Some Pig

Grace Notes

The little one woke up with a fever yesterday after nap, and her temperature has continued to seesaw up and down despite the Motrin/Tylenol cocktail.  So we are home today.  After the frenzy of the pre-dawn dash to school to write up sub plans, copy vocab tests, and get all the administrivia done, suddenly I'm home with nothing to do but cuddle my little girl.  Well, I lie. There's plenty to do.  But right now, the most important thing to do is nothing.

Now that Ceci is almost one (One!  Where did the time go?), it's time to retire the "Fertility Follies" category of this blog.  I started blogging because, like so many other (better) bloggers out there, I was having a hard time getting and staying pregnant.  When my comments on other blogs (hi, Julia!) got longer than the posts I was reading, I figured it was time to get my blog on.  Funnily enough (and yes, funnily is a word; it's the adverbial form of funny - go look it up), once I started blogging the fertility stuff just wasn't as all-engaging as it had been.  It was nice to realize I had other things to talk about besides my lazy ovaries and pathetic pregnancy retention rate.  Not that I didn't worry my pretty little head on that front; shortly after we got pregnant with Ceci, I had a huge muscle spasm across my lower back that, for all I knew, might presage another miscarriage.   I remember turning to Warren and saying, "If this pregnancy doesn't work out, I'm taking a ... break."  "Like a rest-of-this-lifetime break?" he asked, hesitantly.  "Yeah," I said, "like that." Fortunately for all of us, it was just a muscle spasm, and we all know how that story ended.

After the five years of trial and (mostly) error that made up our childbearing years, the baby hunger is definitely sated.  Infertility seems like a place I knew really well once, like a town I used to live in a bunch of years ago.  I still can navigate my way around, but I don't know the street names the way I used to.  When I read infertility blogs, my reaction is more usually, "oh yeah, I kinda remember that," more than, "you just said exactly what I've been living through."  Lately, Warren's been joking (at least, I think he's joking) about what we're going to name our next and last baby, who, according to him, is going to be a boy and is going to be given a family name.  While some teeny, tiny segment of my brain thinks that one more baby wouldn't be such a terrible idea, the rest of me (the sane, forty years old and not getting any younger, tired of being sleep-deprived part) has a far more visceral reaction; e.g., what part of HELL, NO, don't you understand?  And that, my friends, is what tells me it's really over.  When I was still in the hospital with India, merely hours after the fun and excitement of pitocin-induced labor, I was already contemplating the next one - when we should try, how far apart they should be spaced.  When efforts at same were going pear-shaped in a big hurry, I felt just as desperate for a second successful pregnancy as I had for a first.  When Julie writes about the tension between being grateful for having a child at all, and longing for another one, well, I get that now.  It's irrational, it's illogical, it seems somehow ungracious, but there it is.  I'm lucky.  Thanks to Clomid, the basal temperature chart, and the frighteningly competent Dr. A., we now fit the two-kids-plus-station-wagon profile of the typical happy middle class family.

Well, now that I've written myself into a metaphorical corner, I'm not sure how to end this post.   I think Ceci has some idea - she's rampng up for the mid-morning fussfest that presages her 10 a.m. snack.  With no further ado, Fertility Follies comes to a close.

A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, And Stuff Like That There

WARNING:  This post contains references to bodily functions, female plumbing, and ... oh come on, haven't you been paying attention to the last couple of posts?

Going to the same medical center where we had India felt like an extended time warp.  I even had the same nurse and doctor attending.  The intervening two years just dissolved somehow, and things I had half- or completely forgotten came rushing back.  Some of the things I had forgotten were better left that way (e.g., the granny underwear they give you) and some of them are so situation-specific that they don't really apply to life outside the maternity ward.  For example, for those of you who have never experienced a vaginal birth (and I don't mean your own), I'm sure you can imagine that the whole experience leaves one a little sore around one's hiney.  To help speed the healing process, the staff keeps a stack of frozen Kotex pads on hand for new moms to use at their discretion.  While sitting on a wad of icy cotton may not sound like a transcendent experience, your frame of reference changes pretty dang fast when your butt hurts.  That moment of sweet relief when ice pack meets bruised flesh - mmm, nothing like it!  Hey, Proust had his madeleines, I have my frozen buttsicles. 

Score:  Beds, 2; Caroline, 0

Remember my story about the Seinfeldian experience I had with the labor and delivery bed when India was born?  Well, when I was in the throes of bringing Celeste into the world, I looked down at my feet and realized they never replaced the old beds on the ward!  After all I went through, too.  All that Sturm und Drang for nothing.  Yes, I realize that most people probably wouldn't have noticed or cared about that particular piece of arcana, given the situation, but then I am not most people, obviously.

