Skipping Town

Yesterday, on our flight from Atlanta to Pittsburgh, Flight 985 on AirTran, a woman and her two-year-old son were removed from the plane when the child would not sit still in his seat. We were on the tarmac, ready for take-off, when the pilot announced that there was "an issue in the cabin" and that we'd be returning to the gate. At the gate, a customer service person came on and informed the woman that she'd have to get off the plane--even though, by that time, she'd calmed her son and he was falling asleep. Some passengers (including me) called out in her defense, but AirTran would not be swayed. Andrew and I had talked to this mom and her son when we'd boarded--they were sitting directly in front of us. The little boy was very blond and cute; he talked to us over the seat back. When the plane began to move, he fell asleep in his mother's lap. But then a flight attendant (male, completely cold, frowning) approached and asked how old he was. The mother sa...

Cozy morning.

Yesterday when Lucia woke up, I gasped—it looked like she’d been in a bar fight. For a day or two now her eye had been a bit watery, with some mucus-y matter in the corner, and yesterday the entire underside of her eye was a pinkish purple, like someone had punched her. Punched my baby! I took her to the pediatrician in the afternoon, and he deemed it an infection. We’re now taking Our First Antibiotic. Do they have a Hallmark card for that? She looks almost entirely back to normal today, so I didn’t have a chance to take a picture of Lucia with her Don’t Mess With Me look. Ah well. I’m just glad we got it taken care of now, since we leave for the East Coast tomorrow. We are looking at the flight as an adventure…and, really, we’re so excited for the trip that even if Fusskins makes an appearance, I think we’ll be able to take it in stride. Tonight I have to select her traveling outfit…and her backup traveling outfits…and my backup traveling outfit. Milk and other bodily fluids are as m...

Last night, I did something I haven’t done in months: I put on cute tights, knee-high boots, a skirt, and a non-milk-stained sweater and went to a party, leaving a little Fusskins with Andrew for a couple of hours while I celebrated the grand opening of my prenatal yoga teacher’s new studio. And I talked—talked!—to a variety of other moms, and even made plans to get together with a few of them in the new year. In other words, I was a regular human being again, at least for a little while. I was happy to hear from every other girl I talked to that they, too, spent days—weeks—crying once they brought their babies home. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the impressions and preconceptions about motherhood that I had before giving birth. I’d heard that having a baby was hard—no one ever, ever said to me it was a piece of cake. But for some unknown reason, in the back of my mind, I thought it’d be different for me—that I’d be different, or do something differently, or have a different kind o...

This year, Andrew and I have decided to do something different for Christmas—we’re giving our friends and Andrew’s co-workers homemade Christmas presents. Because undertaking a logistically complex and incredibly time-consuming baking project is exactly what one should do when one has an infant! Nonetheless, this weekend we braved the relentless cold and rain (I thought we lived in California!) and set out to make our preparations. First stop: one of Roseville’s countless big box stores, an employee-owned grocery store chain with dirt-cheap prices and a fabulous bulk food section. The prices are akin to Pechin’s, for those of you from southwestern PA. The new Pechin’s, not the old (no dirt floors here, though there were buckets out to catch leaks from the ceiling). It’s a mammoth store, always chaotic, but we put Lucia in the sling and she slept peacefully the entire time. What I love about the sling, besides having two free hands, is that no one can actually see the baby. They can see...

I’m knocking on wood as I type this, but…Lucia has stopped screaming before breast-feeding. She is now eagerly latching on and nursing peacefully. By Friday of last week, Andrew and I were both exhausted and frustrated, and we were eagerly anticipating our appointment with our pediatrician. He didn’t have any solutions—I was hoping he’d say immediately it was reflux and give us some medicine in a dropper—and suggested a week of formula to gauge her reaction to that. I wasn’t about to do that, however (we’ve come so far with breast-feeding, and I feel strongly it’s the right thing for us), and I continued to explain what was happening. I told him I’d started trying to feed her every hour and a half to stave off any hunger-related hysteria. “Don’t do that,” he said immediately. “Just watch her. Let her eat only when she wants to.” He told me to stop waking her up to eat. It seemed like such obvious advice… …and yet the magic words worked. Friday, I started watching the baby, not the cloc...

