In Which Napoleon Becomes Hortense

Crap salad, I've been lazy.

In my defense, 

1. I've just started grad school, which involved running all over campus, trolling for part-time jobs.

2. My house has been on the market for six months, and I've been pricing kitchen overhauls to see if the investment is worthwhile.

3. I dunno. Other stuff.

No major life changes while trying to get pregnant? That's for the weak.

So the big news is that I had the 18-week ultrasound and learned that Napoleon is more of a Napoleonette. Which is a big surprise, given that I was nearly convinced it was a boy. On the other hand, my mother was convinced it was a boy, and she's always, always wrong at gender-guessing. So that should have been a clue. 

I guess the obvious thing  would be to rename Napoleon Josephine, but that's a name that I could conceivably give to a child someday (husband's grandmother's name), and so it's not nearly as amusing as Hortense. 

Other exciting ultrasound news - I seem to have developed a succenturiate placental lobe, which they claim poses no threat to Hortense (although she seems to be rather snug between those two big lumps of placenta, and I wish she had a bit more room to flail around in) but which will have to be extracted from me after delivery, so as to keep me from hemorrhaging. My mother describes the manual extraction of leftover placenta as "worse than 36 hours of labor" and "oh, God, I wanted to die." So, that's exciting. But - if this is the only complication I encounter between now and January 27th, I'll probably be a pretty lucky girl.   

Off to breakfast - my insane husband is drafting a document in which I release him from responsibility for any future gestational diabetes diagnosis, and aver that I am eating the Krispy Kreme he brought me of my own volition. 

Grandparent Names that are Currently Being Discussed

- Goose and Maverick.

- Mamie and Ike.

- Nub and Digger.

- Biggie and Puffy.

- Captain and Tenille. 

Not currently in the running: Meemaw, Peepaw, Glamma, Granny, "Big" anything, or Gogie. Or, sadly, Toot. 

Words that are Very Unsexy, but in All Fairness, Were Never Intended to Be Sexy

1. Colostrum.

There are women, on this message board that I read from time to time, who say that milky goo has, at one time or another, flown out of their boobs when sneezing, say, or squeezing a nipple. This was shocking to me. When I cough and sneeze, my boobs stay completely sealed. I even tried to squeeze a nipple, to see what would happen (not something I do every day, let's just say). Nothing. 

On one hand, it's always a relief not to inadvertently milk yourself. On the other, I don't want to fall behind developmentally. Hmm.

Good night, then. Off to scrutinize my boobs. 

To Everything There is a Season

I've taken a brief blogging hiatus, as I've been out of town attending my grandfather's funeral, an event that serves as a sobering reminder that everyone in the family tree is about to climb up a branch. The grandparents, as I knew them, are all gone, and the parents are ready to take their places. That, naturally, means that at some point very soon, I will be moving from the ranks of child (metaphorical: clearly a grown-ass married woman with a mortgage is not a child) to parent. If I step directly into my mother's footsteps, I'm looking at years of child-raising followed, possibly, by years of parent-caretaking.  Serious stuff. 

Is it scary? Yeah, a little. Do I feel like a wussbag for making this transition at 29, instead of, say, building a log cabin with my bare hands and raising six children and some cows and chopping cotton all day by age 19 or so? Again - yeah, a tad. 

So, loins must be girded and all that. I do wish my grandparents had gotten to meet the kid, though.