Oh yeah, I remember this. It seems we (Mary Elise and I) have entered a new phase in our time as inside-baby and mama. The ol' Just Try and Get Some Sleep with a Watermelon-sized Infant in your esophagus phase.
Handily coupled with the "Was that a contraction?" phase.
Ah yes, I remember it well.
It's funny how they say the pain of labor escapes you just after it's ended. Sensory memories are a real funny thing, though, too.
And as my husband would say, "funny" is a funny word. Not so much funny ha-ha.
I had remembered before tonite that in the end I slept sitting up with a washrag in my mouth, but...
I had forgotten how much it kind of well not kind of but really...
What's the word moms are supposed to use in place of the word "blew"?
People keep asking me if Im "ready" but not in the context of wondering if Im really ready...rather in the context of "Are you so sick of feeling like crap that you just want that thing in there to come out already?????" And Ive tried really hard to gently assert that while there are inconveniences involved in carrying a full-fledged infant around inside my uterus, there is a bright side and that bright side is that I am not able for any of my waking hours to forget that, for the second and most likely (my husband's eyebrows just went up in his sleep, methinks...most likely???? Well, we know from experience that we can not tell the future...) last time in this lifetime
I am harboring a miracle.
But Im also thinking, just now in fact, as I sit up at two am with infant-on-the-esophagus, that there just might be something to the whole "God made the end so darn uncomfortable so we would eventually want to push the thing out" theory too. Kind of like The Teenage Years. It's going to happen. She is going to come out. And the moment she comes out, I get to touch her and look into her eyes and hear her voice for the first time, but I also encounter the new risk of forgetting I have seen and felt and heard a miracle. And maybe the Universe knows that, being the sort of person I am, Im going to need a little encouragement to cross that threshold.
So the Universe puts an infant in my esophagus for a few nights and asks again "Are you ready?".
Yeah, I think Im ready.
Just please, I pray, don't let me forget the miracle.
05 July 2008
No Baby-on-the-Outside Yet, but...
I did discover that the hanging planter I'd been watering regularly since May was actually the home of four beautiful baby robins. Sorry about the regular flooding, mamabirdie!
Hello, baby!
And here are a couple of shots (taken by me) of baby-on-the-inside, who, according to our midwife, is about 7.5lbs and in prime position for delivery. I was even able to isolate a foot last night. Now it's up to Mary Elise to decide the time is right (preferably when we are not visiting my parents three hours away from home, like we are right now.)
Hello, baby!
Our friend Carmen came by last week and took (literally) a thousand pictures of my belly in all its engorged-gorgeousness. I was just so grateful. For one thing, she came on my birthday bearing not just a cake but an amazing home-made red velvet cake straight out of heaven's pantry. For another reason, belly pictures were something I had really hoped to do this time but there was just no way we could have afforded to pay someone. Carmen loves to take pictures of pregnant women (and bake amazing cakes) and it turns out she isn't averse to receiving incredibly relaxing, deep, holistic professional massages either, so we worked out a barter. Once she is finished with the editing process, I hope to display some of her beautiful work here.
And on a related topic...Id like to offer a little tidbit of pregnancy wisdom the universe just handed to me. If you are wondering, like I was "How will I know when my baby has 'dropped'", the answer is very simple. When you are able to eat a half pound of Candy Kitchen Fudge (the King Tut flavor, in this case) not only without nausea and vomiting, but without so much as a sense of being "full", you can be assured that your baby has, indeed, dropped.
Hello, baby!
And here are a couple of shots (taken by me) of baby-on-the-inside, who, according to our midwife, is about 7.5lbs and in prime position for delivery. I was even able to isolate a foot last night. Now it's up to Mary Elise to decide the time is right (preferably when we are not visiting my parents three hours away from home, like we are right now.)
Hello, baby!
Our friend Carmen came by last week and took (literally) a thousand pictures of my belly in all its engorged-gorgeousness. I was just so grateful. For one thing, she came on my birthday bearing not just a cake but an amazing home-made red velvet cake straight out of heaven's pantry. For another reason, belly pictures were something I had really hoped to do this time but there was just no way we could have afforded to pay someone. Carmen loves to take pictures of pregnant women (and bake amazing cakes) and it turns out she isn't averse to receiving incredibly relaxing, deep, holistic professional massages either, so we worked out a barter. Once she is finished with the editing process, I hope to display some of her beautiful work here.
And on a related topic...Id like to offer a little tidbit of pregnancy wisdom the universe just handed to me. If you are wondering, like I was "How will I know when my baby has 'dropped'", the answer is very simple. When you are able to eat a half pound of Candy Kitchen Fudge (the King Tut flavor, in this case) not only without nausea and vomiting, but without so much as a sense of being "full", you can be assured that your baby has, indeed, dropped.
