It's early in the morning. I've been awake since 4:30. My husband is soundly asleep beside me, and my son is awake inside me. His movements have become less fluttery, less like individual jabs (although there are still those) and more like stretches. He presses against me, turns. I watch my belly pulse and ripple.
We're leaving in a few hours to go to my husband's side of the family for Thanksgiving. We alternate holidays: last year, Thanksgiving was with my side of the family, Christmas was with his. I've learned to say "my side of the family" and "his side of the family" instead of "my family" or "his family." You know, since my family is his and his family is mine and all of that. The wisdom that comes with two years of marriage.
In past years, when it was his side of the family's turn for Thanksgiving, we've spent it with his mom. This year, we're spending it with his dad. There are people on his dad's side I still haven't met, and my husband wants me to meet them.
I washed and straightened my hair last night (well, it was already more or less straightened from the last time I flat ironed it a few weeks ago, but now I got that fresh press) in part because I'm about to be around a lot of white people. My natural hair is great and I love it, but in certain contexts, it can be a spectacle. And when you have a spectacular thing like natural black hair around lots of white people, you stand out even more than you already do and people may be so bold as to ask about it or even touch it. And I don't want to talk about what I do to my hair to people who have no concept of what it means to have my hair (National Geographic voice over: The black woman, in her natural habitat, pulls a wide-toothed comb through her damp, conditioner-laden hair...), and I certainly don't want anyone to try to touch it. Well, I might let you if you're one of my little nieces or nephews. Aunt Chantell, you have fluffy hair. Yup, I sure do.
So, after Thanksgiving, we will spend time with my mother-in-law, and she wants to do a little family baby shower for me. That will be nice. I just need to manually update my Target registry so I don't get yet another baby monitor or bottle rack. The thing is, if you aren't ordering things online, the registry doesn't update when you're in store unless you bring the registry thing up there for the cashier to scan, and lots of people fail to do that. I know, because I failed to do it when I bought a few items at Target right before someone else's baby shower who was also registered there.
In a little while, it'll be road trip time. NPR podcasts, gas station stops, fast food. I'm looking forward to getting a chicken biscuit this morning, truth be told. We don't have a Chick-fil-a in our humble town.
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
Saturday, November 18, 2017
30 Weeks
So, today officially marks the 10-week countdown. That is utterly ridiculous. 10 weeks is nothing. Like, it is so scarily close, but at the same time, I know I have no concept of how radically everything is about to change. And soon.
How did the baby go from the size of a tomato seed to a butternut squash in such a small amount of time? It's like, for the longest time, I was quasi-pregnant with a barely noticeable bump, and then one day, BAM, I wake up with a soccer ball stuffed inside me, unable to completely bend over and waddling when I walk.
And I do waddle when I walk now. Ugh. I'm still walking to and from work, and I'll do that for as long as humanly possible (we only have like, two more weeks of class before finals anyway), but still, I can feel the change in my gait, and it's totally unavoidable. I also stumble more often than usual (so embarrassing). Sometimes I'll be in the shower crying because I'm daydreaming about my son getting picked on when he goes to school (why?). Sometimes I'll be in the middle of teaching and just straight up forget words. In Spanish and English. Pregnancy brain? Every dumb little thing I do, I blame it on the pregnancy. That's what I tell my students to make them laugh, anyway.
Since my last post with Curious George in the swing, P has now put together our pack and play, bassinet and stroller. The last thing he'll contend with before our little guy makes his entrance into the world will be the crib. (There's also the high chair, but we have a little more time before we'll need that.) I didn't know I had such a handy husband.
I guess part of this industriousness was prompted by my waking up one morning a week or so ago freaking out because I was seized by this feeling of things "not being ready for the baby." My husband, ever calm, suggested we make out a list of what we needed to do. It's now up on the fridge, and we've since crossed a few things off.
One of the things on our list that I'm dreading is checking out childcare options. It's a small town, so it's not like there are millions of places, and I've already talked to a lot of my colleagues with children to get recommendations so it's not like we have no guidance whatsoever, but the idea just makes me nervous. The idea of leaving my child somewhere, the idea of the kinds of people who would be caring for him and the kinds of kids he would be surrounded by, the idea of finding a good "fit," the idea of the financial concerns tied into childcare. The whole thing makes me nervous and makes me want to put it off. But we totally can't.
