dianaschnuth

One of the pregnancy podcasts I listen to, PregTASTIC, recently had a show about baby bucket lists — similar to the list of things you want to do before you kick the bucket, but in terms of the things you want to do before you have a baby. This really struck me, because Aaron and I had barely even thought about that sort of thing until the infamous Miscarriage of ’07, after which our baby bucket list turned into our lifestyle.

Before we got pregnant the first time, the only thing we did in preparation was to paint the baby’s room. We didn’t have any savings, we hadn’t gone on any trips, we weren’t in the best shape physically… I’m honestly not sure what made me think it was a good idea at the time. Biological clock ticking and all that, I guess.

The miscarriage happened at ten weeks: barely enough time for us to have gotten used to the idea of being pregnant in the first place. I’ve mentioned our post-miscarriage dinner at Red Lobster (yes, I think it may have been that very weekend), where we discussed our chance of a do-over. Now we get the opportunity to do the things we should really do before starting a family… so what are they?

Going to Japan.

That was the main one, and it was made possible partially due to a pretty sweet tax return. The next year, we went to Hawaii, made possible mainly from the severance pay from the job I got laid off from in Fall 2007.

After those two trips, our annual Big Vacation became something that we (and our friends and family) came to anticipate and expect. It became a part of our lifestyle, as much as going out to eat together on the weekends, or subscribing to cable internet service. Our baby bucket list (of one item) became a pivotal linchpin of why we decided not to have children.

(Until the decision was made differently by one rogue, birth-control-evading ovum, that is.)

Now that I’m six months pregnant (really? already? holy shit!), there’s not much on the baby bucket list except gathering baby stuff. Clothes, crib, dresser, and whatever ends up leftover from my registry (which I’m sure will be plenty).

There are things, however, that I’m glad I ended up doing before I got pregnant — first and foremost involving my health. I’m glad that I was at my lowest adult weight when I conceived. I’m glad that I had started a running regimen, and that I had just finished my first 5K.

I’m also glad I got a job that pays well and that I enjoy (as much as a person can enjoy their 8-to-5, anyway). I’m glad that we’re financially stable; although we’ll definitely be cutting back on spending (dinners out, Starbucks, online purchases), we’re not living paycheck-to-paycheck, and we’ll make it. We’ll just go back to being weekend homebodies for a little while, maybe only taking Junior out to Sunday dim sum with us (because we’d go absolutely stir-crazy nutso if we didn’t get out of the house at all).

There are also things that it might have been nice to do before we got pregnant, but that it’s not the end of the world that they didn’t happen. I’m thinking mainly of home improvement projects, like painting the living and dining rooms and getting new carpet. Once Junior threatens to become mobile, I’m sure we’ll have a whole new set of home-related to-dos, like putting up gates and perhaps getting some new pieces of furniture (or securing our current shelves to the walls). But we’ll cross that cliché when we come to it.

Moms and Dads out there: what was on your baby bucket list? Did you have one? Did you wish you had after the fact?

Well, I spent most of my quality blogging time this evening trying to puzzle out how to most efficiently code a javascript slideshow of my growing baby bump, with little luck. I know there are free ones out there, but I really wanted to code it myself; alas, I may end up finding one that I can tweak instead.

Point being, today’s update is going to be short and sweet kind of stream-of-consciousness, since I used up all my time and brainpower on javascript geekery.

Even though I haven’t quite hit the third trimester yet, I’m definitely feeling different this week. I feel like I look rounder these days, and I can feel the pull of the extra weight on my back and abs. When I try to activate my abs to protect my lower back and to stand up straight, my abs get sore quick; when I let my weight sag forward, my back hurts. Walking is more tiring than it was even a month ago, and makes my lower abdominals ache in an interesting new way. Luckily, my thighs don’t hurt as much anymore — whether that’s from my sleeping with a pillow between my legs or because my pelvis has slowed its spread is a mystery. Either way is fine by me.

In relation to me getting rounder, our baby boy is definitely getting bigger and taking up more room. Used to be that I could only feel his kicks and punches and whatnot below my belly button; now (right now, actually) he’s making movements I can feel above my waistline. This corresponds with my suddenly-decreased lung capacity and my new-found inability to eat a large meal.

Aaron and I are getting closer to a name for our new addition, as well as getting closer to having his room livable. His room has been a storage room for the past seven years or so, and it’s been a slow process for me to get my crap out of the room. I still have some odds and ends to relocate/pitch before we can buy a crib and get it assembled and ready for Junior. We’re also starting to check out antique malls and other low-cost options for a dresser that will double as a changing table.

As far as the naming goes, we have some options posted on the refrigerator, and we do have a strong contender for full name. We’ve recently moved from dorky, joking mode to seriously-our-kid-needs-a-name-soon mode, and we’ve made good progress.

