Heaven...

... is feeling a bit hungry, and be able to load up a plate with brussel sprouts, carrots, cauliflower, mashed potatoes, gravy and turkey. Pop it in the microwave and eat it, looking out over the winter landscape.
I've always loved vegetables, but now we have a love affaire going that almost makes me teary eyed when I can load a plate with all the colors of the rainbow.
I have a craving for red peppers. But also a conflict. The organic peppers always taste of mold, and the non organic are one of the most heavily toxic vegetables. Actually Swedish health care don't recommend small children to eat peppers due to high amount of pesticides.
Why can't we just take care of our selves, each other and the planet and have normal food in the stores?

We have a ton of dishes and cleaning up to do. But, as I often remind wifey, relaxing is as important as getting things done.



I'm reading Ina May Gaskin's Guide to childbirth. It is both very comforting and distressing. Comforting in it's way to view childbirth. Distressing in knowing that this is not the way hospital births are encouraged. I get wild fantasies of barring the door to the delivery room with furniture to get to birth my baby uninterrupted, uninhibited and natural.
But, I am going to give them a fair chance. After the next visit to our midwife she's going to send a referral to the hospital so we can go visit and talk to the head midwife.

I would love the birth of our baby to be something to look forward to. Not something to dread and have nightmares about. How unlikely it seems that an entire baby can pass through your body. Still it apparently is a very successful mechanism considering how many people inhabit the planet.

Ina May on the success rate of their natural child birth apporach;
"And the more things you do that are right, the more synergic they become. Each may seem small to someone looking for a magic bullet. What? - Turn birth over to women? Feed them? Just let them sleep? Wait for them to go into labour? Don't scare them? Yet the combination of these simple protocols produces a gestalt that leads to relaxed, happy, enthusiastic mothers and healthy babies".

Glad advent!

Being a pregnant lady means nothing is allowed to stand between you and food. Thus I´m up before everyone else, enjoying a first breakfast. I suppose I will also enjoy a second breakfast after all of our guests that spent the night and wifey is up and about.
We had the most amazing dinner last night. I think wifey should open a turkey restaurant.
It is interesting how you pile up your plate and think; my God, how will I ever be able to eat all that? And then somehow you still go for seconds.
We were two preggos at the party last night, and after dinner we each took a couch and sprawled out. And since you´re pregnant, no one can say anything about it.

It was also nice to be able to walk around in regular clothes, and not hide behind huge cardigans. Ok , regular and regular, I got me some maternity tights and a skirt. But it was a liberating feeling to be among people who all knew why I look like I ate too much, even before dinner began.

I told my boss at work I´m pregnant. Recent events made me realize it doesn´t matter much either way. And I want to protect myself from getting tangled up in more misunderstandings and hostilities from management.
But I still don´t want to share it with all my co-workers.
One reason is I don´t need to hear all their horror stories of birth, another is I don´t feel up to educate heteroville on how come a lesbo can get pregnant.
Also, I don´t have personal relationships with most of the people at work. And being pregnant feels so private. It´s something for me and wifey to share with the ones close to us. I don´t want the rest of the world in on it. Not yet.

After the Christmas holidays it will probably be pretty obvious anyways. Until then baby is my little secret.

Oh well, now that I had my hot chocolate (I know the milk is good for the baby, but my sugar intake must have increased with 10 000 % since I started this dietary change) and my vörtbröd I might go back to bed for a nap. Pregnant ladies can do that you know. Go take a nap, in spite of having guests to entertain.

Today's dinner is...

... pizza sallad. Again. For those of you who never heard of this Swedish masterpiece; it's sort of like coleslaw, minus the mayo and carrots, and with a lot of vinegar.

Since I'm too tired/lazy/hungry to do the dishes before dinner, I'm eating it with a pair of chopsticks left over from some sushi take away.

As a pregnant lady food shopping has become a bit... impulsive, to say the least. I never know what I feel like eating until I see it and I either feel nauseous or ravenous.
Yesterday the grocery store's sallad shelf got me hooked. I bought about 7 different types of sallads, tomatoes, beans, sprouts and shreaded cabbage.

I added some hot chocolate and vörtbröd (Swedish christmas bread) to my pizza sallad dinner. A full meal? Who knows, but baby seems happy.
I felt her move today when I was working. Her heart dancing under mine. It feels funny. She must be doing jazz hands. I think we have a showgirl in the making. And as Bette Midler said; showgirl must go on! She's here to stay, my tiny dancer.

3 more days until Advent!

My advent star is shining in my window, I have hot chocolate and Ella Fitzgerald singing me christmas carols. Life is good in all the areas that matter. (At least I try to convince myself work doesn't matter, eventhough I have workoholic tendencies. But I'm in quick recovery, let me tell you).

Baby is growing, though I haven't felt her for a while. Last week and this past weekend she grew like crazy. Saturday morning I had a straining, strechy feeling in my uterus/abdomen all morning. I was thinking MY GOD, is THIS what it's going to feel like now that she's REALLY started growing? For 5 more months?

