Seamus Guybrush DuMaison, seven pounds and change of larynx, digestive system and complete adorableness. Three weeks old and he can lift his head for a few seconds and sort of follow things with his eyes! HE'S A PRODIGY!!!!
And a redhead! I was hoping for a redhead! All the teachers are going to think he's trouble whether he actually is or not, but I don't care, red hair is awesome.
I have three words to describe childbirth, and they are OH DEAR GOD. I did have to get induced, and I did get myself all drugged up, but the epidural didn't quite take all the way... and now I have pretty much blocked the memory, as one does with extreme trauma. They put him on my chest and he was covered in blood and goop and screaming loudly and it was AWESOME. It took a bit, but I am now firmly under the influence of the Alien Mom Ray, one side effect of which is that you can never again sleep through any baby making any sound whatsoever, even if it's just happy, sleepy little "eh eh" noises... and newborns make ALL KINDS of weird little noises, all the time, conscious or unconscious.
Also they can get terrible intestinal gas and shriek for hours on end. I can do hungry, tired, bored, etc. cries, but this one's too much for me, because it hits me right in the hindbrain and my jumped-up lady hormones put me on high panic alert because oh my god my son is screaming he is SCREAMING someone is hurting him I will KILL THE SHIT OUT OF THEM. Except you can't violently murder intestinal gas.
Things I did not understand about parenting, I now understand. Co-sleeping: they quiet down when they're being snuggled, and also hugging a sleepy baby makes you feel kind of drunk, like human Valium, so sleeping next to a baby would be win/win - alas, I'm too paranoid about rolling over on the little guy. Vaccinations: I am starting to figure out that the "someone is hurting my baby, kill the shit out of them" reflex is so strong that some people would rather make long elaborate angry arguments about adverse effects and herd immunity rather than watch their kid be stuck with needles and cry. Breastfeeding: I can't, I take meds that are not compatible, and I didn't think I'd want to anyway, but when the milk came in it was RIGHT THERE and what the hell are you going to do with it, not feed your kid? I felt so horrible, and yeah some of it was the lectures from the midwife and the nurses and the lactation consultant they sent me even though I said "don't send me a lactation consultant" and the fact that I had to explain my extensive research on the issue multiple times before they'd leave me alone, but mostly it was that here I was, lactating, doing one of the key things mammals do, and it was completely useless. I suck at being a mammal.
And doing weird things with the placenta, or burying it under a tree, or god forbid eating it. I get that. Childbirth is indeed magical, for a given value of magical - not so much unicorns and rainbows, but the sort of magic where you go out barefoot in the woods at midnight and do something unspeakable with goat entrails and come back hollow-eyed but imbued with a terrible wisdom. This is ancient, blood-for-life sort of stuff. If you think eating your own body part gives you some sort of talismanic edge I say bon appetit.
Needless to say, I can only blog right now because the Wee Baby Seamus is out cold, being adorable, little arms flung out in random directions, and I didn't swaddle him tonight so he's probably going to flail around, hit himself in the face and wake himself up later. The lack of motor control is absolutely astonishing. Horses come out walking! Ah well, I guess that's the biped's dilemma.
Oh, now he's squeaking. That sounds like an "I'm waking up" squeak, not a "REM sleep" squeak. And now back to your regularly scheduled sleep deprivation...
Showing posts with label how is babby formed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label how is babby formed. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
I am large, I contain multitudes.
And they WILL NOT GET THE HELL OUT.
Today is my due date. When I do manage to haul my magnificent ass off the sofa, it's like March of the Penguins over here. I have eaten semi-ripe papayas and the equivalent of maybe five pineapples, I have made some exquisite eggplant parm, I have wandered all over town and done squats and tried all that other stuff they suggest too. Nothing.
My parents are in town from halfway across the continent, wasting their money while they wait. Friends and relatives keep calling and emailing. If they have a sense of humor I direct them to "this site I'm using to track my progress, it's called haveyouhadthatbabyyet.com", but the kind of relatives who keep at you about this sort of thing are the kind of relatives who wouldn't think that's funny, so lots of chirpy "Nope, not yet! :)" responses are in order. Blerg. Meanwhile I get more uncomfortable and more twitchy and my hospital refuses to induce till you're two weeks overdue, and no I HAVE NOT HAD THAT BABY YET STOP ASKING.