We’re scheduled for a tour of the hospital in July, and we’re taking the weekend Childbirth Express class in August. Things are falling into place, and we only have three months to go before two becomes three.

Yikes.

I rarely write personal thoughts in my blog anymore. Either I’m just not interested in blogging after spending the work day in front of a computer, or I’m not comfortable sharing that much of myself anymore.

Today, I think, may be a departure from that trend.

Because I’m feeling totally overwhelmed.

It really is ironic that I got pregnant after Aaron and I had decided that having kids just wasn’t for us. I mean, I’d always wanted to be a mom, but Aaron had never wanted children, and he never sugarcoated that fact for me. I knew. I hoped he’d change his mind, but I knew. In fact, I told him on more than one occasion that I loved him more than I loved someone that I’d never met, that didn’t even exist, and that I certainly wouldn’t leave him just so I could have a child with someone else.

Back in September 2009, nearly two years ago, I blogged about why people choose to (or not to) have kids:

This really feels like my deconversion from Christianity: a slow but revealing process that makes my brain look at the world differently. Once I seriously asked the question, once I stepped back from my worldview and considered it, I got my mind blown.

There are just so many reasons why we didn’t want this. Like I said earlier, it’s not that I didn’t want kids, but I did recognize that the support situation isn’t ideal. We don’t have any family who’s local, apart from my father-in-law and brother-in-law (neither of whom are likely to watch Junior on a regular basis). We work opposite shifts — I get home from work and usually get to spend about 30 minutes with Aaron before he’s off to work; I’m asleep for a good four hours before he comes home; then I get up and leave for work in the morning and he sleeps for another five hours after I leave. This spells daycare, so Daddy can get some sleep after Mommy goes to work in the morning.

Then there are even more selfish reasons, like having nice things, and sleeping in on weekends, and going on international and tropical vacations, and being totally comfortable with our current financial situation. Yeah, they’re self-centered. That doesn’t bother me. After all, I am the center of my universe. I am the person who perceives the world around me and interacts with it. (But that’s a philosophical post for another time.)

Maybe it’s hormones. Maybe I’m overloaded with babyness. I don’t know. But I have this pervasive fear that our child is going to affect our marriage in a Very Bad Way. So far, we’ve managed to work through most of the relationship bumps we’ve encountered, coming to some sort of arrangement or agreement to get us through. But this… I don’t want us to resent this newcomer. Or each other.

A friend-couple of ours just told us that they’re also expecting, and that they’re “overjoyed.” I read their e-mail, and thought about that first few minutes after our positive pee-test, where Aaron and I sat in the living room in shoe-gazing silence, punctuated by the occasional quiet f-bomb. Even after getting used to the idea, I’ve barely made it to the “moderately excited” part of the spectrum. “Overjoyed” won’t be until… I don’t know when. Until he graduates high school?

I feel guilty as fuck for NOT being overjoyed. Like there’s something inherently wrong with me. And, again, it’s not that I won’t or don’t love this little still-unnamed son of ours… but I do love my husband, and I don’t want us to grow to resent our son or each other.

I hate the unknown. That’s mainly it. Our lives are about to change (as every parent loves to tell us), and as much as I can read and prepare and learn, there’s no knowing how this is going to affect our routine, our lifestyle, our relationship.

Maybe we can have a “normal” weekend, with no baby garage sales or baby naming or shopping for maternity underwear or bras that are three goddamn cup sizes bigger than my old ones. Maybe some normality (or as close as I can get) will help set me right.

Today’s pregnancy topic: my changing shape. Specifically, finding clothes for said changing shape, especially considering that I’ll only be wearing these clothes for another few months.

The good news is that I’d been slack about getting rid of my old “fat clothes” after losing 25 pounds on Weight Watchers. Many of my fat pants are still quite passable with a belly band to hold them up (and to disguise my waaay open fly). The bad news is that all my cute summer girly tees and whatnot are going to stay in their Sterilite container under my bed for at least another year.

As with my last update, I’ll be skimming back through my tweets to find some appropriate milestones…

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It occurred to me that I’ve been doing my readership mother a disservice by not blogging more about my pregnancy since I announced it to the world. I guess I just got in such a habit of keeping everything to myself (we learned about it at 10 weeks and didn’t say anything for another month and a half) that most of my internal pregnancy banter still went straight into my private longhand journal.

I’ve gotten away from the journaling a bit, though, and more into micro-blogging on Twitter. Granted, my tweets do get published here (and on Facebook), but condensing feelings and experiences down to 140 characters can lose a little something in the translation.

So, I’m going to take my first few public micro-blogs on the topic of pregnancy and expound on them a bit. We’ll see how far I get…

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