Cannot fail to cheer

My mom sent me these:

One giggling baby

Four giggling babies

A Question of Timing

I had a funny experience shopping for maternity clothes at Target last week. There was another woman there, whose bump was a little bigger than mine, and we got to talking. She asked how pregnant I was, and I, at 21 weeks, said I was just six months (that's what the book said, six months starts at 21 weeks). She was at 23 weeks herself, and she said "oh, you're not at six months, then, only five."

A little crushed, I went on my way, and last week asked the midwife about it. "At 22 weeks," I asked, "am I now officially six months pregnant or not?" "It depends," she said. "Do you want to be pregnant for nine months or ten?"

So this counting the weeks before you're actually pregnant (three weeks, in my case) does screw things up the counting. From now on, I'm going to stop paying attention to the books and use what's most logical for non-pregnant people: I got pregnant in the first week of January, and I'm due the last week of September. June = six months, May = five months. Easy peasy.

Flying with stowaway on board

I recently decided to take advantage of a perk at my husband's company and go to the Bahamas with him in July, when I am at 30 weeks. I am not concerned about it, though I was advised by my friend the family doc to investigate the nearest hospital with American-trained doctors when I get there.

Just happened to stumble across this article today...

Halfway

Twenty weeks, halfway mark. I finally figured out how this 40 weeks = 9 months crap operates - the ninth month has seven weeks in it! What a sneaky trick.

So, things have been rolling along just fine, in general. I got maternity jeans and clothes (have reaffirmed my love for Old Navy) so now I can wear "pregnanty" clothes or wear baggy clothes over jeans and continue to pass for a little while longer. It was a bit of a shock to wear fitted jeans and remember what my legs actually look like, after so many weeks of wearing huge jeans.

We finally decided what to do about the fact that my midwife practice is closing two months before my due date; we're going to stay at the same hospital but switch to the hospital midwife clinic, which means a larger group of midwives to work with and less time and personalized care, but still the same probability that I will be working with a midwife when I show up at the hospital in labor. Have also found a birth doula that we really like, and we are in the middle of interviewing/intake process with her.

My appetite seems to be going away again - that is, I can barely eat half a meal at a time and from afternoon onward I feel overfull and sickish. Had a huge mood meltdown at the end of the day today, may have been partly due to low blood sugar. Will discuss at prenatal appointment next week. My sleep has been much more haphazard too (I'm writing this at 4:30 AM), more like how I was sleeping before I got pregnant.

One of the themes of my little meltdown was loss of control - I think what finally tipped me over the edge was hearing bits of plans about a baby shower some friends are planning, and getting anxious about being expected to do something uncomfortable ("well, we may make you eat baby food"). Gotta trust - I have cool friends who care about us and throwing us a shower is a sweet thing to do. Besides, if I survived hazing when I joined my co-ed frat in college, I'm sure I can handle a little Gerber Stage One.

Preliminary Results

I have only scanned a few chapters of The Panic-Free Pregnancy, but so far I'm very glad it came along. The research scientist in me would have liked to have more citations of the studies the author uses but those may be listed in the back, haven't checked yet.

The author does a nice job of addressing two separate facets of the can-I-eat-this? concern: whether pregnant women are at any higher risk than other people (usually not), and whether the consequences are harmful to baby or any more harmful to women when they're pregnant. The verdict on sushi: mercury is still an issue, so watch what kind of fish you eat and avoid the highest mercury-content fish, but parasites and even E. Coli infections do not pass the placenta and cannot be given to baby.

So far I've read the chapters on food, drugs and alcohol, and most of the chapter on exercise, and I decided to make some changes for the rest of my pregnancy based on what I read. (Keep in mind these are my informed choices, reflecting the level of risk I am comfortable with, I'm not a doctor, YMMV, disclaimer disclaimer etc etc.) I decided:

* sushi once or twice a month is fine (limited because of mercury content). Still avoiding the worst offenders in terms of mercury (swordfish, king mackerel, tile fish, shark), but I never used to eat those types of fish anyway. Also no lox.

* a cocktail or a glass of wine when we go out to dinner (2-3 times/week) is fine.

* no more feta, soft cheeses (brie) or blue cheeses (because of risk of listeria) until I can find more information about whether pasteurization takes care of the bacteria.

* no more peanuts (this is a new one for me) - apparently pregnant women who eat a lot of peanuts have a significantly higher risk of having a baby with a peanut allergy.

So, we went out last night for sushi and a cocktail. We sat at the counter, and the sushi chef was a little disturbed to find out that I was pregnant and eating his sushi with such wild abandon. (I don't know if he even noticed the cocktail...)

An interesting thing about this book is that I noticed when I ordered it that reviews on Amazon were very polarized - most reviews were from pregnant women raving about how this book brings a voice of sanity to the warnings and advice pregnant women get, and a few reviewers lambasted the book for irresponsibly telling pregnant women what they want to hear in order to make money. It may be that I'm just "hearing what I want to hear" and losing my sense of objectivity (and who can blame me when spicy tuna hand rolls hang in the balance?) but I found it interesting that, of the changes I decided to make after skimming this book, half of them are choices to limit what I am eating more than I was already - certainly this book is not a blanket reassurance to go ahead and do whatever you want when pregnant!