Little Lucy, You’re eight weeks old today—two months! And wow, have you been giving your mama a run for her money. Last week was probably the most difficult I’ve had since you were born. I really felt like I couldn’t keep it together, and all the difficulty we’ve been having with feeding you made me feel distraught. This week has been better. You’re still screaming before feedings, but I’m handling it with more grace, and I’ve found some tricks for calming you down and getting you to eat peacefully. We have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, which may or may not be helpful. I suspect he may just tell us this is a phase we need to get through. I’m not about to stop breastfeeding, so you and I are going to have to work it out together. In the past few weeks you’ve started smiling, which is adorable. Sometimes you give us tentative little smiles, but sometimes your whole face lights up, eyes crinkling, as though you’re laughing at a private baby joke. You’ve been cooing, too, and sometimes ...

I had two goals for Sunday: 1. Go to Target; 2. Get through the whole day without crying. I’m proud to say it was Mission Accomplished. It’s now 7pm on Monday, and today has been tear-free as well. I’m on a roll. I’ve always considered myself a pretty capable person—even adventurous, or at least willing to take (calculated) risks when it came to going new places and trying new things. I’ve never been one to give up on things, or to assume I couldn’t do something just because I’d never done it before. And yet I’m now humbled to say that motherhood has thrown me for a loop, to put it mildly. How is it possible that Lucia, a tiny being smaller than most housepets, has pushed me to—and past—my limits time and again over the past few days? We had a rough week last week. It was a culmination of factors, namely extreme fussiness and a hesitation—nay, a violent aversion—to breast-feeding. Each time I put her into feeding position, she began screaming shrilly, a kind of scream I’ve never heard ...

I’m tired. It’s strange to feel more tired now than I have been, since Lucia’s sleeping has been getting so much better. But I’m tired. With all our visitors gone now and Andrew back to work, I find that my days alone with Lucia pass quickly—but leave me exhausted. Most days we do just fine. But here and there we have A Day, like we did on Monday, when I’ve apparently eaten something horrendous that leaves Lucia in inconsolable discomfort. Even an hour or two of her painful crying wipes me out and has me counting the minutes until I hear Andrew’s car in the driveway. And now that I’m trying to pick up a little work again, I find my stress level has skyrocketed—I don’t know how I’m going to find time in the day to do what I need to do. Part of my problem is that if Lucia so much as glances at me from her bassinet or bouncy chair, I’m overwhelmed with guilt for not holding her. I didn’t expect to feel this way, and I can’t get over it—she looks at me so innocently and plaintively, as tho...

Lucia’s sleep has improved dramatically over the past week or so—she can generally go for about four hours now before waking up for a feeding. Now and then she’ll even surprise us with a five- or even six-hour stretch. Our strategy is to give her a bottle (of breastmilk) as her last feeding before bedtime—she seems to eat more this way, and it’s that first stretch of sleep that has improved so drastically. She’ll then wake up once more, around 6:00am or so, before we get up for the day. Unfortunately, Lucia’s idea of a good time to get up for the day and our idea of a good time is about two hours off. When Lucia wakes up at 6:00 to eat, she’s usually wide awake, ready to play. She is not ready to go back in her bassinet. We, however, are determined to get at least another hour of sleep—and so the extra-hour challenge begins. Andrew usually takes the lead on singing, dancing, and playing, sometimes lying with her on the floor for half an hour or so while she kicks and coos. When, after ...

I’m excited for Christmas this year. Of course, I look forward to it every year—the chance to travel home to see our families, pulling out the Christmas ornaments I’ve collected from all over the world—but this year it will be particularly fun since Lucia is now part of the family. We’ll be going to Jacksonville for Christmas Day and Connellsville for post-Christmas, and everyone is immensely excited to see the little one. Right now, of course, Lucia’s too little to understand Christmas, and she’ll likely spend the holiday as she spends other days—eating, sleeping, crying, playing on her back, and gazing around at various things. But I can’t help imagining the years ahead, when she’ll be fully cognizant of what’s happening, when she’ll be as excited as any other kid counting down to Christmas morning. On the one hand, I dread some of the complications that will come along with this awareness. I’ve been reading reports of this year’s hottest toy—the Zhu Zhu Pet—and how it’s nearly impos...

