mile73.com

Belly At 26 Weeks And Stuff

May 17, 2012 By Heather 9 Comments

Are you ready for this belly?

I’ve had a few people who haven’t seen me in a while and they are surprised I’m not showing more. Like, “You’re not massive! I thought you’d be grotesquely huge by now!” I feel pretty okay about that. I’m sort of tall, at 5’8,” and we know one of the guys is way down there. I can’t be sure what exactly “way down there” means. But all the ultrasound technicians have remarked that Baby A is about as low as he can go.

I know there have been times when I can push on the top of my belly, on what I assume is a foot, and feel it down in my butt. I wouldn’t even say “crotchal region,” I’d say butt. So this kid better make for the correct exit when the time comes.

Okay, so, kicking. These kids better be world class soccer players. If they inherit any traits from their father, they would be lucky to get his soccer legs. Holy crap, they are kicking the shit out of me. Nothing painful, but sometimes like popcorn popping all up and down my right side. I had coffee and a cinnamon roll the other day, and I thought the two of them found a dead squirrel and were kicking it around in my belly.

And also, nothing amuses me more than seeing the kicks through my shirt. I am at the stage where I can rest a book or cup of coffee on my belly, between my boobs. I wouldn’t dare balance a beverage there, because the boys will kick it. I can see the kicks. A book will jump in my hands. I know that Baby A is more on my right, with his head down in my butt, and his feet up by my ribs. Baby B is more on the left, but also with his feet pointing to my right. So it’s hard to know who might be kicking. They still have enough room to move around, but eventually, they are going to get big enough that they will be cramped, and they will “declare a position” for the remainder of the pregnancy.

I’m still moving around okay, but everything is getting more uncomfortable. Bending over, tying shoes, eating my toe nails, etc. I realize there will be a point I will not be able to do these things myself anymore. Getting up from the bed now involves doing a side pushup with my arms, because the extra weight in my belly renders my stomach muscles ineffective. I probably have another 10 to 20 pounds to gain before this is over.

There are two sleep positions that are comfortable. My right side, and my left side. Turning over is like a nine point turn in traffic. I can’t just roll over. I sort of have to squirm each body part over in succession, like a calibrated horizontal ballet, or a not-quite-dead beached whale.

This is on my mind, as I get more pregnant: My body becomes less my own, and becomes more of a gestational vehicle for new humans. It doesn’t feel natural. I know there are women who like being pregnant. And we, the big, societal ”WE,” glorify pregnancy and motherhood. Indeed, with contemporary politics and media, pregnant women are more like public property (A WHOLE OTHER DISCUSSION).

It should feel like the most natural thing in the world, right? Here I am, making babies. My body has taken over, and knows exactly what it has to do. Even though I’ve never done this before. My boobs will cease to be ornamental and recreational, and actually fulfill their original purpose, which is to squirt milk and feed offspring. It’s fucked up.

I mean, I know. I know, I know, I know, this is what is supposed to happen, it’s not some goddamned novelty and I’m the first to experience it. I do believe however, I’m probably the first woman to blog about it.

But it doesn’t feel natural to me. None of it does. I haven’t been dreaming about having a baby all my life. Dave and I were enjoying our baby-free existence, but being in our late 30s, we looked at each other and figured we’d better get this show on the road. And that was the extent of our dreaming. We were as ignorant about childbirth or parenthood as two teenagers rolling around in the back of a pickup truck.

We are learning quickly. But what I am learning is not dispelling this feeling of all this shit being totally unnatural. Like for instance (this is gruesome, block your eyes): Vagina stitches. Stitches in the fucking vagina. Are you kidding me? Hearing about this made me cross my fingers for a C-section, but then…a line of stitches across my belly? Is that better? It’s all fricken horrific. All of it.

And really, I can’t even complain about childbirth. Yes, I am freaked out. Really. I am. I really, really, really am. Because I’m an anxious person, and I’ve lived a sheltered life, and I have never had any injuries or emergencies that required me to go to the hospital. Imagine having thirty eight years to build up any major medical procedure or any visit to the hospital as a XXX horror slasher flick. I AM FREAKED OUT.

But I can’t complain because billions of women have given birth before me. They do it all the time. All those billions of women, past and present, through the annals of history…they are stealing my thunder.

Those bitches.

Let’s Talk About Baby Shit

May 14, 2012 By Heather 18 Comments

No really. Not baby “stuff,” as I have already briefly discussed. I mean poo poo. When I was a kid, we called it caca. Or cuckies. I don’t hear that quite as much these days, or I don’t hear that term quite as often on the west coast. But of course, it’s been ten or fifteen years since I stopped shitting my own pants, and well, times change.

But seriously: Baby shit. I hadn’t thought about it all that much. I know about diapers. I know there are such things as disposable diapers, and there is such a thing as cloth diapers. I knew those things existed, and that was the sum of my expertise. When we decided to start a family, I figured I would someday get better acquainted with baby crap, and the whole matter dropped from my mind.

