blind insight

Waiting for Crusher.

Maternity leave is fun! At least, maternity leave without a baby to care for is fun, filled with leisurely lunches, late morning walks, piddling around the internet, and playing mah johngg with my mom's friends. I suspect that a few weeks of this would drive me bonkers, but the last few days of rest and relaxation have done wonders for my stress level and have me feeling mentally and physically ready for Crusher to turn my world upside down.

Things wrapped up nicely at work, with my docket well under control for the next few months. I'm monitoring my cases and intend to continue to do so (though certainly with less zeal and obsessive frequency, I'm sure), and have already dashed off some client correspondence from afar. I'm trying to keep the lawyer part of my brain functioning even while the mommy part kicks in. We'll see how that goes.

And now, the real waiting game begins. My brother and I cooperatively arrived quite early, as did my nephews and most of my cousins. Crusher seems to be on a slightly more leisurely schedule, apparently taking after Daddy's side of the family. At D-day minus 4, my doctor says everything looks optimal for labor and delivery, but I have yet to experience any real contractions. Once we get some of those going, the show should be well on the road.

This is one of the most surreal experiences I've ever had. Right now, I have an enormous belly, from which strange, angular protrusions emerge throughout the day, along with assorted minor aches. At any given moment, all of this could shift into acute labor pains, followed (hopefully quickly and with little ado - a girl can dream, anyway) by the arrival of an ENTIRE BABY, who will come home and live with us. So weird.

And so thrilling. I've spent most of my pregnancy actively forbidding myself to imagine how labor and delivery will unfold, or to develop expectations for what my child will be like. For a control freak planner like me, this is probably excellent training for parenthood. But now that L&D&baby are almost here, I'm just itching - tingling - with anticipation, and so, so curious to finally know how it's all going to happen.

I'll keep you posted!

As promised.

I present, The Crusher-Belly, in various stages of rotundity.

Here, to assuage my vain side (and hopefully motivate me to get back into shape post-partum), is the baseline belly, at 4 weeks gestation:

Towards the end of the first trimester, at 12 weeks, things started pooching out a wee bit.

By 18 weeks, the belly was starting to take on a life of its own (and around the same time, Crusher started making his or her presence known to me on a regular basis, providing both reassurance and entertainment)

A few weeks later, we headed to Roatan, but you've already seen the floating-belly photos. Here's one from the week before we left (and documenting my failed attempt to turn Steve's shorts into maternity attire).

At 27 weeks, I was still climbing, but not for much longer. By this point, I was a pretty pathetically comical sight on the walls, limited by size, strength, and lung capacity to only the easiest routes.

Which brings us to the present, 32 weeks and counting.I I'm feeling LARGE now - slow and heavy and hot, particularly as we head into our umpteenth consecutive day of temperatures in the 90s.

But for the most part, I still feel really good, and I'm trying to stay as active as my body says it can tolerate, with a mix of moderate walking, swimming, and yoga. Crusher continues entertain us constantly with the belly-shaking antics of its baby disco routine. I feel so very lucky to be having this experience!

If you'd like to see the complete set of belly photos, they are here. Any guesses as to Crusher's boyness or girlness (or other qualities) that these photos motivate you to hazard may be memorialized in the comments. I may try to create some sort of baby-stats-guessing pool, if I can figure out how.

For what it's worth, Steve and I really have no idea as to the baby's sex. Steve's baby dreams have had me birthing everything from four-year-old twins to a very cute kitten, and now seem to be leaning girlward. My own, relatively few dreams on the subject have involved either boy-babies or cats. Since the ultrasound photos are decidedly un-feline, the fact that both of us are dreaming of cat-babies probably has more to do with our familiarity with that particular species of small, mewling creature, dependent upon us for food, snuggles, and poop management.

As for the VisionWalk, we are already nearing $5,000, almost a third of the way to our ambitious fundraising goal. Several folks have asked me for more specifics about the FFB's research that may be relevant to my situation, and I will try to post something about that soon. Thanks to everyone who has given already!

We can never sell this house.

Steve and I are fortunate to have a house with quite a few bedrooms. The kitchen is tiny, the floor plan is broken up inefficiently, but for purposes of creating space for a baby to come live with us, we're in good shape.

Steve's wonderful parents came to visit us for 10 days, and are helping us turn the basement into an exercise/entertainment area and the current exercise/entertainment room into a nursery. I spent the first couple of days of their visit in a panic, as it seemed that rooms were getting demolished more than remodeled and the list of Things To Do grew ever longer. Steve finally talked me off the ledge, and reminded me that (a) doing it yourself is a lot more satisfying (not to mention cheaper) than hiring a professional; (b) doing it yourself means it will take twice as long as you anticipate, and will involve three times as many swear words; and (c) the baby won't care if the basement isn't finished by August. At that point, I decided to relax, let go of my control-freaky tendencies, and let the Freiburgers work their home improvement magic.

