Saturday, August 30, 2008

Grateful for Distraction

Waiting on Baby

Bethany asks me pretty frequently lately, "Aren't you afraid?" And I understand because definitely when I was thirteen the whole concept of giving birth seemed awful and unjust to me. And, in fact, I had that sense somewhat again when we went to the prenatal class, but at this point, as I tell Bethany, "No! I just want this baby out!" In some ways, I am looking forward to just not being big and heavy and uncomfortable again (even though I know that things aren't "back to normal" possibly ever again and certainly not for several weeks/months) so that getting another little person out of the deal just seems like this amazing bonus. That may not make sense, but I still sort of feel that way.

As for being big, heavy, and uncomfortable, I have another funny story about that. I was in my office later than normal last week and a student custodian came in to collect the trash. He was friendly, saying, "Hey, you're not usually here when I come in. What's your name? And when are you due?" I said, "Any day now," and he said, "Well, that's good because you look like if you were any bigger you'd fall over." I guess my sense of humor is improving because I just thought that was hilarious! I think I said something like, "Yeah, it's true" and laughed, though he probably didn't realize that I was laughing more at his insensitivity than at his cleverness.

Anyway, I realize that I can't complain. This pregnancy has been the easiest pregnancy possibly in the history of pregnancies, so if I have to wait longer than some other people, then it's not as though I have anything serious to complain about. Besides, it really could happen any time. When we went in for the exam this week, the doctor examined me and said the baby is in place and that when he comes any lower it will be because I'm giving birth. This was comforting because several women have said, "You really don't look any lower. I don't think the baby has dropped yet," but apparently he has. I haven't dilated much, but he said that it doesn't matter; I could still go into labor any time. To be honest, even if that was a lie (which I don't think it was) I am so grateful for it. I am happy to have even an unfounded reason to hope right now.

Various Distractions

Ender's Game

Last week was Patrick's first week off of two between semesters/terms. For a good deal of the week, we didn't do anything productive. Patrick read Ender's Game, which I had read the week before, and I read Orson Scott Card's Saints. First, Ender's Game.

I liked it, and I'm not even sure what it is I liked about it. One thing was that it was unique. It really wasn't like any other book I have ever read, and the war room, in particular is an interesting element. I liked that a lot took place from the main character's perspective so that you could get into his head and understand what he was thinking. That meant that that even when he did things that weren't good, he was still good and likable. I liked the complex simplicity of the story. I mean, there aren't that many characters to keep track of and the plot isn't difficult to follow, but the relationships are interesting and multifaceted. Patrick read more of the series, but he said Ender's Game was his favorite, though he did get pretty caught up in some of the others, as well.

Saints

I have been curious about this book since seeing it in the BYU bookstore a few years ago, so when we passed it on the shelves at the library, I thought I'd check it out. I had mixed feelings about it. The beginning is terribly depressing and hopeless. When the family converts to the LDS Church and comes to America, a lot of that stifling hopelessness is gone, so that the story becomes more bearable. I had a teacher of Doctrine and Covenants point out that Mormons in the 21st Century tend to think that Mormons in the 19th Century were the same as we were, but in reality they were more rugged, living in frontier America. I think that most historical fiction writers taking on the subject get caught up in the illusion, and I admire that Card didn't. I think in many ways his portrayal of Joseph Smith, for instance, may have been more real than any others I've ever read. Still, it was jolting sometimes and, although I respected that about his writing, it made it harder to embrace the story when the characters so clearly didn't match my illusion.

Also, polygamy is a major element of the story. This is a complex subject for many Mormons and non-Mormons alike. I was going to say that a lot of LDS historical fiction writers might simplify it, but I don't know that I've ever even read a work by an LDS author where polygamy was "the story," and particularly not where the beginning of polygamy was "the story." I admire that Card took on something so challenging, and I admire that he gave balance to the perspective. On the one hand, it was not an easy law for the people to keep. I liked his emphasis on their background-- they were not that far removed from the Puritan mindset, so adultery was loathsome to them. They obviously weren't just living this way for kicks; they were doing it out of obedience. On the other hand, the people found joy in the practice and even made it into something beautiful, a possibility I don't think I had really considered until reading this book.

So while this definitely wasn't my favorite book and I think that Card may have gone beyond what "frontier America" called for in some places, I like that it made me think about things in a new way and that he treated the subject with respect.

