On Predictions: Old Wives’ Tales

 

Knowing whether you’re having a boy or a girl is a really big deal to a lot of people. It determines the name you give, the color your paint the nursery, what clothes to buy, what fabrics your grandmother is going to use to make that quilt she wants to give to you. Sometimes it helps you plan whether you want to have more kids or not!

In my own personal journey, the only thing it’s going to influence is the name. Still, it’s nice to know what to expect!

Before we had blood tests and ultrasounds, we had sage older women who had seen it all and started to pick out some patterns. (Or the spiritual old women who believed a certain force existed depending if you were carrying a boy or a girl!) I’m going to break out a few grand sex-predicting traditions and apply them to my own experience. Let’s see what we find!

“So what is it?!”

“Do you know what you’re having yet?”

I’m holding out for a baby!

Kidding aside, I’m well aware this is a question about the sex of the baby. Bow or bowtie, Team Pink or Team Blue, touchdowns or tutus, rifles or ruffles, he or she?

I don’t care.

That said, it’s complicated.

On to the second trimester!

It’s now been 2 months since I last updated. Sorry about that!

Here’s what happened in bullet form:

Preconceived Notions

Pun fully intended.

I have very little first-hand experience with babies. I’m 30. My friend group has chosen to reproduce relatively late in life; the earliest just had her first last year (hi, Jessica, hi, Miles!). The second baby in my group — second — is due in July. I don’t have much close family, and I’m not very close to the few I do have. Suffice to say, what I get about babies, I get from TV, movies, and the internet.

I consider myself a well-read person. I am naturally skeptical so I try to do a lot of digging into what research I do find, too. The internet is a trove of information, though it may sometimes be light on “facts.” For every source saying A, you get another saying absolutely NEVER A. In the end, you just have to decide some things for yourself.

Before I’ve even had my first doctor’s appointment, I already have thoughts on how I want things to go for this pregnancy and the first few months with baby. I’m writing it down so I can laugh at it in 9 months.

How do I get to work?

My daily commute is about as uncomplicated as it could be. Turn right, turn right, get on the freeway, take the first exit, turn left, turn right, and park across the street from my building. It takes me about 20 minutes door-to-door, every day, and costs $2.50 in bridge toll and $5 in parking.

The trip home is also pretty simple: turn right, turn right, turn left, turn right, get on the freeway, stay on the 80, take the first exit, turn right, turn left, get home.

Cost per day: $7.50
Time spent: 40 minutes

Why is this so easy? Because I have a motorcycle.

First Appointment

Well, it was technically my first appointment. In practice, it was more like a phone orientation. My first real appointment is on June 1.

The phone call was a mini-avalanche of information. I’ll be getting another one of those at the appointment, of course, but this one was the “how we do things here at Kaiser” version. Appointments monthly for a while, then every 2 weeks when we get into the 3rd trimester, then weekly as we near the end. I’ll be seeing the same OB/GYN I saw for my regular female exams, except it turns out my primary care doctor participates in this new “group OB” thing that lets me do appointments in the second and early third trimesters with her. I like my primary care doc and barely know my OB/GYN, so this is great!

June 1 is an exciting appointment. They’ll confirm the due date – and do a preliminary ultrasound. There may be pictures. It’ll be really real. I think at that point I can tell family and close friends what’s going on.

One of the reasons I’m hesitant to tell anyone is that the miscarriage risk, even for an otherwise healthy and normal mother, is still in the ~25% range up until a heartbeat is confirmed. It drops to <5% by ~7 weeks, and down to 2% by 9 weeks.

June 1 will be just over 7 weeks.

Sprog is due January 15, 2017.

(I’m calling it Sprog for now.)

 

Snapshot

There are many things about children and pregnancy that people have opinions on. Quite frequently, they are diametrically opposed. Recently I came across this article which summarized current sleep training methods as taught in various books.

One thing that is nearly universal is that everything changes when there is a baby in the picture.

I don’t consider my life all that exciting. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t go to clubs or parties, I don’t really go much of anywhere. I can’t imagine how what I do day-to-day even has room to change, but I thought it might be interesting to put in a snapshot of my average day now and revisit it as things progress (and especially once the baby is here).

Monday, 7am

What is this?

I’m pregnant.

I want to write about it. Not just for myself, though I am a fan of journaling. I found some old diaries from high school; it was therapeutic to write, even though it was channeling angst into words. It was therapeutic to read, too, and realize how far I’ve come.

This is all new to me. My family is small so there weren’t any weddings or babies or even many funerals to expose me to those meaningful lifetime moments and shape my expectations. I’m a blank slate! But I’m a very anxious blank slate and I don’t like to enter new things unprepared.

There will be much reading. Much questioning of conventional wisdom, because how could I not? I think I’ll also be collecting things that capture my fancy and posting them on a regular basis. I’m a crafter and a sucker for a good project! I also have aspirations of better living. I can do better in the nutrition department, for example, so undoubtedly there will be recipes.

This is for me, but it is also for curious friends and family. I won’t make any promises one way or another on the level of TMI I anticipate, because I’ve noticed that pregnancy and childbirth and children all have a way of deleting most people’s filters, but I’ll do my best to keep it safe (or give a warning if it’s going to get gritty).

Here’s to a pregnant 2016!