Baby Showers Bring...Who Knows What

At some point in the average American woman's pregnancy, people begin to ask about a baby shower for the child waiting to be born.  There are many reasons they ask:

1. They want to plan a party for you.
2. They want to know how much money you expect them to spend on a child they will probably rarely ever see.
3. They don't know what else to ask an obviously pregnant woman.
4. They want to try to find something else to be doing that day so that, if and when they are invited, they can bow out of any obligation of attending.
5. They want to tell you about their own baby shower experiences, so the question is really just a lead-in.
6. They want to tell you how to handle things for a baby shower.
7. And finally, they might just want to be sure you intend to invite them should you have a baby shower.

The funny thing about baby showers is the wide variety of reactions people have toward them.  I have known people to make some truly amazing faces at the mere suggestion they attend such a party--and not just men, either.  

Part of the problem stems from parties these people have attended in the past which have permanently scarred them or at least negatively colored their views on prenatal celebrations.  Typically resulting from parties planned by a friend or family member, unsuspecting attendees have been forced to participate in all sorts of "undignified" antics.  These include diapering a stuffed animal while blindfolded, drinking games with baby bottles, and fumblingly guessing at the circumference of the mom-to-be's belly.  (The latter was actually played at one of my 2 baby showers for Jackson; I guessed the closest!)  While some truly enjoy these frivolities, many others are made to feel horribly uncomfortable by them and begin to hide from baby shower invites (see #4 above).

Some make a face less of disgust and more of excitement.  They may even scream and jump erratically.  (n.b. These are typically NOT men.)  These are often the same people who enjoy planning games like Pin the Diaper on the Teddy Bear and making Diaper Cakes.

Andrew and I canvassed all these issues while determining our strategy for baby planning.  We are both very much control-freaks, and we wanted anyone who attended to be under as little stress as possible.  The main problems we faced were that our friends and family almost exclusively lived at least 2 hour's drive away (and in two distantly separated locations) and that we needed to know how much of our own funds we would need to budget for whatever other people did not want to buy for us.

Eventually we devised a plan to have 3 (later downsized to 2) baby showers.  One was being hosted by Andrew's parents in Tallahassee, and the other by my sister in Tarpon Springs.  A third we had considered hosting somewhere here in Gainesville, but in our frustration and exhaustion we scrapped the idea.  Being the sort who like to have a hold of the reins of any project involving our time, Andrew and I felt exasperated by the efforts being made for us.

In an effort to save us money, my sister had hoped to host the party over Thanksgiving holidays to help minimize our number of trips to town (and thus hotel and dining costs).  This would have been just 3 weeks before my due date, however, and far too close for our comfort, therefore.  Our goal was to have Jackson's nursery completely prepared by then so that, should he be a sweetheart and arrive early, we would have all the tools we would need to appease him.  Eventually we convinced her that earlier was better than later, and the final decision was made to have both showers in October, 2 weeks apart.

The Tallahassee one came first and was a great success.  My mother-in-law cooked a vast (and I do mean vast!) spread of yummy foods, and we spent the day enjoying an open house of visitors.  The initial plan was for guests to arrive between 1pm and 5pm, but the result was a party that lasted 8 hours until we had to usher people out the door.  Still, we had a very intimate visit with each group of attendees in a pleasant and relaxed atmosphere. 

Our subsequent shower in Tarpon Springs was, perhaps, overly ambitious.  A wide variety of my friends and acquaintances were invited to a Greek lunch cafe, none of whom had received any sort of written invitation.  (My sister had some sort of conflict with the post office that I never fully interpreted.)  Vanessa had planned a number of guessing games that entertained people, while some very awkward family/friend combinations occurred due to the cramped quarters of the back room we inhabited.  Overall, the party was still a great success--in more than one way!  As a consequence of meeting at Jackson's baby shower, my friends Chirag and Juliet met one another, and 9 months later they were married!  (No children between them; they both began graduate school a month after tying the knot.)

On discussion during the process and afterward, Andrew and I felt that if ever we were to have another baby shower, we would plan it ourselves.  Having some greater hindsight and recalling how busy we were at the time, I think the main consideration is really just that the person planning the shower needs to understand and accept what is important to YOU in regard to any prenatal partying.  For example, next time we send invitations and/or Thank You cards, we're using the US Post Office's website.  And if we ever have another baby shower with single people, we'll hand out condoms for the after party.