But the story of Caroline vs. the beds doesn't end there.  After the fireworks were over, the nurse went to raise the head of the bed and there was an ungodly loud metallic clanging noise - the kind of noise that, were it to happen while I was driving, would force me to swerve to the shoulder of the road and look about nervously for the nearest tow truck.  Then I noticed that one of the bedrails was canted at an angle, and one was not.  Clearly, I broke the bed.  I can't help but wonder why hospital beds insist on malfunctioning around me.  Do I have a poltergeist following me around that manifests itself only during hospital visits, or can inanimate objects actually hold grudges?  And how long will I be allowed to stay in the nursing home when I'm old and decrepit with a record of breaking a bed every hospital visit?

Well, It's Something to Be Grateful For, Anyway

Celeste's land-speed-record appearance may have meant I was deprived of the good drugs, but it had its benefits too: Namely, that I didn't have time to notice what percentage of the other women delivering at the same time were younger than I am (answer: probably 90% plus), and worse yet, how many other women who were my age were there in the capacity of proud grandma.  Yes, I know that those women are the outliers, at least when you take the national averages into account, and yes, I know that I wouldn't want to have lived the kind of life where I would be a proud grandma before hitting the grand old age of 40 (damn close to it, though), but still ... being the only person on the ward simultaneously giving birth AND harboring gray hairs is a little off-putting.  I mean, what do I talk to my fellow mothers about, how hard it was to find a nice prom dress that fit a seven-months-pregnant form?  How annoying it is when my babydaddy's mom won't babysit so I can go out with my new boyfriend?   The mind boggles.

It's Deja Vu All Over Again

Here is a partial list of things I vaguely remembered or had totally forgotten between India's and Celeste's arrivals:

...walking the halls of the recovery ward in the middle of the night, too wired to sleep.  It's eerily silent at 3 am.

... the mediocrity of the food served on the ward.  The coffee shop, on the other hand, turned out to have really decent food AND truly fabulous frappes; I just wish I had known that the first time around!

... how it's completely impossible to preserve one's sense of dignity and decency when wearing a hospital johnny.

... how good it feels to take that first shower.  (In Homer Simpson tones) Mmmmm, shower.

... the unmistakable sounds of a down-the-legs, up-the-back, explosive poopie that requires a full change of clothes, never mind a clean diaper.

... for some reason, I was chomping at the bit to go home both times.  I don't know why. Home doesn't have knowledgeable, capable, confident staff on hand 24/7; home has the two of us, with the addition of one bossy toddler this time around.  Home doesn't have a nursery where we can banish the screaming demon leave the baby briefly if need be.  But then again, home doesn't have people waking you up at all hours and telling you to wake up and nurse a perfectly happy, soundly sleeping baby, either.

Milking It For All It's Worth

In the interest of full disclosure, I freely admit that I have an axe to grind with the breast-is-best community.  My first experience nursing was overseen by a Teutonic taskmistress of a duty nurse who insisted that I sit up in bed a certain way, with the pillows arranged in a specific order, and holding the baby as she demonstrated.  Later, when I was having problems nursing India, I found that most of the experts I consulted seemed much more concerned about the breastfeeding than they did with my or my baby's welfare.  I remember talking to one lactation consultant about the fact that my child was screaming with hunger starting around 6 pm each day, and her advice consisted solely of repeating several times, "you need to keep nursing."  Well, gee, thanks. I was considering maybe feeding her some chicken cordon bleu, what do you think I was going to do?  Most of the experts reacted to my timid query about maybe, possibly supplementing the breast with a nighttime bottle or two as though I had suggested giving her a dose of botulin toxin with a herpes chaser.  Finally I got a sane lady on the end of the line who said, "For heaven's sake, give her a bottle or two a day, it won't hurt."  But by then it was too little, too late, and I had already learned to be leery of the type.  Fortunately, they're not hard to spot, being much given to natural fiber clothes and funky handmade jewelry.

Thus, when asked during this last hospital stay if I wanted a visit from the lactation consultant, I bared my teeth in a passable smile, gave a polite "thanks but no thanks," and settled in for a much-wanted nap.  I had an hour between the morning visit from India and Warren and a lunch visit with friends, and dammit, I wanted that nap.  So what happens?  The friggin' lactation consultant (dressed in vegetable-dyed cotton, wearing handblown glass beads) comes in my room anyway and launches into her spiel!  Forty-five minutes it was, too, thus effectively putting the kibosh on the planned snoozing spell.  Being the overly polite person I am, I sat and listened instead of saying what I should have said, which is, "What the hell are you doing here, and could you please leave?"  Come to find out later, after all my hopes of getting a nap had been abandoned for the day, she went to see the wrong patient - she wanted the woman in the next room over.  Inadvertent as it may have been, it did nothing to ameliorate my prejudice against the lactation community.  I mean, dang, I missed out on sleep for that!

