dancingsinging

Okay, I'm officially squeeing in non-tiny type now. The little dude is, like, baby-shaped now. His heartbeat is totally perfect, and we saw him totally moving around. This was wonderfully adorable, but also apparently a very good sign of health! I thought there'd just be arm buds and leg buds, but no! actual little /hands/. You guys can not even believe the adorableness of this.

The doc said there's no reason not to tell people now. I'm going to keep it locked down on dw for a little longer, just because I feel like it. But I told my dad and plan to call the other grandparents tonight. It's kind of weird to suddenly be talking about something that was so recently a scary secret.

But, OMG, squeeeee! He is really so very cute, moving around in there.

Yesterday was the 9-week mark. Assuming everything is still fine right now (I and feel sick enough to think it probably is), chances of miscarriage are now only 5%. Or, to put it another way, at this point of got a 95% chance of ending up with an alive baby at the beginning of next July.

I've got another u/s appointment Monday, at which I'm hoping to see arm- and leg-buds.

Spent a lot of time trying to convince my MIL that it was normal for me to be lying on her couch. "I'm really not getting over this cold!" Today, about an hour before we left, spouse and I were both drowsing on the couch and she said, "You're about to leave! Why are you guys sleeping instead of visiting with me?" I seriously came close to saying, "So I don't barf on your carpet!" But I resisted.

Also in nausea news--staying in an apartment permeated with old cigarette smoke is not easy on the tummy! Neither is unpacking your own befouled clothes. Retch!

I am eating so much freaking candy, people. It's like, for the few, marvelous seconds that I'm chewing a mini Milky Way, I don't feel nauseated. At all. It's something about the chewiness and the sweet and the food going through my throat in the proper direction. Also, I got some after dinner mints that have a nice mintiness that helps. These aren't, like, long-term treatments. I don't get an hour nausea-free or anything. Just those wonderful five seconds or whatever. But I feel like I really need those five seconds.

But, seriously, I worry about all this sugar consumption. When I was pregnant with Munchkin, I literally did not allow any sugar to pass my lips. Sometimes, I would have a tiny amount of this homemade jam I made with fresh cranberries and maple syrup. I had this atypically healthy pregnancy, and Munchkin's apgar scores were 9s and 10s. I worry, broadly, that Junior is going to get sort of the short end of every stick. This time, I'm chowing down on candy and eating mostly refined starch with butter. If I don't feel like it, I don't make myself swallow the extra fish oil pills. I don't get enough sleep. I would totally take ibuprofen if I got a headache. And the alarming thing? I'm not even that worried about it.

It makes me extrapolate and worry. Like, will I bother to even take pictures of him? (No, I don't have info on his sex yet, just a feeling. Hey, I've got 50% chance of being prophetic!) Will he get decent parenting out of me? Sometimes, I like to think that my parental failings are kind of made up for by my obsessive drive during years 1 through 3 to do everything I could for her benefit. But I seriously can't muster any of that drive right now. So poor Junior with have nothing to use to compensate with when I mess up.

I used to be super pissed that there were five baby albums of my sister and one of me. But now I totally get it.

I went to Trader Joe's today and bought anything that looked like it would help with nausea or mornings--ginger chews, ricola cough drops, chocolate mints, cookies, crackers, granola bars, and boxed cereal. It's nice to give myself permission to eat stuff which makes me feel less gross, even though it's all carby and sugary and not so fantastic for blood sugar. (I'm glad now that I got that medication stuff straightened out before all this! I think I'd die if I were trying to be carb-free right now.)

You know, I think the hardest thing about feeling so crappy is not telling the munchkin about it. Like, she'll want to play or sing loudly or be goofy, and I'm always telling her to please be quiet or let me alone because I'm not feeling so great. I wonder how she's processing all this chronic unavailability from me. She doesn't seem to mind, but still I feel bad.

Also, I think I just am temperamentally unsuited to hiding stuff. Today at lunch with my sister-in-law (which I went to even though I'm exhausted, because I didn't want to hurt her feelings--it was for my birthday), I explained that we'd be having munchkin's birthday dinner at a restaurant instead of my house. I felt really lame-ass--I told her I was feeling overwhelmed, and when she asked what was going on I was all, "uh, I kind of have this cold...." Oh well. At least she was flexible about it.