Separation Anxiety

One of my goals in writing this blog is to highlight some of the things no one seems willing to talk about with pregnancy and child-rearing.  I'm a fairly candid person, so I'm not too shy to describe some of the less appealing parts along the way.  Among such seldom-mentioned experiences are the sometimes painful consequences of the hormone relaxin--and worse.

Throughout my pregnancy, there were frequent surprises.  Andrew and I had read the books that are published on human gestation, so we knew that the excessive production of gas was "normal."  When I had a resting heart rate of over 100bpm at 3 months gestation, that was also fairly "normal", though I normally have between 60-70bpm.

What we were not prepared to experience, however, was what my midwife termed as a change in my 'environment.'  When she says environment, though, she doesn't mean that I'm in a new place.  She means that my lady bits have changed in pH and other chemicals may be lurking in the dark.  These changed environs do not combine well with sensitive skin.  Enter my darling husband Andrew.

Darling husband Andrew became mad at me; he had developed a rash.  Suspicions arose on both our parts as to how he came to develop such a rash -- and only as a consequence of coitus.  This was the second trimester, the alleged golden period of pregnancy in which both partners are back at it like rabbits.  We, on the other hand, were questioning one another's honesty and integrity regarding STD cleanliness.  Luckily we trusted one another enough to ask the midwife what could be the cause.  She had a brilliant solution:  prescribe me nipple cream.  Problem solved!  His rash cleared up after a few applications of topical cream, but afterward...intercourse became more sparse in frequency.  Getting some action now meant a fate far worse than pregnancy -- "cock rot", as he called it -- of which he was naturally terrified.  He was grouchy; I was defensive.  Let's face it, have a burning member is only good when it's a metaphor, right?  But there was not a thing I could do to ameliorate the situation.  (If we were good at the whole condom thing, there wouldn't have been a pregnancy in the first place.)  While we were able to work through it, a certain spark had been lost in the bedroom that took a very long time to return.

Several weeks afterward, we traveled across the state so Andrew could be best man in a wedding.  On the beach.  In the afternoon.  In August.  In Florida.  (Perhaps the setting helps explain why that marriage only lasted until the first anniversary?)  I digress.

The night before the wedding, Andrew and I stayed in a hotel room de gratis, and snuggled comfortably (if Platonically) into the expansive king size bed.  Being the good rule-follower, I had developed techniques for left-side lying in order to help the baby.  (They almost never explain it, but supposedly it has something to do with blood flow to the uterus.)  Pregnancy was never greatly comfortable, but I had begun to find it tolerable and increasingly agreeable.  Overnight, literally, this changed.  During the night, the pillow I kept between my legs snuck its way out.  I awoke to find myself immobilized.

This is not a metaphor, either.  I had to beg Andrew to help me turn onto my back, which caused me to make all sorts of unattractive faces.  Further facial contortions resulted when I finally managed to be removed from the bed.  "Things" were not where they belonged.  What I didn't know then is that they would remain out of sorts until 4 months later when I had the opportunity to eject my darling little parasite.  Still, he was kicking away to his little heart's content to let me know everything was just fine and dandy inside.

Walking became a challenge.  This was especially entertaining as, while on this ill-fated trip I received good news:  I had been hired for the position I had interviewed a few hours before hitting the road.  Bad enough I had had to make sure my new employer was aware that I was an egg waiting to hatch, but I felt obligated to pretend that I was in perfect health.  So, the herniated disc in my neck?  Oh, no problem!  The painful exercise of moving?  No big deal....

Finally I surrendered and got a referral from my midwife to a local physical therapy group.  There I was told the cause of my pain:  the hormone relaxin, present in all pregnant women, had gone ape-doody crazy and decided to segregate the bones of my pelvis to ridiculous levels.  While the therapy helped briefly, typically by the time I walked back my car to drive home, all the corrections and repositionings had gone haywire already, and my poor pelvis was in pain again.

The muscles of my buttocks, lower abdomen, and all the little bits that hold things together were strained and pained from the extra workload shirked by my joints.  To top it off, over time the misalignment shifted so that the bones of my pelvis were grinding together at the front.  Good times, good times.

Yet...for all that, somehow I made it through the last 4 months without losing my sanity.  It helped to know that it could have been way worse (i.e. preeclampsia, miscarriage, anencephaly).  Even more it helped me to know the cause--and that the end was in sight.  My hip problems disappeared immediately post partum.  And knowing that, in the end, I gave birth naturally to a nearly 10lb child helped explain all the prep work my body was doing to make it all possible!

Nice to meet you!

