non-maternity maternity clothes

sometimes maternity clothes are super cute, and sometimes they seemed to be designed to make you look even more beastly than you already feel.

i got pretty lucky, in that i was able to get a lot of maternity clothes from my sister and from shamu's cousin, so i bought very few clothes at all for ever-burgeoning baby monster.* i've found a few non-maternity items that i've been able to wear all the way up until now (39 weeks and 6 days!). this may have been easier for me to pull off because i have a high-riding baby who doesn't happen to stick out as much. and, i have to confess, it was fun for momma to buy something for herself once or twice and not feel like she is totally wasting money.

things that happened to work for me:

1. knit tops from anthropologie: most of these tops are cut A-line and/or have an empire waist, and are pretty long. so they're stretchy, comfortable, look nice and can cover up the belly for quite a while. (i had already owned some from the clearance rack before becoming preggers.)

2. ribbed tank tops from the gap: again, the length is key. when i'm lounging at home like a sweaty bloated whale (which is a lot, these days), i usually wearing one of these tank tops and shamu's boxer shorts.

3. tankini bathing suit: i found that several "maternity" bathing suits were essentially a large skirt-like tank on top, which is fine for going in the pool but too much material if you actually want to swim. i ended up getting a suit one size larger than one i would normally wear, which did a good job with coverage for both the boobs and the belly. (and i got it for $20 off the clearance rack at Target, sweet).

4. knit A-line skirts from American Apparel: i bought two of these a couple years ago. unfortunately i don't think they sell them any more, but the large stretchy waistband and A-line cut are the keys. good for hotter weather and easier to deal with you have a full bladder and you are making a mad dash to the toilet because you are about to sneeze.

5. stretchy knit dresses in a bigger size: baby doll, wrap, and even a black number from a store that i have never shopped in before (Martin + Osa) and i am absolutely sure that in a Large, was supposed to be low-cut and sexy for a 7-foot tall waifish eastern European model but also covers the belly quite comfortably.

*not the baby. I am the baby monster, yet another fantastic nickname cooked up by shamu.

things i didn't think about before i got knocked up, part 1: small stuff

besides the aforementioned flat feet & sore boobs, some others:

1. the warm comforting glow of the internet: everyone's pregnancy is different. if you're like me and don't know too many women who have had children, you might not know if what you're going through is "normal." (and you don't want to call your doctor every other day.) e.g. when i started getting nauseous again too weeks ago, it wasn't helpful to ask my sister, whose total experience w/ "morning sickness" in her last pregnancy was three weeks of first trimester. but hooray for google and random people commenting on blogs to let me know that while not common, or fun, pretty normal.

2. morning sickness can come back in the third trimester: wtf. really.

3. clumsiness: and nope, not clumsiness because you're like a large whale lurking through the aisles of target, but clumsiness as in just dropping everything all the time. knocking stuff over with your elbows. losing fine motor skills. whatever few you had. at the same time that bending over and picking up stuff gets a bit more challenging every week. i could try to tell myself it has something to do with joint changes, but really. my fat ass is just clumsy.

4. underwear stock: (warning: gross references coming) not the case for everyone, but i did have to get some larger pairs of underwear (see "fat ass" in #3). this was helpful bc you go through a lot of underwear. yeast infections, random unknown discharge, and peeing on yourself when you sneeze-- you get the picture. and doing laundry gets more cumbersome in later weeks. so it's just easier to have a lot of pairs on hand.

5. friends telling you that you look great: even though i always thought pregnant women looked fantastic (before i became pregnant myself), i have felt like a growing beast this entire time. and so it's very nice and helpful to have your friends tell you that you look great, esp. if your parents are like mine, who have told me nearly every week that i am getting too fat and should "watch out."

imitation is the best form of flattery

after dinner today, i found myself sitting across the table from cc surfing the web on my computer while he was playing WoW on his computer.

hgb: hey- we're like shamu and lag2 tonight.
cc: yea, except we're not working.

this is what medicine is like to a public health person

Last week's New Yorker is generating a good bit of buzz b.c. of an article by Atul Gawande on health care spending. It's very well written and I like it, and I'm glad he wrote it. On the other hand, hard not to be a little bit irritated, as in hey, everyone else in public health, health care policy, health care economics, you name it- has known this was going on for a while, but no one listens until the Harvard surgeon talks about it.