No one tell you these things. I don't know what I expected, and perhaps most women don't feel anything during their pregnancies. Perhaps I'm just the odd exception. But baby is here, and it's not going by unnoticed.

Sunday is first of Advent. Wifey has her yearly Thanksgivning-dinner on Saturday. We´re trying to make it more ours by inviting some of my friends too. Wifey's already off shopping turkey and cleaning our country house.

Then we´re off to December, with christmas concerts, Glögg-parties etc. Before we know it, we'll be heading back to the midwife for our second check-up. And then all the courses starts; profylax, baby care, rainbow parent group, visiting the hospital, nursing course etc.
It's a bit weird to wait until half the pregnancy is over, and then cram everything into the last 20 weeks.

Next week, week 18, would be the week for our routine ultrasound. Had we chosen to have one.
However, I read a bunch of research, pros and cons, made wifey read some too, and decided it is not for us.
I'm not a fanatic, I think ultrasound is great if you need it for medical reasons, I don't think it's going to kill my baby or impair it for life.
I just think the information you get from it is not anything we will find useful, and that it atleast will disturb baby and put her through stress, and some research suggest it's harmful.

I trust baby to be healthy, or my body to tell me otherwise. I nurture her with hot chocolate and christmas carols (still can't muster tea or coffee, though the smell doesn't make me want to barf any more). I love her with all my heart. Wifey sings to her, talks to her and hold her with her palm against my bump.
All will be fine. I feel stronger and calmer to have trusted my instinct to not have a routine ultrasound. To not let anxiety win.
Last time I trusted my instinct we ended up pregnant, without having my tubes flushed (another anxiety induced decision).

The nausea is almost all gone. The only foods I have difficulty eating is processed or artificial tasting food. Unfortunately this includes pre-natal vitamins. My body simply doesn't want them. I try to sneek them in from time to time, but don't stress out about it.

I think a turkey- dinner is just what the baby needs!

Focus shift

This weekend wifey told me I can't sit at home crying the rest of my life over the way I got treated at work. Like a bonafied behavioral therapist she instead took me shopping for the baby. We bought a tiny onesie for the baby and a pair of materity jeans for me. I even got my appetite back and bought me a piece of teryaki chicken.

I've decided not to care about work any more. I will show up and do a good job, as always, but I won't have any illusions that it will take me anywhere in this company.

I have an income, I have 2 blocks between home and work, I still like what I do and I'm still good at it. No office politics (or lack there of) can take that from me.

I also wanted to write about baby and how she dances under our hands at night when we lay in bed. Like tiny flutters of a butterfly, she moves agains our palms. She moves more when wifey holds her hand agains her. Like she wants to say hello to her other mommy. We dare to hope it's her, we dismiss it as digestion, we're convinced again that it's our tiny dancer moving inside me.
And then, ofcourse, this is the song she needs.

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"And now she's in me, always with me, tiny dancer in my hand..."

Hormones, work drama and tears

Lately I've mostly alternated between three basic states; crying, freaking out over my dying career and read horror stories about deliveries and the pain of giving birth; and thus freaking out over this too.

The old truth that as soon as one area of your life is going well, another one goes to hell has proven to be quite dependable. (Actually I think I read it in Bridget Jones' diary).

The short story of work drama is me being promised a job that was given to someone else a few weeks later. I'm not sure as to why, as my boss had no other explanation than what's done is done and she has no memory of ever promising me the job. Well, that does not make for much conversation.

I'm not exactly a pillar of stone now a days, even though the nausea and extreme fatigue has settled slightly, so I promply broke down in tears. I'm not usually the crying kind, but I (atleast like to think )am more of the stoic, nordic Greta Garbo/viking type. (Though I'm sure the vikings cried quite a lot when pregnant. And perhaps Greta cried too, for having to stay in the closet).

Work has gone from being one of my loves to a place of torment where I just sit and try to keep from bursting into tears until I can go home at 5. I feel silly for not being able to handle things in a more graceful way. But oh well, you can't beat the hormones. Crying is my number one leisure activity at the moment.

The book I've been reading lately to cheer myself up further is "Att möta förlossningsmärtan" (To handle the pain of delivery) by Gudrun Abascal; a famous Swedish midwife.
The book was like a really horrid traffic accident. Eventhough it makes you sick you can't stop staring.
The book is basically a description of how completely unbearable and horriffic the pain during delivery is. There is woman after woman describing how she wanted to kill herself, jump out of a window, how all her limbs felt like they were torn from her body etc all from the unmanageble pain.

Well. I feel confident and optimistic now.

To balance it out I also listened to my hypno birthing cd; a completely different approach. Unfortunately I got so relaxed I fell asleep and woke up with the hypno ladies voice in my ear (headphones) and got scared half to death. So much for relaxation.

I will leave you with one of my favorite crying soundtracks.

And btw; baby is growing like crazy, every morning she seems to have doubled in size, I'm still madly in love with my beautiful wife and I very seldom feel nauseaous, so it's not all that bad.

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