Tag: Pregnancy

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Sometimes breaking the news of a pregnancy is really sweet. Sometimes it isn’t.

A Bun In The Oven and other horror stories There’s this sweet video of a young couple in a photo booth that’s been making the rounds. The man thinks he’s just there to snap some pictures and then the woman holds up a newborn hat with the word “baby” on it. He gets all weepy and there’s a lot of hugging (and it does go on, to be honest), and it’s clear that he is overwhelmed with joy and love.

Like I said, it’s a sweet video. Here it is in case you like that sort of thing.

It reminds me of the first time I told my husband I was pregnant.

I put a solitary bun in the oven before we sat down to eat. Then, during dinner, I exclaimed that I forgot something in the oven. Could he go get it?

He walked over, opened the oven door, took out the bun and placed it on the table without saying a word.

“It’s a bun in the oven,” I said.

“Yeah, I can see that,” he said. “I’m going for a walk.”

Then he left the apartment.

It was almost the same!

(Which goes to show you that you can be surprised, confused and even upset upon learning about a pregnancy and then go on to be a fantastic parent.)

Okay, let’s have them. What are your best “breaking the pregnancy” stories? You can share in the comments, on Facebook, Twitter or leave a link to your own blog. Whatever. It’s just for fun.

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Pregnancy and Feminism

Pregnancy in way of work

I would not have called myself a feminist before I had kids. I mean, I didn’t reject the idea either, I just didn’t think about it much. I thought Latin and philosophy and political science were sexier than women’s studies in university. (Yes, if you pick your major based on what is book-nerdishly sexy you run a significant risk of becoming a blogger.)

Mostly, though, being a girl had never held me back from anything. As a young woman born in Toronto, Canada in 1978, the idea that my sex would at all impact my career choices and trajectory (outside of professional athletics, say) was completely foreign to me. Globally, of course, I knew it was a different story. But for me? In my life? Sexual discrimination was a non-factor.

And then I became a mother.

No, first I got knocked up and freaked the hell out. Of course, I was happy and excited and all that stuff too. But beneath that glow of eager anticipation and seriously thick and shiny hair was the gut-wrenching apprehension that I was not in control anymore. My maternal imperative to provide a secure and stable environment for my baby was matched only by the increasingly suffocating realization that I might not be able to.

Don’t get me wrong, I was never in danger of becoming homeless or otherwise destitute. I had a husband and a strong family network to fall back on. But I, MYSELF, suddenly had doors slamming in my face everywhere I turned. Job mobility doesn’t exist while you’re pregnant; you cling to the one you have or get a new one quick-style before you start to show.

You’d be hard pressed (Sarah Palin and Marissa Mayer aside) to find a new job halfway through your pregnancy and even the job you have is on life support. You will either take a maternity leave and have your salary slashed at least in half in most cases or go back to work and instead spend half your pay on childcare or forego that silly childhood dream of a career and just stay home. I am not trying to belittle anyone’s choices. In fact, I’ve dabbled a bit in all those outcomes myself. My problem is that pregnancy made me feel like I had no choice.

All three times I have felt a bit trapped. I didn’t want to leave my husband, but what if I should want to all of a sudden? What if something happened? I simply couldn’t do it on my own. I was in a temporary state of forced dependence — on my husband, my parents, the welfare system … anyone but myself. It eased up by the time my baby was a few months to a year old. I regained a sense of control, began rediscovering an array of options.

But that first pregnancy (echoed by the second and third) was the first real inkling I had that my womanhood could hold me back.

This post on pregnancy and feminism was inspired by International Women’s Day. I think we’re good to keep talking about this stuff for more than one day, don’t you?

Did you feel the same sense of constraint and dependency during your pregnancies? Is this a commonly shared experience?

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Thank God That’s Not Me, I Mean Congratulations!

We left the kids with my mom and squealed off into the sunset. Did I say sunset? I meant the incredible traffic jam waiting to get into the Ontario Place parking lot for the Lady Antebellum  concert. It was insane and made all the more maddening by the fact that we weren’t even going to the concert. We were going to a wedding and, dammit, this was supposed to be the one wedding we actually made in time for the ceremony.

(That hour long Catholic mass that proceeded our wedding ceremony? A late comers dream. Your welcome.)

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The only photographic evidence of my night out: a picture I sent to my sister wondering if the shoes go with the dress. Still waiting on the answer.

We eventually made it up to the roof of Atlantis in time to catch the better part of a lovely wedding ceremony, Lake Ontario and the relics of Ontario Place in the background and the Toronto skyline soaring above it all. All of this was set to the sweet strains of Lady Antebellum’s opening act covering Zeppelin. Ah, serendipity. Or something.