1776

I love the musical 1776 and would even have considered it to be one of my favorite movies in the past. So I watched it last Saturday while folding laundry and cleaning up because I know so much of it by heart I didn't expect to get lured in. And, in fact, I did get a lot done, but at the end, I just sat there and watched it. I just want to say that this was the first time I'd ever watched the movie and had a serious sense that these men didn't know that they were going to succeed. I mean, all the debates about liberty and the Declaration were real. They really didn't know that they were forming the basis of a new nation. They had a sense that they were doing it. They (some of them anyway) had a hope that it could happen. They had a vision of what they believed should happen. But the odds were so much against them that the fact that they wrote and signed a document severing their allegiance to England in the middle of a war with that country that seemed impossible to win is incredible! For some reason, after watching this movie so many times, this was the first time I had a true sense of their fear and of their courage.

Miscellaneous

My boss has agreed that I can work pretty much until the baby comes. I sent him an email asking if I could work into September if the baby hadn't come, and he replied that they'd like to keep me as long as they could, but if the pregnancy goes into the 18th or 19th month, they'd probably have to get approval to keep me on. I replied, "If the pregnancy goes into the 18th or 19th month, I'm going to shoot myself, so I won't need employment. Thanks." So I have work as a good distraction besides everything else I'm doing to keep myself occupied.

Yesterday, Patrick and I went to see Indiana Jones at the dollar theater. Some of it was pretty gruesome and Patrick thought it was pretty weird right afterwards, but later he pointed out that it wasn't much weirder than the other ones. We think we might see Ironman on Labor Day and sometime I'd like to see Prince Caspian. We figure if we're waiting on the baby, we might as well enjoy the movie theater while we have the liberty to do so.

We have also watched the Olympics (especially gymnastics, swimming, diving, and other prime time events). While watching, we started a puzzle, which we just finished yesterday. We have cleaned up the apartment and gotten more organized, and I attended a class on installing a baby seat correctly at the Department of Health and Justice. And we have gone for walks. And I have written disgustingly long blog entries in order to distract myself and keep busy doing something.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Insert Jeopardy Song Here

So, the baby missed his "birthday." And, in fact, when we went to the doctor on Wednesday, it seems to me that I haven't progressed much from what he said. However, I did wonder if I had to have fake contractions before the real ones start (because they keep asking me if I'm having them when I go in for appointments) and he assured me that it's not necessary. In that way, he was very encouraging and said that I could go into labor anytime. However, I didn't get the impression that it's imminent . . . which I really hoped it would be. In fact, we even joked that it would be so convenient for the doctor and his patients if I just went into labor on Wednesday and was in active labor by the time we reached the hospital. Then the doctor could just come over to the hospital and deliver and it would hardly even mess up his schedule. Not surprisingly, that didn't happen.

This whole situation reminds me of when I was a little kid. I would ask my dad what he blessed me with in my baby blessing, and he would say, "Oh, I blessed you with everything!" I would smile and nod and probably look cocky and he would add (or maybe I would say smugly), "Except humility." But I think we missed patience in there, too. I am still really working on that. I keep pretending that I'm patient and thinking I will be fine if he's a couple days late, but it's a lie. It's a nice lie because I really want to be patient and longsuffering, but it's still definitely a lie.

I have even stopped praying that the baby will come after Patrick gets better. We can't really figure out what's wrong with him anyway. He started off taking allergy medicine and that helped for a day or so, but then it didn't seem to be doing anything. At that point, we decided it was a cold, so he started taking generic NyQuil and DayQuil and that helped for a day or so, but then it stopped doing much. So now he just kind of guesses in the morning when he decides to take anything at all, which he doesn't always do since he can't figure out what works. I have been very good about getting out a multivitamin and a vitamin C pill for him to take everyday, but to no avail. As there doesn't seem to be an obvious end in sight, and Patrick starts school next week Tuesday (Sept. 2), we have dropped that little caveat from our requests. Considering all the other discomfort involved, I'm sure we can handle a bit of sneezing and sniffling, although of course we'd be grateful to get that straightened out before school starts, too. Mostly, we think and pray, though, just let this munchkin come!