With my health insurance firmly established, I gladly began regular prenatal visits to a local midwifery group.  They are a WONDERFUL bunch of women!  The experience was far more relaxing than going to an ordinary OB/GYN and much more comfortable an atmosphere.  Finally the time came when they wanted to schedule me for an ultrasound.

On August 13, 2007, Andrew and I got to see our little guy for the second time--and learned that he had a dangler between his legs.  My midwife had suspected as much, based on his heart rate, but the little tripod images we saw onscreen confirmed things:  we were having a boy!

We were really excited and pleased to be told that all his parts were in the right places and developing properly.  By that point I was 21 weeks pregnant, and Kippy (Jackson's in utero name) was 3 weeks large for his gestation.

The tricky part was that Andrew and I had found names challenging for us when it came to boy names.  Girl names were easy enough, and we had 2 selected with coordinating middle names.  Kippy's male designation forced us to work very hard at finding a suitable name for our little alien invader.

We had begun calling him Kippy from the start as I learned of my pregnant status shortly after a unique encounter with a local vagrant of sorts.  Known around my home town of Palm Harbor as "the Can Man," this ragged bicyclist would travel around collecting aluminum cans in his bike basket, presumably to generate money for his beer fund.  Only a few hours before I tested positive for having an inner child, I had worked up sufficient nerve to ask the Can Man's name.  He very shyly had responded, half-hiding behind his long blond mane and ball cap, that his name was Kippy.  So, Andrew and I decided the name was appropriate until we knew what we would really call our future munchkin.  After all, the original Kippy was an avid recycler (like me) and was silently trying to help the world around him by ensuring aluminum was not wastefully discarded.  Riding a bicycle around town (though probably a DUI-cycle in reality) was both giving him regular exercise and saving on carbon emissions that a motorized vehicle would have produced.  What better role model could our child have?

So after we saw his dangler, Andrew and I worked long and hard to choose a name that would fit our offspring.  He had to have a solid, strong name, since he had no chance of being tiny.  Eventually we discussed the idea of naming him John and calling him Jack.  There were a few problems with this, though.  One, his middle name was certainly going to be Edward, and our last name is Adams.  John Edwards was running for democractic candidacy for the office of president, and John Adams was already the name of two past presidents.  We did not want to overstate his possible future attainments before he was even born.  Secondly, the name was too bland, too generic.  He would not be "google-able".  The final problem was that Jack was already a nickname of mine.

When I was born, my sister was only 18months old, so she could not say Jessica.  Her initial attempt, Jecca, morphed over time until Jacka and finally Jack became a name to which I would willingly respond.  This would not be so troubling except that my niece and nephew only have two aunts, both named Jessica (it was SUCH a popular name!), so to differentiate between us, they have always known me as Auntie Jack.

Tossing ideas around some more, we settled on Jackson Edward Adams.  This did not eradicate the excessive presidentiality of his name, but it didn't have to do so.  My darling husband, Andrew, shares a birthday with former president Andrew Jackson, for whom he was named.  Jackson is my son, therefore the son of "Jack".  The name seemed fitting and was suitably strong and was not a particularly popular name--or so we thought.

As it turns out, Jackson had been rapidly gaining in popularity as a first name, placing as the #36 name for boys in 2006 and #33 in 2007.

Surprisingly, we've also frequently received the response, "That's a good, Southern name" quite often.  Who knew?  Though it appears to be a fairly common mid-western name as well.

Back to the ultrasound.  Andrew and I are geeks.  I don't mean we go about biting the heads off birds.  We just are willing to recognize that there are some things we obsess over that others don't (like finance and budgeting).  Within 5 hours of having the goop spread over my belly and watching Jackson suck his thumb in utero, we had ripped the DVD of the sonogram into an Internet-ready video file, added some Dido music, burnt some CDs, uploaded the show to Veoh, and emailed the link to everyone who might care enough to open an email from us.

Experience the thrill for yourself!  

(The text that appears onscreen says "Boy!!!" and the arrow points to the indicator.)

"You don't look pregnant"

Pregnant women in the first trimester do not receive enough credit.

I was unaware of this truth until I was such a woman.  As I learned during that first trimester, until you have a telltale baby bump, people automatically are suspicious of any claim you may make that you are pregnant.  The would-be employer I had to disappoint treated me as though I might really have Ebola, since I obviously wasn't pregnant at my previous interviews.

