Violent Ink

Hits you like a brick

I have TLC on in the background a lot of the time, and I guess the station knows its audience because there are a ton of baby-product commercials on during the day.

But there is one that I just abhor, and it's on about 900 times an hour.

It's for Huggies Natural Fit diapers, and there's a woman wandering around a playground playing with a brick as if it is a baby. Ha ha ha! That's so hilarious. What ridiculously amusing scenario could cause a woman to break with reality and think that this brick is her baby? Years of infertility? The loss of a pregnancy? The loss of a child?

Yeah, not really so hilarious, is it?

(Not to mention, the other diaper companies actually sued because it implies that only Huggies are shaped like an hourglass and are not rectangular, when all companies changed shape about 20 years ago. Whoops.)

How quickly time passes

One year, two weeks and one day ago, we saw Isaac for the first time.

After so much time, so many emotions, we sat in a room in Rockville and watched on the ultrasound screen as two little dots -- our blastocysts -- exited a plastic tube and drifted into my womb. One of them had a short existence, but the other eventually developed into a larger cluster of cells with a heartbeat I saw a few weeks later, then a grape-shaped blob, then a baby-shaped blob, then a stubborn fetus who didn't want to unfold his neck for a test, then a less-stubborn fetus who let us know he was indeed a boy.

And then, a few scant weeks after that, we saw him again, in the flesh, for real, and we had our son.

What to wear, baby?

For any expectant types out there, here are my recommendations for maternity clothes. I meant to write this up the last week of my pregnancy, but I had a busy schedule of walking around in circles and watching Bravo that prevented it.

• Isabella Olivier wrap shirt. Super-cute. Very flattering. Awesome color. But it was a pain in the ass to get on correctly, and if I wore it with pants, I had to basically unwrap it and rewrap it every time I went to the bathroom, which was totally not feasible since I went to the bathroom too many times a day. It worked OK with a skirt, though.
• Paige Denim maternity jeans. For me, a total waste of money. The waist was in the worst place -- it was too high to work as under-belly and too low to actually stay up on my belly. For some reason, after a while, whenever I walked, they would fall down a bit, so I was constantly hiking them up. Then they shrunk slightly in the wash (yes, my fault), and it was all over.
• Secret Fit Belly. By the end of my pregnancy, I had several pairs of pants and a skirt with the Secret Fit Belly, mostly from Motherhood Maternity. This was a godsend for me. Finally, pants would stay up, the belly didn't roll, etc. And it worked mid-pregnancy until the end (and afterward, too). Lots of the upscale stores offer this belly option, too. Totally worth it, in my opinion.
• Ruched-side shirts. One thing about the Isabella Olivier clothes is that they have a good philosophy: Wearing clothes that are closer to the body and show off the belly makes you look littler. The looser stuff just adds so much fabric that you look larger. I got several ruched-side shirts from Mimi Maternity, plus a great one from Michael Stars. These were the cornerstone of my wardrobe for a while.
• Toward the end of my pregnancy, I got two pairs of under-belly capri pants, and the bonus was that they were uber-wearable after the birth, too. I could still wear them, but I have reached that point where I want to be totally out of maternity clothes.
• Bella Bands. I bought of a couple of these and really liked them. In theory they were supposed to keep up pants that were too loose and cover up not-totally-closed pants that were getting too snug. They never really worked for me for the former, but they did for the latter, making sure that my closed-with-a-rubber-band pants were not visible to the public. Mostly I wore them to cover up maternity waistbands since even my maternity shirts seemed too short really early on, even though I am short-waisted. Also, I've worn them as tube tops at night before the birth and since to give my hormonal chest a little support without having to wear a full bra to sleep.

Here we go ...

My water broke around 9:30 this evening, now (10:15), we're just waiting for active-labor contractions to start. Once they get to 5 minutes apart for an hour at an intensity I can't talk through, we go to the hospital. If that hasn't happened by 7 a.m., we call the midwife again and either go to the office or the hospital to get evaluated, depending on how things are going.

Holy wow -- this is a-happening!

Update: This is so weird, like a switch has been flipped. I've been so ready for this to start, and now it has, and wow, what freaky things it does to the brain. That was a lot less comprehensible typed out than it was in my head. But I'm in labor, so cut me some slack.

Sleep is overrated, right?

A few weeks ago, I read this story about a former blogger for Gawker. She had had a personal blog about her life and relationship and ended up working at Gawker and exposing a lot of her personal life there -- and getting involved with a coworker and some other messiness.

Anyway, at the beginning of this enormous, self-indulgent NYT Magazine story, she says:

One of the strangest and most enthralling aspects of personal blogs is just how intensely personal they can be. I’m talking “specific details about someone’s S.T.D.’s” personal, “my infertility treatments” personal. There are nongynecological overshares, too: “My dog has cancer” overshares, “my abusive relationship” overshares.

One, I think you can blog about whatever the hell you want (provided it doesn't make you lose your job, which is why my blog is pretty focused on personal issues and not anything that strays into work territory). But it annoys the crap out of me that she singles out infertility treatments as an overshare she wouldn't ever commit -- she blogged about problems with her boyfriend even though he asked her not to! And that was what seemingly got her the gig at Gawker. Come on!

And, as I mentioned a few days ago, I found so much comfort in other people's blogs about their experiences with infertility that I don't know how I would have gotten through some of the days without them.

In sum: Shut up, Emily Gould.

I should sleep now.

Cervix says ...

... nothing. No exam at the appointment today. I'm scheduled for a non-stress test on Saturday, after which point we'll schedule an induction date. We did get to hear his heart rate again, and the kid is pretty dang content right now. So that is good.

I, on the other hand, am going a tiny bit bananas.

The house is clean, the bag is packed, I've watched nearly four seasons of The Office and gotten a lot better at Mario Kart and I'm reading a 1,300-page book. I might actually get yet another pedicure since I don't really like this color that much, and I messed up the big toe before I left the salon last week. Saw The Incredible Hulk, not really excited about anything else in the theater right now.

So ... biding time.

Father's(-to-be) Day

Yesterday, we saw The Incredible Hulk, ate at Cheesecake Factory, dropped off a trunk full of books at a library kind of nearby and then went to Arundel Mills and walked around for two hours.

Today, we checked out a new grocery store (Harris Teeter?) and walked around some more and then came home and watched more of The Office on Roku and played a bunch of Mario Kart.

Oh, labor? Yeah, not so much.

Nada mucho

Just hanging out and waiting for another day. No news.

I still haven't packed my bag, though. Probably should get on that.

Oh, and since there is a little confusion: Tomorrow is the due date according to the doctors, who are calculating from LMP. Today is the due date based on when they did the egg retrieval and fertilization. Either one would work for me!

Update update

So here's the newest numbers: 60 percent effaced and 3 cm dilated. Some change, but not much, but moving in the right direction.

Baby moving -- on video!

Baby moving
Originally uploaded by kicksie

This is supposed to be a video of the baby moving around. It might look like it's just me breathing, but I promise, it's not.

Also, I apologize for the cheesy transitions. The software I was using only had "random transition" as an option and I couldn't even find a non-stupid one. But trust me, it was worse without transitions.