10.22.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:29 pm by admin
As many know, we have settled on a boy name but are still debating girl names. Dylan keeps coming up with new names that seduce me one after the other. Every time we think we have settled on one, we find another that we may prefer.
If we’re lucky it will be a boy and we won’t have to look like idiots when people ask us what we’re calling her.
And did I mention my husband is a super-hero? Yesterday he went to Bistro Clement, the little French bistro on Clement ave, cheaper version of Clementine (hey, there’s a possible girl name!), and ordered us a boeuf bourgignon and a saumon/ratatouille, bought some plates and silverware, and brought all this back to the hospital room. That was just GREAT. Does my man know how to please his French wife or what?
How does Bourgignon sound as a middle name by the way :)?
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Posted in Uncategorized at 4:23 pm by admin
Oct 19, 4:15 am, I wake up with clear liquid gushing out between my legs.
It is an understatement to say that we were not ready. I had never even envisionned that I would have to go to the hospital six weeks before my due date. Somehow we managed to remain calm. I was not in pain, realized quickly what had happened (water membrane broke), and knew that the baby was most likely fine, so there wasn’t really panic, just a big surprise. Thank God for the little documentation I had read. I knew the steps to do, and I knew just enough to gather in less than 5 minutes a “hospital bag”. Dylan also remained very calm and composed.
We really thought labor would start soon after and that we would have a little preemie to bring home maybe a couple of weeks later. I was never as happy as then to have picked a hospital with a good NICU. What I was not prepared for was the possibility that the labor would never start and that therefore I’d have to be admitted and kept in the hospital for up to 10 days. But we make do, and not so badly at that. It’s better for the baby to cook a little longer. This forces us to focus on the key things. What do we need now, what do we need after the birth, what do we need two weeks after the birth etc… It’s all about priorities and keeping a good attitude.
Two great things help:
- I have wireless access from my room!! (yeah!)
- Dylan is a super-hero, working, shopping, setting up, all at the same time, while I just lay around and do nada
And of course the support of friends and family is wonderful.
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10.12.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:50 pm by admin
This I find interesting: before I got pregnant, I thought that there were a few moments in a pregnancy that are bound to be very exciting and surprising. These would be the milestones that I would remember. I had of course only thought of the most obvious ones: when you can not fit in your pants anymore, when you get your sonogram, and when you first feel the baby move. These ended up being completely irrelevant. First off, it’s not like all of your pants are suddenly un-wearable. It’s a progressive thing. And they become uncomfortable, way before you really see the change. I was also so sick around that time that anyway all i could wear then were my sweatpants… Because I had sonograms early because of the bleeding, I saw the little gestation sac change into a sort of tadpole, then into a baby, yet those images were so hard to decipher sometimes that it was not the emotional moment I thought it would be. And the first few times you feel the baby move, it’s really more like bubbles in your stomach or digestive system. It feels like a little rap inside you, but it’s hard to identify as a move. You don’t really know what it was that caused the weird little flutter you feel: a hand, a foot, a butt?
The moments that ended up being important took me by surprise because I hadn’t really thought of them. First there was seeing movement on the screen of the sonogram. Seeing a big-headed fetus up there was cool but not that exciting until suddenly I saw IT move. Then you realize this thing is independent (think “Alien”). Along the same lines, and probably the most incredible moment of the pregnancy, was the sonogram before the amnio, where the technician goes over the baby in detail and at different angles. The technician I had focused at some point on the heart. We counted the chambers, all four of them, and I saw the little membrane separating them going up and down, up and down, up and down… That was life. Right there. Forget the other definitions. Life is where a heartbeat is. And it brought tears to my eyes.
The last and most surprising milestone so far was when I read, at 28 weeks, that should the baby be born today, it could survive. I realized suddenly that I was really carrying a human being. I don’t know why it dawned on me so suddenly, but I’ve been revelling in the idea since and I love to remind myself of it regularly.
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