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Reflections on Blogging

Update on Us

To begin with, I just want to say how great it is that Patrick is done with summer term. He now has two weeks of vacation from school. He finished exams on Thursday and doesn't go back for fall semester until the beginning of September. Unfortunately, the pleasure of reaching this point in the year is marred a little by the fact that he has a cold. He's going through Kleenex boxes like we have a year's supply handy (though he is realizing that we don't since we need to go shopping). I am sure that my prayers are really confusing now. Up to this point, I've been saying, "Please let us have the baby in the next two weeks before Patrick goes back to school." Now, however, I'm backpeddling and saying, "Please let Patrick get better soon and then let us have the baby before Patrick goes back to school." It is times like these when I'm sure the angels are shaking their heads at me and mumbling, "Come on, lady. Praying isn't supposed to be like ordering fast food." In any case, this is just what I think would be nice (I don't want Patrick sneezing on me when I'm in labor); I have confidence that things will work out right even if my life in the next few weeks isn't "made-to-order."

Wednesday Activity

On Wednesday, Patrick and I were at a combined youth activity at the local park. The kids were playing water games, and, yes, "the kids" definitely includes Patrick. All my Beehives know him now because he attacked them all with various forms of water weaponry. I sat out with the other women.

(Sitting there with these women made me reflect that women get kind of boring: Why were all the men out there playing and the women were sitting on the sidelines commenting on how the teenage girls were afraid to get wet? I suspect that for those women who had changed, the change took place in the course of bearing children. Between pregnancy and watching toddlers, women end up sitting on the sidelines a lot during the roughhousing I imagine. This is something I'm going to have to work out because I've always had good intentions of being a fun adult and it suddenly seemed more complicated after Wednesday.)

After the activity, the bishop came up to me and said, "Keegan, you should have come out there. We could have gotten you to the hospital today."

I explained, "I can't go to the hospital today. Patrick has exams tomorrow. But can we come back and do this on Saturday?" Of course, nobody volunteered . . . unfortunately.

All Ears

While I was sitting there visiting with these women (whom I actually like a lot even though I described them as "boring"), one of the women was telling about these various blogs that she reads. I almost chimed in to say that I have a blog when another woman said, "I would never put my name out there." Considering that our name is very prominently located on our blog, I thought it was a good thing I hadn't shared that little bit of information. A third woman said, "I just don't know that I could be that interested in other people's lives." Again, I was glad I had kept silent because I check our friends' blogs and LiveJournals pretty frequently to see the latest news they've posted. The first woman explained that she doesn't blog, she just reads other people's, and the ones she reads are not personal; they tend to be writing for the sake of writing, not writing for the sake of sharing the details of their lives. As the one person who does all the things that these women would never do, I was sitting there laughing to myself and feeling a bit of a generation gap. After all, they are mothers of teenagers and a grandmother of children; we are coming from two very different worlds. Not to say that people in their generation all feel this way, but compared to my generation, I think it's safe to say that the general sentiments are divided fairly clearly, with a few mavericks on either side.

On a different note, I really enjoyed listening to the first woman share tidbits from the blogs she reads. She mentioned that one of them is called "Eavesdropping on Life" and that the woman who writes it shares different conversations she overhears. May I just say that I think that is absolutely brilliant and I wish I had thought of it. That probably partially explains why I'm sharing this conversation that I wasn't even involved in. While they were talking, they mentioned how you can get paid to blog, and I felt almost hungry to manage that feat. It's something to think about anyway. Someday I'm going to get paid to write; but first, I suppose I need to write more than on this blog once a week. *Sigh* One more thing to add to my to-do list.

1. Have a baby and learn how to take care of him.

2. Recover from having a baby.

3. Write.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Encouraging the Baby

Two doctor's appointments ago, the receptionist informed us that we needed to start making payments (which we had been waiting to do until closer to the end of the pregnancy) because, she said, "You're 34 weeks along. You could have the baby any time now." It was a bit of a shock to realize how close we are. Now, several weeks later, the baby is due in less than a month. We now have one more prenatal class on Monday, in which we will learn about breastfeeding.

