The Confession

So I disappeared for most of my pregnancy. I kept meaning to post but it never quite happened. Emily gamely attempted to keep the blog alive but I was so tired and strangely, I found that having posted constantly about trying to get pregnant, having achieved that state, I didn't know what to say. And every day that I didn't blog, I added a little more guilt to the pile and a little more reason to not get to it the next day.

It's January 1st and I am declaring an amnesty for myself and starting again. I've cheated a bit and back dated X's birth announcement and the first of the monthly reviews that I am hoping to write for him. We'll have to see if this amnesty works. I hope so.

Happy New Year to you all.

Fatherhood

I took these tests yesterday.

32 As a 1930s wife, I am Poor Take the test!

77 As a 1930s husband, I am Very Superior Take the test!

I have to say, I'm a little surprised. Folks who know me in real life know that I pull off a credible pre-feminist housewife routine, though with a heavy layer of snark on the side. I can my own pickles and put up local produce. I throw dinner parties with the nice china (although lately we've been too lazy to dig out the dinner table so we've been having them on the living room couch). I care about other people's emotions more than my own, I craft, and I like there to be flowers on the table.

It's been a long standing joke about Kate and my relationship that I really, really want to be the butch one, but I fail miserably at it. The best example was our previous roommate calling me the butch one while I sat, legs neatly crossed, doing needlepoint with something in the oven, while Kate sat at the other end of the room, legs splayed, hand down her pants. All it was missing was the beer, folks.

But the thing is, with the baby on the way, I'm sensing something happening. It's not that I'm getting butcher, it's that I'm starting to feel like...a father. I didn't believe this would happen before--I was firmly convinced that my experience was going to be of mothering, just one that didn't include the experience of birth. But I'm not feeling nurturing; I'm feeling protective. I'm not feeling like caring; I'm feeling like providing. (Which is singularly ironic, given that I make about $25K less a year than the wife.) I wonder how much of this package of emotions comes with not being the one carrying the kid around: I can't care for or nurture Willa right now. What I can do is feed Kate, run lotion on her belly, pick out her clothes, make her lunch. When Willa is kicking her in the bladder at bedtime, I can lean my head on her stomach and sing REM songs until she falls asleep, or kicks me in the nose. What I can do now is protect and care for my family, which our culture assigns as a task to fathers.

Maybe some of it is watching the process of growing a kid at a distance, being second to feel the kicks, being the one next to the one going through it. I wonder what is structural, what is cultural, and what is personal in all of this. (And to what extent I feel like a father because I overidentify with a certain fictional character.)

So, readers: do you feel like a father?

(And feel free to share your scores on the tests above. A friend of mine got a -9 on the wife test, which I thought was a little awesome.)

Things We Have Done in the Past Month

• Told Kate's grandparents. Upon hearing one of our girl names--which happens to be the name she and Kate's mom share--she said that's what we were calling the baby. Regardless of sex. OK, Nana.
• Told my great-aunt. She thinks we're awfully young to be having children. And it's too close to the wedding. But she's happy. (I love my great-aunt.)
  
• Told the first of our friends. They're all freaking out appropriately, given that we're one of first among our friends to have kids. (The other kid came eight years ago, right out of high school.)
  
• Heard Willa's little heartbeat for the first time. She sounds like a horsey. We heard it for the second time today.
• Willa has become visible to the outside world.
  

• Kate felt the first kick. Last night, when she woke up at 3:30 AM. And a bunch more today. We have bought her soccer shoes already.
• Kate's also had gas so bad she's thrown up. Twice.
  
• Incidentally, I've been writing like a demon. I'm about 7 pages from being done my last semester of coursework, and being able to start in on my dissertation. Whoo-hoo!
• We've been on the road more than we've been off it. Visits to our families, going to a conference and staying with family while there. Thursday we leave for Kate's five-year college reunion. I'm considering making her a t-shirt that says "Yep, it's a bump."
• And I really cannot tell you how many times I've watched this. Or this. Or this.
  

More detailed posts to come. But we wanted to touch base.

Hello there, Teh Intarwebs!

Hi, everybody. My name is Willa.