Music To My Ears

On the other hand, I have lactation to thank for causing the nurse to utter the most beautiful words in the English language to me.  And what would those be - announcement of my lottery winnings?  Words accompanying the presentation of a subtly understated yet still honking large diamond eternity band?  Okay, those might be better, but since they are both equally unlikely to happen (at least to me), I won't ever have occasion to hear them.  Anyhoo, want to know the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me in my thirty-nine years of existence?  Here goes:

"Don't restrict your calories."

And who am I to flaunt the advice of a certified medical professional? 

Now for the Gross Yucky Part

I promised you bodily fluids, did I not?  Giving birth is notorious for being a very, um, damp process, but what you may not know is that the aftermath can be pretty humid as well.  Thanks to the fact that Celeste's head was resting on my bladder for the better part of a trimester, as well as the basic process of giving birth itself, my poor bladder just couldn't take the pressure (ha!  Urinary tract joke!) and basically stopped functioning for awhile there.  All of which is a roundabout way of saying that I spent the better part of two weeks peeing my pants unexpectedly.  You know those ads for the adult diapers that show a stylishly dressed woman confidently dancing the tango or jumping rope with her grandkids?  Yeah.  What they don't show is the "before" picture, where she has to drop everything and race to the head in a desperate attempt to get to the toilet before the floodgates open.  Man, is that ever inconvenient!  (No, I never actually dropped everything - inanimate objects, yes; Celeste and India, no.) Fortunately, the problem seems to be receding somewhat (ha!  Water joke!), so my dark visions of a future spent no further than ten feet away from a bathroom don't seem to be materializing. 

Yeah, Yeah, I Know What I Said

File under the category, "Eating My Words":

Despite all my protests to the contrary, in which I vowed I would not create another attachment -parented parasite, I spent a delicious two hours yesterday, butt firmly planted on the couch, watching episodes of "Desperate Housewives" and cuddling a tiny sleeping baby.  I know this is but the first step down the road to perdition.  I know that India's nightly migration into our bed can be directly traced back to those first few months of 24-hour cuddling and carrying. I know I'm not only allowing but encouraging this to happen again.  But in the immortal words of song and story, how can something so bad feel so good?

It Sure Beats Taking Castor Oil

WARNING:  The following post contains references to all kinds of squishiness and unpleasant bodily functions and ... well, you know.  And if you don't, you soon will.

I have a new sure-fire way to induce labor one's own self.  It takes a few steps, but it seems to be effective. 

First, set up a blog post bitching about how pregnant you are and how you hate everyone as a result.

Then go to an outlet village on a beautifully crisp, clear, picturebook New England day, because that's when everyone else in the whole wide world chooses to go too (and what is it about perfect fall weather that makes people say, gee, let's go shopping?).  Bring your toddler so you can shop for fleece sweaters for her since, as we all know, it is so much fun to shop with toddlers when one is the size of a mobile home and surrounded by seething masses of humanity.  When your husband then asks, "Do you want to go shopping for ..." interrupt him with a loud NO.  Sulk internally.

Go to a nature trails preserve to let said toddler run around.  En route to nature preserve feel huge contraction (not Braxton-Hicks) ripple across midsection.  Get in fight with husband about advisability of calling doctor given random nature of contraction and plans for induction already in place.  Sulk because husband insists on being paragon of rationality until husband loses patience and tells you to call anyway if that's what you're going to do.

En route home, have two more random contractions.  Stop at spice speciality store to get cinnamon to make apple pie anyway.  Call doctor once you get home.  Doctor insists on being paragon of rationality, stating there's no reason for you to come in since contractions aren't regular.  Ask doctor about likelihood of tomorrow's induction being cancelled with vague, if empty, threat of mayhem in your voice.  Doctor assures you that all is quiet on the maternity ward front and you will be induced if need be, you just have to hold on.  Hang up.  Sulk.

Have lunch.  Put toddler down for nap.  Converse with husband in tones of exaggerated politeness and good humor on both sides in attempt to move past events of the morning.  Stomp upstairs for nap, having decided that the apple pie idea is a non-starter today.  Have huge contraction at 3 pm.  And again at 3:07.  And 3:14.  And 3:20.  Stagger downstairs.  Call doctor.  Mobilize husband.  Call parents; get busy signal; curse parents for being too cheap for DSL*.  Doctor calls back in mid-contraction (yours, obviously) and tells you to go right to Labor and Delivery.  Husband takes toddler to next-door neighbor's house just in time as the contractions are three minutes apart and have moved up the discomfort scale from "snorting through nose" to "screaming out loud".  Go into living room to shut off tv; make mental note of score of Giants game in case husband asks (they won).  Mother calls.  Tell her through gritted teeth to get a move on.  When she says, "what's wrong," point out, "I'm in PAIN."  Hang up.  Waddle out to car. 