We celebrated our first Thanksgiving with Lucia this year with Beth and Nate in Napa. Beth made an elaborate and delicious Thanksgiving feast, with all the traditional trimmings—including corn casserole, which is a Clark tradition but new to me and Andrew. Because it is NorCal, Andrew and I sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic for three hours trying to make our way to their house. But also because it is NorCal, the day was so sunny and beautiful that we were able to eat outside in the Clarks’ backyard, where they’d set up a lovely dining table. Lucia handled the long trip and the small crowd at dinner splendidly, with only a little fussing. Lucia will surely not remember her first Thanksgiving, but we will, and we were very glad to get to spend it with the Clarks. It’s impossible not to feel immensely thankful this year—for Andrew, for our beautiful little baby, for the chance to spend these days at home with her, for the quiet evenings spent with just the three of us. We still wish we were...

This weekend, it was wonderful to anticipate the week ahead and know we’d have a visitor: Aunt Molly. She arrived late Sunday night, and we’ve spent the past couple of days indulging in true baby-time: holding the baby, feeding the baby, changing the baby, calming the baby. Reading on the couch. Taking walks. Taking lots of pictures. Molly is holding Lucia right now as I type this post. She is suitably smitten with her little niece. A few updates: Lucia has started to smile. She’ll give little grins now and then when she’s in the right mood, usually when she’s sitting in her blue bouncy chair with one of us hovering over her. It’s incredibly cute. She also set a new record last night—she slept for five straight hours. She’s been doing really well for a few nights now, with stretches of three and a half to four hours, but this was a new level. She's been such a little angel this week that I think she's convinced Molly that having a baby is pretty easy. I'm tempted to eat a g...

Why won’t Lucia just do what I want her to do? That’s what I thought this afternoon when Lucia refused the fabulous nap plans I had for us. Two nights ago, I convinced Andrew it was finally cold enough to put on our microplush bed sheets—the softest sheets I’ve ever felt. Mom and Dad bought them for us last winter, and they’ve been unopened in our closet ever since. Andrew had been dreading the day when I wanted to put them on, believing he’d roast, but he acquiesced. Anyway, today was damp and windy and cold, and I thought napping together in the cozy sheets would be a perfect way for Lucia and me to spend an hour or two this afternoon. Unfortunately, when I settled Lucia onto the bed and cozied her up with a microplush sheet, then cozied myself up beside her, she began screaming unhappily. She seemed to prefer the cold, regular sheet of her bassinet to the luxurious toastiness of the microplush. I would have suspected that Andrew had been turning her against the microplush, but he ad...

Lucia seems to love listening to us sing. However, in the past few days I’ve realized that she does not like key changes. A few days ago, I was walking around the house with her in my arms, singing various songs to her as she gazed up at me raptly. Emboldened by such a captive—and receptive!—audience, I began singing “Memory” from Cats, gaining gusto with the big key change (there may be more than one; I need to brush up on my repertoire). Lucia instantly began crying. Not long after this, I was singing “Climb Every Mountain,” and, again, didn’t hold back with the key change. Again, Lucia began crying. So many things to learn about this little baby.

Today is my first day—my first whole day—alone with Lucia. Andrew left for a business trip this morning at 5am and won’t be back until around 10pm tonight. So it’s just me and the baby, all day. I was alone with her on Friday for most of the day—but Andrew came home for lunch and was home for good at 5:30pm, so this is an entirely new experience. I wouldn’t be so stressed about it had yesterday not been so horrendous. For some reason—likely a perfect storm of tomatoes and grapefruit in my diet on Sunday—Lucia cried the entire day. Not just whimpers or plaintive wails; this was full-throated, best-birth-control-ever crying, the kind that seems to be best delivered directly into mama’s ear. If I put her down, she cried. If I picked her up, she cried. If we moved and danced, she cried. If we gently rocked, she cried. By the time Andrew came home at 3:30pm so I could go to a doctor’s appointment, I wasn’t sure how much more I could take. The appointment itself was upsetting in a way I hadn...

