what was happening.  I could hear the delivery room chatter, and combined with what Calla was obviously going though, I was pretty nervous.  I was also completely locked in on the action at the foot of the delivery bed.  Cal was on her side as she put everything she had into some of the longest minutes of my life.  With every contraction, I found myself sympathetically tightening up, my blood pressure skyrocketing, my pulse rapid, and sweat pouring down my face.  My only thought was for Cal and our child to come through this experience safe, healthy, and without complication.  

I'm still in awe of what she managed to do.

I know I was shouting words of encouragement, probably on the mostly deaf ears of a human being living through that primal, life and death inner struggle of a real experience.  The preparatory massage we'd been doing for weeks combined with Maria's expertise and a healthy helping of oil poured over Calla's increasingly wide birth canal suddenly yielded real results.  Out popped our child's head, a sickly purple due to the cord wrapped tightly around its neck and again about its body.  Maria's suspicions proved correct and the heart rate issue was explained, but action needed to be taken and quickly.  Maria attempted to unwrap the cord, but because of the extra convolution still inside of Calla, it was time to cut the cord and yank that kid out.  Maria deftly snapped on the hemostats and cut the cord then and there.  We'd hoped for a delayed cord clamping, but the situation would have become grim quickly were it not for her experienced decision.  Another push and my son flopped into the world, a pale, sticky, and limp creature splayed on the table.

Nurses rushed to clean him up with gloved hands.  I hadn't actually gotten to catch him as I'd hoped due to the minor complication, but moments later, he was in my bare arms, the first skin he'd ever touched.  Calla's trial was nearly over, and I brought our beautiful boy to her as Sharon gave him a bit of a "polish" and Heather got her gown open so he could feel the warmth of her body and the beating of her heart from the outside for the first time.  

Cal was too dazed, I think, to know what was happening at that moment.  Tears flooded my eyes.  It was only 10:15.  She'd done everything she'd set out to do: a natural birth, without medication, without tearing, without surgery, without any unnecessary medical intervention whatsoever.  

She was back with us by the time she delivered the placenta (which plopped out unceremoniously a few minutes later) and our child was cleaned and pinked up a bit.  I put on his first diaper and got him outfitted in a hat and shirt to keep him warm.  

As he lay on her chest, we started dealing with the fact that we had a healthy baby boy, name as yet undecided, and our family was officially a little larger.  

The exact sequence of events after the birth is a little muddled for me.  I was so elated that everything went so well that I got kind of lost in it.  I think Amanda, having provided amazing support for Calla and done a truly wonderful job as a fly on the wall photographer on basically no notice left the room around 10:45 to collect Ann from the airport.  There were various bits of paperwork to do that we'd skipped upon admission due to the pressing nature of our arrival less than an hour earlier.

Calla and I must have chosen our son's name sometime after the forms and before Amanda returned with the new grandmother, since I recall the nurse telling us we could fill in his name on the forms later.  We were down to two options thanks to my frankly horrendous problem with almost every name we'd come up with: Moss and George.  We more or less put it to the boy.  Calla said "I think he's a Moss, not a George", and Heather, who was holding him at the time, reported that his face lit up in response to his soon-to-be name.  That was enough to clinch it for me.  We greeted our son by his name for the first time: Moss Teshub Trofatter.  

He was small and increasingly pink, with thick patches of fur still in some places, traces of vernix in his armpits, and a mousy squeak, all topped with a full head of hair.  His slate colored eyes were attentive and constantly scanning the room.  I couldn't stop looking at him or hold back the tears of joy and relief and possibility.  

Ann arrived and met her first grandson shortly thereafter.  The placenta was dropped into a waiting cooler for encapsulation, and we shared an hour or two with our present family and friends and made phone calls to update parents and siblings who couldn't be there.  Calla and Moss managed to figure out the all-important latch and we spent the rest of the night, completely exhausted, in our new parent glow.  Eventually Amanda took Ann back to our place, leaving me, my beautiful wife, and our perfect (in all the ways that matter) baby boy.  

I was already feeling like a good dad.

Ben's post

-10 days (but not really)

I thought I had another week to get this written, but this baby is coming now and there's nothing to do but deal.  Motherbird says it's best to learn that babies have lousy timing sooner rather than later.

So how does it feel to know that I'm going to be a dad?  Suddenly very urgent.  It's scary.  I'm already visualizing all these ways I'm going to alternate between being a hero and a disappointment, a support and a barrier, a parent, a friend, and an adversary.  I hope this kid likes the best stuff I have to say and teach, and that he or she has good stuff to share with me.

