Futile moaning.

My biggest problem at the moment is telling people at school. I'm basically committing High Blasphemy against the God of Academia by quitting grad school to go have babies, and most of the people in my department are both extreme feminists and very dismissive of all non-academic pursuits, so I am really nervous about telling people. I've told a couple of friends, who reacted well enough, and I told the person in charge of teaching assignments that I wouldn't be back next semester (but didn't tell her why), so I'm not completely in the closet, but I still need to tell the head of graduate studies and the guy in charge of my particular field of study.

It's the last one that I'm most worried about. I'm a Germanic medievalist, and there aren't many of us around. At my school, there are four of us right now, which is great because it means we can almost fill any class we want to have (five students are required for a class, so we only need to dig up one more). Unfortunately, one of us is graduating this semester and I'm leaving, so that leaves the medievalists with only two students, which means they're kind of at the mercy of the department, so my leaving hurts the program in a very real way.

It doesn't help that the very first day I met this guy he told me about a promising female student that he had who quit to 'go be her husband's wife.' So I've got a feeling he's not going to be particularly pleased with my news.

Aside from the awkwardness involved in telling people, I am actually not upset at all to be leaving. I've been in school for close to a decade (and for practically no reason - there are no jobs out there for Germanic medievalists), and I am incredibly sick of it. It'll be nice to join the real world, and it'll be especially nice to quit doing the long-distance thing and go settle down with Noah (although, with him being in the Navy and all, I can't realistically expect this to be the last time we'll be apart). And, to be perfectly honest, I will be delighted to stop being surrounded by ridiculous intellectual types. I know technically I'm one of them, but they really get on the nerves after a while...

And who knows, maybe after things settle down I'll even have enough time to bake some decent pie again. I miss my oven.

Move along, no baby stuff to see here.

Bruce snoozes happily, if a bit awkwardly.



Bruce becomes aware that he is under observation.



Bruce discovers who is watching.



Bruce attempts to register his dismay.



Bruce sulks childishly.

Three things which are not awesome about being in the Family Way.

1. Waking up two hours before the alarm goes off every morning due to reduced bladder capacity.

2. Being out of breath after a single flight of stairs.

3. Dry-heaving every time I cough. Seriously.

A bit of record-keeping.

How far along? 9 weeks, 1 day
Total weight gain/loss: Up 4 pounds, bah.
Maternity clothes? Nope, but a few skirts are getting a bit tight. Not sure if that's Buckethead or Jimmy John's, though.
Stretch marks? Heh. I've had stretch marks on the boobs since I was 12. No new ones anywhere, though.
Sleep: 12 hours a day, hallelujah.
Best moment this week: Discovering how delicious cheerios are.
Movement: Nein.
Food cravings: Anything greasy.
Gender: No clue.
Labor Signs: Nej.
Belly Button in or out? In, and it better stay that way.
What I miss: Not being sick.
What I am looking forward to: This week being over so I can sleep all weekend. What's that? You mean to tell me it's only Tuesday? *sob*
Weekly Wisdom: More sleeping, less thinking.
Milestones: Very nearly throwing up on the bus yesterday. Excitement!

9 weeks tomorrow!

One inch long and looking like a malevolent gummy bear...



Just kidding, Buckethead. I'm sure you're adorable, in all your slimy googly-eyed-ness.

Doctors. Eek.*

I got there about an hour early because I wasn't sure how long it would take to get there. This left me sitting in the waiting room for about fifty minutes watching a million pregnant ladies wander past and wondering if I'm going to get that huge. Survey says: most likely. :(

Then! Ultrasound. Turns out that at this early period (7 weeks, 4 days at that point) you can't get the nice friendly belly ultrasound. Instead they have to be all intrusive and do a transvaginal ultrasound, which meant I had to take off everything on the bottom. The tech said I could just pull my skirt up instead if I wanted, but that sounded a little too back-of-the-station-wagon for my tastes, so I opted for partial nudity instead.

It actually wasn't bad at all, besides the freezing cold goo they lubed it up with. It wasn't even noticeable once it was in, and I was too distracted looking at stuff anyway. They looked around to see how many babbies there were in there (just one, hallelujah glory be), and they checked out my ovaries (nondescript, but one has a kick-ass fibroid, apparently). And I got to hear a hearbeat. 161 beats per minute, apparently, which is nice and healthy. ("My son has a strong heart!" said Noah, in a fit of manly chest-beating.)



The ultrasound tech thought this one was particularly cute. I suppose she is correct, if you find nondescript cell-blobs to be adorable, which apparently I do, since I got all teary-eyed.

After all this, I got to go to the nurse and tell her all the sordid details of my medical history. This mostly consisted of her listing diseases and me saying "No. Nope. Huh uh." Then I got a huge packet of information on what to eat and not eat, and what medicine will kill Buckethead and what won't, and how not to screw everything up in general.

Lastly, blood. Lots of it. They took six vials. They had the door to the blood-taking room open, so I had the pleasure of watching the guy before me go first. It was this big tall Somali gent with the hat and robes and everything, and he was a complete baby about it. The nurse practically had to restrain him. I was very proud afterwards when I only had to be told to relax about four times and otherwise did not humiliate myself.

And that is all. I'm going to meet the midwife on November 5, when I will be almost 11 weeks along, and probably I'll get another ultrasound then. Hopefully by that point Buckethead will have some cool limbs to gawk at.

*Actually I saw no doctors, just an ultrasound technician and a nurse. They were both very nice though.

7 weeks tomorrow.

And it's finally starting to feel real. Or maybe that's just because I've finally got some morning sickness, I have to pee every three minutes, and (TMI - look away!) my boobs hurt like hell. More minor symptoms include crazy cravings/aversions, weird yet apparently normal cramping/pulling sensations in the lower abdomen, and a superhero sense of smell. Fortunately I haven't actually gained any weight yet - I'm trying to keep that under control. I've got an unfortunate tendency to think: "Hmm. I want ice cream. That means baby wants ice cream! Baby shall have ice cream."

Buckethead is getting enormous, if supermarket blueberries are enormous. At least he's visible to the naked eye now, which is always a plus. Apparently he looks approximately like so:

Which is, frankly, terrifying. I mean, really. Arms and legs? Hilarious webbed toes? What's next, a beating heart? Oh wait, he's already got that.

Crazy.

Babies are jerks.

Or halfway-developed embryos, as the case may be.

I haven't been having any morning sickness, but I've been having food cravings and aversions like mad. Yesterday they got combined into one. I got home from school and could not think about anything except eating a delicious crunchy sweet wonderful apple. So I found myself an apple, and bit into it, and it was amazing. And then two bites later the aversion kicked in and suddenly there was nothing on earth that sounded more revolting and horrifying than a horrible disgusting apple, and I just about threw up all over myself, since I was in the midst of eating it.

Not cool, Buckethead.

Scary.

So I've got my first doctor's appointment for *gasp* the baaaaby. It's Friday, October 15, so I'll be about 8 weeks along. Ish. That's 20% done, which seems like an awful lot. Apparently I'll be getting an ultrasound, so I'll hopefully have a lovely black and white picture of a blob to post. Maybe I'll get to hear a heartbeat too. That would be really awesome (might make it seem real), but they can't always do it that early, so I will try not to hold my breath.

On the downside, they'll also be sucking out a ridiculous amount of my blood for various tests. Last time I had blood drawn, it took three nurses to distract me and hold my arm down so one could do it. I'm hoping I've got a little more self-control this time.

Maybe it'll only take two nurses.

Codename: Buckethead

Holy shit.