Guessing Game Time

 Knocked Up Again  11 Responses »
Aug 222008
 

Inspired by my bloggerific friend Molly, who is anticipating her baby girl in just a couple of weeks, I want to throw open the guessing game for this baby.

Since the DOB is pretty well set as 8/30, that doesn’t seem like a fun guessing game — although if you think Esmerelda Freugenspeigel will be making an early appearance, feel free to say so. But her real name and her weight/length are fair game!

Edited 8/25 to Add: At the final prenatal appt. this morning, the doc who will be doing the c/s offered the opinion that this is also a big baby, but probably not as big as Noah.
Facts that may be helpful: Noah arrived at exactly 41 weeks, weighing 9 lbs, 7 oz, and 21.5 inches long. On 8/30, I will be 38 weeks & 4 days pregnant.

(For those of you who worry about these things, that is the absolute earliest that my health care providers would consider scheduling a c-section, absent a specific and compelling medical reason to do it earlier. We negotiated such an early date for immensely complicated reasons balancing health, insurance, layoff, the freaking holiday weekend, etc. Their regular practice for scheduling a c-section is between 39-41 weeks.)

Anyway. How big is this baby going to be, and what are we naming her?

 Posted by Liza at 9:32 am

Shockingly Empty

 Knocked Up Again, Personal, The Real Live Boy  1 Response »
Aug 212008
 

Packer/Movers came to our house today.

They spent 5.5 hours packing up and moving roughly 3/4 of our stuff.

The house looks crazy empty. Noah’s room is the only one that was left untouched. (We’d already mostly emptied out his closet, after a tantrum in which he removed all the contents he could reach and flung them around the room.)

Noah was pretty surprised when he got home, but since there was more room to spread out his toys, he was ok. But at bedtime, he took it out on Jill, acting out all his upset and refusing to settle down. He was still up, and fussy, when I got home from a church meeting at around 9:30 pm.

Aside: We got a letter of support for Noah’s adoption from one of the other moms on the committee. She and her husband had the whole family sign the letter, including their daughter who was in my Sunday School class last year, and their 3 year old son. I was so moved that I almost cried, and I’m all teared up again as I write this.

I am wiped out. (Another shock, right?) 

 Posted by Liza at 9:34 pm

Heh. Of Course.

 Knocked Up Again  5 Responses »
Aug 212008
 

Yesterday, I went to lunch with the same people I’d gone to lunch with on Monday.

Since one of them has a wife who is almost exactly as pregnant as I am — due with their first the day after Esmerelda Freugenspeigel is due — I regaled them with the story about being asked if I was having twins. They were appropriately amused and horrified.

When we got back to the office, the first person we saw loudly asked, “Are you having one, or two???” Naturally, she also followed it up with, “Are you sure?”

Had she not been someone from whom I need a favor, I can’t swear that I would have successfully managed a polite reaction.

And while commenters Stacey and Carrie are right, that’s a better question than being asked if you are pregnant when you’re not, it still isn’t good. The I-thought-it-was-cute sweater that I wore the day last year when someone asked “when are you due?” was, like Carrie’s dress, donated to Goodwill almost immediately.

Random baby update: More BH contractions, weight officially up 26.5 lbs from pre-preg as of 37w1d (meaning I remain confident in my total of 27-28 lbs estimate!), all other health related tests had good results, Esmerelda Freugenspeigel has a great heart rate, and it seems unlikely that she will decide to join us out in the world before her scheduled c-section date.

 Posted by Liza at 10:15 am

I Think The Baby Ate My Brain

 Knocked Up Again, The Rest of the Fam  1 Response »
Aug 192008
 

She’s making me eat everything else, and she’s definitely working her way up into my lungs, so why wouldn’t she be eating my brain?

Plus, I feel like there are all these things I keep thinking I should blog about, but when I sit down at the computer, all I can remember is “wasn’t there something???”

And then I think, “That better have been a Braxton-Hicks contraction, because we are not ready.” So far, so good. Knock wood and any other ‘please don’t let me have just jinxed myself’ superstitions.

The insane purging project of 2008 has been both crazy and exciting. We’ve found cool things we forgot that we had, odd little related items scattered throughout the house (I don’t think there’s a room or closet where we have failed to find Redskins pins), and our family has to be responsible for 25% of the local Freecycle posts this month. Not to mention approximately 6 bags of clothes donated to the American Kidney Foundation.

The purge is about to get kicked to the next level, thanks to a very generous offer from Grandma.

On Thursday, a team of nice professional movers and packers are going to show up and pack up ~3/4 of our stuff, then take it away to a storage unit. This should make it easier for us to make the house look uncluttered and buyer-friendly when we get it on the market.

At approximately the same time, someone who does small outdoor repair projects for our realtor will be here doing exactly that on our house.

Then on Friday, we hope, a nice team of women who clean the home of one of our neighbors will show up and scour our place from top to bottom.

Thanks, Grandma! Cuz even though Jill is doing an awesome job with all this stuff, I am barely operating at 25%. I’m exhausted and my legs ache and I am almost out of the ability to lift even the most modest weights.

Plus did I mention that I think the baby ate my brain?

 Posted by Liza at 10:52 pm

Apparently, I Kick Ass. I’m Not Alone.

