mama monday: week 33 "womanhood, and all that is a woman"

In case you're wondering why I have ceased to post various fruits and vegetables that represent Baby Gaz's growth, it's because the growth at this point is difficult to document using fruits and vegetables.  Even websites are becoming more obscure in their offerings: your baby is the size of a Chinese cabbage!  A jicama!  A crenshaw melon!

Be assured that Baby Gaz is growing, Baby Gaz is moving (lots), Baby Gaz is hiccuping, and is healthy by all accounts.  The produce section of the local grocery store just doesn't suffice in describing how excited we are to meet him.

My husband, a lover of poetry and a fan of Walt Whitman, sent me this glorious poem a few months back: I Sing The Body Electric.  The poem should be read it its entirety - it is a stunning piece of art - but, if you're short on time, here are some of the excerpts that I thought painted a magnificent portrait of woman and her ability to incubate life.

This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor,
     all falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what
     was expected of heaven or fear'd of hell, are now consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response
     likewise ungovernable,
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all
     diffused, mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling
     and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of
     love, white-blow and delirious nice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the
     prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh'd day.


This the nucleus--after the child is born of woman, man is born
     of woman,
This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the
     outlet again.


Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the
     exit of the rest,
You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.


The female contains all qualities and tempers them,
She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,
She is all things duly veil'd, she is both passive and active,
She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as
     daughters.


She too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of mothers,
She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers.

mama monday: week 30

One would assume that after having whined and complained openly and publicly while we waited to become pregnant that the very least I could do was to blog as frequently about the process of pregnancy once acquired.

But second trimester has come and gone and, for reasons unknown even to me, I didn't feel the urge to post.  Not.  One.  Post.

I guess I was having fun just...being pregnant.

No other excuse.  But now the air is crisp and the leaves are turning and I feel, as I do ever September, the urge to hand in assignments in a timely matter.  School's back in session.

Baby Gaz is growing strong and wiggling near constantly.  Andrew and I read somewhere that babies at this stage sleep 95% of the time.  WHERE ARE THESE BABIES WHO SLEEP 95% OF THE TIME?  Our baby missed the memo.

Here he is, our little butternut squash!

In other news, we attended and just finished 12 weeks of birth classes which were absolutely incredible. We can not recommend the Bradley Method (also known as the "Husband-Coached Childbirth" method) strongly enough to any pregnant couples who are looking to take classes.  At first, we thought 12 classes (two hours each) seemed excessive but now that we've completed them we realize it was just barely enough time to cover all the topics necessary for childbirth education: labour coaching, nutrition, and exercise to name a few.  We genuinely feel well prepared for Baby Gaz's birthday in November!

September also marks a slew of baby showers which arrive just in time since we have been holding off on purchasing too many items ourselves to prevent the Multitudinous Equipment Stockpile Syndrome (MESS) in Baby Gaz's already cozy (read: small) nursery.  Over the next few weeks I'll be posting all about Nursery Makeover 2011: second trimester also came with record-breaking creativity and energy that had me refinishing roadside finds and making multiple trips to Value Village in search of SOMETHING I HAVE IN MY MIND, OK?  STOP ASKING SO MANY QUESTIONS.

Happy September and thanks for visiting after so many months of incommunicado!

mama monday: ok already

Over the past weekend, three separate people kindly reminded me of the state of my blog.  Principally: not updated.  Shout out to Helen, Rebecca, and that wonderful girl that Andrew bumped into at a Starbucks near Orangeville.

Since last we met, Baby Gaz and I graduated Week 13:

And Week 14: 

Week 14 is here represented by a 3.5 inch jalapeño pepper which, trust you me, I am not in the habit of eating.  In fact, anything spicy has been so far off limits for me since I end up feel it dance around my esophagus a few minutes after eating.  Like a spicy Cuban rumba party in my throat.  And the kind of party that you wish you hadn't spent the $15 cover charge to get in for because the guy to girl ratio is 1:10, the drinks taste like Drano, and the walls are perspiring.

In other news, I believe I can say that I've received my first piece of fan mail.  Mid-last-week, a package came to the door which Andrew accepted and then asked aloud, to no one in particular, if anyone had been purchasing more shoes online.  I swore I hadn't.  Then checked recent memory to make sure it was true.  

Within the oversized bubble envelope was a beautifully crocheted (really? that can't possibly be the way to spell something so wonderfully handmade: CROCH-et-ed?) baby quilt in a perfectly chosen dark teal suitable for Baby Gaz no matter if Baby Gaz turns out to be a Miss or Mister.

The gift was sent, along with a beautiful card, from a friend I know from camp - eons ago - named Charis.  AND SINCE CHARIS READS MY BLOG I CAN CONSIDER THIS FAN MAIL.  Thanks so much, Charis!  You completely made my week!  The blanket is now proudly displayed in the not-even-remotely-ready room set aside for Baby Gaz.

Speaking of Baby Gaz's nursery, one of the sure signs that I had passed over into the promised land of Second Trimester was that three weeks ago I woke up and instead of feeling like human slime putty or gagging while I brushed my teeth, I took a look at our two upstairs spare bedrooms and decided: I need to move all this furniture.

All of it. 

None of it can stay as it is.

I'm moving it all.

Now.

And I did.  I slowly and awkwardly moved a secretary desk, a dresser, a filing cabinet, an ironing board, a rocking chair, a desk chair, an oversized upholstered armchair, two large bookshelves, two small book shelves, a few boxes, and a single bed to rearrange both rooms.  One room is now our guest room slash studio room where Andrew's keyboard can reside and I can write (HA! who are we kidding? I write on my lap on the couch in the living room, more often in my pajamas than not), the other is the Nursery In Progress (or NIP).

And by "in progress" I mean it currently houses a single futon, a wicker chest, a dresser we may end up using as a change table, a Swiffer, and Charis' beautifully CROCH-et-ed dark teal baby blanket.  

mama monday: +

That's right, my patient little pumpkins: all the missed posts and writer's block can finally be explained.

I happen to be quite knocked up.

Oh yes, there is much more to the story.  Too much for one post so I'll have to keep you coming back for more over the next few weeks.

I'd have thought announcing our pregnancy to the world would feel more glamourous but it's hard to feel glamourous when meat makes me nauseous (MEAT, of all things...Andrew thinks that it's hilarious that his "little velociraptor" of a wife is a temporary vegetarian), I'm on a strict diet of beige - and occasionally green - food items, I'm experiencing bouts of insomnia for the first time in my life, and I now take sudden and unexpected trips to crazy town.  Oh, and my bladder is the size of a ping-pong ball.

Speaking of size, however, Baby Gaz (who will be debuting on or around November 12th of this year) is now the size of a salted cashew:

Mmm.  Salted cashew.

I most definitely ate the stand-in for Baby Gaz after this photo.

At this point, my favourite thing to announce is that no gag reflex, no sleepless night, no hormonal surge,  and no inconvenient pee schedule could possibly dampen my excitement and joy.  We've been waiting for Baby Gaz for a year and a half, and we don't mind waiting a few months more.