Once in car, begin wondering how long the five-minute drive to the hospital can be delayed by traffic, construction, acts of God, etc., and if the car can be detailed afterward.  Finally arrive at hospital.  Clutch counter at Information Desk for support as people part like the Red Sea in front of you.  Have another intensely painful contraction, and another.  Successfully suppress screams.  Unsuccessfully suppress thoughts of committing mayhem as gormless pre-teen girl wanders slowly down the hall right toward you, blocking your way, while her equally gormless parents do nothing about it.  Go to Admitting; sign forms in handwriting that looks nothing like yours **. 

Heave huge sigh of relief upon entering Labor and Delivery ward that birth will not occur in unorthodox locale.  Husband departs to move car across the street; nurses escort you to room and request urine sample.  In process of producing said sample, get hit with tidal wave-sized contraction.  Scream.  Pull emergency cord.  Nurses escort you out of the bathroom and toward bed for examination.  Request drugs.  Nurses laugh, "Hahahaha.  You can't have any drugs because you're about to have this baby."  Laugh yourself in response, thinking:  "Hahahahahaha.  Not without drugs I'm not."  Request drugs again.  Realize everyone is deadly serious.  Beg and plead for anything up to and including a linty baby aspirin from the bottom of someone's purse.  Everyone up to and including doctor refuses and continues to affirm that you are, indeed, in the process of having this baby.  Nurses start to ask in panic for whereabouts of husband.  Secretly feel glad that husband is not in room as the process got a little messy there for awhile, and as much as it's til death do us part, there are some things better left unseen and unknown in a marriage. 

Nurse asks if you would be more comfortable in a hospital johnny and do you want to take your shirt off.  Stare at her in abject confusion as decision-making being more than you can handle at the current time.  Different nurse begins to fret that husband is going to miss the main event; calls husband on cell phone.  Husband walks into room just as baby starts crowning.  Scream again. And again.  Baby seems permanently stuck, half in and half out.  Beg them to just pull her OUT already.  Doctor refuses, insists you have to push.  Tell everyone you can't.  Tell everyone it hurts.  Tell everyone you're not doing this.  Everyone tells you you're doing fine.  Everyone tells you it will be over soon.  Beg the contrary by screaming favorite loud obscenity of Anglo-Saxon origin.  No one seems to take it seriously.  Grudgingly decide that pushing baby out is the most reasonable option given the circumstances.  Have baby.  Lie back, stunned, still wearing shirt (but fortunately, not jeans) worn into Labor and Delivery. 

Total elapsed time in labor:  one hour, forty-four minutes.  Total elapsed time in delivery room:  30 minutes.  See?  Nothing to it.

* Rationale for continuing to use world's slowest dial-up connection:  "We're retired.  We have plenty of time.  If it's that important to you, you can send us the $30 a month for DSL."

** I noticed that I was not as careful as I usually am about putting my name to a legal document under these circumstances.  I would have signed anything - a sworn affidavit stating that I was the spawn of the Devil, for example, or an application to the Karl Rove Fan Club - if I thought it would get me closer to the good drugs (alas, I was wrong).  So I've decided on a new get rich quick scam:  I'm going to get a job in a hospital admissions office and get laboring women to sign over their life's assets to me in the throes of their pain.  They will neither know nor care until it's too late, and by then, I'll be on the Costa del Sol.  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

The Window's Closing...

Last week at this time, when I was a mere three days overdue, Warren and I cracked jokes about how the baby was going to have to wait until after the Giants game to make her appearance if I planned to have Warren in attendance.  When the game ended, Warren announced, "Okay, honey - you have a six and a half day window to have this kid before the next game."  And we had a good guffaw about that because, hey, there was no way I was still going to be pregnant in a week!  Today, Warren warned me again that we were at T minus six days and counting, so if I wasn't in labor yet, I was going to have to wait until after today's game, after which I can have another six and a half day window. 

Ha.  Ha.  Ha. 

Last night, my parents came over for dinner and distraction.  My mother made a comment along the lines of "I think you should just wait" instead of trying to be induced.  Warren swears she was joking.  Warren laughed.  My father laughed.  I didn't laugh.  I nearly lost it.  I remember shouting something about "once you've been pregnant for nine months you can decide when you want to be induced" as they left.  Remember my comment earlier about how Warren and I would only be talking through divorce lawyers if I went another week without having this kid?  Maybe I need a surrogate me to get us all through this.  Then Surrogate Me can hold a civilized conversation with her loved ones, play with her child, take a walk at a pace faster than .002 miles per minute, and wash the dishes close enough to the sink without getting a wet line across her mammoth belly, and Real Me can lie in bed with her heated rice sock on her back and sulk. 

Now I'm going to go downstairs and sit on the couch next to my daughter, who is zoning out in front of an Elmo video.  If I can't be an active participant in the joy of motherhood, at least I can be physically proximate. 

PS I followed up on the bum threat (boom threat?) at school.  I have to take back some of my givens - the gender and grade of the perpetrator were both wrong.  Apparently it had to do with a luuuurve triangle gone horribly, horribly awry, and the perp (as we say in the school disciplinary field) was not a freshman.  The fact that the threat was written in pink ink should have been the giveaway, huh?