I'm feeling more and more like an adult, whatever that means.  Seeing all that I've been doing to get the house (and myself) ready, and everything that Cal's been going through lately, has made me feel a connection to my parents via common experience that I've never felt before.  I have to imagine they felt the same kind of excited uncertainty.

Every now and again, I get a little weepy eyed thinking about the commitment that Cal and I have made to one another and how that's grown over the last decade.  At first it was just the two of us, then it was us and Aowie, and then we added the Sue.  I hope our little family receives this new addition with patience and love.

I'm feeling very reminded that Life is beautiful and weird and alien and sticky.

I hope I make a good dad.

Some hunches.

-3 WEEKS

Okay I DO NOT KNOW how it is already July.  I'm up to one appointment per week with my midwives.  We finished the childbirth preparation class, the breastfeeding class, the newborn care class, and all the meetings with our doula.  The car seat is here ("outgassing" in the backyard, gross).  My midwife said "You're on notice, my dear.  At this point if our baby friend decides to come say hello, no one's going to push it back up there".  So, yeah.  This is happening.  I'm really trying hard to enjoy the last few weeks of quiet time.  Sweet summer breezes (after the heat wave finally broke) are making that a lot easier.

Ben built a super excellent fire pit in the backyard, perfect for relaxing around.  Come visit us! 

Ben took this past week off to help finish up the last of the unpacking/house-getting-readying, so we finally have a room that will pass for a nursery if we end up needing one.  I suspect that having the cradle in the master bedroom is going to be our solution for the first few months, meaning the "nursery" is more just a place to stack the eight million adorable onesies we have, but it's still nice to have the space all clean and airy and organized.  Plus it has been WONDERFUL to have Ben around and all to myself for the whole week.  I've heard there's not a lot of time for that in the first few months of babyland, so we are making sure to have lots of spontaneous picnics, walks around the neighborhood, quiet evening book time, etc.

Health-wise, on paper, I'm perfect.  Ship-shape.  Not a single complication or red flag of any kind.  In practice, I'm really starting to feel like there's an entire person living inside my abdomen.  There's been a horrible heat wave here since late June.  Nothing like the 110/120 temps that some of the southwest has been dealing with, but it was approaching 95 every day for over a week, which is difficult without air conditioning.  Ben set up a kiddie pool for me in the backyard and I've been spending a lot of time submerged in cool water.  My least favorite symptom of all the disgusting, TMI symptoms (about which I could easily go into intricate, colorful detail, but I will spare you) so far has been hand stiffness/numbness.  It's apparently very common, especially for summer pregnancies, to retain so much fluid in your hands that you basically develop acute onset, temporary carpal tunnel syndrome.  It is quite unpleasant, and makes me drop things and mis-maneuver around the world even more than usual.  I have an "Airplane"-style drinking problem.

~~~

I have some guesses about how this is all going to go down that I'm just going to record here, mainly for bragging rights if I'm correct about any of them.

Bug is small.  I know there will be a fetal weight gain of about 1/2 pound per week this last month, but I would still be surprised if there's something bigger than 8 pounds in there at the end (unless I start pushing 41 or 42 weeks, in which case all bets are off).

Bug is either going to be early or late.  I'm not sure which, but I don't see this kid being cooperative or punctual.  I would be really surprised if the birthday is between July 21 and July 28 (although hearing that there's a full moon on July 22 makes me a little less sure of that).  I would be much less surprised if this kiddo picks a really weird and unexpected date, like July 16, or August 4.  Definitely not July 25 -- I don't know Bug very well yet, but I definitely already detect moderate to high levels of "stubborn" and "contrary".

Bug is a boy.  This one isn't really a fair test of my intuition, because I have pretty much a straight 50/50 shot of being right, but it's been my hunch from the beginning.  So, sorry if you're a girl bug, because I've definitely been calling you "he" this whole time.

Bug will take his sweet sweet time coming out.  I'm imagining a natural childbirth that, when all is said and done, could be characterized as "peaceful", but I also predict that it will take at least 20 hours from start to finish, if not 30.  Perhaps I won't be feeling quite so harmonious towards the end of that...

Bug has green eyes.  This is really more of a hope than a hunch, but I have blue eyes and Ben has hazel/yellow/gold eyes, so let's just use our basic 1st grade color wheel knowledge to predict this one, because green eyes would be super cool.

It won't be long now.  Everyone be on the lookout for a *really* exciting update.

Feeling optimistic and cheerful these days.