Sailboat Recon
About a month ago, we got a call from our friend about a potential adventure that awaited us at the base of a waterfall in a nearby creek. Brian later admitted that before making the call, he asked himself "Who do I know that's unbalanced enough to try this..." and our family apparently sprung to mind.
Ian was watching one of the Lord of the Rings movies, a treat we had just picked up at the library, when we presented him with a choice: Would you like to stay here and watch the rest of this movie, OR...would you like to go and rescue a sailboat?
So, into the car(s) we piled...Tim and his boys in one car, Ian and myself in the Forester, and down toward the creek we went. It took a few encounters with some neighbor boys over the next few days to get the whole story, but apparently someone grew tired of this cute little orange sailboat and offered it to one of the local boys. The local boy decided it would be fun to try to ride it over the falls, as was evidenced by the boat's location upon our arrival and the apparent damage to the bottom of the craft. Our friend, Brian, had been out hiking when he noticed the bright orange and white vessel stranded in the creek and thought we might just be the people who would be adventurous (read: crazy?) enough to try to get it out.
Once the guy living across the street from the area in question commented that several people had tried (and failed) to remove this boat from its current situation, well, I knew we'd be there as long as it took to succeed.
And succeed, we did. We are now the proud owners of a lovely small sailing craft as well as some of the rigging we later found out was still in the original owner's back yard.
Here are a few of the highlights:
Tim in the thick of things. This was taken at the top of the ravine one one side of the creek. Without going onto someone's land, we could not explore what the other side looked like past what we could see from this side. From this side, it appeared to be just as treacherous. (In other words, no place for someone to be climbing with a sailboat on his back.)
The falls, viewed from the overpass.
After a period of time spent brainstorming, it was discovered that the land on the other side of the creek from where we approached was actually a lot more easily traversed and that if we hiked far enough up that side, we would eventually come to a place where we could just walk the boat right out of the water. Well, when I say "we" I mean the men (hey, Im pregnant, remember?) and when I say "walk" I mean "carry". But still, prior to this tidbit of info, we were considering trying to get it back up over the falls, so this plan sounded like a cake-walk.
With permission from the owner of the land, the men folk set off up to tow the boat up the creek and then carry it back to the starting point, on land this time, where we were able to secure it to the top of Tim's Jeep and Viola! the Nugent-Noonan's are now the proud owners of the sailboat Mary Elise.
Ian was watching one of the Lord of the Rings movies, a treat we had just picked up at the library, when we presented him with a choice: Would you like to stay here and watch the rest of this movie, OR...would you like to go and rescue a sailboat?
So, into the car(s) we piled...Tim and his boys in one car, Ian and myself in the Forester, and down toward the creek we went. It took a few encounters with some neighbor boys over the next few days to get the whole story, but apparently someone grew tired of this cute little orange sailboat and offered it to one of the local boys. The local boy decided it would be fun to try to ride it over the falls, as was evidenced by the boat's location upon our arrival and the apparent damage to the bottom of the craft. Our friend, Brian, had been out hiking when he noticed the bright orange and white vessel stranded in the creek and thought we might just be the people who would be adventurous (read: crazy?) enough to try to get it out.
Once the guy living across the street from the area in question commented that several people had tried (and failed) to remove this boat from its current situation, well, I knew we'd be there as long as it took to succeed.
And succeed, we did. We are now the proud owners of a lovely small sailing craft as well as some of the rigging we later found out was still in the original owner's back yard.
Here are a few of the highlights:
Tim in the thick of things. This was taken at the top of the ravine one one side of the creek. Without going onto someone's land, we could not explore what the other side looked like past what we could see from this side. From this side, it appeared to be just as treacherous. (In other words, no place for someone to be climbing with a sailboat on his back.)
The falls, viewed from the overpass.
After a period of time spent brainstorming, it was discovered that the land on the other side of the creek from where we approached was actually a lot more easily traversed and that if we hiked far enough up that side, we would eventually come to a place where we could just walk the boat right out of the water. Well, when I say "we" I mean the men (hey, Im pregnant, remember?) and when I say "walk" I mean "carry". But still, prior to this tidbit of info, we were considering trying to get it back up over the falls, so this plan sounded like a cake-walk.
With permission from the owner of the land, the men folk set off up to tow the boat up the creek and then carry it back to the starting point, on land this time, where we were able to secure it to the top of Tim's Jeep and Viola! the Nugent-Noonan's are now the proud owners of the sailboat Mary Elise.
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