 Knocked Up Again, Opinion, TMI, Weblogs  6 Responses »
Aug 182008
 

According to the incredibly awesome Mrs. Stacy Squirrel, I am a kick ass blogger, deserving of an award:

Kick Ass Blogger Award

I think that’s pretty cool! Especially since today didn’t really feel like a kick ass day. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that it felt like a day that kicked my ass.

I didn’t manage to fall asleep until about 2 am. Noah woke up at 5, but mercifully went back to sleep. Unfortunately, I didn’t.

Then one of the people at Starbucks gave me a hard time about my caffeinated beverage. Um? And your medical degree is in what exactly? And I hired you to be what kind of health care provider for my pregnancy? Is this cuppa covered by my insurance?

(Honestly, for that one I blame his manager, who gave me an even harder time once when I was about this pregnant with Noah. Jackass.)

On the elevator up to my office, someone asked me if I was having twins.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Never, EVER, EVER ask a pregnant woman if she is having twins. If she is and she cares one iota what you think, she will tell you. If she is not, and she probably is not, you have just called her a fat cow. I am pretty sure there is not a woman in the United States who appreciates that.

If you mistakenly ask, do not follow up the negative answer with any variation of “Are you sure?”

My back is killing me.

Jill is in a move panic nesting frenzy and has given away half the crap in our garage. This is +90% good, but for some reason we can’t seem to get her signed up for Freecycle, which means that my personal email has been peppered with inquiries about foam pads, guitars, vases, etc.

For some reason, though, the thing that most made today feel like it kicked my ass is that I found out my favorite pump, the one I recommend to everyone, has gotten a “POOR” rating from the Z Report on BPA in Children’s Feeding Products . And the one I don’t like, that’s twice as expensive, got a top rating.

(I was stalking web sale sites to follow prices, with the optimistic hope that I’ll be returning to work while still nursing Esmerelda Freugenspeigel when I thought to check.)

Naturally that was the day AFTER my recommendation was included as part of my Deep South Moms blog post, so I had to beg someone to edit the post to mention it.

After a day like that, it’s really nice to hear that someone thinks I’m kicking ass.

And just to add to the love, one of the rules of this Kick Ass Blogger award is that I’m supposed to award this 5 other people.

Although I have no small golden statuette to hand off, I say the awards go to:

LesbianDad, for her always thought-provoking posts on parenthood, gender, family, and community, and her amazing photography skills. And for single-handedly keeping LesbianFamily.org alive.

Looky, Daddy!, for writing more humorous posts about poop than any one parent should be able to write, and for being a witty advocate for marriage equality. Would that more married, heterosexual Dads be so sensible.

Hola, Isabel, for her compassionate and honest posts about family and faith, and for her hilarious pictures with everyone else’s eyes blacked out.

Jen and Cait at Addition Problems, for consistently sharing their knowledge, ideas, frustrations, successes, creativity, and breakdowns in the wild world of infertility, pregnancy loss, and parenthood.

Mel of Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters, the exciting new site Bridges, and innumerable other cool internet projects. Building supportive connections around emotionally charged issues seems to be a calling for her. And she has as much energy and drive as approximately any 4 other bloggers I know.

Blogger friends, all of you Kick Ass. Thank you and keep up the good work.

 Posted by Liza at 8:11 pm

Baby Economizing

 Knocked Up Again, Personal  No Responses »
Aug 172008
 

I wrote a long post about my top 3 recommendations for economizing on baby expenses over at the Deep South Moms blog.

 Posted by Liza at 7:34 am

No Baby, No Disaster, Just No Posting

 Knocked Up Again, Personal, The Real Live Boy  3 Responses »
Aug 162008
 

I didn’t mean to disappear, I’ve just been having a tired sort of week.

Noah got sick at day care this week, and was sent home and kept home the next day. He’s fine. We think it was coxsackie virus, based on shared symptoms with another child from day care. Our pediatrician hotline said, “that sounds like a virus, give him tylenol and lots of clear liquids, and call us if it gets worse.”

I’ve well and truly hit the uncomfortable and sleepless phase of late pregnancy. Roughly half the nights this week, I’ve woken up 3 or more times and been up for more than an hour total. Noah woke up upset with bad dreams at least twice this week too.

On the work front, I’m still going in, and actually even still doing some productive work. I’m also taking home the random personal stuff that’s accumulated there over the last 3.5 years.

Ironically, we apparently had a very good quarter, so we got mid-year bonuses this week, and had a company-wide barbecue yesterday. With swag. So yesterday, after eating a hamburger, I took home a battery-operated fan, a long-sleeved t-shirt, and a nice rolling cooler. Sometimes life in corporate America is very strange.

Then I went to my weekly prenatal checkup. Everything looks good with Esmerelda and with me. I did have my biggest weight gain all pregnancy, 3 lbs in 1 week, bringing me to a grand total of 27 lbs so far, but I continue to measure exactly as I should. BP, swelling, etc are all appropriate. Hemoglobin is on the lowest end of normal, not dangerous but not where they would like to see it, probably because I hate taking my iron supplements.

I promise to suck it up and take them for the next 2 weeks.

 Posted by Liza at 7:04 am
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