I've Got Your Number, Missy

Well, I'm still here - big as a house, and about as mobile.  But I finally figured out why this kid won't shake loose.  She wants to be the 300 millionth American. While I admire her perseverance and determination, I don't think I want to wait around until Tuesday.  Back to the raspberry leaf tea, I guess...

Oh, Never Mind

I got a call at 8:45 today.  My induction was cancelled for the time being.  There's no room at the inn, and no telling when there will be anytime soon.  I tried to be gracious - okay, no I didn't.  I was bitchy and snappish and downright petulant about it.  I'm supposed to call back at 3 for a status report, but I'm going to make Warren do it now because I'm too embarrassed.  The nurse I talked to told me to "go ahead and do whatever else you were going to do today anyway."  Hmm, and that would be - what? - HAVE A BABY, perhaps? 

I'm a little demoralized.  Serves me right for being such a bigmouth frog, I guess.  Sigh.

Miscellany

WARNING:  This post contains gynie talk, as well as proud-mama-bragging talk.  Readers who are easily nauseated by one or both might want to skip this entry.  Well, you were warned.

Doing About As Well As Can Be Expected, Thanks
Thanks to everyone who has sent us condolences about Frida.  Molly is slowly adjusting to life as the lone cat in a one-cat household.  Since Frida was definitely the "alpha" cat to Molly's "beta," she's somewhat puzzled to find herself having  first crack at the food bowl, the el primo sleeping spot on the back of the couch, our bed, etc.  She's definitely warming to this idea, but at the same time, we occasionally find her sitting in the yard looking around wistfully for her four-legged companion.  We have decided for the time being that we will stick with one cat and let things settle.

Sorry About That
I went to the terrifyingly competent Dr. A.'s office for my weekly "what, you haven't had that baby yet?" pest-ogram (Warren's term).  According to the sono tech, this kid is responsive, well-nourished, properly awash in amniotic fluid - in short, everything is just tickety-boo.  She could stay in there until Christmas.  Just what I wanted to hear.  After those festivities concluded, I waddled my big self down to Dr. A.'s waiting area to pass the time looking at the covers of all the old magazines that were there last week.  I lumbered past a woman diligently scouring an old magazine for tips on cleaning grout or whatever and sat myself down to wait for my turn to pee in a little cup and have all the blood squeezed out of my arm.  Then Dr. A. his own self came out and fetched the diligent reader, who jumped up like she'd been goosed and followed him out of the waiting area.  I got the distinct sense as she went by that she was deliberately not looking in my direction.  Hmm.  In my experience, whenever Dr. A. came out personally to fetch me from the waiting room, it was right after one of my pregnancy-disaster episodes.  I distinctly remember sitting in that waiting room, resenting the hell out of all the burgeoning tummies surrounding me, and deliberately not looking at anyone sporting any kind of belly larger than a muffin top.  So if I'm not reading the situation incorrectly, on behalf of one who has been there, I'd like to apologize to that patient.  I hope someday you are in my shoes, even if it means your feet are a little swollen.

Strike a Pose
Yesterday was "school picture day" at India's day care, and I would just like to know, what gives with people, anyway?  As you can see, I chose an outfit that (if I do say so myself) makes India look like 1) a little girl, who 2) goes to school (oh, all right - day care).  And that, Dear Readers, put me distinctly in the minority.  For the most part, the boys were dressed unobjectionably, but the girls - good heavens. One girl came dressed in a getup that made her look like she was auditioning for the part of Charo in an all-preschooler remake of "The Love Boat".  Several others were dressed specifically with the intention that (as best I can guess) they would be mistaken for as-yet-undiscovered Hollywood "pop tarts" instead of little girls and offered a contract.  What an image to put on your mantelpiece - little four-year-old AshLynne in her favorite belly shirt and sequined jeans.  Yeesh. 

You Don't Send a Girl to Do a Woman's Job
Apparently Picture Day was not a rousing success, even aside from the near dearth of parental good taste.  The photography company sent a raw novice to photograph little kids and, being little kids, they weren't very responsive to her.  Who'd'a thunk it?  The older kids (those in India's classroom on up) are big enough camera hounds that they were willing to play along, but the younguns all cried.  They refused to strike the mandated poses for the Classical Elegance shots, and they wouldn't sit on the Enchanted Forest props long enough to have their photo taken.  And if I had to have my picture seated on a bunch of big plastic mushrooms, I'd cry, too.

Strike a Pose, The Remix
Picture Day made all the natives restless.  It brought out the Kate Moss in everyone, replete with screaming hissy fits and demands for imported sparkling water with snack, not this apple juice crap (okay, I made that last part up).  When I went to pick up my cherub, I walked in to a scene of what is best described as pandemonium.  Even the almost-unperturbable day care staff, who have the patience of Job and the near-perpetual cheeriness of habitual Thorazine users (hmm - I'll have to check into that) looked a little strained around the mouth.  If that's what Picture Day does to a kid, I have no interest in being the mother of a child model, thank you.