We're also taking childbirth and breastfeeding classes this month. So far, they've been helpful. The instructor is a woman who's been a nurse for like 20 years or something and she's really funny and upbeat. But the other couples who are attending the class, white kids in their 20s (possibly teens?), make me feel like an old, exotic oddball. Like, are there NO other black women giving birth around the same time I am in the entire city?
There are several of my fellow co-workers who are also having babies in the spring or have just had babies, and I came up with the idea to have a "mom's group." In my former life, I would have been so not down with anything even approximating a "mom's group" because it just sounds so basic and trite, but I think we, as professional women at the same institution, should stick together and encourage one another, and moms who have just had little ones can give us advice. Most everyone was really open to it, so we'll see how it goes. Maybe we'll meet at the little coffee shop in town at the beginning of January, once we all get back from winter break.
I'm obsessed with what our child is going to look like, what he's going to be like. There's an entire human in there who is going to come out and be a complete person existing in the world. What does that even mean? We'll get a sneak peek at what he's going to look like in a few weeks with a 3D ultrasound, another one of those things I used to disparage (because they look so freaky), but that I'm looking forward to now. Will I be able to tell whether he'll have my husband's eyes, eyelashes and cute little dimple? Guess we'll see.
How did the baby go from the size of a tomato seed to a butternut squash in such a small amount of time? It's like, for the longest time, I was quasi-pregnant with a barely noticeable bump, and then one day, BAM, I wake up with a soccer ball stuffed inside me, unable to completely bend over and waddling when I walk.
And I do waddle when I walk now. Ugh. I'm still walking to and from work, and I'll do that for as long as humanly possible (we only have like, two more weeks of class before finals anyway), but still, I can feel the change in my gait, and it's totally unavoidable. I also stumble more often than usual (so embarrassing). Sometimes I'll be in the shower crying because I'm daydreaming about my son getting picked on when he goes to school (why?). Sometimes I'll be in the middle of teaching and just straight up forget words. In Spanish and English. Pregnancy brain? Every dumb little thing I do, I blame it on the pregnancy. That's what I tell my students to make them laugh, anyway.
Since my last post with Curious George in the swing, P has now put together our pack and play, bassinet and stroller. The last thing he'll contend with before our little guy makes his entrance into the world will be the crib. (There's also the high chair, but we have a little more time before we'll need that.) I didn't know I had such a handy husband.
I guess part of this industriousness was prompted by my waking up one morning a week or so ago freaking out because I was seized by this feeling of things "not being ready for the baby." My husband, ever calm, suggested we make out a list of what we needed to do. It's now up on the fridge, and we've since crossed a few things off.
One of the things on our list that I'm dreading is checking out childcare options. It's a small town, so it's not like there are millions of places, and I've already talked to a lot of my colleagues with children to get recommendations so it's not like we have no guidance whatsoever, but the idea just makes me nervous. The idea of leaving my child somewhere, the idea of the kinds of people who would be caring for him and the kinds of kids he would be surrounded by, the idea of finding a good "fit," the idea of the financial concerns tied into childcare. The whole thing makes me nervous and makes me want to put it off. But we totally can't.
We're also taking childbirth and breastfeeding classes this month. So far, they've been helpful. The instructor is a woman who's been a nurse for like 20 years or something and she's really funny and upbeat. But the other couples who are attending the class, white kids in their 20s (possibly teens?), make me feel like an old, exotic oddball. Like, are there NO other black women giving birth around the same time I am in the entire city?
There are several of my fellow co-workers who are also having babies in the spring or have just had babies, and I came up with the idea to have a "mom's group." In my former life, I would have been so not down with anything even approximating a "mom's group" because it just sounds so basic and trite, but I think we, as professional women at the same institution, should stick together and encourage one another, and moms who have just had little ones can give us advice. Most everyone was really open to it, so we'll see how it goes. Maybe we'll meet at the little coffee shop in town at the beginning of January, once we all get back from winter break.
I'm obsessed with what our child is going to look like, what he's going to be like. There's an entire human in there who is going to come out and be a complete person existing in the world. What does that even mean? We'll get a sneak peek at what he's going to look like in a few weeks with a 3D ultrasound, another one of those things I used to disparage (because they look so freaky), but that I'm looking forward to now. Will I be able to tell whether he'll have my husband's eyes, eyelashes and cute little dimple? Guess we'll see.
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