Quickening

It has only been in the last 194 years that women have been able to hear their baby's heartbeat, and only in the last 52 years have women been able to see their unborn child on a screen. (The stethoscope was invented in 1816 and ultrasound technology was approved for screening pregnant women in 1957.) But all women of all time -- Eve, Sarah, Hannah, Mary, Catherine the Great, Lucille Ball, my mom, your mom, and so on -- have been able to feel their babies move inside them. Perhaps for that reason alone, the little nudges and movements I've felt in these last few weeks have been the most amazing experience of my pregnancy thus far.

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Three weeks ago I was sitting on my couch next to Pete when I felt an unfamiliar pang in my stomach. "I think the baby just moved!" I said, and then I held very still. "I felt it again!" I said, and Pete paused our movie.

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"Sweet!" he said. "I felt it a few days ago when I hugged you, though, so it's not the first time."

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"For the last time, you did not feel the baby move," I said. "It is impossible for you to feel it before I do."

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"Why? I told you you were pregnant before you knew."

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"I know, and you don't get to take this one away from me," I pouted. "I get to feel it first. Next thing I know you'll be in labor before I am."

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"No thanks." He visibly quivered at the idea. "So what does it feel like?"

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I sat very still again and waited until I felt it. "It feels... not like I thought it would. One of my books said it would feel like bursting bubbles or 'darting minnows,' and my midwife said it would feel like a faint nudge of a fingertip. This feels like... actually, it kind of hurts."

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It was gas. You would think I would know what gas feels like, but I'm a lady, so I don't really get gas. Pete, if you're reading this, shut up.

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A few days later, it was unmistakable -- a gentle little flop and then a tap on something deep inside me. I giggled and pressed on my stomach; I called Pete over to see if he could feel it, which he couldn't. (It looks like he won't be laboring for me, after all.) For the next two weeks I announced every time I felt the baby moving -- about three or four times a day -- and then I grabbed Pete's hand and pressed it on my tummy.

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"Feel that?" I'd ask. He would shake his head. "How about that?" No. "You had to feel that one, come one." Uh uh. Once he said, "Well, I feel something... really faint... wait, nope, that's my heartbeat pulsating in my fingers." I made him pause computer games and flight simulators to feel my stomach. I woke him up from a nap once, which was a bad idea.

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Last night we were drifting asleep when I felt the baby and knew -- just knew -- that it was strong enough for Pete to feel. He was nearly asleep and I didn't want to wake him up, but I had to. "Pete? Pete, wake up, I know you could feel this." He mumbled something and I took his hand, pressed it against my stomach, and waited. The baby jumped and Pete's eyes flew open. "I felt it! Wow, that was a big one!" He waited a little more and felt another kick. It was a milestone, a triumph, and even though he was probably too sleepy to remember it, I always will.

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In her book Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering, Sarah Buckley references a study on maternal bonding with unborn babies. The study concluded that women who have ultrasounds report higher levels of bonding with their unborn child compared to women who do not have ultrasounds, but only before they feel movement. After quickening, technology makes no difference in how bonded a woman feels towards her baby. Even though I'm looking forward to my 21 week ultrasound tomorrow, and even though I have a recording of my baby's heartbeat set as my ring tone, I treasure these movements as the most pure connection that I have with the life inside of me.

"Are you going to find out?"

Until I got pregnant, I wasn't aware that all pregnant couples belong to one of two camps: The Waiters and the Finder-Outers. The lines are clearly drawn, and while both sides are prepared with a mini pitch, the Waiters will always win on account of passion.

"DON'T DOOOOOOO IT," they wail, as if they just found you on the edge of the Golden Gate Bridge.

"But there are so few surprises in life," they implore sadly.

"The not knowing really strengthens you in those last few pushes," mothers reason. Then they add with a loud whisper, "And you get better stuff at the shower if your guests don't know what you're having."

But my all time favorite response came courtesy of our friend Mike. No one else ever put it quite this way, although the sentiment underscores the entire Waiters' case. "You'll ruin it," he said. "You'll just ruin it."

By the sly look on his face when he said it, he obviously knew that it would get to my head. Will I ruin it if I find out? I wondered. Would the knowledge of this baby's gender remove all of the mystery of life, leaving me with a dim, mundane existence? Would my shower guests buy me enough 0-3 month dresses for a flock of baby girls, but no thermometer? Was I going to run out of steam during labor, throw up my arms and say, "Well, I know it's a boy. No sense in pushing it out now," and then die in labor with my baby boy (as expected) stuck in the birth canal? My death would be (regrettably) no surprise to the Waiters, who had predicted this scenario, and they would talk about it the way you might discuss the death of a drunk race car driver. She found out, they would murmur to one another at my wake, their voices full of pity and condemnation.

Well, probably not.