The point is that it was a lovely wedding filled with lovely people. Some of those people were even aglow with the shiny dew of pregnancy, swollen feet barely contained by practical flats, sipping soda water, steering clear of the sushi and wondering when they might be able to escape to their beds. Oh, the miracle of new life. Thank god that’s not me, I thought.

One woman even had her four month old with her, snuggled up against her chest for hours on end. Being jiggled and wriggled and bounced in his stroller. Being passed around and swaddled and paced with and still, he did not sleep. Thank god that’s not me.

My youngest baby is nine months old which means I can finally go out for an evening without worrying about leaky breasts. I can enjoy a couple drinks and can start working toward staying in the same dress size for more than a few months. If ever there were any doubt that three is plenty of kids for us (and there have been fleeting moments of lunacy, it’s true), then Saturday night has put them to rest.

Are you having a baby? Good for you. But I think I’m done.

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Calm Before the Storm

I think I’m approaching a place — if not quite of zen-like serenity — of at least calm acceptance and lessening anxiety. [Oh god, there are not one, but two flies in this office. They keep landing on my hands as I type and buzzing around my face and I cannot manage to swat them. Om.] Partially, this is because I’m 35 weeks tomorrow which is really the home stretch, so I had bloody-well start accepting things.

Part of it is because we have managed to clear out and paint the third bedroom and located most of our newborn apparatuses (apparati?). I’ve also been relieved of the bulk of my paid work which kind of sucks because there goes the bulk of my income. But it’s also kind of a relief because I no longer have to worry about working ahead and figuring out how to cram a newborn into my already hectic WAHM schedule. This means I’ll have most of September to seriously clean, organize, nest and otherwise get ready for baby. (It also means I’ll be posting more here and including more PR and sponsored posts — heads up! — and writing more elsewhere too, eventually.)

I think part of it is also that I’ve been feeling better. There are still aches and pains, but the alarming, mobility-robbing pains I was having in my pelvis throughout the second half of my second trimester are much less severe. This could just be because I’ve been trying to do less and have learned what will cause a flare up and what helps with one. Who knows? Or maybe knowing that the birth is around the corner means I’m less concerned about coping with achy ligaments and trick hips for a just few more weeks.

I’ve even taken the time to sit quietly at night and feel the baby moving and squirming and kicking me in the ribs. (Either that or punching me; we’re not a hundred per cent sure if this babe’s head down yet.) I’m trying to relish these last weeks and days of being pregnant, looking down in awe at how my body has accommodated a growing baby and more than a few extra pounds of maternal fat stores. I’m anticipating what it will be like to hold a newborn baby once again and enjoying watching the older kids get more and more excited as the due date nears. This will likely be the last time I get to do this, so it’s nice to be able to live in the moment.

35 weeks. We're all just pretending now that my shirt meets my pants, okay?
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The Baby’s Coming Fret List

I’ve got a checklist a mile long to get through in the next three months. I have to reach for a paper bag just typing that. I’m having a baby in three months and I don’t even know where my Moby Wrap is or my breast pump or any of the baby clothes. And what about a snowsuit? Won’t it need a snowsuit?!

Still, through the power of obsessive fretting, I have managed to cross a couple biggies off my list lately.

Number 1, the car seat. Yes, my dear friends, I figured out how to squeeze three car seats across. Behold:

I especially love how when I shared this picture on Facebook all the mothers of three were astounded. My husband, on the other hand, doesn’t quite seem to understand the feat of engineering involved. Engineering and hours of internet research on which brands of car seats would fit best. From left to right you have the original Britax Marathon that we bought for Colum and Irene now uses — it’s huge. Then there’s a Sunshine Kids Radian, the slimmest car seat on the market, and a Chicco Keyfit, among the skinniest infant bucket seats. It’s a tight squeeze and replacing the Marathon with another Radian or a booster seat was my contingency plan if this didn’t fit. I may try putting the bucket seat in the middle so I can recline the driver’s seat a tad more, but I’m afraid it will be too snug to snap the bucket seat in and out of the base easily. Whatever, it’s done!

Number 2, air conditioning. Do you remember last summer? Do you? Because I do. I remember day after day, week after week, of unbearable heat. There was just no break. You can usually count on a couple weeks worth of serious heat wave in a Toronto July, but last year it was the whole month and August, too. The main floor of my house was a warm and sticky mess and I mostly just flopped around barely able to function. The second floor was like the furnace of hell. We put our one portable air conditioner in the kid’s bedroom and ran it overnight and sprawled out ourselves before a multitude of fans. Never again, I said. Never again. That brings us to this summer, during which I will be enjoying the third trimester of my third pregnancy, and we still had no a/c! Until yesterday. Cue the angels singing, please.