Those Were The Days
So I spoke to some of my compadres in the ed biz, and apparently there was a boom threat at school today (that's what we veterans around the school call it, in honor of a spectacularly semiliterate threat penned several years ago).  Fortunately for my eager young substitute, I had remembered to provide him with the requisite yellow Emergency Evacuation Folder, replete with class rosters, building maps, bandaids and gloves, and the mandated copy of the ever-incomprehensible District-Wide School Evacuation and Crisis Plan we are required to keep on our persons at all times per order of the Department of Homeland Security. 

There are a few givens that come along with boom threats. 

Given #1:  It was made by a freshman.  Freshmen are the only ones stupid or impulsive enough to think that such a stunt is worth doing.  Everyone else knows that it will result in their being trapped in a relatively small space with a number of fellow human beings who have only a rudimentary grasp of personal hygiene, not to mention the federal rap that bomb threats now carry.

Given #2:  The boom threat-maker and his friends may think forcing an evacuation was a really cool thing to do for about five minutes, but the thrill quickly wears off when they realize that everyone else in the school hated every minute of it, hates them as a result, and is not afraid to express it.

Given #3:  The perpetrator will be caught.  There's a reason adolescents aren't generally trusted with state secrets, and this is why.

I couldn't help but feel a pang of nostalgia for the good old days (i.e., five years ago).  Then we would just herd the kids over to the middle school gym and let them run riot for a couple hours as the seniors with cars found ways to sneak out the back door and the assistant principals desperately searched for a bullhorn that didn't shriek with feedback so they could tell us how on earth we were going to feed lunch to 800 trapped adolescents.  Now we have "crisis management plans" and "emergency protocols" and special codes called out over the intercom, and of course those blasted yellow folders.  Folders, schmolders.  As my sainted Deedee used to say, many changes, few improvements. 

Two Anecdotes About Food
Anecdote #1:  I am setting an appointment for induction with the terrifyingly competent Dr. A.  Those of you familiar with my husband and his ... nutritional outlook will appreciate this:

Dr. A.:  "Okay, you're all set for Thursday at 9:30.  Have a light breakfast beforehand, no Denny's Grand Slams ..."
Me:  "Have you met my husband?  Do you think we've seen the inside of a Denny's in, um, EVER?"

Anecdote #2:  I woke up several times during the night earlier this week to find myself feeling definitively damp around the nether regions [hey - I warned you!].  Hoping I might actually be starting labor, I called Dr. A's office and was told I would have to go to the hospital to be checked as it was Columbus Day and the office was closed.  So I hied myself the five minutes' drive to the nearby medical center - convenient, no?  Soon I was ensconced in an examination room, swaddled in an ever-flattering and always attractive hospital johnny, and left to wait ... and wait ... and wait ...  for the nice young resident to be done with grand rounds.  Optimistic fool that I am, I naturally started letting myself believe that this might indeed be the real thing.  No more backaches, no more heartburn, no more bursts of uncontrollable moodiness, hurrah!  So you can imagine my disappointment when the nice young (did I mention she was young?) resident came in and said cheerily, "Your membranes haven't ruptured yet, so you're free to go!"  What I bet you can't imagine is the look of consternation on her face when I promptly burst into tears.  "What kind of whacko is this, anyway?" the look said.  The nurse, being over the age of 30 (and when the hell did doctors get so young, anyway?), understood perfectly and was much more sympathetic to my plight.

I had no sooner dried my eyes when Warren called for a status report, resulting in another tear fest.  Warren usually gets a little flustered around these big shows of wifely emotion, and he did his best to make comforting noises, but  I could tell he was a little taken aback by my display of raw despair. I am proud to say I was not too far gone in my anguish to press home the advantage. "I didn't get any breakfast and I'm hungry," I whimpered in my best tear-drenched voice. "I'm going to stop at Tony's Donuts on the way home."  I could feel him wanting to object to such wanton consumption of trans fats and white sugar, but fortunately for him, his wiser nature prevailed and he kept silent.  Of course, I didn't go through this whole rigamarole just to get me a chocolate cruller - but if I can get a chocolate cruller out of the deal, who am I to pass it up?

I Want a New Drug - One With No Doubt
I need some recommendations.  I am out of series (serieses?) to Netflix for my own viewing.  I got through all of Sex and the City a long time ago and have been slowly working through Nip/Tuck, but today I just ... gave up.  N/T is just tooo weird.  The first season was great and the second season was okay, but the third season ... it's gotten ridonculous, as my students used to say.  I mean, c'mon.  In the space of one season, the plotlines have included anal rape, serial killings, corpse dismemberment, neo-Nazism, and sadomasochism.  It's not that the show's too complex (hey, I love The Wire, and you have to watch each episode at least three times to absorb all the nuances), it's that it's too farfetched - like X-Files without the excuse of aliens infiltrating our world to explain it.  I can't take it seriously even as escapist drivel anymore.  Since I'm going to spend quite a bit of the early winter weeks with my butt planted squarely on the couch and my boobs hanging out, I might as well make some kind of entertainment hay while I'm there.  I was considering Desperate Housewives - whaddya think?