My camp of Finder Outers isn't very passionate, and we're unified only by our impatience or our nerdy urge to "plan ahead" with appropriate colors. But, on behalf of all the peeking parents out there, I would like to offer my response.

First: Which surprise-filled reality are we comparing this this one to that deems life lacking in surprises? I for one am surprised on a daily basis. Sometimes Pete walks up behind me without my knowing and touches my shoulder and I spit my water all over the keyboard while falling out of my chair. Just today a dog ran into the street and I almost got in an accident. Occasionally I get a call from Family Video and am surprised to remember that I never returned that movie that we never watched, resulting in over $15 of fines. Some mornings I wake up with an enormous pimple that I didn't even feel coming.

Okay, so those are all bad surprises, but I'm sure there are plenty of good ones, too.

Second: Finding out doesn't take away the surprise, it just shifts the surprise to a different point in time. I can see why it would be fun to find out at the moment of birth, but personally I like the idea of spreading out the fun. We're going to have the ultrasound tech put the "results" in a sealed envelope, then we're driving to a family reunion and opening the envelope over dinner. This should provide at least twenty minutes of excitement, followed by months of anticipation and calls from my mother-in-law saying, "I saw an infant train conductor outfit today and couldn't resist!" At birth you have the excitement over the gender mixed in with the exhaustion and the rush of birth, followed by months of green and yellow onsies.

But ultimately, it's up to each person or each couple, and I say more power to the Waiters. I for one can hardly wait the 15 remaining days until my ultrasound. I think I'll set the envelope on the dashboard and stare at it during the entire drive to Wisconsin, just to tantalize myself with the surprise.

(I forgot to mention a third camp of couples: The Finder-Outers-Who-Make-Everyone-Else-Wait. Though they may have pure intentions, this group always comes off a little smug. Their mantra is, "We just want to keep something for ourselves." I never really know how to respond to that. Is an apology in order? "I'm so sorry that we the people have taken away so much from your pregnancy. I'm glad you are reserving some of it just for yourself." (?) Please, if you are going to find out but not tell anyone, don't tell people that you are finding out but not telling them.Find an appropriate way to dodge the question, and dodge it, lest I buy you lots of toys and stuffed animals that aren't on your registry just to make you angry.)

Just a spoonful of crazy helps the hormones go down

Yesterday I had my first official hormonal pregnancy breakdown. It went something like this:

Pete was in the living room as I was looking through pictures of fetal development. I found an amazing, high-tech, biology-book worthy photograph of a baby at our stage of development, and marveled at it. I look at these pictures every other week or so, and so much happens in that amount of time that it amazes me.

I set the photo as our desktop background (replacing a glamor shot of an airplane flying over water) just as Pete walked into the office. I said, "Pete, look at this amazing picture. Can you believe that's how developed our baby is right now?" He looked at it and said,

"Ugh. That looks like a dead baby. And please don't change my desktop background."

(Okay, now that I'm writing this, I'm starting to think that my following reaction was completely justified. Well, almost.)

Feeling a rare sort of rage creeping up from my toes to my chest, I silently stood up and walked to the dining room, where I began rearranging piles of magazines on the table. I do this when I'm upset -- I pretend to clean things. Pete has forbidden me from pretending to clean the kitchen when I'm angry because he often has to play interference, catching plates and glasses that I accidentally drop.

Pete followed me into the dining room and said, "Okay, you're upset. Tell me why."

I took one of the magazines off its new pile, walked silently to the living room, sat on the couch, and pretended to read.

"Okay, you are very upset. Tell me why."

Since I was pretending, I decided to pretend that I was an adult and, rather than act out on the anger I was feeling, ask questions to understand where Pete had been coming from and why he had such a morbid reaction to a beautiful picture. I opened my mouth, took a deep, calming breath, and burst into tears. "What is WRONG WITH YOU?!?!?!?!" was my first resolution-seeking inquiry.

Pete took a step back. "Okay, now you're unreasonably upset. Go ahead."

"I am NOT being UNREASONABLE," I informed him, wiping snot from my nose and attempting to focus my eyes. The rage had reached my head now.

"Joy, it isn't a picture of our baby. And why do you look so crazy? You've been so good throughout this whole pregnancy... even more emotionally stable than when you're not pregnant. Where is this coming from?"

I stopped blubbering and snotting and coughing and eye-darting as he finished his sentence. This is what shock feels like, I thought. I gripped my magazine. "I want to throw this magazine at you," I said. "I want to THROW IT AT YOU but it wouldn't HURT ENOUGH!!!! More emotionally stable than when I'm not pregnant?!"

He started laughing. Laughing. He probably wouldn't have done so if there were any sharp utensils lying around, but since all I had was my magazine, he laughed at me. "Yes, you've been very stable. I hear all these stories about crazy pregnant women, and I thought, 'Holy cow, Joy's going to be a trip.' But you've been great! And I'm just saying, let's not go down this road here. Let's just go back to Super Pregnant Joy."

