audits.

i have a lot to post about this past weekend (baby shower was incredible), but that will wait until i have a chance to upload pictures.

so, jb and i are being audited for our 2008 tax returns.  it is making me feel like a white collar criminal, even though we are the least likely people to cheat on our taxes ever.  i have a phobia of being in trouble.  more than that, though, this is just pretty much the most inconvenient thing that could be happening right now.

in any case, sheila is the lovely IRS examiner that we're supposed to meet with.  we got a nice form letter yesterday letting us know that we have TEN DAYS to contact sheila and schedule some time.  so, jb called this morning and apparently sheila is out of the office until the first week of november.  this is super convenient, since i'll likely be delivering a human child that week.  they let us know that december 1 is the absolute latest date we can have our meeting.  so, there you have it.

for your entertainment, i would like to deliver a transcript of justin's response to my indignation over the whole matter (why can't we meet with someone else, sooner, etc etc).

Dec 1 was the most they would let us push the appointment out. So annoying. Yes, bring the baby and see if we can get it to throw up on Sheila's desk. Sheila is apparently the only one that would sit down with us. I asked if she had someone covering her biz while she was out but the answer was no.  

I figured we'd start with the honey + flys approach. If Sheila is a whore and tells us we owe the IRS more than $40, I'll tell her straight up that she's making our baby cry and is a terrible person with back-acne and no soul. I will then proceed to poop on her desk and throw up on her HP printer.

hopefully everything will just work out and our meeting will be quick and painless (and sheila will be apologetic and remorseful for bothering us during this special time)....

class summary.

our newborn care class was fun.  probably not as fun/realistic/informative as it might have been if we'd been using real babies, but i think we both got some good information, and it was helpful to get some perspective on all the stuff babies need you to do for them.

we did get to see several awesome videos involving men with intense mustaches and women with bad sweaters and worse haircuts.  ah, the 80s.  we also saw a clip of a diaper with meconium that i'm pretty sure has scarred justin for life.  just wait.

the hands-on portion of the class had us taking plastic babies through various stations to practice all the skills we'd learned from the videos.  justin thought it would be a great idea to grab the african-american baby, which i know really impressed the 30 other couples in the room.  he was holding that baby up like simba.  i just hope he's that proud when he meets our real baby.

we were also supposed to practice the football hold/carry as we transitioned from station to station.  apparently, babies enjoy being held like this and it's easier to keep their head supported, etc etc.  jb thought it was more practical to carry the baby by its head in the "basketball" hold.  fortunately, he really excelled at the swaddling, so i think we'll be ok when our real baby arrives.  i've informed him that basketball holds are ok for class, but not ok for real babies.

we also toured the hospital where we'll be delivering and it was super nice.  they are all about security and very progressive about working with families and care providers to give you the experience you want.

this weekend we have an infant cpr class which i bet will bring more fun stories.  amy says the mannequin babies in that class are even more terrifying than the ones from newborn care, so i can only imagine....

baby class #1.

we're about to leave for our infant care class.  this is the conversation we just had.

jb: "so, we're going to learn how to hold and diaper and bathe babies....are we experimenting with real babies?"

me: "um, like from the nursery?"

jb: "yeah, i just figured they'd grab a few for us to learn on."

drapes and updates.

i need to post some pics from our fun weekend last weekend, but jb wants to edit some of them and play around a bit, so those will be forthcoming.  we were in san antonio for b&e's wedding weekend and it was a total blast.  the wedding was small and intimate, and we were super honored to be included in the celebration.  i love going to weddings when you can just see and feel all the love between the couple and everyone in their lives.  it was my first time meeting e, and she's one of the most precious people i've ever met.  i just know she's the perfect person for b and it's so rad to witness something like that.  here's one pic of mom and amelia - she was the flower girl and was SO well-behaved the whole weekend.  she really is one of the cutest little munchkins ever.

anyway...we got back to austin late saturday night and have spent this week busy busy.  i got one of the drapes that i'm sewing for nibs' room done, and we hung that up, so i'll hopefully finish #2 by the end of the weekend and then decide if i'm going to attempt the bumper and dust ruffle.  the crib is all set up, so the room is pretty much ready for a new inhabitant.  none of the pets know what to think about any of it, except maybe etta who is pretty sure she wants to chew on all the new, small, delightful-smelling items.  we keep the nursery room doors closed most of the time.....

this morning was our 33 week appointment, and everything is still looking great, yay!  nibs is still head down, but is rolling back and forth with his/her back to my belly button.  this makes me feel like i have a weird melon rolling around in there since the baby's feet are basically towards my spine and i'm feeling fewer kicks than rolls.  his/her butt is also all up in my rib cage (the blessings of a ridiculously short torso, i guess), which is....interesting.  i can't really call it painful since i love feeling all the movement so much, but i do have to stand up and stretch out every so often when s/he gets a little too buck wild in there.  other stats: heart beat was 152 this morning; still measuring exact at 33 weeks; still no swelling or high blood pressure, so all good news.