The more this goes on, the more I don't even know why I got myself into this mess. My snarky, no-nonsense BFF back home, who I may have casually mentioned months and months ago is a few weeks ahead of me pregnancy-wise, went about a week early, and for the past few weeks she's cooing over her own teeny little poop machine and talking like a diaper-changing vet and saying stuff like "I had NO IDEA I could love anything THIS MUCH." Several years (and one asshole ex) ago she was saying she never wanted children. And as much as I fear getting shot in the head with the Alien Mom Ray, I'm especially terrified of NOT getting shot in the head with the Alien Mom Ray. What if this magical oxytocin-induced crazy baby love thing that's supposed to hit you immediately... doesn't hit me? What if I look at the Wee Baby Seamus and all I can muster is the same emotion I usually feel for babies? (Which is "Huh.") And what about postpartum depression - what if I get it? And am I REALLY all right with spending the next decade or so only eating at restaurants with placemats you can color on?
I don't know if I really thought this through.
Ah well. The point is moot anyway, because obviously I'm never actually going to HAVE a baby. I'm just going to be pregnant for the rest of my life.
Today is my due date. When I do manage to haul my magnificent ass off the sofa, it's like March of the Penguins over here. I have eaten semi-ripe papayas and the equivalent of maybe five pineapples, I have made some exquisite eggplant parm, I have wandered all over town and done squats and tried all that other stuff they suggest too. Nothing.
My parents are in town from halfway across the continent, wasting their money while they wait. Friends and relatives keep calling and emailing. If they have a sense of humor I direct them to "this site I'm using to track my progress, it's called haveyouhadthatbabyyet.com", but the kind of relatives who keep at you about this sort of thing are the kind of relatives who wouldn't think that's funny, so lots of chirpy "Nope, not yet! :)" responses are in order. Blerg. Meanwhile I get more uncomfortable and more twitchy and my hospital refuses to induce till you're two weeks overdue, and no I HAVE NOT HAD THAT BABY YET STOP ASKING.
The more this goes on, the more I don't even know why I got myself into this mess. My snarky, no-nonsense BFF back home, who I may have casually mentioned months and months ago is a few weeks ahead of me pregnancy-wise, went about a week early, and for the past few weeks she's cooing over her own teeny little poop machine and talking like a diaper-changing vet and saying stuff like "I had NO IDEA I could love anything THIS MUCH." Several years (and one asshole ex) ago she was saying she never wanted children. And as much as I fear getting shot in the head with the Alien Mom Ray, I'm especially terrified of NOT getting shot in the head with the Alien Mom Ray. What if this magical oxytocin-induced crazy baby love thing that's supposed to hit you immediately... doesn't hit me? What if I look at the Wee Baby Seamus and all I can muster is the same emotion I usually feel for babies? (Which is "Huh.") And what about postpartum depression - what if I get it? And am I REALLY all right with spending the next decade or so only eating at restaurants with placemats you can color on?
I don't know if I really thought this through.
Ah well. The point is moot anyway, because obviously I'm never actually going to HAVE a baby. I'm just going to be pregnant for the rest of my life.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
A perfect storm of fart noises forever
Oh dear god.
It's a boy.
We weren't even supposed to find out. It just so happened that I'd put off the NT ultrasound (part of the overly-elaborate process of genetic testing that has been giving me anxiety attacks lately - I am so used to my body failing me at every turn, I expected something to be drastically wrong, but apparently everything's fine? I'm confused) till after my recent trip back to the husband's and my Rust Belt hometown. Just got back, got the scan, and there it was, dancing around on the screen like a twitchy little monkey doll. Oh man!
And the tech casually says, "So are you planning to find out what the gender is?"
Of course we are. My entire family made it clear that if I don't they'll never forgive me. Heaven forbid you have to buy things with cute bunnies and duckies and monkeys on them instead of "Daddy's Little MVP" and "Born to Shop." Gotta get those gender norms ironed out early! (With the ladies doing the ironing thereof, of course.) But mostly we are just curious. "Yeah?" I said, skeptical. "Aren't we not supposed to be able to see anything yet?"
