30 weeks...holy cow (not a pun!)

It seems like every blog I want to start off with 'Wow!...' - and this one is no exception. The whole experience continues to amaze me, challenge me, and thrill me. I am amazed at every turn of the little body within me, and have especially grown to love what I believe is a little foot, in its regular place on the right side of my belly, about 3 inches from my belly button. It is like a touchstone for me, a lucky little bump I can rub when I feel anxious or nervous or nostalgic or any of the above. Like ctaching a falling star in some ways, I find myself constantly searching for the reassurance that little foot gives me, as if to say 'I'm still here!'. The baby moves around fairly constantly and I haven't had but one or two days when there was little or no movement, so I have not had any fears there thus far. Sometimes we even are dazzled by what feels like a full-body flip, a little in-utero gymnastics event that is wild to see and to feel. I am still feeling really good, although I am having some more uncomfortable days lately and feel quite full sometimes. I'm also more tired again, something I noticed markedly in the last ten days or so. Since I have been going to Yogapod's prenatal class (wonderful!) I have really seen how tired I get. Both times after the class I have had to go home and have a nap. I'm still struggling with the whole notion that I'm not doing enough, especially since I am not working, although I have had a steady stream of voice auditions, hopefully some of which I will book to make me feel better in general.

It still seems like a strange time, with all this waiting in the wings, anticipating this whole radical life change that is to come. It is not all romantic and blissful as the movies make it out to be, even though it has been phenomenally good. I just mean that there is also a lot of pressure and stress that comes into play with this new stage in life, a lot of self-reckoning, questioning of past decisions, future decisions, attitudes - everything. It is an emotionally challenging experience, but I continue to try and be present in this moment, enjoying each day as it comes to the best of my ability. I feel so fortunate to have had such a great pregnancy, and while my anticipation about the labour continues, I can only hope that it might match the pregnancy and that's all I could wish for - that and a healthy, gorgeous baby, of course!

I'm happy to have this chance to live with my baby all to myself, and while I know this next 10 weeks will go by quickly, I am taking it one day at a time and trying to give myself permission to live in this moment and experience without judgement, guilt or expectation - a challenge for me at the best of times. All I really know is that this is bound to make me a better person - it already has.

29 weeks - the countdown keeps racing!

It's crazy to think how little time is left before baby finally comes - only 11 weeks till my actual due date and who knows what will happen? No matter what way you slice it, baby is on its way!

We've been stuck in reno hell for 2 weeks (and we were gonna buy an old house??) - hell mainly because we still had to live here in this small space while we were doing everything, so it was move it, then move it again, and again and again. Tons of work, but it looks beautiful even though it's not totally finished up yet (it's finished enough for now, that's for sure!). The floors are gorgeous and were worth it but WOW what a lot of work (an apt metaphor for parenthood, I suspect...) It's a pleasure just to look at them, and they really make the whole place brighter and airier. The baby's room looks lovely and we both find ourselves going in there just to sit and absorb, sometimes in the middle of more restless nights (so much change afoot!) I sit in the chair and rock, or look into the empty crib and try to imagine the child that will soon fill it - it is an amazing idea to wrap your head around as an impending parent. I know soon it will be here and shortly thereafter will just be old hat, but for now, it is fresh and amazing and awesome to behold.

We're tired; tired of cleaning up and trying to figure out how our lives will go and wrapping our heads around the momentous changes that await us. We're just trying to sit back and enjoy these last few quiet weeks before everything is turned on its head and, as Ez says, we gain a whole universe.

7 months and the fear sets in...

Yes, it's somehow true: 28 weeks have gone by since this all began (well, technically 26, but why get into the bizarre mathematics of pregnancy at this juncture?) I'm continually growing and swelling and now my thoughts are really turning to the realities of having this child - and I'm finding myself a little scared in a lot of ways. Heck, more than a little scared, as evidenced by breathless crying jags and a sensitivity to everything that I didn't think I was capable of.

"What are you afraid of?", one might scoff, and it's true, that all will be well and we'll figure it all out, I know, but at the same time there are so many worries. I am certainly worried about money and the state of my marriage and my career and taking time off and what will happen with all that - those points, I believe, are obvious. I am also growing more and more uneasy with respect to the acutal birth, as everytiime I am asked about my desire to give birth naturally and with as few counterintuitive interventions as possible, women tend to look at me like I'm crazy - and I'm starting to wonder. Granted, I am meeting tomorrow with my midwife and I am sure much of that will be alleviated when I speak to her, but really, you have to begin to wonder when you receive so many incredulous looks and scoffs and pointed 'Well, if you have a headache you take aspirin, don't you?" lines. Despite the extensive research I have done, all of which points to epidurals prolonging labour, not utilizing the best birthing positions, adding stress to both mother and baby and requiring more interventions including forceps and vaccuum, the links to painful and difficult nursing and inabailities to latch etc etc etc - somehow I seem to be the one who's crazy - and I'm starting to wonder - maybe I can't handle it? It seems to be what everyone is telling me, despite the fact that so many of their birth stories had exactly the complications I spoke of. I worry that maybe I won't be able to handle it, despite having prepared myself all this time for it, despite feeling like a strong and focused woman whose body was created to this cery task. Despite all the intellectual checkmarks, I must face it that maybe I won't be strong enough - but then that insistent voice inside me yells 'WHY NOT?!' - and I begin to relax. It's not that I'm looking forward to an entire day's worth of very difficult and painful birthing, but at the same time, I feel like it is a time to test myself and to be focused and in communion with the whole spiritual side of this experience. I have tested myself physically before and I have always surprised myself, but I still understand that birth is a very dynamic event and that no one can predict how it will go, how I will react, how my body will cope, how my mind will cope, how my baby will cope. I keep telling myself it is like the most difficult river I have ever run - it will be scary and unpredictable, but I have trained for it and I will ride the waves that come. And, I guess, if I have to get out of my boat and walk out (i.e accept interventions) then I damn well will. I will do what is best for my baby.