Now I only have to get Colum to the dentist and the doctor, get Ed to get his driver’s license so that I am not the only chauffeur this family has, clean out all the junk in the basement “office” (including a fridge and a stove), move all the actual office stuff from the unfinished third bedroom upstairs, finish the bloody room and figure out what baby gear I have and where it is. Why do they not put GPS’s on Moby Wraps?!

Oh, and I have to do all of this while taking care of my other two kids (remember them?) full time and doubling the number of work hours I put in from home so that I might get ahead enough to actually take a couple of months off when this bambino arrives.

And I get to be very pregnant while I do it.  That means that on top of being tired and slow, I will also be completely irrational and you will likely find me on my hands and knees meticulously cleaning under the stove instead. Because of course.

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Pizza Party Pooper

Today was Pizza Day at Colum’s school. I love Pizza Day with all my heart because it means I don’t have to make him lunch at 11:15am since he’ll eat when he gets to school.

So my plan was to walk Colum to the bus stop and then continue into the Junction to pick up pizza slices from Vesuvios for Irene and I. How could this plan possibly fail me?

Well, as we were walking together and pushing the empty stroller, I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my abdomen. It must be gas, I thought, but boy did it hurt. It also seemed to have triggered a Braxton Hicks contraction and I felt my entire midsection tighten up. I had to stop walking until it passed. We then continued around the corner when it happened again: a sharp stabbing accompanied by a tightening sensation. This time I actually knelt on the sidewalk while waiting for it to pass. Irene knelt down beside me.

This couldn’t be a contraction, could it? Nah. I’m only 22 weeks along. The baby’s not even viable yet. I always go into labour at 39.5 weeks, everybody knows that. Even if it does turn out to be something, I thought, the midwives and doctors will be able to stop it. Sure. There’s no reason to panic . . . unless I have to go on bed rest! Who would take care of the kids then? We would be so utterly and completely screwed.

I pulled myself together and tried to continue walking again when I felt a familiar urge. “Irene, get in the stroller because we need to go home right away. Mommy needs to poo.”

Ahem. So yeah, everything’s fine. No contractions, no labour, no bed rest. Just some killer gas pains/bowel movement and ill-timed Braxton Hicks.

But, alas, no pizza for me.

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It’s A Baby!

I finally had my 20-week anatomical scan last Friday and it’s good news all around. There is one (singular) baby residing in my womb who scored straight normals on all counts. Seriously. Head shape: normal; profile: normal; abdominal wall: normal; genitalia: normal. I hope this kid knows that this is the last time it will get away with pulling this average crap. Not one excellent on the entire page. Pshaw.

The truth is, though, that I still cannot get over the fact that there is a little human in there. This is my third baby and my fourth ultrasound and I still do a double take the first time the tech says, “There’s your baby.” I don’t know what exactly I’m expecting. By 20 weeks I know it’s not going to look like a tadpole anymore, but I still think it’s going to be some sort of sea monkey-type creature. But no! It’s a human baby. Only one human baby and a healthy-looking one at that. Fucking A, as they say.

We didn’t find out the gender, of course, because everyone knows only the weak and morally inferior need to know their baby’s sex. *Break to guzzle Coca Cola and unwrap my second McDonald’s cheeseburger.*Burp. As I was saying, I’m still kind of in denial about this whole third kid thing and finding out the sex is just bound to make it all feel so much more real and imminent — which it is not! This pregnancy is scheduled to continue for at least another four months and I intend to enjoy our mutual anonymity while it lasts.

Oh, here’s the glamour shot:

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Mother’s Day and More

It says: "Mommy," at the top and that teensy picture is me. Then it says, "I love you."

This was the best Mother’s Day so far, mostly because Colum was so incredibly jazzed about it. He worked on a special surprise card for two days at school and kept talking about breakfast in bed all week. (Do you know how hard it is to eat cereal and sip coffee in bed with two kids bouncing around on it? Yes, of course you do.)

Here is the card:

It says: "Mommy," at the top and that teensy picture is me. Then it says, "I love you."
"... because you let me watch tv." As pictured.

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This was apparently a popular reason for loving your mom in Colum’s JK class. At least I didn’t get, “because you let me play video games.” Mean anti-video game position vindicated!

And as long as I’m uploading pictures … here’s a solid month’s worth.

My friend Helena suggested I do a compare and contrast, reconstruction kind of thing with old pictures of Irene’s pregnancy. I thought it was a good idea and took a couple shots at 17.5 weeks. I am now 19.5 weeks, but better late than never, right?

Colum and I about three years ago.
Here we are at 17.5 weeks now.

And more shots from that same day:


And because it’s feast or famine with photos here at Playground Confidential, here are some random shots of us at the beach yesterday evening.

And, finally, with all due respect to Charlie Sheen, THIS smile means winning.

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13 Weeks (and 4 days)

And we have a heartbeat!