On Saturday, at the encouragement of Beth and Nate, Lucia, Andrew, and I had our first official outing. Let me clarify: we have left the house before, on walks around our neighborhood. And I have been in two public places since she was born, Safeway and Trader Joe’s, when my parents were here. And we’ve had two appointments with the pediatrician. Otherwise, however, I’ve left the public-place errands to Andrew while Lucia and I have stayed snug and swine-flu-safe at home. When the Clarks came to visit this weekend, however, it was a beautiful, sunny day, and we all went to lunch at a local burger place we like. We’d been there together before, and, besides having great food, it’s a good place for kids—and there’s a large outdoor area where we could sit far apart from the swine-flu masses. We got an outdoor table in a corner, and Lucia did splendidly for almost the entire meal, napping and then sitting peacefully in her stroller. Only at the end of the meal did she begin crying—it was f...

Little Lucia, You’re four weeks old today. It’s hard to believe we’ve had you for such a short amount of time—it feels like you’ve been with us forever. I’m still amazed that it was you in my belly for all those months, that it was your precious little feet I felt kicking me in the side. In the first ultrasound picture we had of you, you were waving—a gesture you still make quite regularly. It’s hard to fully grasp that the nine months I spent pregnant this year were all leading up to you. You’ve changed a lot in just one month. You’ve gained a pound and a half—maybe more by now—and your cheeks, legs, and arms are all getting a little chubbier, a little sturdier. I can see the difference in your feet and hands. You don’t look quite so new and fragile anymore. You had a personality from the moment you were born, but it’s becoming stronger now. You set your lips firmly together when you don’t like something; your whole face crumples heart-breakingly when you’re upset. When you’re relaxed...

It’s been wonderful having Andrew home on paternity leave for the past week, and he’ll be home most of this week too. We are truly on baby time here, and, when Lucia has not descended into fits of screaming—which, fortunately, are rare—we are able to quite enjoy these odd days. On the one hand, we have nothing to do; but on the other, our hands have never been fuller. It’s a strange balance. We’ve been reading a lot; on Friday we watched a movie in the middle of the day; Andrew is watching a lot of college football; Saturday night we watched the votes come in for the House vote on the healthcare bill. We nap and eat and go to bed at 9pm. Then there are the moments when Lucia is inconsolable and we’re both hovering over her frantically, trying to determine the source of her unhappiness. Andrew’s legs are sore from doing so much bouncing and swaying. By the end of the day I generally have milk and/or spit-up on most articles of my clothing. On one recent night, I had to change pj’s twice...

Midnight: A semi-fussy Lucia refuses the pacifier by dramatically gagging herself. 2:00am: A steely-eyed Lucia refuses the pacifier by pressing her lips stubbornly together and giving us a resolute glare. 3:30am: Andrew and I hum “Edelweiss” to a fussy baby, followed by hummed selections of Andrew Lloyd Weber. 4:00am: I try to lull Lucia to sleep with a hypnotic mantra: “Mommy’s tired. Daddy’s tired. Baby must be tired. Mommy’s tired. Daddy’s tired. Baby must be tired. Mommy’s tired. Daddy’s tired. Baby must be tired.” Some readers of this blog will understand what I mean when I say I use the “Garden Surprise” voice for this chant. 4:45am: Andrew and Lucia lay down on the bedroom floor for some ungodly-hour Tummy Time. 7:00am-8:00am: Lucia and I both fall into a desperate, restless sleep with her on my chest. 9:00am-9:30am: Crying and feeding. 9:30am-11:30am: An overtired Lucia continues to cry hysterically, inconsolable. She finally takes the pacifier and falls into a suspicious, sli...

Lucia seems to have brought lovely fall weather with her, and the past couple of weeks have been beautiful. Here are a few pictures from the amazing trees we have in our backyard. We get more fall foliage here than you’d expect.

Two years ago today, Andrew and I got married at the Summit Inn in Farmington, PA. It seems like we’ve been married for so much longer than two years! We celebrated quietly today by taking Lucia on her first walk in the stroller, to Dairy Queen for Blizzards. She screamed for most of the trip, working herself up into a true froth, little arms waving angrily. It’s 6:40pm here right now, but it may as well be midnight. Andrew and I are exhausted, and it’s pitch-black outside—it feels much, much later than it is. We just took a nap and easily could have stayed in bed for the rest of the night. Lucia has been sleeping well today—during the day she can stay asleep for several hours at a time—and yet I have no doubt that tonight will be another night of being up every two hours. Ah, newborns. Good thing she’s pretty cute:

