Australian idle

We found out yesterday that our permanent residency for Australia has come through! While I should probably launch into a rousing chorus of “Advance Australia Fair“, I tend to break out in giggles at the line “Our home is girt by sea”. Also, any sense of Australian patriotism I’ve had is at an all time low due to the Australian cricket team thrashing England in the first Ashes test. Bloody Ricky Ponting.

However, I have been thinking for some time about the fact that the baby is going to be born an Australian. Maybe our kid will grow up idolising Ricky Ponting? Maybe our kid will hang about in Australian-themed pubs overseas, and sing “Walzing Matilta” when they’ve drunk too many. It’s a weird thought.

Game

We’ve been playing this great game lately. I catch Chris unawares by tickling or jabbing him. Then when he looks like he’s going to retaliate, I say, “NO! Don’t hurt the baby!”

It’s great fun!

Giving thanks

Sorry for the silence of late, I’ve been really busy. I’ve been writing and working on a presentation that I’m giving to a librarians conference on Thursday, and we had a full weekend of social engagements. Also, if the truth be told, not much is going on, with the pregnancy at least. The baby’s been moving quite a bit more, and the movements are much more pronounced (I’m definitely feeling kicks). I thought it would be weird to feel something inside you move, but in reality it’s actually been quite a nice sensation. It’s very reassuring. Last night was my first workout with baby movements (while Chris was away I’d slackened off on the gym front). The baby was really quiet throughout the workout, but after I got home and was laying on the couch, it was like a kicking extravaganza in there! I wonder what it’s like to be an in-utero baby when your host mama is lifting weights?

It was really nice to get to an “ex-pat” thanksgiving on the weekend at Stephen and Delwyn’s place. I wanted to make a pumpkin pie, but discovered that it’s pretty much impossible to buy canned pumpkin in Australia. Apparently, to make it from scratch would involve roasting pumpkin for an hour, not an exciting prospect when it’s this warm. I spent all afternoon baking a yummy cherry pie instead and making a cous cous side dish. Stephen had taped the thanksgiving american football games, which was a nice authentic touch. But inauthentically it was so hot outside that we had the air con on all night, and we spent a lot of time complaining about the heat. I kept thinking back on the great thanksgivings we’d spent in the States – twice at Fred & Jean’s house, once at the Lisy’s in Rochester, and once with the Morrisons in the Boston area. For us, Thanksgiving was always about being welcomed into another family’s home and sharing a really wonderful, uncommercialised and religiously-uncomplicated festive occasion. I have to say that I’ve always felt the lack of a thanksgiving tradition in the other countries I’ve lived in. Long live thanksgiving!

Harvard Future Scholar

 

So Chris got back from his Boston conference yesterday… it was very exciting to see him. It was also exciting to see the haul of stuff he brought back. It was like a maternity-clothing-themed Christmas! He brought some lovely maternity clothes from Laura, plus also had gone maternity clothes shopping for me. In fact, he told me a funny story about going to Gap Maternity. I asked him if the sales assistants were helpful, and he said, “Yes…. but not as helpful as the other shoppers.” Apparently a whole bunch of women crowded around him and helped him pick out clothes. One of them said to him, “You’re going maternity clothes shopping for your wife? You are a GREAT MAN!”

He also bought a few cute baby things back. One of them was this baby top with the words “Harvard – Future Scholar”. It’s pretty cute. We just hope our baby won’t look back and see it as undue pressure.

Another fantastic gift was a copy of “The Girlfriend’s Guide to Baby Gear” by Vicki Iovine and Peg Rosen, passed on from Laura and Dave. Even though I’ve only had a short time to flick through it I can tell already tell that it’s an amazingly helpful guide to buying baby stuff. There’s lots of practical, yet humourous advice (“For some of us with fussy or colicky babies, a battery-operated or windup swing was the only thing that kept us from selling our own young.”) My head is already spinning over the choice and variety of baby paraphrenalia, yet so much of it seems unnessecary and/or incredibly expensive. The book’s going to be really helpful.

The quickening?

Wow, I just got home to some pretty exciting news. David and Clare, some good friends of ours, had their baby at 5.12am this morning! (Actually, re-reading over this sentence it seems totally crazy to use the third-person plural, since Clare did 95% of the work, I’m sure.) So a big shout out to the newly born Cole Thomas Bowden!

It makes my own news seem slightly insignificant. My development was that today was the first time a stranger commented on my pregnancy. A woman came to the desk this afternoon and told me she couldn’t find a book. I went over to the correct spot on the shelves. Then she said, “I’m so sorry to make you bend all the way down there” pointing at ankle height. Anyway, it was pretty exciting to find out that I actually look pregnant now, not just overweight. It wasn’t that exciting to bend down to ankle height.

Also, over the weekend I’m sure I felt the baby move. It wasn’t very distinct. In fact it generally feels like I have a rumble in my tummy. And there’s all those other weird aches and pains. But yes, I have a feeling that it was definitely movement. I’m so excited about Chris getting back from his overseas trip (he arrives back Thursday morning). He’ll be really excited with the new developments. Also, I’ve missed him so much, and I know that it’s been hard for him to be away right now as well.