Anyways. Highly recommend if you have the time.
The Cost Conundrum. What a Texas town can teach us about health care.

And apparently, Obama has the time.

delinquent updates

sorry for the delays, things have been jam-packed here over at casa de shamu.

among others:

1. no gestational diabetes, yay! which then became some rather frightening weeks of an all-out cake fest...followed by some scolding by my doctor. oops.

2. running had to stop a while ago, from the flat feet and the swollen legs. kind of a surprise- i would have thought that the problem would be the belly, but nope. it's the lower extremities that won't cooperate. possibly leading to problems in 1.

3. friends threw us a really wonderful baby shower, low key, in their backyard with dim sum and homemade cake. everyone hanging out, kids running around, just great to see all of our friends. before we never see them again.

4. shamu is totally nesting. last weekend he & eb went to babies r us and ikea. hgb asked if people thought they were a gay couple at babies r us...it hadn't occurred to either one of them :) eb was like, no, it felt perfectly natural!

5. i am enviously not nesting. the past couple weeks have been consumed by trying to get out a grant proposal, blech.

as indicated by more dreams..

lag2: i dreamt that you, [your colleauge], and i were sitting in the cafeteria talking about why health care costs are so high.

shamu: i dreamt that our baby was eating her first solid foods, and we were all excited and took pictures. and then she went poop, and we were all excited, and took pictures of that, too!

*sigh*

can't wait to switch gears and get back to doing all the preparing for the baby, rather than doing all other things that need to be done before the baby...

p.s. design is from "Fail" at threadless.com. not sure why i can't embed anymore, too tired to try to figure it out.

what dreams may come

i think you're supposed to have all kinds of weird, baby-related dreams during pregnancy but i can't say that's happened to me yet. the most vivid dream so far was one in which the Cylons unleashed a plague just before launching a nuclear holocaust on the planet.

shamu, on the other hand, i think qualifies as having his own pregnancy dream. of sorts.

shamu: last night i dreamt i had another kidney stone! but it didn't hurt, and i peed it right out. then i fished it out of the toilet with my hand, and i wanted to know what was in it. so i took a bite out of it.

lag2: yuck!

shamu: it tasted salty!

what we did for Soon-To-Be-Mother's Day

shamu got me a bunch of fresh-picked angry Romulans.

(okay, he didn't realize it was mother's day, he just got tickets for the first available day he could to see Star Trek on an Imax screen. and yes, i went along with it.)

p.s. rating: actually better as a film, but not as good as wolverine for reminder of supposed sentimental holiday. and asian man not as hot.

nesting, house of shamu style

so i've heard about the Nesting "instinct," which is apparently quite strong and can give you huge bursts of energy to remodel your house, or wake up at 3 am and spot clean all the walls, or (and this is my sister) to buy every organizational aid known to man from the container store and yes, actually put things in those linen storage bins, with labels. (yes, people really do use them. not just martha stewart. or the stylists at Real Simple magazine.)

this has been my experience with Nesting so far:

lag2: shamu, why don't you clean your desk?

lag2: shamu, after you clean your desk, maybe you can move the printer over to my desk, then you can put the filing cabinet where the printer table is right now.

lag2: hey shamu, maybe after the baby shower you can invite the guys to hang out at our house and move furniture. then they can help you can move your desk up into the loft, move the futon from the loft into the guest room, and move the guest bed into the office where your desk used to be.

lag2: thanks!

p.s. btw, people have asked us what color the baby's room is going to be. answer: blue. not because we are trying to be progressive and free her from any potential gender stereotypes, etc., but because her mom and dad are lazy. and cheap. the room is already blue. that's what she gets.