Week 24: Nesting and Ears of Corn

Week 24...

Google "newborn checklist" and you will be given suggestions for a multitude of baby products that you need.  Search for "baby needs" and you'll find hundreds of mom blogs with ideas for everything under the planet.  "Nursery ideas" will have you swimming through paint colors and wading through complicated design ideas.  Beware--put your toe in the waters of baby nesting and you'll end up treading water for hours.  

At some point in your pregnancy, those lists and ideas will begin to impact your psyche.  Maybe for you it was immediate.  Perhaps you've been buying booties from week four and you have outfits for every occasion.  Or, you may be the opposite, and have yet to become enamored with diaper genies, and bounce chairs, and eight different styles of onesies.

For me, it happened this week, rather unexpectedly.  I was considering how to paint the nursery, and found myself making a phone call to a restaurant in Lexington, Kentucky... ...where I then convinced a waiter to go into the bathroom and take a photo of the wall mural and text it to me.  Mind you, I hadn't been at Table Three Ten in several months, and it is 1,520 miles away, and I had originally been there to eat, not to ogle their bathroom.  But I remembered the birds painted above the toilet, and it seemed perfectly reasonable to go to such lengths to get the image... ...immediately.

CNP, 2015

I mean, it is a nice bird mural.  But I'm not sure that it merited a call at 8pm.

The little bambino is the size of an ear of corn!  She is still busy growing and making surfactant for her lungs to help keep the little alveoli open to prepare for breathing.  There is some evidence that fetal brains at this stage have a degree of memory, as your child will respond to familiar noises (such as that same song you are stuck on) in the womb.  Although your baby's skin is still translucent, and her hair and eyebrows albino white, she can blink!

CNP, 2015

Until next week,
Cat

I know I have been desperately behind on this cartoon series, but I will finish!  I hope that my hiatus hasn't left you struggling with what to expect... ...but I can promise that my journey ahead was indeed unexpected.  

Week 23: Papayas and Belly Property

Week 23...

I cried a little when I went through my closet and packed away my favorite pair of jeans.  The last time I put them on I looked like a muffin.  I don't want them lurking on the shelf taunting me for the next few months, and so I packed them and other thou shalt not taunt me clothes into tupperware containers.

Our break-up was rather sophomoric and short lived though, as less than a day after sealing them away, my maternity jeans arrived in the mail and I don't know that I ever want to wear anything else ever again.  Consider your favorite pair of jeans.  Comfortable... ...until you sit down to Thanksgiving dinner.  A perfect fit... ...until you decide that half of a pizza is a perfectly reasonable idea.  Maternity jeans are like your favorite jeans in every way, but have a one-foot wide elastic waistband so they are not so friggin' judgmental.

As my belly expands, I have become uncomfortably aware of another important milestone of pregnancy.  Suddenly, absolute strangers want to touch my belly.  In the post office.  The grocery store.  Even at the motor vehicle office-the bastion of anonymity-a  nice little old lady rubbed me like I was a buddha and declared that I was having a girl.  Evidently, my belly is now communal property.  It would have been nice to get some kind of notice.  

CNP, 2015

I'm actually relieved to look pregnant though, as it means our little girl has finally been pushing out and making some room for herself.  She is currently the size of a papaya, and weighs about a pound.  It is hard to imagine what I'll feel like when she clocks in at five times this size.

CNP, 2015

Until next week,
Cat

Week 22: Spaghetti Squash and Immunity

Week 22...


I have come to the conclusion that I have a lousy bedside manner.  I honestly thought that people who were sick were pansies.  I would still help... ...begrudgingly give them tissues, make soup, run errands, but the entire time my silent monologue went something like "Oh-for-the-love-of-God-can-you-please-grow-up-or-grow-a-pair-and-not-be-such-a-helpless-imbecile."  You get the picture.  I may have portrayed an image of a doting Florence Nightingale, but inside I was a merciless demon. 

Let me explain.  It wasn't really my fault. 

I am a teacher, and have an immune system of an ox.  I never get sick, or rather, if I did get a little sick, it cleared up in a few hours or so.   Since I never really experienced the need to lay around on the couch with a conveyor belt of tissues, barf basins, and hot compresses to cope, I thought that other people who required that kind of attention were weak.  And then?  Then I got pregnant.

CNP, 2015

Pregnancy books warn that "you may experience decreased immunity during pregnancy."  FYI, this is code for your body saying that it "doesn't have time to investigate any trivial little sniffle because it is busy doing important things, like making another human."  Outcome?  The common cold becomes the plague.  I spent three days on the couch, went through a box of tissues, fell in love with neti pots, and slept for fifteen hours in a row.


I realized that I've had a lousy bedside manner because I had never been sick before.  Now I know.  I henceforth pledge to be a little more Nightingale, and a little less petulant... or at least not call you names in my head.

Little miss thing this week is about the size of a box of sugar or a spaghetti squash.  She is sprouting all kinds of hair, but it is albino white.  Like her pigment-less hair, her irises also lack color, but she is able to sense light and dark even though the lids are fused.  Finally, at 22 weeks she has a pretty hefty grip!  I could see her hanging on her umbilical cord in her 20-week ultrasound!  

CNP, 2015

Until next week, 
Cat

p.s. Thanks to my friend Laura who made me first have a sense of humor about getting sick for the first time, and being the inspiration for this week's cartoon.

Week 21: Carrots and Heartburn

Week 21...

The second trimester of pregnancy has been pretty blissful.  Besides the occasional bout of acne, weird twitchy legs in the middle of the night, and some back pain, I think the second trimester has been wonderful.  Well, except for my new-found hobby of gargling battery acid.  Heartburn hasn't been so much fun.  I can't possibly do heartburn more justice than Brie Spangler does in her cartoons: I too have come to worship the Tums gods:

Brie's work is available here

As the little bambina gets bigger, she cuddles with my stomach.  Since that hormone relaxin (remember week 18?) is doing such a fabulous job 'relaxing' muscles throughout my body, remnants of whatever I do eat to take little acid trips up from the bottom of the esophagus through the 'relaxed' esophageal sphincter.  Fun, eh?

Drinking milk, eating apples and nuts, and generally consuming smaller meals with no beverages has, in general, helped.  So has Tums.  Lots of Tums.  According to some good-olde non scientific research, a lot of heartburn during pregnancy is indicative of your child being hairy.  If so, I am carrying Cousin Itt.

CNP, 2015

The little bambina this week, in addition to cuddling with my stomach, is about the size of a carrot and is rapidly developing her own schedule of wake and sleep cycles.  Ten pm, when I am ready to go to bed, she often has a dance party.

CNP, 2015

Until next week,
Cat