I really don't know what to think about the whole notion of actually bringing a newborn home and caring for it. It really does highlight the hole Clintonian notion that it really does 'take a village' and my village is so far away! Which is not to say that I don't have friends (many of whom are like family) but mother and grandmother and in-laws are not here to take some of the load off, to help guide us through the newness of it all with the wisdom that has traditionally been passed down from generation to generation. It is hard to help over the phone and sometimes I worry that the beginning will be so over-whelming. In truth, I actually feel like I'll be fine, like buried deep inside myself is the codebook to this experience, but it is then that I wonder if perhaps I am being complacent in my confidence and that is in fact, what makes me worry. That I'm really not as together and prepared as I think I am. I can't say and won't know until the day this one walks in the door with us.

What fears envelope us at different times? It's funny to me that I can still worry myself like an old rag about my career, and my mistakes - which of course, add to the worry about all the ways in which I am doomed to fail this child in the same ways in which I fail myself, my husband, my friends. Understand that this is not the overwhelming sentiment, but certainly an underlying unease that I am simply admitting to because it seems I am admitting to everything here. I feel so much of the middle age injurious and sharpened barbs with which it is so easy to jab oneself. "I didn't do this, I failed at that, that did not go at all how I planned..." - it is the inescapable reality of living; not everything turns out as planned. Perhaps that is really what is scaring me, that I know the truth about how life goes. It does what it wants and though we may try to control it and mold it into our vision of its best path it is like the river - it bends and winds and is powerful and uncontrollable and you can only ride it through and try to catch every eddy you can.


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An update on the other going-on around here: The floors are finished but the finishing is not finished so no pics until it is done done done! They look beautiful but the house is still upsidedown, although only about 30% upsidedown, which is actually a seriouis improvement. More to come...

a few more pics of the renos

(27 weeks) Growing like a weed!

Okay, I'm admittedly a little behind on the blog - I took the pictures on Sunday but haven't been able to post as the house is upside down for our little spate of renos - finally, the ghetto carpet is out and the gorgeous mahogany floors are in! Well, almost in...

We're still working away on getting the floors down and getting the place back to some workable form. Monday JJ came by and helped by moving the heavy things and doing the underlay with Ez and then we all worked together to lay down the first 16 rows, which is not an inconsiderable feat considering that we have to move everything around this tiny space while we work, and also considering that the planks we are using are only 3.5" planks, so it takes some time. Oh! But it looks beautiful, really, we're so excited and proud of ourselves for all the work we've put in. Ez and I worked all day yesterday and finished the living room and today we hope that we will finally finish the baby's room (den no more!) and be able to piece together some semblance of normalcy in the apartment again. It's so much work, but the floor is really so beautiful we know it's worth it. Can't wait for you all to see it!

Otherwise, as you can see from the pictures, baby is growing rapidly, at a rate that somehow continues to astonish me. I find myself catching a glimpse in the mirror and stopping short thinking 'that's my body?' It is really so very strange, the way my little soccer-ball belly now curves up under my sternum - a place where the baby kicked me yesterday for the first time - very strange and forebording indeed. I have begun the odd little waddle that seems to accompany this stage of pregnancy and I am finding it increasingly more difficult to do little things like put on my socks. I am finally at a place where all my little fixit versions of my old pants are no longer working and I will have to break down and purchase some of the dreadfully ugly maternity wear that is out there. I refuse to pay $65 for an ugly pair of jeans, so I am hoping to comb through stores and find suitable options outside the realm of the super-ugly that pervades maternity wear. No wonder Tracy was thinking so much of starting a line of maternity clothes!

The other night I had the strangest dream yet about the baby - I dreamt that I could feel it moving and when I lifted my shirt to look the skin was pulled taut and translucent so that I could see first a tiny little hand with the smallest imaginable fingers, then two tiny feet and finally, when I moved into the light, a tiny face, blinking away the intrusion. It was amazing to see it blink its little eyes, and then suddenly, I was holding it in my hands, this tiny little girl, pink and slick and gorgeous. I ran up to my midwife and held her out "Look at this!" I shouted at her, and she took one look at me and said "It's too soon! You'll have to put her back. Go get a bottle of olive oil and you'll have to put her back until she's done" - as casually as if she were telling me to put a chicken back into the oven. It was a truly bizarre dream.