So she points to this little weird dangly thing and grins and holy shit that's a penis. It's a boy! It's a goddamned little teeny awesome BOY. Unless that was an intestine. We won't know for sure till the next ultrasound in six weeks. But wow, sure looks like it.
What am I going to do now?
Despite logically knowing there's a 50/50 chance it would occur, I never planned for having a boy. I have spent my whole adult life planning on how I'm going to raise my daughter differently from how my mom raised me. When she'll be allowed to wear makeup (when she starts getting zits and needs concealer), how late she can stay out (way later than I ever could), can she be friends with people with divorced parents (I wasn't allowed to), what activities I'd encourage her to do (mostly theater - I was a band kid, but my husband is far too hilarously charismatic to waste his genes on an introvert's extracurricular.) I had this picture in my head of this girl with a wicked grin and red hair like my husband's, goofing off in the back of the class and still getting perfect grades, starring in all the musicals, stopping off at Second City before making it big Fey-and-Poehler-style. Or if she absolutely MUST go instrumental, then Interlochen. Or maybe MIT, if she hits that crucial liberal-arts-vs.-science decision point that I hit in mid/late high school and decides to make the RIGHT career choice for her financial future rather than the one I made.
The only plans I ever had for a boy were giving him the annual stern talking-to re: consent and condoms once he hit dating age and trying to keep him from saying "gay" and "retarded."
Which is good. It's very good! Because having preconceived notions of who your kid is going to be and how they are going to become it is what fucked ME up. (That and biochemistry. It'll getcha!) I fell way short of Perfect Daughter, despite being the one my friends' parents held up as "why can't you be more like," because my mom was devastated to have raised a nerd. She hid my computer games and my fantasy novels. "Stop reading and go watch TV" was a common refrain. It just was not on her radar that her daughter would be strange. With my luck I'd have an attractive, cheerful, popular, uncomplicated jock for a daughter, and as I took her homecoming-queen pictures and regarded the wall of softball trophies I would silently think what did I do wrong? Because it all comes down to expecting your same-sex child to be YOU, distilled and improved, and wanting them to do all the things you ever wanted to do. And no one ever is, and no one ever does.
I don't have a picture in my mind's eye of what my son will look like at 20, how he'll wear his hair when he's 14, what his favorite books will be when he's 5. I have made no specific plans for his wardrobe or college major. You know what this means? It means the chain of mother/daughter angst and unfulfilled expectations is broken! No more failed cloning attempts! Evil Beans is a blank slate. And I intend to give him some crayons, step back and let him go to town. This is going to be so much fun.
Except now my husband is going to see it as his solemn sacred duty to teach his son how to work the word "booger" and at least one fart noise into every sentence for the rest of his life.
It's a boy.
We weren't even supposed to find out. It just so happened that I'd put off the NT ultrasound (part of the overly-elaborate process of genetic testing that has been giving me anxiety attacks lately - I am so used to my body failing me at every turn, I expected something to be drastically wrong, but apparently everything's fine? I'm confused) till after my recent trip back to the husband's and my Rust Belt hometown. Just got back, got the scan, and there it was, dancing around on the screen like a twitchy little monkey doll. Oh man!
And the tech casually says, "So are you planning to find out what the gender is?"
Of course we are. My entire family made it clear that if I don't they'll never forgive me. Heaven forbid you have to buy things with cute bunnies and duckies and monkeys on them instead of "Daddy's Little MVP" and "Born to Shop." Gotta get those gender norms ironed out early! (With the ladies doing the ironing thereof, of course.) But mostly we are just curious. "Yeah?" I said, skeptical. "Aren't we not supposed to be able to see anything yet?"
So she points to this little weird dangly thing and grins and holy shit that's a penis. It's a boy! It's a goddamned little teeny awesome BOY. Unless that was an intestine. We won't know for sure till the next ultrasound in six weeks. But wow, sure looks like it.
What am I going to do now?