The results have exceeded my wildest expectations. Sure, the simple utility sink in the laundry room took almost a week to install. But the stylish new lights now turn on (and off!), the drywall is almost completely hung, and the basement is slowly turning into a wonderful new functional space in our house, rather than simply a repository for boxes and beer-making equipment.

And the real masterpiece is upstairs. For months, Steve has been musing about creating a mural depicting a scene from "Where The Wild Things Are." We both adore Maurice Sendak's magical illustrations, and loved the idea of bringing the wild rumpus into Crusher's room. But one of us (and that would be the pregnant, cranky, control-freaky one) thought that it would just be too much to undertake painting an intricate mural in the midst of basement remodeling, floor refinishing, and furniture relocating (not to mention gestating). But Steve insisted that it could be done, and promised that, while it might take him most of the next three months, he would have the mural finished by the time Crusher makes his or her appearance. And so, I relented, figuring I could always paint over the partially completed mural if necessary.

My mother-in-law and I painted the room a happy, bright sky blue base color. Then, using a technique I learned from some of my imaginary internet friends, we used an overhead projector to beam transparencies of the appropriate WTWTA pages onto the wall. On Tuesday, my mom and Steve's worked together to trace the images onto the wall, and then spent the rest of the week painting them.

They took some liberties with the colors to make them more nursery-friendly and to mesh better with the overall room color (and to dress one of the creatures in Packers garb), and they improvised a bit on the grass and the trees.

They embellished Max's crown with rhinestones, and his pajamas with buttons:

And they finished the whole darn thing.

This morning, apparently having spent most of the night thinking about the mural, my mom called with an idea. What if we carried the treetops around the rest of the room, to create a unified border? Steve and I approved, and Eileen was willing to make it happen.

This finishing touch really pulls the whole room together!

With the mural completed, Steve is now free to spend the next three months drywalling the basement reading up on baby care climbing and cycling. More important, it gives us a one-of-a-kind nursery, filled with tangible evidence of Crusher's grandmothers' amazing talents, and their great love for this little person-to-be. I'm so, so glad I didn't talk them out of doing it.

Reassurance.

My recent post detailing my fears about parenting with vision loss brought a great many readers out of lurkdom. I received many e-mails and comments from people with blindness who are happily and successfully parenting, from people better connected to disability resources than I am, from women dealing with similar vision loss issues who are not yet, but hope to be, moms, and from sighted parents offering tips and encouragement.

Thank you all so, so much. By the time I finished reading everything you sent me or linked me to, I was having trouble remembering why I was so freaked about this issue.

That reading, and considerable further obsessing musing on the subject of "parenting blindly" (as one correspondent so aptly put it), led me to a few conclusions. First, parenting is scary, and every parent has his or her own set of demons to confront and obstacles to overcome. Second, I've been adapting to the realities of my vision loss for decades, now, and have managed to make all sorts of different situations work just fine for me. There's no reason to think the same won't be true of parenthood, or that trial-and-error, creativity, and flexibility won't lead us to a successful system. And third, I'm not in this alone. I have a wonderful, supportive partner who not only has perfect hearing and vision, but also manages to stay much, much calmer than I do in all situations not involving Wisconsin sports teams. I also have my amazing parents just across town, ready, willing, and able to provide all sorts of much-needed assistance. In short, I'm feeling optimistic, and lucky.

I also anticipate that there will be some scary moments along the way, not just of the usual new-parent variety, but specifically associated with my vision and/or my hearing. I'm trying to make peace with them in advance, so that they don't undermine my confidence in my own parenting abilities at the most vulnerable (that is, uncertain and sleep-deprived) moments. I'll try to chronicle them here, for personal posterity and in case they might give comfort to some other visually impaired mom or dad down the road.

For now, Crusher continues to thrive. I'm still experiencing the Bizarro Pregnancy, in which my second trimester has brought continual nausea and fatigue, after an easy-peasy first tri. However, I'm still having a fairly easy time of it, and my doctor has diagnosed mild anemia that may be the source of the unpleasantness. We saw the critter again on Friday, jiving around and taking great big gulps of amniotic fluid.

Here are a couple of admittedly hard-to-see photos. I think the kid has my chin, but can't tell yet whether it has my (long, thin, crossed) toes.

Crusher is a teetotaller.

Cautioned by the growing body of medical research on the effects of alcohol on fetal development, and the continuing uncertainty about how much alcohol it takes to produce negative effects, I abstained entirely from the Demon Rum during my first trimester. But at 13 weeks, we were enjoying a wonderful Chinese New Year celebration with friends, and I decided to usher in the second tri with a half-glass of wine.

It tasted delicious, as did the hot-pot. But later that night, I experienced my very first puke of the pregnancy.

I chalked it up to excessive protein consumption, since my gestational diet has consisted mostly of carbs, cheese, and avocadoes. The following week, after many hours of riding in the backseat of a small car en route to Northern Wisconsin, I puked again, though rather less intensely.

