this may seem obvious, but I never realized

sheep-herd
. . .
shepherd

Whoa.

dreams more boring than life

I dreamed last night that I was copying and pasting text from one document to another. I had spent a good amount of time doing that during the day, and it was tedious. At some point in my dreams last night, I also was doing the dishes. It was the worst.

20-ish weeks

Posting belly pics on the blog is one of those moments where the "When I'm pregnant, I don't think I'll do that" thought is thrown aside. I suppose there is a lot about pregnancy and motherhood that is like that.

To make my motivations clear, though, I'm posting this for the sake of documentation and comparison. So here I am in all my fat glory. Enjoy.

Also, I decided that starting next week (as I enter the second half of pregnancy), when people ask me how far along I am, I'm going to tell them 19 weeks instead of 21, since it is accurate in a sense (see my due-date post). I'm hoping in the process to convince myself as well as everyone else that I'm not so very advanced so no one gets too uppity. Which I don't imagine anyone would anyway, really, but you never know with these things.

Now on to tell BabyCenter I've regressed two weeks in gestation. This will help convince me, you see, because who can forget how far along they are with those blasted e-mails coming in once a week?

Chef Bernhard's Granola

I made some of this stuff, which has tons of nutty goodness. I'm excited to consume it.

oh, do you need to vomit?

After the discomfort has passed, I often look back on vomiting with some amusement. It makes for some awkward and hilarious moments that seem to be great fodder for the blog — the kind of thing that pregnancy should be rich with, really (I only wish I had great stories about crying over ridiculous things like nature documentaries, but my emotional breakdowns, though perhaps frequenter than usual, pretty well concern the same things they ever did.). If you are imagining me sitting on the bathroom floor thinking about blogging a few minutes after vomiting, then you'd be picturing my reality not too long ago. Does that make me more pathetic?

But enough with the metablogging and on to the good stuff. This morning, I had a milestone: I ate oatmeal without throwing it up. For some reason, feeding me oatmeal was a good way to go if you wanted to see me barf, but not this time. But lunch was a different story. Maybe it was the oatmeal that was getting its delayed vengeance, I don't know. I was almost done eating a burrito that Tim (husband to the invalid) had assembled for me when he looked over at me and said, "Wow, you've eaten almost the whole thing!"

This is what our lives have become: Tim producing foodstuffs for me to consume because I can't do so on my own effectively, and then praising me for eating when I do well with it, which is not usually. The number of times per day that Tim asks "What do you want to eat?" and I respond "I don't know" is actually quite astonishing. Unless it's junk like cookies and cinnamon rolls. I always feel good about those lately, which is strange, because I'm pretty sure the only thing I had going for me by way of physical fitness before this pregnancy started was eating mainly healthy food.

At the moment Tim commented on my progress, I was staring into space contemplating the possibility of vomiting, and he must know that look by now because he ran over and stuck out his hands in a cup shape in front of me, which I proceeded to dry heave over as he guided me toward the toilet.

I think one of my favorite vomiting experiences so far happened a couple of months ago when I had a morning doctor appointment and gulped a lot of water in an effort to pee in a cup (which is hard to do in the morning). Apparently gulping water that way is another pretty surefire way to get me to throw up. After my appointment, Tim and I went to the Corner Bakery Cafe (which is literally on the corner from our apartment, how apropos), and on the way out the door, the moment came. The grass was kind enough to receive my offering. Public puking is the best.

due dates are jacked

When people ask the question "When are you due?", I struggle to give a specific answer. Sometimes I'll say a specific date (arbitrarily chosen among the several I've been given—it changes with every ultrasound), sometimes I will say "early to mid-April," sometimes I will say, "The second week of April." Take your pick.

Before I became pregnant, I had no idea how due dates were determined. Now that I (somewhat) understand the process, I lack confidence in them entirely. Medical practitioners estimate your due date based on the first day of your last menstrual period (LMP) and add 280 days/40 weeks. Normally I wouldn't have any idea about this date when asked, but taking birth control then Clomid actually started and regulated my period, and I had to keep track of when I was bleeding because I based taking Clomid on that. So as a result, I actually have a fairly good idea of the first day of my last menstrual period, but there are even more variables once you've figured that out. Your fertility window, or when conception can actually occur,  is (depending on the length of your cycle) about a 10-day range beginning around 2 weeks after you start bleeding.

