Negotiations and plans

I'm listening to Walter negotiate with Sean for more, more lullabies. It's a nightly thing.  He tries to make it last as long as he possibly can, in part because he wants us to stay in his bedroom with him forever, in part because he doesn't want to go to sleep yet, in part because he loves singing with his whole heart.

"Other one.  Chicken, please?"
"I gave my love a cherry, it had no stone.  I gave my love a chicken, it had no bone ..."
"OTHER ONE! Chicken!"
"Ok ... *sings the chicken dance song*"

"Other one" is Walter's new favorite phrase, joining (not replacing) such classics as "no" and "my turn." It drives us all a little crazy.  There are only so many "other ones" out there, you know. Particularly when it comes to lullabies about chickens. He really, really loves sung Alleluias, and there are a whole lot of "other ones" of those to sing, but he quickly exhausts all the ones we know.  His appetite for Alleluias is insatiable. For the record, I think this has (almost) nothing to do with him being a pastor's kid, and more to do with his love of vowel sounds, words with the letter "l" in them (see also: "Aubriella"), and words that have a joyful connotation.

Walter is really, really good at singing, and getting better at it every day.  He sings whole songs by himself, now. He seems to be repeating the sounds he hears rather than associating those sounds with words, although as he hears a song more and more the approximations of words gradually become actual words.  Last week he went on an almost non-stop jag of singing his version of this new daycare favorite:

Baby bumblebee
Walter's mommy peapod-a-me
Baby bumblebee
Ouch. Stunna me.

I love that "won't my mommy" became "Walter's mommy." I bet he's got all his classmates singing it that way, too. He tends to be a bit of a trendsetter at school.  They all say "uppaday," for example, and they all evidently asked their parents for hats like his, too.  Just keep using your powers for good, Walter.

***

I had my 36 week appointment with Dr. M. today.  We're into the every-week appointment time ... but of course, that time is not very long at all ... just three weeks before Sally day!  It was a good appointment.  Measuring well, heartbeat great, moving like a champ, urine clean, blood pressure perfect.  My weight gain leveled off after going a bit off the rails the past few weeks; I celebrated this good news by eating some Oreos.

Dr. M. and I had a good and candid discussion about all the bad things that happened last time I had a baby, from the botched IV placement to the terrible complications after the c-section.  I told him I was hesitant to write up a "birth plan" because I know that plans, goals, any sort of illusion of control is kind of silly when it comes to childbirth.  I want him and my other caregivers to know that I trust them, and that we'll work through whatever happens together.  He encouraged me to write it down, anyway.  "Limiting the number of IV attempts is a perfectly reasonable thing to ask for," he said. "And the process of writing it down will help you think through everything you're worried about and hoping for."

So ... Birth "Plan" Draft #1:

1. I'd like for the anesthetist to place my IV.
2. I'd like to spend as little time with the catheter in as possible. I'd like to get up and moving as soon as I'm able to after surgery.  If I can't get to the bathroom on the first day, can we consider removing the catheter and using a bed pan?
3. When Sean leaves the OR to go with the baby, I'd like my mom to be gowned up and ready to come into the OR to hold my hand while I'm being stitched up.
4. I'd like to not throw up on the operating table, have uncontrollable diarrhea in my bed, have a huge blood pressure drop right after surgery, or go into renal failure. I know my docs and nurses can't promise these things won't happen, but maybe knowing that they did happen and could happen again will help, somehow.
5. I'd like to hold and try to nurse Sally as soon as I can after she's born. Even though this was hard with Walter, it was so important to me to make that connection as soon as possible.

There's more, of course, but that's enough for now, enough for a first draft. Mainly, I'm hoping for a healthy baby. Walter was such a gloriously healthy baby!  What I'd like to be different, this time, is that the healthy baby would also get a healthy Mama.  I know recovery will be hard, but I'm hoping it's not as hard as last time. Not something we can plan for, but definitely something we can hope for, and pray for.

What to expect when you're not expecting yet

We've spoken before of how pleasantly surprised all the doctors and nurse practitioners have been with our preparations. I really started to understand the flip side of that surprise this week with our visit to the Yale Student Health center Monday.

Everything sitcoms have taught me about pregnancy has painted it as regimented, monitored, and above-all, scheduled.

• Day one of your pregnancy: Start taking pre-natal vitamins, one month ago.
  
• Day two of your pregnancy: Wife begins craving pickles.
• Day three of your pregnancy: Husband's anxiety over crushing responsibility, lost youth manifests in hilarious, seemingly-unrelated psychosis of questionable verisimilitude.
  

The process in this... discovery phase of pregnancy seems wholly self-guided.

We've had great, detailed conversations with a lot of whip-smart medical professionals, but sometimes all I hear is:

“I'm going to recommend a 24-hour urinalysis. Just, you know, take a day and get this done some time before you become pregnant.”

“Oh, so you'd like to get off your class C and D migraine meds? You might consider looking at and switching to one of these alternatives before you get pregnant. You know, talk with your primary care doctor about it.”

“So you had a football-sized tumor removed as a child. Oh -- visit an oncologist? Sure. Yeah, that might not be a bad idea. I mean, if you want. So really, you're not pregnant yet?”

They've imparted lots of great information and helped us work through all the preparations to feel confident going into this. I just hadn't considered that there's not much to the process at this point beyond advice. Anne's basically healthy; until evidence suggests otherwise, all our necessary bits are in working order; really, we're not pregnant yet. Any changes at this point depend on our initiative -- why would a doctor ever change Anne's migraine medicine out of the blue, when it's doing an okay job at regulating her migraines with a minimum of side-effects?

This may not be revelatory to anyone but me. And it's not like my doc is hunting me down with a blood pressure cuff, so I shouldn't have been flat footed on the idea. Just noticing, is all.

William wants a doll

I'm intimidated at the thought of raising a boy. I'm an only child--my main frame of reference/resource for child-rearing is Free to Be, You and Me. Which is great, and it did great things for me, but I'm not sure "William wants a doll" and "It's alright to cry" are going to balance against the messages the world sends boys.

I'm not saying the world doesn't send mixed up messages to girls. I'm just personally familiar with many of those messages.

If you had told me when I was a young feminist (0-18 yrs old) that patriarchal society has just as much of a negative impact on men as it does on women, I would have been deeply offended. This is corny, but in a college journalism course we watched a video called "The Tough Guise" about the dangerous myth of masculinity and its impact on men and boys ... and it opened my eyes. And freaked me out on a whole new level at the hypothetical thought of raising a boy--I'd always imagined having a girl, but this video only heightened that aspiration.

All of this came out in a less-than-graceful way over lunchtime chatting at the refectory last week. A friend asked if we want a boy or a girl, and I responded: "We're planning on a boy, but we're hoping for a girl." Another friend called me out on this and another friend assured me that it's OK to hope for a girl baby, knowing that Sean and I are going to love our baby. Period.

So here I am, a slightly more mature feminist who really does believe that Free to Be stuff. I don't want to turn around and dump a bunch of my own sex/gender issues on my child. I want to go into this mysterious process with an open mind and an open heart (wait a second ...) and really be ready with the love, no qualifications. Frankly, I should be intimidated no matter what.

So when I imagine hypothetical future baby these days, I often imagine a boy. He has a name, which I've promised Sean I will not disclose, but the name does help me imagine the kid. It's exciting. Here's the thing ...

Is it OK if I'm still kinda hoping for a girl? I'm genuinely asking ... as a fine YDS graduate once said in a sermon, "I'm not allergic to your Amens" ... or in this case, comments.