But, in general, it's hard not telling people I care about. Because this is kind of all that's happening in my life right now, since we tried so hard to get here, and since I feel like barfing pretty much nonstop. I've been avoiding talking to my dad at all, because I hate to lie to him, and I know me avoiding him hurts his feelings. But, I keep reminding myself that I /really/ don't want to have a bunch of people be all concerned over me and trying to work out their own grief with me if this pregnancy doesn't turn out. (It was horrible last time. My mother-in-law almost drove all the way up to Oregon to console me, even after I told her not to come and basically to leave me alone. She still feels guilty that she didn't come. What a nightmare.)

I picked up Harry Connolly's Child of Fire off of the freebie table at WorldCon and totally enjoyed it*. There is nothing deep about it--no genderbending, no overarching metaphor or commentary about the futility of modern life, no profound study of the concept of alien, nothing. But you know what, I totally had a great time reading it. And it's been too long, you know? 

I've started doing a lot more reading lately, but it's been in a Responsible mode. Like, I've been trying to read stuff that is like what I hope my work turns out to be someday. Or that is outside the mainstream, that is maybe underread. Or is published in Strange Horizons I fantasize about someday being published. Or that is very smart and was published somewhere like Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet or a university press. I usually enjoy all these things; don't get me wrong. Often the stuff I read amazes me and moves me and inspires me. (Especially Strange Horizons. Which is why I dream of them publishing a story of mine. There's a great story up there right now.) But me picking them up and reading them is "justified" by some reason or other.

And the reading experience just isn't the same. Reading Connolly's book, I wasn't improving myself or my chances of being published. I was just kicking back and having a great time. It reminded me of being in fourth grade and finding some new awesome book that was the Best In The Whole World and slurping it right down. It was really great, and I think I need more of that in my life. So I ordered the two sequels.



*Before you all take this as me saying, "Go buy it! Now!"** I need to make some disclaimers. (1) It fails the Bechdel test. But there is one female character I really liked who has a ton of agency, just off the page. Except she's a little bit of a Strong Female Character. But at least not sexy. (2) Everyone in the book seems to be white, straight, and able-bodied. (3) Connolly has the nasty habit of making fat equate to stupid/bumbling/loserish. Also, his supervillain used to be fat, until he became evil and mightily powerful.

**But if you can set aside these pretty serious failings, seriously go buy it now. It was a super, super fun read. And it's not like Heinlein or anything.

If you're gonna be at WorldCon and you want to see me, totally call/e-mail/dm me!

I want to say how happy and loved it made me feel when you all commented on my last post with tips and sympathy and understanding. I love so much that you beautiful people are out there, all getting the body image issues and stuff, and living lives that buck the whole beauty-image ickiness. I literally get all sappy and teary-eyed about this beautiful community. I wish I could be on-line often enough to engage in non-glacially slow conversations with you all. :)

Here is an exciting thing I discovered about my medication--I can eat a perfectly carb-free meal and totally avoid the sprinting to the bathroom thing, but then my blood sugar crashes like nobody's business. Not to get all western white dude about it, but it's like Ulysses with Scylla and Charybdis. Except no one gets pulled overboard and eaten by a monster.

Also? At full dose, the medication makes me super lightheaded about 20 minutes after I take it. Like, so much so that I can't walk without assistance. That kind of freaked out the spouse, but it seems to wear off. I called my doctor's office and the nurse was pretty clueless. She told me to start taking it half-dose both morning and night, without so much noticing that I was already taking it both morning and night. Also, she suggested that I drink more water because the dizziness was probably all about dehydration. Because of course I get spontaneously dehydrated 20 minutes after taking the pill, and get un-dehydrated an hour or so later without drinking anything!

Eventually, she got around to suggesting that I take a different med, which is the same med except time-released. And costs fifteen times as much money. Which I get to pay out of pocket. (She also accidentally told me to take twice the dosage my doctor prescribed, but fortunately I remembered the conversation with him and had her double-check.)