And Away We Go
So tomorrow's the big day - the induction ceremony, as it were.  Warren, being the noninterventionist that he is, still is not fully sold on the idea that we should expedite matters, especially since India's birth required a) large doses of pitocin, which led to the need for b) large doses of pain meds, neither of which we wanted.  Dr. A. was willing to wait until next week out of deference to Warren's sensibilities.  However, as I explained to Warren, if we waited that long, we would have to be accompanied in the Labor and Delivery ward by our divorce lawyers as I would not be fit to live with by that point.  On top of that, I'm now 3 cm dilated and my abs hurt from all the practice contractions (hey, you were warned!).  So even though I have spent this week in a near narcoleptic quest for sleep, I now find myself wide awake, revising and re-posting this entry over and over.  Geez, nervous much?

I can't help thinking - orders to eat a light breakfast notwithstanding, maybe I can get another cruller out of this deal.

You Know You're Overdue When....

... people start telling you, "You know, elephants have a twenty month gestational period," thinking that will cheer you up.

... your coworkers tell you in ever-so-polite terms to stop emailing them already, they're working.

... your husband suggests taking a four-hour train ride for a day trip to a major metropolis two states away, and he means it, because hey, you've been pregnant so long he forgets that you're still pregnant.

... three words are guaranteed to make you gag:  Raspberry leaf tea.

... not even the thought of still having an excuse to indulge your favorite craving (Smiling Hill Farm chocolate milk) makes you happy.

... you get depressed when you realize you have to shave your legs and cut your toenails, because these are very difficult tasks to accomplish when you're the size of the Graf Zeppelin and last time you did them, you mentally promised yourself you'd have the baby before you had to do them again, and here you are.  By the same token, you 'nested' so long ago, your house has gotten untidy again and you can't be arsed to do anything about it.

... heartburn is a given, like day following night.

... your husband has gone back to using the bassinet as a transitional clothing storage unit, stating, "As soon as you put a newborn in there, I'll stop putting my clothes there. Deal?"

... your maternity tops no longer are long enough to cover the attractive stretchy panel on your maternity pants and you no longer give a damn, and besides, you've been wearing the same four or five items of clothing over and over for the past two weeks anyway because they're the only ones that fit, and who cares anyway?  Leave me alone!

... you get the hairy eyeball wherever you go.  You can cause widespread panic just by making a wince-y face, putting your hand on your belly, and bending forward ever so slightly. 

... you go to your weekly appointment and the nurse at the OB/GYN office says, "You're still here? I thought you delivered already," in tones of amazement.

... you post new blog entries constantly, sometimes more than one a day.  (And isn't that one of life's ironies?  Just at the point when I have plenty of time to blog, I have soooo little of interest going on to blog about.)

This Relaxing Stuff's Hard Work

Maternity Leave Day 1:

Well, I packed it in at the end of last week.  By the end of each school day I was totally exhausted, every body part that could ache, did, and I was tired of playing "classroom roulette" all day (this is where I have to make a choice between wetting my pants during an 80 minute class period or dashing to the bathroom and leaving 20+ adolescents unsupervised).  In addition, I was having fierce practice contractions and heartburn that would stagger an ox on a regular basis.  I hoped that all this added up to childbirth being imminent, so I figured I'd better mosey on out before I had to give extra credit to whoever caught the kid.

Yesterday I spent a big chunk of time at school finishing grades, turning in progress reports and comments, emailing all and sundry any information I thought they might need, and worrying, so today marks the *real* start of my maternity leave.

Damn, I'm bored.

Don't get me wrong - I have plenty to do.  P-L-E-N-T-Y.  In fact, here is what I have accomplished over the past 36 hours:

gone grocery shopping

gone to the sewing goods store for bias tape

taken item requiring bias tape repair to dry cleaner's

Ironed shirts for Warren to cut down on outsized dry cleaning bill

made India's lunch

dropped India off at day care

made a to-do list

picked up cold cuts at the deli

written a blog post

washed dishes

planned dinner

done laundry

gone to Target

picked up a rug at the cleaner's

chased down the cat to dose her with Frontline (she hated that)

updated the Netflix queue (critical task)

put Warren's summer shirts formerly residing in the bassinet in their very own storage container

picked up India

taken India for a hair cut

cleaned up cat puke

started making dinner

And you know what?  There have been no signs of labor, imminent, false, or otherwise.  Nada, zip, zilch, zero.  Geez, I went at 38 weeks when I had India!  At this point in my pregnancy, I wasn't pregnant anymore!  What gives?