Now with the twins less than three months away, I am coming to understand that dealing with baby shit is going to be a whole big thing. I’m going to have to get off my ass and really think about this stuff. We’re going to have to develop strategies, philosophies, coping mechanisms, disposal protocols, evacuation schematics, aroma containment, and indeed, after all is said and done, we may need to deal with olfactory PTSD and submit ourselves to aroma therapy. I never quizzed Dave about his thoughts on potpourri, but I now realize we should have thought about all this months ago.

So with twins, I was just thinking we would probably do disposables, though it made my inner greeny hippy environmentalist self die a little. I just couldn’t imagine doing cloth diapers for two. TWO. Two little poopy butts.

Let’s do some math. I’ve never had a baby, so I have to believe experts and others when they tell me we will be changing each kid 10 to 12 times a day. Let’s make it 10 times a day, for the sake of being conservative, and because it’s easier to do math with 10. So, 10 diapers for each kid = 20 diapers a day. That’s 140 diapers a week. This to me, almost doesn’t sound like it’s enough.

Okay. So we moved into a duplex in Portland, and for us, our garbage service is every other week. So by the time the garbage is picked up, it would be 280 dirty diapers, in addition to whatever other household trash we create (which is not much). But still. 280 diapers is a LOT OF BABY SHIT. And pee. Those garbage bins are going to be heavy and stinky.

I don’t feel good about 280 dirty disposable diapers every two weeks. So maybe, let’s think about cloth diapers for a second.

I know nothing about cloth diapers. I guess you wrap the kid in a cloth diaper, then there are diaper covers, and you change them frequently, and you cross your fingers and pray to the unicorns that you don’t create a national emergency or superfund site in your house. Sometimes there are disposable liners, so that when the kids crap themselves, you can just zip off the disposable liners and flush it down the toilet. Okay. Not too bad. I guess. I mean, it sounds fucking awful, but these are the decisions we made, and so we have to live with scraping poo. Let’s just get through this.

So then, you wash the dirty diapers, right? They are going to be soaked with pee, and probably have some poo nuggets in there too. From the little I’ve read, you pre rinse the diapers in the washing machine first. Then you wash them. Then you do another rinse, which I assume is the same as the regular washing cycle. But maybe not. This is poo we are dealing with here, so I don’t know if there are special magical poo rinses we have to do.

Some folks say that your laundry room may eventually smell like pee and ammonia. If that’s the case, you need to do more rinsing. Because basically, you are baking the pee smell into the diapers in the dryer. Awesome.

Again, we are living in a duplex, and we are paying for our own water. City water in Portland is expensive. It seems like it should be free, practically, but there are big pipe projects going on in Portland and the rate payers are financing them. So our water bills are more expensive in Portland than they are in Los Angeles or Las Vegas.

So if we are washing our own diapers, and really putting them through two or three cycles, our water bill may end up being as expensive as a new car.

Okay? If I could, I would go back to being blissfully unaware of all this baby crap. But no, we had to go and procreate, and now we have to be responsible adults and deal with our spawns’ functions. I’m still just a bit skeeved by the idea of poo in the washing machine. It’s poo. In the washing machine. Is it just me, or is that fucking disgusting?

Dave brought up the idea of a diaper service. This is something else I know nothing about. Someone delivers cloth diapers, your family soils the hell out of them, you throw them in a bin, and the service comes and takes them away and gives you fresh ones. This doesn’t sound all that bad. We might do this. It feels more responsible environmentally. We may do disposables overnight. We may do this. But, oh, the research, and the reading, and the internet forums, and the raging parents, and the passionate advice from every possible perspective. I hear babies are more prone to rashes when you use cloth diapers, which sounds awesome.

No one just tells you how to do this. You have to figure it all out. You have to figure out what works for you. Isn’t that the most wishy washy, non-committal, namby pamby bullshit advice you’ve ever heard? It’s complete, utter bullshit.

We can send people to the moon, but we haven’t figured out baby crap.

Little Kids Are Super Evil

May 9, 2012 By Heather 8 Comments

Last week, I met a friend and her 18 month old, Roxy, at a kid-friendly coffee shop/play place. There was a smattering of people quietly sitting with lap tops or drinking coffee. But for the most part, the place was dominated by parents and young children. There was a corral filled with books and toys, [...]

“Stuff” For Babies = Mind Blown

May 7, 2012 By Heather 14 Comments

Okay so, now I’m thinking about stuff for babies. I’ve been able to avoid this process for an impressive amount of time. We’ve had so many other things to think about this year before we started thinking about baby stuff. We had big panicky things to think about. Like moving back to Portland. And getting [...]

Here’s What Happens When A (Former) Accountant Gets Pregnant

May 2, 2012 By Heather 11 Comments

Okay, so this post may be interesting to exactly no one. But it sort of shows what a difference five years have made in my life. And it shows exactly how anal I can be, if left to my own devices. I’m guessing you were eating your breakfast this morning, and thinking, “Huh. I wonder [...]