I figured I should probably just cut to the chase since I’ve left you all hanging for four days after finally hearing the heartbeat. I blame my husband; you should too. (WINKING! Totally winking here. The guy’s been working his butt off lately which just means less time and energy for me to do what really matters: blogging.)

After much waffling and foot shuffling, I finally decided that I should pop in for another listen. Hearing that several women I know have had missed miscarriages late in their first trimester was definitely an influencing factor. So was a friend just saying,”Go!” So I dropped the kids off with my parents last Thursday morning, figuring I’d probably have to wait around for a while and then I’d go in for my monthly blood draw at the lab.

Instead, my midwife saw me right away and found a crystal clear heartbeat in less than 30 seconds. It took longer to walk from the car. (Mostly because I refuse to pay for parking, but still.) What a relief! Now I no longer have to wonder if every tummy rumble and gas bubble is the baby moving or if I’m simply losing my mind. I can relax and let that first definite movement be a wonderful surprise.

I’ve also taken to squeezing into my regular jeans for as long as I can, which seems to make me feel less huge. So I’m not stressing about twins any more. We’ll find out eventually, but there’s really no good reason to worry. So all’s well and good in the pregnancy department, despite my tricky hip and lowered bladder capacity.

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Obsess Much?

Ok, I’m starting to obsess.

I thought I was alright until last night when I sat down to finish an hour or two’s worth of work after putting the kids to bed at 8:30. Cue 11pm and I still have yet to write a sentence because I’m too busy googling “no heartbeat with doppler at 12 weeks” and “missed miscarriages.” Did you know that it’s possible for your baby’s heart to stop and not have any symptoms of a miscarriage for weeks? Then I started to wonder if I even feel pregnant anymore. I mean, I do feel better. But then again, that’s what the second trimester does for you anyway.

I was pretty much just planning on waiting until my 16 week appointment to hear the heartbeat. I already waited all this time, right? What’s the difference? I certainly look pregnant. Of course, given that this is my third pregnancy, the chances are pretty good that I’ll be able to feel the baby move by then anyway. So the heartbeat will be no big deal. So … do I continue to obsess for another couple weeks or do I drag my ass back to my midwife to try again on Thursday morning? And if I don’t hear it again? It’s still early, so I continue to obsess for another week or two. Ugh.

(Yes, I could have scheduled a 12 week ultrasound, but I decided just to do the one at 20 weeks instead and you need to book these things weeks in advance. If, by 16 weeks, there’s still no heartbeat with the doppler then I’d be sent to an emergency ultrasound clinic.)

And did I mention that I’m huge? I’ve always shown my pregnancies fairly early and carried all my weight right up front in my belly, so that’ s not really anything new. When I was about six months along with Irene an elderly woman who lived in the apartment building I was working at stopped to argue with me about my due date. I simply could not have another three months to go; that was impossible; I was too big. Unless, that is, I was carrying twins.

Twins. Yep. I also filled up my Google search bar with queries like, “early signs of twins,” “12 week twin belly pics,” and “no heartbeat 12 weeks twin pregnancy.” Now, let’s get this straight: I’m not having twins. No way, no how, unh-uh. First of all, I’m always big. Maybe not quite this big, but I went into this pregnancy with a few extra pounds to begin with and, hello, it’s my third freaking pregnancy. I also have no history of twins in my family whatsoever which lowers the odds of naturally conceiving fraternal twins. And identical twins are really quite rare. (Thanks, Google.) But everywhere I turn people are talking about twins.

First, the med student at my endocrinology and pregnancy clinic wanted to confirm how many babies I was expecting. Huh? I was eight weeks pregnant, how could I know? Then Rebecca Woolf from Girls Gone Child who just announced her third pregnancy found out that she was indeed expecting twins. People started misspelling “baby’s” as “babies” and suddenly half the people I talked to seemed to have twins. Out of the friggin blue my husband and my mother-in-law separately told me that it would be nice to have twins. Then Colum comes padding into my bedroom the other morning talking about Jojo and Robin. Who? Jojo, I knew, is the name he’s given the baby, but Robin was new because he decided it was going to be twins. And did I mention just how big I am?

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I didn’t get a chance to finish this post earlier today and I must say that I feel somewhat less crazy and obsessed. I might pop in for another stab at the heartbeat Thursday, or I might not. I’ll see how I feel. The odds of my having twins (and not being able to hear either baby’s heartbeat!) is astronomically small. I’m pretty sure I’m still pregnant according to my sticky right hip, the massive zit on my chin, my ginormous belly and even bigger appetite. And I almost started crying just watching Irene watch TV earlier today.

Anyway, I’ve found a new obsession to fuel my procrastination yet. Gardening! (Like I may plant some basil and rhubarb, maybe.)