Maternity Leave Day 2:

Went for my weekly visit to the terrifyingly competent Dr. A., which came replete with ultrasound this time to check for fetal distress.  Yeah.  Distress.  Right.  The most distressing part was how comfy-cozy Celeste looks in there.  She scored 8 out of 8 points on the scale of not needing to come out any time soon.  The sono tech told me that labor isn't started by the baby - he or she would gladly stay in there until voting age rolls around - it's started by the uterus signaling the hormonal equivalent of "don't let the door hit you on your way out".  Apparently my uterus is either more accommodating this time around, or just more resigned to being the size of a watermelon for an indefinite period of time.  I know I'm lazy, I just didn't realize I'm lazy down to the cellular level.

For those of you contemplating unorthodox methods of hastening labor, I will give you one tip:  Let's say you and your husband decide to take a family trip to the state fair.  And just for so, let's say you go off on your own to scout out a fried-dough vendor while your husband and child are gorging themselves on the Congregational Church ladies' apple crisp.  I strongly discourage you from twisting your ankle and falling down hard on your side in the middle of the walkway.  While falling heavily always seems to trigger labor instantaneously on the television shows, I found it resulted only in being swarmed by police and EMTs and being hugely (ha!  pregnancy size pun!) embarrassed, and then having a sore hand, knee, and hip later on.  I talked to the on-call doctor, hoping she would say I had to be induced immediately if not sooner, but no dice.  Her recommendation was that I go into the hospital for "monitoring," which means, "you'll spend half the night hooked up to machines and not sleeping just to prove that since you caught most of your weight on your hand and knee, you're fine."  I'll pass, thanks.

Maternity Leave, Day 3

I am so desperate, I read my school email including the daily announcements.

My next appointment with Dr. A. is Tuesday.  If I haven't gone into labor by then, we'll set the date for induction.

Crazy-Making: It's The Final Countdown

This cold is not going down without a fight.

After an week and a half of unwillingly hosting one of the worst colds I've ever had, I had finally gotten to the point where I could see that I was, in fact, getting better.  It seemed my head had become nothing more than the container for an enormous gland whose sole function was the production of mucous, but that represented progress.  I was actually thinking about life post-cold.

Then I blew my nose for the one millionth time - nothing new there - and one of my ears immediately plugged up.  It's clogged to the point where I can't hear anything out of that ear, it throbs when I move, and I hear ringing from time to time (tinnitus, I think it's called). I also have a cracking headache from the pressure building up in my middle ear.

Of course, I know exactly what's wrong.  My eustachian tube is clogged.  And if I weren't pregnant, and if I hadn't had an adverse reaction to some OTC medications already, I'd just take a bunch of cold meds or allergy meds and wait for this to go away.  But I can't, not really.  I took one Benadryl (because the Sudafed makes me crazy) and I've been paranoid about it ever since, wondering if it's going to set off some kind of reaction.  So now I'm left asking, how long is this fun and excitement going to last?  A day?  Two days?  All week?

I know this is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it falls into the category labeled "last straws".  I'm tired of being sick and I'm tired of being cranky.  I'm tired of fizzy vitamin C drinks and saline nasal spray and cough drops.  I'm tired of blowing my nose every five minutes and still not being able to breathe.  I'm tired of having dry chapped lips and a dry mouth and a dry throat.  I'm tired of menthol and camphor.  I'm tired of sleeping on the edge of the bed so I can catch the mist from the humidifier, which is getting my sheets and covers all damp.  I'm tired of sniffling and sneezing and being just not quiiiiite back on my game. 

Usually I take a lot of delight from being around my family, but because I don't feel well, I am crabby, and of course they catch the brunt of it.  I'm trapped in my own little world of bitchiness and I haven't been a fully functioning member of this family for the last ten days.  This means that Warren has had to pick up the parenting slack and be my parent, in a way, since I can't cope with India and I can't cope with not feeling well and I can't cope with being so uncomfortable all the time and I generally just can't cope right now.  This makes me feel guilty, so I try to get over myself, but then something stupid like this happens and I'm back at square one.  I know if I call my OB/GYN practice, the on-call doc will give me the same information the internet just gave me, and with the bad reactions to meds in the recent past, I know what my choices are - hot steamy showers, maybe some Tylenol, lots of water, blah blah blah.  My primary care practice hasn't seen me for the better part of two years, so there's no point calling them.  So I stomp around and snap at India and Warren and feel sorry for myself, none of which does any medical good whatsoever.

Believe it or not, I am actually working on a post that has nothing whatsoever to do with my upper respiratory system.  I was hoping to finish it today but am not in the mood.  Instead I am going to go make a pie by way of a nonverbal apology to my husband for my recent incarnation as a witch.  And if you have any home remedies for blocked ears (aside from chewing gum or holding my nose and blowing, neither of which has worked), please, comment away.