7 lbs. 8 oz.! Our baby has grown! We had a doctor’s appointment this morning and were shocked to learn Lucia has gained a pound and a half in the last two weeks. Such good news—it’s great to know that breastfeeding is giving her what she needs. It’s so hard to know sometimes if I’m giving her enough. Looks like she’s doing just fine. The other good news is that the scary swelling on Lucia’s head is finally gone. About a week and a half ago, Andrew and I noticed a puffiness around the area where the vacuum suction had been—it hadn’t been there in the hospital. We made a late-night phone call to the advice nurse, who consulted with the doctor on call, and our pediatrician contacted us in the morning—the consensus was that it was a hematoma, and nothing to be alarmed about. A word like “hematoma” is pretty terrifying, though, and it was hard to be reassured. I swore off Google searches during my pregnancy, but Andrew bravely Googled it, and even the Google results said it was nothing seri...

For most of my twenties, I believed I didn’t want children. I spent most of high school and college writing angst-ridden poems addressing themes like suffocation, identity loss, and entrapment, and believing that the worst possible fate was to wind up married and mothering in suburbia. The idea of having a family and living outside a city seemed, for some reason, incompatible with absolutely everything else life should, and could possibly, be. I am now married and mothering in suburbia, and it’s actually pretty fantastic. Of course, we’d prefer to live elsewhere; but we’ve had adventures—many years in New York, our lucky time in Barcelona—and will surely have more. It’s not surprising to have had a seismic shift on the idea of marriage and motherhood in ten-plus years, but it’s funny to look back on that doubtful girl; I wish she could have had an idea of the kind of happiness that was possible in everything she feared. Eleven years ago, when I was twenty-two years old, I wrote the poe...

Lucia Orlando Littell made her grand entrance at 6:38pm on Thursday, October 15, at Kaiser Roseville, two days before her due date. She was 6 pounds exactly and 19 inches long. Andrew and I had “planned” on a natural birth; and I use the quotation marks deliberately now, having learned a dramatic lesson about the impossibility of planning how a birth can go. I’m still shaken up about Lucia’s birth story, and am trying to focus on the fact that she is beautiful and healthy and here. I started getting period-like cramping around 4:00am the morning of Wednesday, October 14. I tried to sleep but was too excited; something told me this was it. The cramping continued through the morning but was mild enough that Andrew and I decided he should go to work. Late morning, the cramping turned decidedly to contractions, which I timed throughout the afternoon. By the time Andrew got home around 5:30pm, we knew we’d be having a baby soon. We got our things together and made a soup for dinner. Around ...

I’ve entered Baby Time. She’s been home for only a week, but already I feel transported into a world where I might not check email until noon, where time is measured in feedings and changings. She tends to sleep a lot during the day, and she’s been giving us two- to three-hour stretches of sleep at night—until around 4am, when she is suddenly wide awake, resisting our rocking and shushing and white-noise-machining and staring up at us with bright, wide-open eyes. She may or may not fall asleep again around 6am. We are hoping this will change. I’m tired; but I like Baby Time. It requires a new kind of focus and calm. Everything is suddenly subordinate to making sure this little being is fed, dry, happy. It’s rare that things are this clear, separated so firmly into what matters right now and what can be put off until later.

Our sleeping baby. I've been posting lots of pictures on Facebook. Feel free to friend me if you're on Facebook and haven't yet.

A couple of months ago, when Andrew and I began doing perineal massage to prepare me for what we thought would be a natural birth, we thought we’d taken our marriage to a new level. You don’t just break out the vegetable oil and uncomfortable downward pressure with anyone; it seemed like a step toward a new kind of marital intimacy. Little did we know. There were a lot of things I could never have imagined about labor, and one of those is the variety of compromising and, in any other circumstance, embarrassing positions Andrew would see me in. Perineal massage pales in comparison to seeing me leak bloody water all over the floor and any other available surface after I had my water broken. It pales in comparison to escorting me and my IV pole into the bathroom—and helping me situate myself and my hospital gown on the toilet. It pales in comparison to sitting with me while I was on the toilet , kneeling in front of me and squeezing my hips through a contraction. It definitely pales in co...