(Aside: I know I shouldn't whine because (1) I'm actually really glad this medicine exists (I'm such a hypocrite hippie, I know. Hey! I just coined a word--I'm a hypohippie!), (2) I'm really privileged to be /able/ to pay for this crazy expensive med out of pocket, (3) I'm really privileged to have a lifestyle where I can not work right now and instead hang out and be dizzy and sleep. But still, the whining, it helps.)

I'm totally dying for someone to talk to about these stories, in particular, "The Things." Because it's everything I don't like in my fiction any more--super duper male-perspective-on-everything, the use of rape as a metaphor where I really don't think the author gets it (but then maybe he does?). But the thing is, of the five stories, it's the one that really presents an alien that's alien. It reminds me of why I fell in love with sf as a child. And I haven't read any spec fic that evokes that in a long, long time. Anyone out there read that story?

Every year at the school's May Fair celebration, among our little balloon tossing booths and whatnot, we also have Pocket Man. Pocket Man is one of the dads dressed up in an autumnal-leaf mask and a big bathrobe with extra pockets sewn all over it. The pockets are stuffed with little prizes which the children can take out. I have no idea where Pocket Man came from--I don't think it's like a Waldorfy or spiritual tradition. My best guess is that some alumnus parent came up with it the year they were planning May Fair and it stuck.  I personally love Pocket Man--I love to see the kids running up all excited and I love to see the expression on the man's face doing it, once he's got over the initial awkwardness. Last year, my spouse did Pocket Man and it was interesting to me to watch his initial strong reluctance and then to see how much joy it gave him.

Every year, there are parents who want to nix Pocket Man from the festivities because it creeps them out. And I can relate; there is an aspect to it that creeps me out, too. Even though Pocket Man is always one of the dads, someone every parent totally knows, and the whole thing happens right out in the middle of the field with everyone watching.

This all reminds me of this older guy, Bert, who was a neighbor of mine when I was maybe five years old. He would give us kids jellybeans when we went to his house and rang the bell. He never invited us in or ever did anything the least bit creepy. He would just open the door, see a pack of hopeful-looking children, bring out his big bowl of jellybeans and give each kid a handful. (Back in those days, we were all allowed to wander the neighborhood entirely unsupervised.) I have a strange kind of dissonance around this memory. On one hand, as an adult and a parent, the whole thing freaks me out. If a (male) neighbor of mine were handing out candy and it wasn't Halloween, I seriously might call the police. But I remember clearly how happy it made me as a kid to have Bert give us jelly beans. More happy than just to get candy. It was like it made me feel like the world was a good place and that I lived in a real community, that adults who weren't my parents cared about the happiness of the kids in the neighborhood.

Some of it is the idea of an adult forming a relationship with a kid without the parents' knowledge. The other year at Wiscon, I was trying (mostly failing) to make balloon animals at the Gathering. And I totally freaked out an older sister by offering a balloon animal to a toddler while her mom was distracted talking to someone. And even though I totally was just trying to do something nice for a kid, after some reflection, I get why it freaked out the older sister.

But it also seems clear that there's also a gendered thing going on here. That in our culture, men are only allowed to care about children from a distance, or indirectly by making money or administrating a school or something. That we have a serious taboo against dudes lovingly interacting with children who aren't their own. Of course, it comes from a protective instinct to keep kids from getting molested, which is pretty damn important. I don't know the statistics, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the majority of child molesters are men (since the overwhelming majority of rapists and violent criminals are). But it still seems sad to me (for all of us--the kids, the non-dude adults, and the dudes themselves) that healthy, non-creepy men are so forbidden to participate in nurturing our children. And it seems like it's certainly an important piece in sorting out how women are almost always expected to be the nurturers and how childcare is so economically undervalued.

Oh! And also, one time an actual creepy dude did offer candy to my sister and I to try to get us into his car. Which we didn't do because we had been told a jillion times not to take candy from strangers. Which I totally don't want to have to tell my daughter because I don't want to give her the idea that the world is full of evil men who want to harm her at every turn. So I tell her not to get into anyone's car, and I don't let her wander the neighborhood alone. But still, I am so conflicted. Maybe I should tell her not to take candy from strangers.  Ugh.