This photo was taken when I was 11 weeks and 3 days old. My mama went for an Ultrascreen test at the hospital where I'm going to be born (with my mommy for moral support). From what they say, we all went into a little room, and Mama lay down on the table. The nice technician had really good aim, so that the moment she put the sonogram wand on Mama's belly I popped right into view. Mommy immediately started crying. (She's like that. Funny, she's not even pregnant.) I put on a nice show for them all, kicking my long legs, patting my face, and jumping up and down. Actually I put on such a nice show that I gave myself the hiccups.

After a little while, Mama and Mommy got annoyed, because the technician said I wasn't in the right position. I got called recalcitrant, and ordered to move in the right position. Then Mama coughed a lot, which was really annoying, and so I stayed because they were annoying. So Mama and Mommy went for a walk, and Mama even jumped up and down, which was fun. Apparently the tech liked where I was this time, so they were able to get the photo for the test.

Mama and Mommy have been running around being silly since they got the pictures. They keep calling me by my outside-world name, and crying, and emailing these pictures to my grandparents. They even have photos on their cell phones. Silly moms.

Anyway. They just wanted me to say hi. So hi!

Sympathy: A Guessing Game

OK, folks, it's a game. Guess which of these women is pregnant, and which one is merely copying, based on this list of symptoms.

Wife #1:

• Nausea
• Involuntary Napping
• Cravings for Hearts of Romaine (no other lettuce will do)
• Aversion to Bananas and Coffee
• Fuzzy Brain
• Sore Breasts
  

Wife #2:

• Insomnia
• Cravings for Chocolate (especially Mounds Bars)
• Mood Swings
  
• Compulsive Cleaning/Nesting
• Inability to Focus or Complete Regular Tasks

Guess correctly, and you will win...applause? Internet applause?

OK, it's probably not that hard to tell, but I'm finding it amusing. My sympathetic pregnancy is in full swing, y'all.

On fathers and pants

So, it's been almost two weeks since the internets have heard from us. We're fine, our lives are just crazy and getting used to this pregnancy thing is really weird. Over the last two weeks, both our fathers have been in the hospital (different ones, although they are within ten miles of each other) for various serious ailments. We went home this past weekend to be helpful and it made us so tired that I'm not entirely sure that either of us has recovered. Of course, there is the physical tired (which my newly pregnant self isn't coping with well, considering the level of exhaustion I've been experiencing to begin with) and there is the emotional tired, which is more difficult to address but after dealing with our families in crisis is always pretty damn high.

On a non-family of origin note, a few weeks ago, Emily had made a RSS feed on craigslist for maternity clothes and discovered a women from the next neighborhood over given away for free two bags of maternity clothes. At the time we laughed about taking in these clothes SO early, tempting the Gods, etc. And yet, my pants I wear to work have been getting quite snug by the end of the day, causing me to put on pajama pants the moment I get home (many thanks to my mother-in-law, who bought me two new pairs for Christmas.) In a bout of cleaning this afternoon, Emily made me take off my pants so that she could wash them. A very good thing for all involved, but it left me pantsless, which caused me to do something that I've been putting off for a while, trying on all my pants to see which ones still fit. It was kind of sad, two pairs I cannot button, three pairs are quite snug, two pairs will be good for a little while and that's all the pants I own. Laughing at my exertions, Emily suggested that I try the maternity pants in the bag we got. Figuring why not, I went to the dining room and tried them on...and they felt comfortable and fit. This has completely knocked me for a loop. I was kidding when I tried them on. I'm not quite seven weeks pregnant. I have gained 1 pound. Why do maternity jeans fit more comfortably than any other pants? This is feeding into my slight paranoia that I'm having twins. My grandfather was a twin, so I'm not completely making this fear up. My first midwife appointment is until I'm 9w3d, so I have a long two and a half weeks before I get this question answered. Oh my.

The Morning Sickness Cometh

I've been having these waves of something that isn't quite nausea but isn't quite heartburn. I've gotten used to them and I seem to be able to fix them by eating something small right away. I was hoping that this was the worst it was going to get, but, nope, not so much.