Despite logically knowing there's a 50/50 chance it would occur, I never planned for having a boy. I have spent my whole adult life planning on how I'm going to raise my daughter differently from how my mom raised me. When she'll be allowed to wear makeup (when she starts getting zits and needs concealer), how late she can stay out (way later than I ever could), can she be friends with people with divorced parents (I wasn't allowed to), what activities I'd encourage her to do (mostly theater - I was a band kid, but my husband is far too hilarously charismatic to waste his genes on an introvert's extracurricular.) I had this picture in my head of this girl with a wicked grin and red hair like my husband's, goofing off in the back of the class and still getting perfect grades, starring in all the musicals, stopping off at Second City before making it big Fey-and-Poehler-style. Or if she absolutely MUST go instrumental, then Interlochen. Or maybe MIT, if she hits that crucial liberal-arts-vs.-science decision point that I hit in mid/late high school and decides to make the RIGHT career choice for her financial future rather than the one I made.
The only plans I ever had for a boy were giving him the annual stern talking-to re: consent and condoms once he hit dating age and trying to keep him from saying "gay" and "retarded."
Which is good. It's very good! Because having preconceived notions of who your kid is going to be and how they are going to become it is what fucked ME up. (That and biochemistry. It'll getcha!) I fell way short of Perfect Daughter, despite being the one my friends' parents held up as "why can't you be more like," because my mom was devastated to have raised a nerd. She hid my computer games and my fantasy novels. "Stop reading and go watch TV" was a common refrain. It just was not on her radar that her daughter would be strange. With my luck I'd have an attractive, cheerful, popular, uncomplicated jock for a daughter, and as I took her homecoming-queen pictures and regarded the wall of softball trophies I would silently think what did I do wrong? Because it all comes down to expecting your same-sex child to be YOU, distilled and improved, and wanting them to do all the things you ever wanted to do. And no one ever is, and no one ever does.
I don't have a picture in my mind's eye of what my son will look like at 20, how he'll wear his hair when he's 14, what his favorite books will be when he's 5. I have made no specific plans for his wardrobe or college major. You know what this means? It means the chain of mother/daughter angst and unfulfilled expectations is broken! No more failed cloning attempts! Evil Beans is a blank slate. And I intend to give him some crayons, step back and let him go to town. This is going to be so much fun.
Except now my husband is going to see it as his solemn sacred duty to teach his son how to work the word "booger" and at least one fart noise into every sentence for the rest of his life.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Naming your future supervillain
I have just been amusing myself over at Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing, and I know what I'm naming the kid (tentatively referred to right now as Evil Beans, from a Jezebel comment re: what you would have to eat regularly to mistake a baby kicking you in the ribcage for indigestion) if it's a girl: Tierranney. It looks like a typically goofy fake-Celtic baby name, and then you pronounce it. It would be especially hilarious if she got a postgraduate degree and became Doctor Tierranney. Or went into academia and was Professor Tierranney. And the usual "and now the President of the United States, (firstname) (lastname)" baby name acceptability formula works too. What rules the free world? Tierranney! And of course she will find a place in her cabinet for her sister Hegemonie.
I am sorely tempted. Granted, my husband is sorely tempted to name a boy Guybrush, and that's not going to happen, so alas, poor Evil Beans is going to have to take over the world with a less perfectly appropriate first name.
The iPhone app I'm using to obsessively track everything about this pregnancy has a list of the current top thousand baby names, and just wow. I thought Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing represented outliers. Apparently not. Each one of the names below has at least 300 kids in the US who were named it last year. In some cases significantly more. I do not understand the thought processes that lead to certain names taking hold of the mass subconscious so that even parents who think they're original are compelled to use them, but the swarms of Jennys in my grade school class are proof that it happens.
Today's selections: Boys.
#674: Alexzander (pick one weird letter and stick with it, people)
#583: Armani (will get a job in tech and spend his life in ratty jeans and video-game T-shirts)
#978: Bridger (for a minute there I thought it said "Badger" - which is pretty cool if you want your kid to grow up to be an Old West outlaw)
#631: Cannon (naming your children after artillery is so Palinesque)
#766: Dax (yeah, I liked Deep Space Nine too)
#670: Draven (walks the night...)
#736: Gauge (now I can see "Gage", but "Gauge"? And his brothers Jack and Tire Iron)
#859: German (is probably not actually. Part of the "I've never been there but it's such a nice name" trend: see also London, Ireland, Asia.)