By now I was sobbing and hyperventilating again. "So because I'm pregnant, my feelings don't matter right now," I wailed. "And I suppose when I'm you know, uh, SCREABING [that was supposed to be screaming, but snot was in the way] in LABOR, you'll just tell me to, I don't know, walk it off or something."

He hiccuped a little trying to suppress his laughs.

"And for another thing," I said, "It's not your desktop. It's OUR desktop."

"What are you talking about?" He looked bewildered. "What about the desktop?"

"YousaidthatIshouldn'treplacepicturesonYOURdesktop," I blubbered, the sobs rising and rising. "Butit'smydesktoptoo,weShareit!!!"

"Joy! Just tell me why you're so upset."

He waited until my eyes stopped darting around my head, until my sobs settled into a slight sniff, until some of the anger seeped out of my ears and the ends of my toes.

"I was excited over what I think is an amazing picture," I said. "I didn't care what you thought about the picture, but I wanted you to be amazed at how developed our baby was. I wanted you to say things like, 'Look at its fingers! Look at its nose!' And you should have figured out that it was important to me, because I had made it the background photo and I called you over to look at it. And finally, you should never say, 'dead baby.'"

Pete nodded. "Okay, I understand now. And you understand that I did not intend to hurt you or to say anything bad about our baby. I love our baby. Our baby is great. That wasn't our baby. Whatever I said about the picture probably came from a place of ignorance. I don't know how they take those pictures, okay? I know now that it was really a live baby, and that white ghostly stuff was... I don't know... the placenta? You're laughing now because I said that was the placenta, so see? I'm ignorant. And I'm not going to tell you to 'walk off' the labor pains. And it is our computer, not my computer, you're right."

"Just.... stop talking," I said. "And we'll be find." [That was supposed to be fine, but there was some leftover snot in the way.]

Framed Photos

Tonight I gathered all of my mismatched framed pictures to make an arrangement on a bare wall. A few of the pictures are from when Pete and I were dating, some are from our engagement, others from the wedding, and so on. Right when I thought I was finished, I spotted a 2 inch frame that was exactly the right size for our 10 week ultrasound picture.

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Pete hammered the nail and I hung the picture; it was almost too small to notice. "Just imagine how many pictures we're going to have of this mysterious person," I said. "School photos, birthday parties, vacations, holidays, graduations... And all we have now is this."

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And then I realized that this is probably the last time that many of those pictures of Pete and I will every be on our wall. Couples with kids just don't display multiple pictures of themselves kissing on park benches or dancing at their wedding. Most of them will get tucked away into albums as we make room for the kids' portraits and family pictures, just like my pictures of friends and high school and Europe made way for these.

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If beginnings weren't this much fun, I'd spend a lot more time crying over endings.

*photos http://www.sarahbarlow.com/

"Beauty" and Melanoma: Only Skin Deep

This is your square friend Joy here, reminding you that when someone says, "Wow, you look really tan," the proper response is not, "Thanks, you look great, too." (Unless that's how you would respond if someone said, "Wow, your skin looks irreversibly damaged on account of either your vanity or carelessness.")

You would think that tanning would be as out of fashion as smoking by now (actually, in the real fashion world, it's completely out of vogue), but I still hear things like,

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"I don't need sunscreen because my skin doesn't burn."

"Storing up my Vitamin D for the winter!"

"My shrink suggested that I try a tanning bed for my SADS."

(And my personal favorite)

"I'm going on vacation in a couple weeks, so I'm getting a base tan. To be safe."

Facts:

- Everyone needs SPF 15 or higher with UVA/UVB protection whenever he or she goes into the sun (even if it's winter or a cloudy summer day), regardless of race, skin type or skin tone.

- Vitamin D: Get it before 10 am. Otherwise it's like drinking a 1,500 calorie shake for the calcium.

- Your shrink is not a dermatologist.

- There is no such thing as a safe base tan, regardless of what the girl at the tanning salon (who is, interestingly enough, also not a dermatologist) says. Tan skin is damaged skin, even if it's in preparation for a vacation somewhere where "the sun is different than it is here." When you go on vacation, you should be applying sunscreen every two hours, staying out of the sun during the hottest part of the day, and wearing thin, long sleeve shirts and a hat when the sun is unavoidable.

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We all know why, right? 1 in 5 Americans... most preventable kind of cancer... melanoma, squamous cell... basal cell... this 32 year old woman. Okay. I thought so. Just making sure. Renew your committment to protect your health and preserve your beautiful skin! Suntans are not a cute way to express your cool retro style.