Last night, when Sasha and I met up after work, I was very much looking forward to a little vino. I asked the bartender for something smooth and not-too-full-bodied, and he complied with a delicious red, the provenance of which I didn't quite catch. The wine was soothing and delicious, and it felt wonderful to sit and chat and sip. When we moved on to dinner, I made a point of not overeating, and kept the protein consumption to a minimum.

To no avail. I barely made it home in time to vomit violently and copiously.

I'm not a big drinker even when I'm not growing a person, so it may be that my already low alcohol tolerance has dwindled to zero over the past fifteen weeks. But I'm thinking that Crusher is sending a message - lay off the sauce, mommy.

What's keeping me awake at night.

Progress in my uterus continues apace, as I remain exceedingly grateful for this relatively uneventful and comfortable pregnancy. Above the neck, however, things are anything but tranquil.

I've been spending a lot of time wondering how in the world we're going to make this work. I'm sure we can figure out the child-care situation and the work-family balance thing, although it will mean fewer impulsive gear purchases, exotic vacations, and nice restaurant dinners for a while. I'm also sure - or at least reasonably confident - that we will find ways to maintain our beloved athletic pursuits, spend time with our kid-less friends, and even relax on the couch from time to time. Perhaps I'm delusional, but this part of adapting to Life With Baby doesn't worry me so much.

But trying to figure out how we're going to manage all of this with only one parent who drives? And wondering how I'm going to avoid hurting my kid due to my vision loss (given how frequently I injure myself, however inconsequentially)? That has me scared shitless.

My hearing isn't troubling me. The CI has brought me almost to a normal level of hearing, and between that and the ready availability of lighted and vibrating alert systems, I don't expect my hearing loss to pose much of a hurdle in parenting. True, I can't understand much of what your average toddler says, but can anyone?

My vision, though? Hoo-boy. We're investigating nanny versus day-care options, and trying to weigh the dollar differences against the reality that only one of us will be able to do pick-ups and drop-offs in most circumstances. Not to mention transportation to doctor's appointments, play-dates, and kiddie activities. The bus system in Boulder is great, but it only goes so far, and I'm not entirely sure it's safe to take a newborn in a baby-bucket on the bus (anyone know?). Cabs will provide another option from time to time, but are available in these parts only on a slow, inconvenient, and expensive call-in basis (and, again, we have the safety issue).

And we haven't even begun to explore how we can protect the baby from any harm that might come to it because its mother walks into and trips over stuff a lot. I have no idea how I'm going to handle a stroller in crowded conditions, or how I'm going to walk home safely with the baby after dark, particularly given that I can only make it from the bike path to my front door by walking part-way in the street and doing my damndest not to trip over the branches, garbage cans, and other obstacles that frequently mar the sidewalk on our block. And how will I handle night-time feedings without having to turn on the lights to safely handle the baby, thereby waking the poor thing and probably destroying Steve's and my chances of getting a bit of sleep ourselves?

Part of me is sure we'll figure all of this out, through trial and (hopefully not too damaging) error. Part of me thinks I'm making too much of my disability's impact on parenting. But another part of me is filled with fear and uncertainty.

I guess I need to investigate resources for new parents with disabilities. I do hope that someone out there has not only dealt with the issues that worry me, but has memorialized their experiences and solutions in print or in cyberspace.

The big reveal.

The real reason I've been such a negligent blogger is that I wasn't ready to share the thing that has been dominating much of my brain space for the past few months. The time feels right, now, to do so.

Assuming that all continues to go well, somewhere around August 26, Steve and I will become parents. That's right - we're having a baby!

Our road to parenthood has been marred by a few bumps and potholes, including an early miscarriage last spring and what turned out to be a readily fixable issue that was preventing a subsequent "sticky" pregnancy. As these things go, though, we have been fairly fortunate.

While we're on the subject of luck, I've been blessed thus far with a relatively easy first trimester, free of puking and marked by only a few truly unpleasant days of nausea and ickiness. We can only hope that Crusher* goes as easy on us in its first three months on the outside as it has during the three it has spent inside.

I've been staying fairly active, with swimming and cross-country skiing and cycling on the trainer and doing some light weights/pilates.  Even on the days when I feel worst, I'm trying to get some light exercise, since it seems to alleviate my nausea far more effectively than saltines or ginger tea.

On Friday, we saw Crusher doing its own little workout, waving its little arms and legs about in an adorable baby jive. Clearly, the kid is a natural athlete, just like its daddy, and has inherited the musical genes from its mommy's side that must have skipped a generation.

Plenty more on this subject to follow, I'm sure. Right now, I'm feeling a tad vulnerable about revealing the state of my uterus to cyberspace.

*Steve bestowed this cute and cuddly utero-name on the critter very early in its gestation. I like its gender-neutrality (no, we are not planning to find out the sex before the birth), and the sense of invincibility it projects.