Two nights ago, during one of Lucia’s many nighttime diaper changes, Andrew changed her diaper, changed her sleeper, and picked her up from the changing table—only to suddenly see urine streaming to the ground. We were both stunned. When Andrew went to change her yet again, he realized he’d forgotten to put a diaper on her. She was naked inside her little sleeper.

I’d heard about the baby blues. But wow, have I gone for an emotional roller-coaster ride in the past week. Yesterday was the first day I got through without crying uncontrollably. It’s now 2:45pm, and I haven’t cried yet today, which may make this day #2 without tears. Prior to these days, I cried pretty much every time I looked at the baby. I cried when we left the hospital, and when we got home. I cried when I realized my smallest maternity jeans are almost too big. I cried when I realized I’m now within three pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight and I look almost as skinny as I used to. I cried because I wished I could put Lucia back into my belly and just start all over again. I cried because I miss being pregnant. I cried while eating cereal and reading the New York Times at the breakfast table because I looked up and spotted the stroller and thought about all the care we took in picking it out and realized it’s for her. Yesterday I felt very together. Today, together, but a bit edg...

I’m still working on putting down Lucia’s birth story. It’s difficult; I can’t seem to think about it without crying. But I want to record and share some of the details in the meantime, in bits and pieces, before they start getting foggier than they already are. Andrew and I created a basic “birth plan” that we gave to Kaiser (our HMO) several weeks ago. The plan detailed things like what pain management strategies we wanted to use, whether Andrew wanted to cut the cord, etc. The gist of our “birth plan” was this: Natural birth, no interventions. From the moment we arrived at the hospital, however, the interventions began. In triage, Lucia’s heart rate occasionally decelerated, and so from that point things changed. Here is a list, in roughly chronological order, of the interventions I underwent to bring Lucia into the world. Anything that attached to my body was cumulative—they didn’t remove one wire to make room for another. I was in labor for approximately 24 hours, 18 of them witho...

Lucia Orlando Littell, born October 15, 6:38pm, 6 oz. exactly, 19 inches long. A beautiful, beautiful baby girl. There are no words. My birth story is not at all what I had imagined it would be, and I am still working through it, processing, healing. All I can say is that the phrase "birth plan" may be the most ridiculous phrase in the English language. Details soon.

Californians in this area do not know what to do when it rains. It’s understandable—it hardly ever rains, and, in my experience, when it does rain, it rains hard . Yesterday was a particularly apocalyptic day, with high winds and downpours that lasted for most of the morning and afternoon. The environment, too, can’t handle such odd weather. Branches cracked from trees; leaves filled the streets; power lines went down; streets flooded. I ventured out only briefly, to drive Andrew to work after my doctor’s appointment, and hydroplaned slightly as a made a very slow right turn. Though I was snug inside yesterday afternoon, the chaos of the day took over here as well. My cervical exam yesterday was particularly aggressive—the midwife had a hard time reaching the cervix because little Whittemora’s head was in the way—and several hours after I got home, I began having some pretty heavy bleeding. Bleeding is just one of those things you don’t expect or want to see for, oh, nine-plus months, ...

It’s raining in Roseville, and has been for hours; the wind gusted through the night. It’s so strange for a day to be this gloomy that I can’t help but feel it portends an imminent birth. I saw the midwife today, who told me I’m now 2cm dilated, 80% effaced, with a -2 engagement. So things are progressing. It’s such a dreary, moody October day—the kind I love; a perfect day for momentous changes. We’ll see what the little one has in mind.

With my due date coming up on Saturday, Andrew and I are officially on Labor Watch. There have been enough signs—I’ll spare everyone the details; those who have been pregnant can guess what they are—to suggest that labor is imminent. But the cruel irony is that none of those signs mean anything at all. Such things can occur weeks or days before labor. I could finish this blog post and go into labor. Or I could still be pregnant a week from today. No one knows. So there’s nothing to do now but sit around and obsess about things. Last night I began obsessing about our bassinet, which we borrowed from one of Andrew’s co-workers. I was really gung-ho about borrowing this particular item, since the baby will use it for just a couple of months. But now the item is vexing me. First, I wanted to buy a new mattress and sheets for it. This attempt was unsuccessful; no sizes fit. Then I decided to just buy new sheets. Also unsuccessful. Nothing fit; the ones I bought that sort of fit shrunk to ha...