The last class was on the postpartum period. Before the class, I had a vision in my head of me hopping out of bed the next day and being set to go back to life as normal, so the class was a good reality check. I've asked my mom to come out for a while, hopefully including the birth. I asked her soon after we discovered we were pregnant and Patrick was both in shock and still in some denial. Once he had adjusted and become excited, I wasn't as worried about her coming to be here for the big event. However, he is still pretty anxious for her to be here because he's a little overwhelmed by the whole idea of giving birth, even though it's me doing it. And with the image I had in my head of me being all set with everything after the birth, I thought it would mostly be nice to have her here to help me figure out the whole "mom-thing." After the class, I realized there is just no telling how functional I'll be and it made me so grateful that she's coming for more reasons than just what I imagined. It is pretty amazing how much we've learned in the last couple months, things we might never have learned if we never had kids.

Our next doctor's appointment isn't until August 20. We're at the point where we're supposed to come in every week, except that our doctor will be out of town next week, so it will be two weeks until our next appointment. The appointment is the same day as Patrick has "scheduled" the baby to come. People keep telling us that "you can't plan when the baby comes" and "they have a mind of their own" and "they'll do what they want, no matter what your plans are." Even if we are first-time parents, we are pretty aware of that. Still, in the ideal world, the baby would come a little early so Patrick didn't have school to worry about.

This next week he has one day of class, one day of study, and two or three days for exams. After that, he has two weeks off from school until fall semester begins. This is lovely because, until now, he's been going to school straight from fall 2007 through summer 2008 with much shorter time between terms (except for Christmas). He's looking forward to the break and we're both inviting the baby to make his appearance during that period when Patrick will be more available.

Plus, besides the convenience in timing, this baby is big. They haven't told me that, but my stomach is quite big in any case. When I get out of bed, I have to put my hand under my stomach to pull it along with me or I feel like gravity is working against me. So, given the extra weight and the number of times I have to go to the bathroom (four times last night and during every commercial while we watched the opening cermonies for the Olympics), I am ready for his arrival too.

I'm grateful that I get to work until he comes. It isn't convenient in some ways because I am tired sometimes and when the variety of tasks to do is low, I have to struggle to stay focused. In other ways, though, it's a relief. As it is, I think I'm one of those pregnant women people might dread being around because I think about the baby all the time, so I think I talk about the baby all the time too. And, after awhile, there's only so much to think or say about the same topic, so I need a diversion in my life. Even as it is, we have a calendar on our freezer door that I am crossing off each day on, looking forward to THE DAY. So, while we know that we can't really plan his date of arrival, we have still set an earlier ETA for him, and we've let him know that we have a birthday party planned for him, so we are just hoping he'll abide by that.

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Belly Dancing

First, I should warn people that despite my complaints and frustrations in the last entry, we really might name our child Caelan. We both like the sound of it, and Patrick says he thinks that the spelling is masculine. Also, my mom referred us to Parents Connect and they have an option for people with a name to vote on how they liked it. Only six people commented (which is okay since we want a name that isn't too common), but most of their comments were positive, so the baby is likely to be Caelan Joseph Taylor . . . of course, that is dependent on whether or not something else comes up before he arrives. Anyway, you can see the comments here: http://babynamesworld.parentsconnect.com/suitability_of_Caelan.html. It's really a good site to search for what you are interested in. It's overwhelming to search through a whole list, especially when we don't like most of the names, but the Advanced Search option helped us narrow it down better. The one problem with this site, though, is that they say Caelan means "slender," but when I saw it elsewhere it meant "victorious warrior," which is so much cooler. Given that the meanings aren't similar at all, I do wonder which is more accurate.

Also, a random funny thing is that sometimes when I'm just sitting around, I feel like I'm doing a belly dance. There was a girl in my ward who really could belly dance (she demonstrated once at Girls' Camp or something) and the things my belly does remind me of the way her stomach looked when she did it. I'm just sitting there and my stomach is going in and out in random places. It makes me feel like an alien has invaded my body.

An interesting thing I have learned lately is that there is not as much room as there used to be in my stomach . . . obviously. But it is strange to realize I can't eat very much at a time or I will feel sick for an hour or two. Back when my stomach was flat I could eat more at once than I can now when my stomach is ballooned out; it is all very ironic. It's not just the space I think, but also the slower digestion. I have to recognize that digestion seems to take ages longer than it used to. In fact, I was never so conscious of my digestion as I am now; it's almost like I can feel the food breaking down.

Anyway, there is a ton to do today-- go to Aimee and Brant's wedding, put away laundry, vacuum our floor, clean our bathroom, prepare our dish for tomorrow's family dinner-- so that is all I will say for now. Just know, life is going well and we're busy and happy.