this weekend we have a newborn care class and a tour of the hospital and in non-baby activities, i'm sure there will be extensive football watching and hopefully some yard work.  we're consistently in the lower 90s now, so i think this *may* be a sign that we will have a fall at some point.  maybe i'll pull out the halloween decorations to encourage the weather's cooperation.

roll-up shade i made - keeps light out pretty well and gives the room a warm orange-y glow

my belly = officially gigantic.  also, i look so domestic in this picture....

thoughts on birth part two: natural birth (or, why i'm kind of maybe sorta a masochist).

i don't enjoy pain.  i don't think it takes me to some magical, transcendent place where i become steeped in the knowledge of the universe or anything like that.  but i do think that sometimes pain is part of an experience, and it can engrain that experience more fully into your being.  sort of the no pain, no gain philosophy, but maybe a gentler version of that.  in any case, it's probably why i chose to run a marathon (and will hopefully do more), why i have made bad relationship choices, why i will always have dogs even though i have experienced the loss of dogs that i've loved immensely.  you get the idea.  the pain, for me, highlights and contrasts the joy of the other side - finishing the race, meeting jb, all the great life-filled experiences with the dogs.

so it stands to reason that i, being a person who craves a life full of experiences, would want to give the whole un-medicated birth thing a try.  so that's what i'm going to try to do.  it's not really a whole lot more complicated than that.  i feel like women have been doing this for a long long time.  and our bodies are made to do it, and our babies are made to come out.  it's natural.  it's also temporary, which for me is a big deal. i've watched lots of birth videos by this point in the whole experience, and i am always struck by the amazing contrast between that last push and the look of utter and complete relief and bliss moments later.  as a person who doesn't even really like to take advil when i have a headache, i think the anticipation of that relief can get me through the whole ordeal...especially knowing that the other side of the ordeal is my little nibs.

i guess that's really it.  for those that are curious, the birthing class we're taking is hypnobirthing and it's really focused on changing the associations your brain has with birth.  they talk about a fear-tension-pain cycle that we try to break.  meaning, most people have fear associated with birth (from other peoples' crazy stories and the drama that always accompanies birth in tv/movies, etc).  birth is portrayed as this insanely painful and scary and crazy ordeal, which creates tension.  when you're tense, your body doesn't respond in "normal" ways, so things that your body is actually capable of doing become more painful because of that tension.  anyway....they change the language around birth and encourage you to trust the whole process and your body's capabilities.

as a friend recently said, no one wins a medal for waiving meds during birth.  that is absolutely true.  no one asks your high school student if his mom had an epidural when he was born.  this is just my thing...i'm a sucker for a challenge....

thoughts on birth part one: midwives.

lots of people have asked me about why/how/what our birth plans are, so i thought i'd write down my own thoughts/philosophies about this.   i honestly think the choices that a woman/couple make about the birth of their child are very individual, so i don't have an agenda at all in my preferences and choices.  i just feel the way i do, and this is a reflection on why and how i came to feel this way.

first, the midwives thing.  when i first started thinking about giving birth (well before this pregnancy, just in the grand scheme of maybe someday i will have a human baby), i realized i don't have a great deal of trust in the medical profession.  it's the whole hammer/nail thing - when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  when you're a surgeon, everything looks like an opportunity to perform some kind of surgery or other intervention.  i think doctors are great, and i'm not one of those people who will avoid going to the doctor in favor of hoping whatever ailment will randomly go away, but i do think that i live in a culture that is increasingly (and i would argue detrimentally) reliant on the medical profession.  people get on medication for all kinds of things that could really be solved (a lot of the times - this is not a blanket statement) by diet and exercise and stress management.  by that same token, it seems to me like everyone goes to a doctor for pregnancy and childbirth, when it's really only a very very small percentage of women who need medical intervention in their pregnancies.  obviously, for those that do, medical intervention is a god-send, but for myself, i didn't really think a doctor was who i needed to see if i happened to be blessed with a normal pregnancy.  and, thankfully, doctors are rampant so i feel confident i'm in the clear if something abnormal pops up.

enter midwifery, the solution to my doctor skepticism.  i think i was drawn to the idea because of its history.  women have been using midwives for birth for a long, long time, with a great deal of success.  there's also a much lower incidence of surgical intervention (read: c-section) with midwife-assisted birth.  combine that with the option my practice offers of delivering in a hospital (a request my family made, despite my assurances that home and birth center births were statistically just as safe if not safer), and i was sold.