There are a lot of cases to be made for not throwing things out, for a very sage reason: you never know when you’ll need them. This was proven to me once again last night, as I worked to compile a suitable collection of music for labor. I have never been through labor, so I don’t know what I’m going to feel like listening to; but I can guess. And, unfortunately for us all, what I truly believe is going to work best to help relax me and keep me focused is new age-y music, including albums with titles like “Lifescapes” and “Music for Yoga and Other Joys.” This is what I’m used to breathing and relaxing to in yoga, and it’s what I imagine when I try to picture the labor room. Anyway, last night I finished uploading a few CDs my yoga teacher had burned for me and had culled my own paltry collection of new age music, which consisted—I thought—of one CD: “Calming Sea.” Onto the iPod it went. But when I searched my (extremely paltry) CD collection a bit more closely, I came across a 2-CD set ...

There’s a suitcase in my room, half-packed, with a lengthy packing list on top of it. Yesterday I spent hours burning new playlists onto CDs and updating my iPod with songs of a certain mood. We’ve made countless purchases—a “boombox” (to fulfill battery-only hospital requirements), cute pajamas, a robe, slippers, a battery-operated fan, a birth ball—to assist us in this very specific endeavor. We’ve made cheat-sheets about labor and pain-management strategies. And last night it occurred to me that we’ve done more shopping, planning, and preparation than we did for our two-week trip to Japan—for an occasion that will be 24-48 hours, start to finish, at the most (knock wood). It definitely feels like we’re embarking on some sort of lengthy, involved journey, not just preparing to take a five-minute drive to the hospital, and both the extent and the atmosphere of these preparations feel the same as those that always go into anticipating a major trip— with some significant differences, of...

The weird, vivid dreams are back. I had tons of them early in my pregnancy, and now, here at the end, they’ve started up again. This time, besides being incredibly strange, they’re also extremely physical—even though they’re about sensations I couldn’t possibly understand yet. In one dream, I gave birth to twins. I was surprised, but it was a happy dream, free from anxiety—despite the fact that the babies weren’t babies but rat-like creatures. As I breastfed one of the rats, it morphed into a baby. In another, I gave birth yet again to twins. I held one of them in my hand adoringly, even though it wasn’t a baby but a small figurine of a baby wrapped in a tiny, tiny blanket; it was no bigger than my palm. Then I began breastfeeding a normal-sized baby. The night before last, I dreamed that Andrew and I were gazing out at an ocean experiencing tsunami-like waves. At the crest of each wave were groups of killer whales. Some of the whales began washing up on shore, coming dangerously close...

This weekend Andrew and I put the finishing touches to the nursery. There are still a few things to get, like a mobile, but we’re pleased with how it turned out. It’s very cozy—a place, hopefully, of rest and peace. I’ve been spending a lot of time sitting in the glider, just imagining the baby and what it will be like when she finally arrives. It’s very peaceful to sit there with a book, with sunlight streaming in the windows, feeling the little one moving around in her little womb-house as she prepares for her arrival. Our bird bedding is from Target; the curtains, bureau, bookshelf, and carpet are from Ikea; the blanket over the back of the glider is handmade by Mom; and all wall art is courtesy of Dad.

Isn't it confounding that with all of today's amazing technology, no one can tell me exactly when our baby will be born? They can put a man on the moon and put a pig's heart in a human's body, and yet no one can say when I'll go into labor. It's kind of amazing. I suppose it isn't a matter of critical medical importance, but it just seems so...basic.

It’s fall. All weekend we had crisp, cool temperatures and blue skies; at night it’s been down into the 40s. I hesitate to believe it—experience has proven that such lovely fall days could be clobbered without warning by a return to high-80s temperatures and a seemingly endless summer—but for now it is just beautiful. We may not have spectacular fall foliage where we live, but the cool temperatures still make it feel like October should feel. I have a jittery back-to-school kind of feeling; the kind of feeling I always get before taking a big trip, knowing something momentous is about to happen. There are less than two weeks now until my due date, and though I don’t really believe she’ll come this early, she very well could. It was on our minds all weekend. Friday night, we went out for Indian food after some shoe-shopping at DSW—a relaxing evening we won’t have too many more of, at least for a while. Saturday began a whirlwind two days of final preparations. Saturday, we did what fel...