Other than that, not much dreaming going on as there seems to be very little sleeping going either. Insomnia continues to plague me (although Ez seems to have finally turned a corner with his) and it has been joined by a new friend - heartburn, something which I suspect I will suffer until the end, being so small as I am. My belly seems to be growing by the mintue and I am a little worried that my belly-ring hole can't handle the pressure. I'm keeping up my regimen of yoga and almond oil in hopes of saving the skin there and I am beginning to wrap my head around the fact that labour is an impending reality in which all my theories and research will be tested. I am trying not to think too much about it yet - and really have had little time with all the commotion around here. I have an audition today for a voice gig and am happy that the year seems to be beginning again. I was up at five this morning and when I looked out in the back forest it was once again covered in a glorious layer of white - yet another strange winter occurence for Vancouver. We've just lived through our third power outage of the last month, this one lasting nearly 24 hours, and we hope that there will be no further boil water advisories - onward towards spring! I'm finally finishing the baby's blanket which has taken me probably a hundred hours already, such a tedious little job with over a hundred separate pieces, but like the floor, I am very proud of it! More this weekend, perhaps even well written - and of course, with more pictures, hopefully of the place fully done!

26 weeks...and the year of the Yukon baby

Well, it's here, the year our baby will be born. As part of what appears to be a significant minority, we did little to celebrate the New Year except to welcome it for obviously important reasons - with an innocuous toast of Dr. Pepper at midnight - an hour which I have not seen for some time indeed. I seem to be much more the 4-6 a.m. type lately, that second trip of the night to the loo is killing me and I lie awake for a few hours after as my mind gets going about, well, everything.

I'm having trouble shaking a pervasive set of the blues, the ones which I think typically envelope me at this time of the year. Not only am I a relative grinch about the whole Christmas season thing, resenting the commercialism and the general frenzy, but living in a condo means I must also dread New Year's Eve as it has been a nightmare for years. We have had some of the world's least courtesous neighbours; last year Neil the diminutive and highly inconsiderate neighbour above us had a party whose highlights included floor firecrackers and what can only have been a mosh pit - directly above our bedroom. We were dreading this year, literally cringing at every sound from above us. Finally, around 9 p.m. it started with a low and invasive bass that continued to rise until we finally figured out that it was our new neighbours downstairs instead. We'd already endured their Christmas party and the drunken reverie on the balcony - "like, you know, houseboating is so awesome, except that, like, because there were guys there, we like, couldn't really walk around in our underwear, it was like, so strange!" It's so frustrating to sit there and have to endure the rudeness of other people who have not yet clued into the fact that they do not live in freestanding homes. It made it that much more despressing that we didn;t get that house. All things considered though, they shut it down to a dull roar by 12:30, just as I was getting ready to go downstairs. If only we'd have had the sub-floor ready, I would have been happy to start installing the floors around 9 a.m. this morning.

As for the renos, we have pulled up the carpet from the den - now affectionately called 'baby's room' - and I couldn't have been happier to get that hideous eyesore out of my life - what idiot thiought that white carpet what a good idea I will never know... In any case, Ez worked dutifully to paint it in a beautiful sunny yellow that he picked out (lemon pound cake to be exact) and it looks so bright and wonderful. We're changing the light fixture and it is like a different room completely and I cannot wait to see it with the rich mahogany floors we've bought. The hardest part of the whole thing is just finding where to put everything in the meantime - this is a small place to say the least.

I suppose that is part of the depression I'm fighting. despite my true belief that living in small spaces is the inconvenient truth of future living in terms of its clearly smaller environmental footprint, I still long for a space of our own where we don;t need a storage space and we don't have to deal with whatever arbitrarioly annoying asshole happens to impose their lives upon ours. I wonder sometimes how we will ever move up, but then I have a tendency to live in the difficulty of things --I know, I'm working on it.

It's tough right now though, just getting through December. It's a month that I tend to despise, slow and boring and really a dead month with respect to work and hoping to work, and I just genearlly have to endure the time until life starts again and I feel like I am part of the world again. I always feel like I'm stuck in a horrible, lethargic limbo at this time of the year. I keep asking myself what I can be doing to get rolling, to move forward, to recreate myself and become something again - and I have to remind myself that I am starting something new, the most important job that I'll ever have. And it's not at all that I don't recognize that, it's just that I struggle with the transition from being obsessed with moving upward in my career and the decisions I have made to give my child the best life I think I can for it, including the country in which it is raised; its environment, both physcial and socia-spiritual. It's hard for me to think about giving up on my dreams in so many ways, but I suppose until I meet them, how can I feel like the sacrifice was worth it? I think (and hope sincerely) that when I finally see that tiny face, those little feet which have been steadily thrusting themselves into further and further parts of my interior, when I look into those eyes, I will know why I have done everything I have ever done in my life. It will all make sense - if only for a brief moment in time.