in my experiences so far, the midwives are intuitive and responsive and direct.  my doctors are great too, of course, but i think doctors are sometimes reliant on checklists and limiting liability in a way that my midwives are not....in a situation like the birth of a child, where every woman and every pregnancy is different, i really appreciate working with caretakers who are attuned to me and my pregnancy specifically.  they feel around on my belly, ask questions about me and the baby, and generally engage with the whole experience much more like an art than a science.  and i, personally, like that.  so will a doctor deliver nibs when s/he decides to make an appearance?  it's unlikely.  will a doctor even be present in the room?  i hope not, because that will mean i'm having the normal, uncomplicated birth i'm hoping for.

labor day, but not that kind of labor.

i love holiday weekends.  i have always had a special fondness for labor day weekend, for some reason, and this particular one did not disappoint.

on friday, we spent some time playing cards at a cafe, then took the pups for a long walk at the park.  it was the beginning of some glorious weather, and they loved it.  then we hung out with our friend cj for a while and called it a reasonably early night.

saturday morning i met a long-lost friend and her almost 2 year-old for some park swinging.  another glorious day, weather wise, and it was awesome to see this pal after so long.  her daughter is adorable and beautiful and might love swinging more than any other kid ever.  the rest of saturday was spent in a food and football coma.  our friends m&k made pulled pork for the ut vs. rice game and we always eat waaaay too much when they cook.  ut looked very unimpressive in this season opener, so we had to deal with our sorrow over that fact with snacks....anyway, then we went to watch lsu vs. unc at w&d's house, where they made delicious grilled burgers.  needless to say we were stuffed to the gills.  lsu looked great the first half and then things went a little awry (especially considering unc's lack of starters), but they managed to pull it off, which i guess is all you can ask for?

anyway....sunday we got busy on nibs's room and made a ridiculous amount of progress - yay!  jb tackled the pack n play set up.  here are his notes (there's a whole section for notes in the manual - a bad sign for the level of complexity of a project):

somehow, he managed to prevail, so we have an officially set up pack n play now.  woo hoo!  there are several less appropriate pictures of jb dominating this piece of equipment, but here is an internet-suitable one to show the victory:

we still hadn't screwed all the face plates back over the light switches and outlets, so we managed to get that done with the smallest screwdriver available.  nothing like finding the right tool for the job....

all in all, we're really excited with how everything turned out.  we'll be picking up the real crib this weekend (it will go where the pack n play currently is), and then we've got a few adjustments, etc, but everything is feeling pretty good to go.  i washed all the clothes and blankets and whatnot, so all we need is a bebe to put in them....

changing table, cloth diapers, blankets, gear

corner area where the glider will eventually go

high shelf with books and cute stuffed animals

whole room view.  i know it's blurry and overexposed.  justin is trying to teach me how to use the manual settings on our digital camera but my brain isn't functioning quite as well these days...

this is his exasperation with my inability to take an in-focus, properly exposed shot, despite the fact that i know how to use a manual film camera....

so all in all, very productive.  we got the glider ordered and it will be here in 8-12 weeks, but we're hoping for sooner since nibs will likely make an appearance by then.  

monday was a day of picnicking and poolside hang out at deep eddy, an awesome spring fed pool near town lake.  we topped the weekend off with a lamb feast going-away party for a classmate and his wife who are moving to cincinnati.  our friends d&e cooked and it was a delightful evening.  

now it's on to the next adventure.  it's been raining for like 14 straight hours and i think that means a nap is in order....

31 week update.

we're now into the appointments every 2 weeks phase.  mayhem.  tomorrow is the official 31-week mark (9 weeks left, what does that even mean?), but our appointment was today.  we met with a new midwife who was awesome.

nibs is officially head down, and the midwife claims s/he will stay this way through delivery.  hopefully so.  jb got to feel the head and butt and back, which was awesome.  we also got to hear the real heartbeat (we've been hearing the placental heartbeat this whole time because of my anterior placenta situation).  it was right at 150, so that keeps the mystery alive, for sure.  i was measuring a little big last time (about 1 week or so), but i'm right back on track this week, so i was really happy about that.  what else?  oh, i've gained a few more pounds than i'd like to have by this point, but nothing to be worried about, they said.  i'm just going to try to pay attention to what i'm putting in my mouth over the next nine weeks so it's not completely out of control by the end.....

we also had our first birthing class last night - hypnobirthing.  it was fantastic.  hypnobirthing is basically the idea that your mind has been trained (by movies and society and whatever else) to think of birth as this painful, horrible thing.  but in reality, it's very natural and your body is made to do it (the baby got in there, your body can get it out).  anyway...it's all about learning how to relax through everything and trust your body and your mind.  i know this sounds like a bunch of hippie stuff, but i love it.  we watched 3 birth videos last night, and these women were all just so calm and happy.

anyway...i guess that's the report for now!  feeling good and moving right along.  we're very excited for the holiday weekend, but i bet the pups are more excited....