Given its impreciseness, it makes sense that no one would really be able to determine the exact date of conception. Instead, they use the date of LMP + 2 weeks, which means you get an extra 2 weeks of being pregnant when you're not actually (go you!). Remembering I've actually been pregnant for approximately 2 weeks less than I tell people sometimes makes me feel like I have forever left to go . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pregnancy is longer than this ellipsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The accepted method of due date (or as the ultrasound machine said, "estimated date of confinement," which is awful) determination gives a rather large window of error. Don't ask me how large of a window, because my math skills are poorly developed. But if my exact (estimated) due date (let's go with April 9 for now) comes and goes and Baby Rowan hasn't made an appearance, I'll try to remember that I need not be anxious because due dates are ±5 days anywho. Oh yeah, and let's not forget that the length of a "term" pregnancy varies ±2 weeks, too.

What I get out of all of this is simple: even if my pregnancy lasts a "normal" amount of time and I deliver "full-term" (which itself is highly unpredictable), I have NO IDEA when this baby is going to get here.

editing amusement

Being an editor provides me with the simple joy of asking humorous questions based on punctuation and word usage that less anal people might not wonder about. Example: "Emily's husband Aaron was not accustomed to dressing up for Halloween. . . . " (What about Emily's other husband(s)?)

Heh.

17 weeks

Isn't this nausea/vomiting stuff supposed to let up by now?

Also, this is what my belly looks like right now:

new technology? bummer

Sometimes I get excited about new techie items, but when I got an e-mail at work saying that they were replacing all of a certain model of laptop and I was on the list, I was indifferent. My laptop had been suiting me just fine for two years, and there weren't any problems.

Initially, I thought nothing would happen because the replacement process was never initiated, I was just told my machine would be replaced. Then they initiated the process, and I now have a new computer. I should be happy to have a new computer without spending a dime of my own, right? But I'm actually disappointed. This particular model of laptop has a less functional keyboard layout (which I'll probably get used to), and the speakers seem even worse than the ones on my old machine. Other than that, I haven't really noticed a difference.

I'm seriously considering asking about whether I can have my old laptop back. When they replaced it, I asked what would happen to it, and I was told it would become surplus. That poor thing! I'm thinking of it sitting alone, cold and dark (seriously, the IT area always has the lights turned down for some reason) and neglected. You may not be loved by many, but you are loved by me, little HP.

Babypocalypse 2012

Pregnancy is kind of a weird new thing for me. I wasn't sure how I felt about it before I got pregnant, and right now, I'm not quite sure how I fit into the broader context of pregnant women everywhere. I can't believe women all throughout the history of mankind have done this, even multiple times. What the what? How does it happen? It's seriously mind-boggling. And pregnant women are everywhere right now, too, it seems! I feel like I've never known of so many people who are pregnant all around the same time. Get ready for Babypocalypse. It's happening Spring 2012, World.

Being a participant in Babypocalypse is interesting. Sometimes I think I want to be the only person I know who is pregnant right now so that everyone will make a huge deal out of it. OHMYGOSH, I NEVER WOULD HAVE GUESSED EVER THAT YOU WOULD EVER BE HAVING A BABY. LIKE EVER.

Because that's kinda how I feel about it. Even though all around, people are repeating this cycle of living and creating life, this territory feels terribly uncharted on a personal level. I've never really been around babies closely! I've never talked to pregnant women about being pregnant!

For a long time, I thought me becoming a parent would never happen, and I wasn't even sure if I wanted it to. At first, I thought it wouldn't happen because I didn't think I would ever get married. Then, once I was married, the issue became a lot more immediate. I started to think about my body differently; I had to consider birth control, and the fact that I never had a regular period became more of a disconcerting problem than an odd fluke of nature.

After more than a year of being off birth control without a period or a pregnancy, I started taking fertility drugs. When I started the Clomid, I did so thinking "Well, this has gotta happen some time," not necessarily sure if the Clomid would even work, but thinking I could no longer delay the inevitable. Though I'm not old, I'm not getting younger. And lo and behold, it worked, and here I am, and by all accounts, it looks like if everything continues as it has been going, sometime in April I will bear progeny.

I'm fascinated and in awe (especially after not functioning according to the womanly norm for so long) that my body is doing this and nature is taking its course, and that everything so far has been fairly normal. I must say, it was pretty miraculous the first time I heard Baby's heartbeat. My first ultrasound wasn't very moving (I wondered "Am I supposed to have any kind of emotional response to this unrecognizable blob on the screen?"), but there's something very visceral about the sound of a heartbeat.

As much as I still fear all of the things that could go wrong and what a horrible parent I might be and what if things don't work out very well, etc. (this list could go on and on and on), I am pretty sure I'm looking forward to this.