Baby loves rock ‘n’ roll

(Or at least folky, guitar-based country rock.) So baby and I went to our first music show last night. Actually, that’s not strictly true, we’d gone to a King Curly show a few months back, but I didn’t know I was pregnant then, plus the show involved sitting in comfortable seats and eating dinner, which isn’t very rock ‘n’ roll, is it? The artist on Wednesday night was Jason Molina from the band Magnolia Electric Co. It was a fantastic show: there were only about 20 people in the room, so it was intense and intimate. And Jason Molina is an intense guy, even with a band behind him. By himself, with his haunting, sparse guitar and his unsteady voice, it was intense.

It was also great getting out with my pal Raewyn who’s just moved to Sydney. But I have to say that Wednesday night felt somewhat like a requiem. I know that soon our lives are going to change dramatically, and I would be a fool to think that ‘new baby’ life is going to permit long evenings in bars.

Tips

So far a couple good friends have given me first-rate, practical baby-wrangling tips. The first was that babies heads are larger than other parts of their body, so that soiled clothes can be pulled down, not over the head (sorry about the frankness but I got as euphemistic as I could with “soiled”). The second great tip was about using cloth nappies: Pip told me to either pre-soak with napisan or hang out to dry in the sun, to avoid fungus growth (ewwwww!). She also gave me a fab recipe for natural wipes (recipe follows below).

The funny thing is, both pieces of advice were prefixed with a lot of apologies. It seems that many pregnant women get too much advice, and this can be annoying. The funny thing is, I’m actually grateful for every bit of advice I get, because I feel like a total novice! Babies, with all their chaotic, random, and noisy ways are pretty scary. I’m sure that any advice that friends give comes with a lot of hard-won experience. In fact, I’m positively thrilled at the prospect of learning from other people’s mistakes.

In other exciting news… I’m 20 weeks pregnant today! Woo-hoo, half way there!

NATURAL BABY WIPES

Steep one chamomile tea bag in two pints of boiling water. When it is cold, add one tablespoon of vege/olive/sunflower oil. Use more oil if your baby has nappy rash. (Don’t use nut oils.) Add 2 or 3 drops of lavender or roman chamomile oil. Stir together as best you can then pour over your chosen wipes. Any old cotton fabric will do to make the wipes (Chux cloths cut in quarters work well). Store the wipes in a lidded, preferably spill-proof, container (maybe a commercial wipes box.) The solution should last 3 -4 days. Once the wipe has been used, wash and re-use. (Chux wash really well).

the space race

One of the things that’s a bit daunting about having a baby is working out how he/she is going to fit in, house-wise. You’ve got to work out where s/he’s going to sleep, eat, where you’re going to nurse, and where you’re going to store the mass of paraphernalia that babies accumulates (stroller, bassinette, clothes, toys, etc).

So this weekend we took on the task head on, turning our small windowless waste of space/junk room into a baby’s room. It involved a lot of sorting out where to store miscellaneous stuff like suitcases, etc. and the removing the old chest of drawers that Delwyn and Stephen had given us. Now that chest of drawers has been the bane of my life – it’s big and heavy and it requires a big “heave ho” to get the drawers open. Needlesstosay, I danced a jig when that thing went out of the house. 

We selected a new spacious, wipeable chest of drawers from Ikea (8-drawer Hemnes), which we’re hoping will double as a change table. Then there was the lark of putting it all together: imagines lots of swearing and “where’s that @!#$$#@!@ allen key?” and “What’s an ‘allen key’?” I estimate that it took a good 4 hours to put it together, not including “staring out to space” breaks. Then, more cleaning, vacuuming, and hunting for non-existent storage holes. Happily, we’ve made huge progress, and the room is looking really great! There’s still a small pile of things that we need to get rid of, but it all seems a lot more manageable now.

The worst thing of all is how much everything costs. What with medical bills and buying stuff for the baby, it feels like we’re haemorrhaging money right now. It’s not going to get any easier, is it?

First pictures!

I had my 19 week ultrasound this morning, and got some first pictures of the baby. This picture shows him/her in profile.

There’s a couple of other pictures here.

The woman who’s going to deliver our child

Yesterday we visited our obstetrician for the first time. I felt myself give a big sigh five minutes into it when I realized that she was exactly what I wanted in an obstetrician. She had a great kind of “business as usual” attitude. She gave just the right impression – that giving birth is both incredibly ordinary AND incredibly special. She chatted to me and Chris about our jobs, and then sighed, and said, “Other people’s work seems so interesting.” (I didn’t say the obvious retort.) She gave just the right amount of information. She was honest (“I think some of those food guidelines are a bit over the top”), but also congenial (“good job on going to the dentist so regularly and keeping up with the exercise!”).

One of the exciting discoveries was that she works closely with a midwife. Usually I’ll go in to see her midwife first, and then her. It makes me feel like I’m getting the best of both worlds, just the right mix of earth-mother/medically-sound care.

I also asked about antenatal classes – I have to register for those soon, and there’s a dizzying array of options. (I’m one of those weirdos that usually wants fewer options.) Also, I have a 99% chance of being in my own room in the hospital. She laughed when I told her I assumed I’d be giving birth in a room with lots of other women, apparently I have “low expectations”. I must remember to put that on my resume.

Finally she took a mini-ultrasound. My passenger was in good form – strong beating heart, super wriggly. Still feels like I’m watching TV rather than watching something inside of me, though.