#471: Gunner (not "Gunnar", Gunner. As in one who shoots guns. This is my friend's dad's hunting dog's name. That's much more appropriate.)
#154: Jaxon (sound the klaxon! It's Jaxon! I actually think this one is kind of cute.)
#500: Kale (is not as tasty as the health nuts would have us believe, and I have been known to eat raw mustard greens)
#883: Leonidas (TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELL!!!!)
#939: Lyric (nouns as first names are goofy sometimes but generally I approve - but "Lyric" is a little celebrity-baby for me. Says "My dad was totally in a band in college.")
#511: Maverick (it will always be 2008 for this kid)
#704: Messiah (doomed to feel like an underachiever forever)
#780: Raiden (FATALITY!!!)
#804: Ronin (and his brother Shinobi - they like to go out back and throw the ol' ninja star around)
#719: Sincere (has no choice but to grow up to be a con man)
#465: Talon (yes, you consider yourself kind of a badass, we get it )
And my absolute favorite: #628, Xzavier. An X is cool, a Z is cooler - put them together and TRIPLE WORD SCORE!
I am sorely tempted. Granted, my husband is sorely tempted to name a boy Guybrush, and that's not going to happen, so alas, poor Evil Beans is going to have to take over the world with a less perfectly appropriate first name.
The iPhone app I'm using to obsessively track everything about this pregnancy has a list of the current top thousand baby names, and just wow. I thought Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing represented outliers. Apparently not. Each one of the names below has at least 300 kids in the US who were named it last year. In some cases significantly more. I do not understand the thought processes that lead to certain names taking hold of the mass subconscious so that even parents who think they're original are compelled to use them, but the swarms of Jennys in my grade school class are proof that it happens.
Today's selections: Boys.
#674: Alexzander (pick one weird letter and stick with it, people)
#583: Armani (will get a job in tech and spend his life in ratty jeans and video-game T-shirts)
#978: Bridger (for a minute there I thought it said "Badger" - which is pretty cool if you want your kid to grow up to be an Old West outlaw)
#631: Cannon (naming your children after artillery is so Palinesque)
#766: Dax (yeah, I liked Deep Space Nine too)
#670: Draven (walks the night...)
#736: Gauge (now I can see "Gage", but "Gauge"? And his brothers Jack and Tire Iron)
#859: German (is probably not actually. Part of the "I've never been there but it's such a nice name" trend: see also London, Ireland, Asia.)
#471: Gunner (not "Gunnar", Gunner. As in one who shoots guns. This is my friend's dad's hunting dog's name. That's much more appropriate.)
#154: Jaxon (sound the klaxon! It's Jaxon! I actually think this one is kind of cute.)
#500: Kale (is not as tasty as the health nuts would have us believe, and I have been known to eat raw mustard greens)
#883: Leonidas (TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELL!!!!)
#939: Lyric (nouns as first names are goofy sometimes but generally I approve - but "Lyric" is a little celebrity-baby for me. Says "My dad was totally in a band in college.")
#511: Maverick (it will always be 2008 for this kid)
#704: Messiah (doomed to feel like an underachiever forever)
#780: Raiden (FATALITY!!!)
#804: Ronin (and his brother Shinobi - they like to go out back and throw the ol' ninja star around)
#719: Sincere (has no choice but to grow up to be a con man)
#465: Talon (yes, you consider yourself kind of a badass, we get it )
And my absolute favorite: #628, Xzavier. An X is cool, a Z is cooler - put them together and TRIPLE WORD SCORE!
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Cravings goddamnit
I wasn't even trying to be cute. I was walking around the grocery store at lunch, scanning for things I could stand to eat, and something fruity and fat-free but not TOO fruity = gummi bears, and something salty and creamy and tangy = Purple Haze chevre. It didn't even occur to me how cliched I was being till I was making up the cheese plate.
So yeah. Gummi bears and goat cheese are the new pickles and ice cream.
So yeah. Gummi bears and goat cheese are the new pickles and ice cream.
Friday, June 24, 2011
how is babby formed
Yep! Still pregnant.
