Nearly halfway

Things we haven’t done: Cleared out the box room that will be Critter’s room Settled on a name for Critter Critter-proofed the house Purchased any Critter infrastructure Felt Critter move (that would be a surprise, though Ms spends a noteworthy amount of time prodding her baby factory trying to irritate Critter into moving … I’ll note this is behavior that Ms specifically requested I not perform on the dogs several months ago) Found a suitable date for any sort of getaway (or, hork, “babymoon”) I think we can clean out the box room in a weekend. And buying the majority of infrastructure can happen in a day once we get to that point. Ugh. Don’t get me wrong: it’s all very exciting. Truly.  But there’s definitely stuff to do, and we’re approaching the time when we start accelerating towards the finish (start?) line faster and faster.  No pressure! My brain isn’t working well tonight. I was sick for a pretty good chunk of the last week, and today is the first day I’ve felt really 100% for a while. Thing is, I’ve been saying that for several days now, only to realize the next day that I was not, in fact, 100%.  Imma just sit here and drool a...

The strange questions

I’m finding myself asking a lot of weird questions about the baby. For example, tonight, while holding one of the cats in a facsimile of a burp position, I asked, “So, how hard are you supposed to beat the baby?” I mean, I’m not advocating beating babies. Beating babies is bad. But at some point, you have to give the baby a bit of a whack to make it burp. How hard? A light pat? A solid whack? Something between? Intuitively, I know I shouldn’t be hitting the baby very hard, because beating babies is bad. So my primary concern is less about hitting the baby too hard than it is about not hitting hard enough. What if my baby sits there in great discomfort from a persistent gas bubble because Dad was being too gentle? What a weird thing it is to ponder babykeeping without an actual baby to run tests...

Random Thoughts

Glucose tests are inSANE. Doctors need to do a better job of not freaking out patients. Ms is currently resisting the temptation to chase a little girl around the waiting room because she, Ms, is so sugar-smacked. But at least we seem to have moved on from Ms’ competitive compulsion to cut any other pregnant women who are, in her words, “beating me” (that is, further along in their pregnancies). I don’t know if this is permanent or a temporary detente. Ms just told me she can feel her pulse in her butt. Well, a pulse. I asked “yours or his?” Hers, apparently. Glucose tests, y’all. I’m pretty sure Ms could scale this building using only her eyelids right now. Babies are small targets. For the ultrasound, freaks. If they don’t find the baby right away, think about how hard it is to aim a laser pointer at something from a distance. Ms is totally about to go dance with this six-year-old in the waiting room. I think the soothing music in here is counterproductive. It sounds like a weepy scene from a French drama. A bad one, not a weird artsy...

On the birth of a baby: the Christmas post...

First, the merriest of merry Christmases to all who celebrate! That Jesus, he was a groovy dude who preached love and peace. It’s a message we could use more of. I don’t have a whole lot to say tonight. A year from now, we’ll have our own baby bundle. I suppose he won’t be doing much at 6 months old. Drooling a bit. Pooping himself. Generally useless. So here’s my Christmas wish: let’s all try to make a world in which all our babies know peace and love. That’s it. It’s not an easy wish to squeeze down a chimney, but it’s an easy wish to squeeze out an open heart. And, to my unborn son, please, oh please, give me uninterrupted sleep for Christmas in...

I should know

I’ve been seeing something a lot recently. Ms will say something – for example, a sternly-worded rejection of an idiotic YouTube video that’s been going around involving white people rapping badly in pajamas (I won’t link to it, because … Jesus, no) – and someone will respond that she’s only saying that because she’s pregnant. It’s not always quite that direct, but the conclusion is inescapable. Let me see if I can pick through this. I’ve known my wife for 20+ years. I’ve heard her moods, seen her triggers, listened to what makes her angry, and the Ms I grew up with and married is the Ms who is nuzzled up to her pillows in the bedroom right now. Her essential character hasn’t changed, her reactions to things (largely) haven’t changed, her sense of humor is the same. Everything about her is the same as I’ve always known, with a very few exceptions. She has, on maybe two or three occasions in my presence, had an emotional reaction to a stimulus that I would not have otherwise expected (think tears when a feelgood news story comes on, or something along those lines). She has identified rapidly changing hormones as the cause, but I should really be clearer on the point: she hasn’t done anything out of character or weird, just not the response I was expecting. All well within Ms’ established range of responses to stimuli – enough so that it’s difficult for me to think of specific examples here, just remembering my own mild surprise. On another two or three occasions, Ms has spoken to me more sternly than I would have expected because I needed to be doing more. I’m perfectly ok with that. I mean, we’re doing this in sort of pro mode: we’re still learning our way around each other as cohabitators, and now Ms is going through substantial physical changes that leave her quick to tire, so I’m having to make my own adjustments. Sometimes I miss the mark. I feel bad about it, because I want to do everything I can to make this process as easy for Ms as possible without treating her like an invalid, but it’s nothing that’s caused me to feel wronged or unjustly accused or any nonsense like that. My pregnant wife needs me to do more sometimes, I’m trying, and sometimes I don’t do enough. Maybe Ms will chime in about this, but I don’t feel like it’s an epidemic of failure or anything, heh, but I do feel like it’s justified and gentle correction during a time when both of us are going through behavior adaptations. It’s also worth pointing out that, as with the first example, I can’t really think of a specific occurrence because nothing wedged in my memory out of either shock or anger. After considering it for maybe one one hundredth of a second, my reaction was “Oh, ok, right, of course.” My pregnant wife is essentially the same person my non-pregnant wife was. Full stop. There are differences, but they’re subtle. The best example is one I told her about this weekend. Ms goes to sleep earlier than I do (I mean, my current insomnia troubles notwithstanding, I’m a night owl by nature, and Ms is not). Before she became pregnant, she’d come home and gradually wind down, almost imperceptibly cleansing herself of the day’s stresses before falling asleep on the couch. Now she’s much more consistently awake until the light suddenly goes...