The day Andrew and I married really captured a number of the sentiments I experienced during that time.  The day was June 5, and we had been engaged for 3 weeks.  I had morning sickness.  Bad.  It wasn't as bad if I slept later in the day, so I had developed a habit of staying up until 2am reading, then sleeping until lunchtime.  Bedside crackers did very little to help tame the low blood sugar beast that is morning sickness.  And stress only compounded the problem--including the stress of waking up early.

On the morning of June 5, I was finally going to begin receiving prenatal care.  I had an appointment scheduled at the health department.  I had no insurance and no job.  Surely I was a prime candidate.  I also had an anole lizard dead somewhere in my car, whose carcass was hiding from everything but the summer heat of Florida and decomposition.

Getting into the car after being ill twice already that morning was enough of a challenge.  I smelled my lizard friend's remains, and promptly delivered a dose of stomach contents to the ground beside my car before closing the door.  So far, so good.

The drive to the health department had me feeling a little nervous, not to mention that I had been lacking sufficient caloric intake thus far.  The plastic bag I brought along was not up to the task as my belly lurched driving through a large intersection.  My retro shirt and silk skirt were looking much yellower suddenly than they had a few minutes prior.

Arriving at the parking lot, I found a space at the furthest distance possible from the building.  Agonizingly slowly, horribly embarrassed by my appearance, I forced myself to enter.  Once inside I was directed to complete some paperwork and wait.  After some waiting and nose-blowing and a run to a garbage can, I was allowed to sit and discuss my personal finances intimately with a complete stranger--who then rejected me for health care at the health department (even if I offered to pay out of pocket) because I admitted I was living with Andrew, whose pay was "too high".  Cue reverse peristalsis again, though this time in a garbage can.  Eventually, I managed to cry enough that I could drive home.

Opening the car door just in time, I managed to land my next batch immediately atop the previous offering I had made to the ground before leaving on my misadventure.  A couple more shots of nauseating misery landed in the toilet, and I allowed myself to get some much-needed rest.

My phone rang.  Andrew was on his way home for lunch and demanded that I get up and get dressed.  My vomit-covered clothing was still hanging unwashed in the bathroom.  I felt like death itself.  Still, I managed to let him coerce me into clothing myself and staggering pathetically about until we had accomplished the task of going to the courthouse and securing a marriage license.  I have no doubt in my mind that the woman issuing it believed me to be a heroin addict or something of that caliber.

Later that evening, we went to our weekly trivia game at the local pizza bar, Gumby's, and had our marriage completed by a notary friend between trivia questions.  How romantic.  

Three weeks later, we did have a really nice, planned reception for family to attend, followed by a honeymoon in Pennsylvania.  A few days before the reception, I began receiving treatments for a disc herniation at a new office.  The girl behind the counter blurted out to me, "You don't look pregnant."  The same line was repeated to me many times at the reception.

I assume that people are ignorant of how ignorant they sound when saying that.  First of all, I was showing, but because I had never had any belly fat before,  my burgeoning baby bump looked inconsequential to onlookers.  If I am being honest, it was barely noticeable, but try telling that to my jeans that had gotten tight at 3 weeks pregnant.  The feeling of frustration that I was going through all of these new and difficult issues and gaining weight--and no one could even tell!--was so strong at times that I felt very ungracious toward the disbelieving bunch.

Then a miracle happened during the honeymoon:  my morning sickness subsided.  My appetite began to return, and I regained much of my strength as Andrew and I trekked and hiked about the Poconos of western Pennsylvania, exploring beautiful waterfalls and elegant scenery.  The cool air was a welcome change of pace from the 90F+ weather back home.  After our week was over we returned to home and the real world once more.

Upon smelling the apartment again, my stomach revolted, and I wretched for the last time (until the day I delivered).  A few days later, while shopping at the local food store, a young employee named Ashley queried if I were pregnant.  I answered in the affirmative, though I felt half-obligated to lie and say that I wasn't, since it seemed a rude question to ask.  Unless you're certain, it's better to err on the side of caution, rather than incur the wrath of a woman who is merely, shall we say, well-rounded.  Still, it was heartening to finally get someone to recognize my condition for what it was.  A week later at the same store, another young employee named Ashley committed the same faux pas.  I decided that that year must have been the year of naive girls named Ashley.

Still, I knew I was finally out of that horrible first trimester phase when I went to get a haircut.  Another woman sat nearby chatting with her mother, while we awaited our turns in the chair.  My belly was showing slightly more, though I was only 3 and a half months pregnant.  The younger woman averred that I must be with-child because I was glowing.

From that point on, I decided to be more cheerful as I certainly enjoyed being told that I was "glowing" in my pregnancy!