I woke up this morning at 6am(my alarm is at 9am) with a really deep sense of nausea sitting deep in my stomach. It felt like the worst heartburn ever and I couldn't fall asleep again and no position was comfortable. I thought it might be bathroom related so I stumbled down the hall, waking up the kitten as I turned on the bathroom light (for some reason she was sleeping on a pile of dirty clothes on the bathroom floor). The bathroom visit not having resolved the issue, I staggered slightly blind in the early morning dark to my purse where I vaguely remembered having left some peanuts. Peanuts recovered I went back to the bed, spent two minutes shoving peanuts down my throat and then was able to collapse back on my pillow and sleep another three hours. So, apparently protein with salt is my morning sickness solution, at least for the moment. I hope this doesn't get worse.

The Circling Sharks are Howling at the Door

I feel bad that I seem to have stopped posting in the last week. A lot of it is that I'm REALLY busy at work and I'm so tired that I'm having to take several naps a day and go to bed early. But there is a little bit of me that is kind of scared to write about being pregnant, because then it will get taken away.

So instead, I will take a moment and talk about my co-workers. I have a wonderful group of co-workers who I enjoy working with and have good personal relationships with most of them. They have been pretty involved with the TTC process, including one co-worker who had the day that I was testing this past weekend on her calendar in the office. (Yes, we are all the entwined in each others lives.) Em and I have agreed to tell a very limited number of people IRL about this pregnancy until we get to April and except for my immediate boss, that means that my co-workers are now waiting with no info and a LOT of questions.

Hence the metaphor of the circling sharks howling at the door. Three of my co-workers have flat out asked me what the test said. And I've replied, as per Emily's instructions: "I have no comment at this time." Which they are totally (and rightly) taking as a YES. I really don't know how I'm going to navigate this next two months of them theoretically not knowing, while I go to the bathroom constantly and look ill every time someone makes coffee.

So, any thoughts on how to pull this off?

William The Transsexual Parakeet: A Story (With An Important Payoff)

Kate and I do this thing. She makes me tell her stories for her. Not just things that happened that we both know about: she makes me tell her childhood stories, her college stories, all of them. I'm the storyteller, which is hilarious if you consider that she's the one who wants us to blog every damn thing. Wants me to blog every damn thing, more like.

But anyway, today I'm the storyteller. And this is her story, but I'm telling it for my own purposes. So make of that what you want.

Anyway, when Kate was seven or so, a shed got delivered to her house. And in that shed was a tiny little parakeet. She and her mother and her little brother (who was about four) spent a good deal of time trying to catch that parakeet. Actually, Kate's mom did most of the work, aided by the ever-well-behaved Kate, and disturbed by the less-well-behaved brother, who desperately wanted to pet the pretty birdy. But, in the end, the bird was captured and brought inside. Kate's mom refused to let the kids name the bird for about six months or so, until she had exhausted every possible avenue for finding its original home. After all hope was lost, the kids named him William.

Several years down the road, William became sick. So he was taken to the vet, for the first time ever. At the vet, it was revealed that William was, in Kate's words, Williamette: they had a lady bird on their hands. William/ette's condition did not improve substantially, and about six months later s/he Flew To The Great Shed In The Sky, so to speak.

So, it is in honor of this bird, who managed to live for a time in both genders, who appeared without warning and shocked everyone by sticking around, that we christen the Non-Hysteri-Keet.

Blogosphere, meet Willa. Willa, meet Blogosphere.

Why Willa, and not William? Well, because we've basically decided that it's too hard to play the gender-neutral pronoun game all the time, and that our personal default pronoun is female, so she should have a vaguely female name. However, we picked Willa in part because it references the chromozonal question mark: Willa might be William might be Williamette, and all is well. We'll know when we know, or we won't, and it's fine.

(Oh, and alternative sources for the name include this and this. Look, the one walked the line between genders and wrote one of my favorite novels, and the other is a mysterious production of parents who shouldn't have been able to procreate AND had magical powers as an infant. Either way, it's good.)

What, you want a real story of yesterday morning's positive? Well, maybe I'll tell you. But not today. Willa's mama is demanding dinner, and her mom has some Guy Debord to read. The world continues turning, but it's one Keet heavier round these parts.