Sean is one month old today! We celebrated by taking him out for his first walk (well, actually *we* walked; he was carried) through our neighborhood to the drugstore to pick up batteries and to a cafe called Cupcake, where we got birthday cupcakes. (Sean slept through the whole thing, but I’ll be delivering his (transformed) cupcake to him next time he nurses…). We realized that my coat panel that I had used to extend my coat while I was pregnant also fits Ben’s coat! So he put Sean in a carrier and zipped up his coat around the little guy using the panel. (Thanks, Kate! Great panel…)

And we had a photo shoot. Following Erin and Tim’s lead, we’ll photograph him every month next to stuffed animals, so we can see how he grows…

Close up portrait…

And some pictures with dad and mom…

And some artsy pix. Because I can…

Sean’s first fencing lesson at 9 days… we were thinking he might be lefty; now, not so sure — could go either way.

Checkup at the hospital, 3 days old

Margaret with Sean, 3 days old

Ben with Sean, 3 days old

Home from the hospital; Sean, 8 days old

Ben with Sean, 9 days old


Margaret, Ben, and Sean, 11 days old


Grandma and Sean, 11 days old


Papa and Sean, 16 days old


Mima and Sean, 18 days old

Jan 15, my due date. Week 40.
I didn’t give birth until 12 days later, but I didn’t change size too much, either.

Oog. I really feel big now. But yet, I’d still like a couple more weeks of being a pre-parent. I passed my oral preliminary exam a week ago (yay!) and spent this past week finishing up my classes — a lab report, a problem set, a final project write-up, and a take-home final. On Tuesday I have an in-class final and then I’m done for the semester. Just need to take care of some baby stuff now and relax a bit. That’s why I want another couple weeks.

(Did I mention, my computer died again — the week before my oral prelim. This time it died good and hard; the tech folks couldn’t resurrect it… likely something to do with the motherboard’s hard drive controller. Anyway, I’ve got a new computer now, but I’m on a new operating system (Windows 7) and have to reinstall everything, which I’m doing little by little. Plus, I’m finding out things like there is no Windows 7 driver for my home printer. Sigh…)

Ben’s done teaching his classes and just has to finish grading. But he won’t get to relax, really, as he’s still working on his dissertation. He did get his first paper (which is also a thesis chapter) accepted for publication, which is very exciting. And while it’s sad we won’t be seeing family for the holidays this year, we’re glad we’re not trying to negotiate airports during the big East Coast snowstorm.

Okay, and now the requisite picture:

Week 36

Up to week 32 now. Since last time, I got a pre-natal massage, my computer completely died and was resurrected, we’ve gone to all 6 childbirth prep classes, we’ve created a baby registry, my parents visited for a weekend, and we had a morning together talking with our doula. And I’ve discovered swimming. Even better than the water aerobics (at the YWCA’s rather cold pool), there’s a swimming pool at the university gym, about a five-minute walk from my office. It’s shallow and just for lap-swimming, but wow, how wonderful it is (and quite a bit warmer than the Y’s). I can move fluidly and stretch in all directions, and I can get some actual exercise. I think swimming is going to save my sanity these last few months. It’s pretty much the only time I’m comfortable and what I look forward to more than just about anything else — including sleeping, which is no longer comfortable. Sigh. Things are moving along. Two more months to go (give or take).

Week 32

It’s official: if I stand up straight and look right down, I can’t see my feet…

It’s interesting to note the things that you so often take for granted when you can’t do them for some reason. My fencing coach, Ro, had a nasty bike accident several weeks ago and can’t use his right arm while his shoulder heals. So not only are sleeping and getting dressed and showering difficult, so are things like teeth-brushing and signing checks.

For me, the big chunk of body that has materialized at belly-level has made bending over difficult and uncomfortable. So things like picking up a dropped piece of paper or doing many of the stretches that I rely on to keep my back and leg muscles happy are becoming undoable. On Friday I spent a bunch of hours cleaning up my field plots. This involved looking through patches of vegetation, locating colored plastic toothpicks (harder than you might imagine), and removing them. I’ve gotten used to squatting instead of bending to get down to the ground, and was delighted when Saturday morning my quads were sore, but my back wasn’t any more sore than usual. It’s probably the best exercise my legs have gotten in months, and certainly in weeks. I’ve been taking prenatal water aerobics, which helps with core muscles and with stretching, but doesn’t really challenge leg muscles accustomed to fencing lunges.

Week 26

Meanwhile, Ben and I have started taking birth classes at the hospital where I plan to deliver. So far we’ve had two evening classes of a couple hours each, and they’ve been rather entertaining. There are about 5-6 other mothers and usually their partners who come to class and a bunch of them are real characters. Our instructor, Veronica, is the calm, reassuring sort of person you would expect; when she announced early on in the first class that this was a “safe space” and people could say what they thought, one mother-to-be exclaimed, “you mean we don’t have to pretend we’re loving every minute of pregnancy? Thank God!” Another woman quizzed the rest of us on how we’d gotten our partners to come to class; “I told him if I was the only one here by myself he was sleeping in the basement,” she said. “Looks like it’s basement for him tonight.” (He did show up to the second class.)