I'm not really into it (yet, at least.) It is freaking me out, I'm bloated, I'm queasy - it's like I have a gastrointestinal parasite that also makes my boobs hurt. My mother will not stop calling and every time she does I feel sucked down into the femininity void where you are expected to use phrases like "bless your heart" and "precious little angel," which I can ordinarily only tolerate when they're used as veiled insults in the Southern fashion. Reading the Internet is no better. I am very glad I spent very little time TTC with my DH before I got a BFP so that I never need to see/use those twee acronyms ever, ever again.
Twee. That's the problem. Everything about pregnancy is so charmingly self-consciously childlike, feminine and adorable that it makes me want to find one of those Hallmarks that sell Precious Moments figurines and burn it to the ground. But I digress.
The main reason I am ambivalent and tense about this pregnancy is that I have had a few symptoms that could indicate I may not hang on to it for long. I am either on my way to miscarriage or one of those weird women you see on "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant!" who have their periods in a normal-ish way and then, whoops! Baby! How the hell did that happen? The doctors (to whom I've run in wild panic twice so far - I can't go my whole first trimester like this!) seem to think I'm okay, pending my next ultrasound in two weeks. We shall see. In any case I am living in fear (because the prospect of miscarrying a wanted child, no matter how early, I am learning, is very disturbing) and trying really, really hard not to get my hopes up. Or get attached, at all. Which is why the precious baby huggy lumpkins shit that my mom wants to foist on me makes me want to barf. Then again, a lot of things make me want to barf right now, including car rides, my coworker's deodorant and basil pesto.
(This has not stopped me for thinking up names. In keeping with the Y-abuse that must apparently take place when you name a girl (Madysyn? Really?), I'm thinking Ysabel Syzygy Myrycle, Ys for short, and my husband insists on Link Batman Optimus Prime for a boy.)
But yeah, more people know than probably should, thanks to my husband's big mouth, and if I can't pull this off I'm going to have to deal with some of the most awkwardly expressed condolences ever.
You may be picking up that I'm terrible at grief. So terrible that I need to plan for it ahead of time even when things could very well be perfectly fine. Wow, this entry got depressing.
I'm not really into it (yet, at least.) It is freaking me out, I'm bloated, I'm queasy - it's like I have a gastrointestinal parasite that also makes my boobs hurt. My mother will not stop calling and every time she does I feel sucked down into the femininity void where you are expected to use phrases like "bless your heart" and "precious little angel," which I can ordinarily only tolerate when they're used as veiled insults in the Southern fashion. Reading the Internet is no better. I am very glad I spent very little time TTC with my DH before I got a BFP so that I never need to see/use those twee acronyms ever, ever again.
Twee. That's the problem. Everything about pregnancy is so charmingly self-consciously childlike, feminine and adorable that it makes me want to find one of those Hallmarks that sell Precious Moments figurines and burn it to the ground. But I digress.
The main reason I am ambivalent and tense about this pregnancy is that I have had a few symptoms that could indicate I may not hang on to it for long. I am either on my way to miscarriage or one of those weird women you see on "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant!" who have their periods in a normal-ish way and then, whoops! Baby! How the hell did that happen? The doctors (to whom I've run in wild panic twice so far - I can't go my whole first trimester like this!) seem to think I'm okay, pending my next ultrasound in two weeks. We shall see. In any case I am living in fear (because the prospect of miscarrying a wanted child, no matter how early, I am learning, is very disturbing) and trying really, really hard not to get my hopes up. Or get attached, at all. Which is why the precious baby huggy lumpkins shit that my mom wants to foist on me makes me want to barf. Then again, a lot of things make me want to barf right now, including car rides, my coworker's deodorant and basil pesto.
(This has not stopped me for thinking up names. In keeping with the Y-abuse that must apparently take place when you name a girl (Madysyn? Really?), I'm thinking Ysabel Syzygy Myrycle, Ys for short, and my husband insists on Link Batman Optimus Prime for a boy.)
But yeah, more people know than probably should, thanks to my husband's big mouth, and if I can't pull this off I'm going to have to deal with some of the most awkwardly expressed condolences ever.
You may be picking up that I'm terrible at grief. So terrible that I need to plan for it ahead of time even when things could very well be perfectly fine. Wow, this entry got depressing.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
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