Home Plate Advantage

The sheer volume of decisions that you have to make before you have a baby is on par with planning a wedding. Wedding planning is simply making decision after decision, day after day, until suddenly you're naked in a hotel room wondering what you've gotten yourself into.

Right now I'm baby planning. Thankfully I have nine months instead of the five short months of my engagement, but the decisions feel a little more weighty. I could probably list 65 decisions that I've made in the last five weeks, some of them without a second thought, but many of them in consultation with my mother, a friend, and at least three reference books.

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One of the decisions that I'll have to make soon is whether I want to give birth in a hospital or at home. I met with both the home birth and the hospital-based midwife last week; I liked both of them, and I don't feel any closer to making the decision. It feels like it should be obvious, but I don't think I've been quiet for long enough to know what I really want.

My mom had two babies in the hospital and three at home, and I attended the final two. I remember them feeling so natural and comfortable. With the last one, my mom made blueberry pie ahead of time, which she set it out with whip cream after the contractions started. I remember checking in on my mom, eating some pie with my dad in the kitchen, reading my novel in the living room, watching Isaiah emerge into the world, and then eating some more pie. The midwives were there the whole time, but everything seemed to go according to my mom's timetable. No one told her what to do or when to do it; she just disappeared into another world inside herself and had a baby.

I liked the whole experience, but I always assumed that I would have my babies in hospitals. I admired my mother's hippie, granola ways, but back then I also found them odd. Well, I still think she's a tad odd. Not only did my mom have her babies at home... she wants us to host her wake at home. "Everyone goes other places to do everything," she lamented to me once. "They go someplace else to eat dinner, they go someplace else to worship, they go someplace else to have babies, they go someplace else to be dead in a room. When I die, just put my casket on the kitchen table and invite people over." My mom is by no means a hermit--she just thinks your home should be where you live, not a place for you crash after you do your living somewhere else.

So that's my mom, and maybe it's me too, minus the notion of my casket on the kitchen table. I think I've come to terms with all of the really important things to consider with home births and hospital births, and as I quiet myself to figure out what I really want, I'm left to consider these items on each pro list:

- If I have the baby at the hospital, I'll get to press a little button when I need something.

- If I have the baby at home, there will be pie.

Stirrups and Sonograms

Today Pete saw more of me than I have ever seen of myself. Today Pete watched me get a Pap Smear. I knew he would. I knew there was no way he was going to stand by my head or blur his eyes and make nervous conversation. I told him exactly what was going to happen while we were waiting for the midwife.

"Guess where this metal beak looking thing goes," I challenged him, raising one eyebrow. Pete rolled his eyes. "It's pretty obvious where that goes."

"Well, I bet you don't know what that does," I said, pointing to a large machine-type object. "What does that do?" Pete asked solemnly. I readjusted myself on the butcher paper and smoothed out my gown. "Oh, oh you just wait." I had no idea what that did.

Amy came in and introduced herself; we chatted for about twenty minutes before she put the gloves on. I told her that Pete has a curious nature, and she offered to give him a front row show.

"See that?" I heard her say to Pete after the metal thing went where it obviously goes. "That's the cervix. That's what's going to dilate to ten centimeters." She made a wide gesture and I said, "Really? That big?" She looked at her hands and said, "Well, no, more like this," and shortened her hands to indicate a space that looked wide enough for a Grade A jumbo egg to fit through.

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Pete's head disappeared for a moment. "That's it, right there?" He had no idea what he was looking at, I'm sure. As soon as the exam was over Amy said, "Now I'm just going to feel around a little..." and suddenly her gloved hand was up there. Up, up, up there. "Yeah, I'd say that's about a ten week uterus," she said. Pete swallowed. It echoed.

Amy finished and left the room and I got dressed. "What did you think?" I asked Pete. He nodded a few times. "Fascinating," he said. "It was something." His eyes were a little wider than normal and he didn't seem to be blinking.

A few minutes later we followed Amy to a larger room with dim lighting and impressive machinery. Amy hadn't been able to find the heartbeat with the Doppler, so she wanted to get a quick peek with the sonogram. She put some jelly on my tummy, pressed something cold against my skin; my heart flickered with the screen. There was my baby's head resting in a cradle of shadows; there were my baby's arms and legs flailing in liquid, computerized motion. "I see it!" Pete said, marveling at its head and appendages. I tried to hold still, but every time the little bean on the screen waved, I giggled. "It's a beautiful baby," Amy said, satisfied with the heartbeat and the measurements.

I forgot all of my reservations about high frequency waves--I wished that I could just sit there with my beautiful baby all evening, waving and giggling. I see you, I told the baby through telepathic powers that I've developed over the last ten weeks. You don't know it, but I see you, and even before I saw you, I loved you.

"Okay, I'm convinced," Pete said proudly, and the screen went dark.

(This is just a stock picture--I haven't scanned mine yet. Picture something like this, only 100x cuter.)