In a previous post I mentioned that forgetfulness is part of the pregnancy. I just learned a(nother) horrifying risk of pregnancy: Couvade Syndrome. Also known as “sympathetic” or “phantom” pregnancy, is when the father experiences pregnancy-like symptoms, including breast tenderness, nausea, weight gain, and even labor pains.

I didn’t know pregnancy was contagious. Why didn’t they warn me about this in health class? This would have prepared me just as much for the real world as teaching me CPR and showing me horrible photographs of STD-infested genitals.

Apparently the word “couvade” comes from the French verb “couver,” which means to brood or to hatch. While it could refer to something like “hatching a plan,” there’s an idiom faire la couvade, which means “to sit doing nothing.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuMZBcJRAXQ

Some of these symptoms could in part be due to elevated estrogen levels that have been measured in expectant fathers. Hopefully it’s not enough for me to go up a cup size.

Though I would like to keep our blog an unending stream of good news, I’d like it to cover our lives more broadly. So it’s inevitable that there will be some bad news, though to be immediately clear it’s not about our baby or the pregnancy. 

On Monday March 21, our beloved Seal Point Siamese cat Milo passed away. We awoke to find him laying in the litter box, ill and barely responsive. Upon taking him to the vet, we were told there was nothing we could do for him. The doctor administered the injection and he died peacefully as Anne held and caressed him. He was 15.

Mischievous and playful, Milo was a cat of many names. “Soccer kitty” sprinted around the house batting balls of tin foil – though he sometimes eventually tried to eat them. He was also a skilled player at the Q-Tip toss, hooking it with his claw and throwing it in the air repeatedly. Marshmallow was another moniker because of the beautiful toasted marshmallow color of his fur. He was also known as “skateboard kitty” because he was known to run up two walls close together to chase a toy (like a skateboard ramp). The shape of his face also earned him the title Muffinhead. 

“Dude. Your ass is all up on me.”

Milo was also a loving – if initially reluctant – adoptive older brother to Filbert. Rescued as an abandoned kitten from the woods of Marin, Filbert was initially terrified of people. When Anne got him, she had to acknowledge Filbert’s “piling” instinct (in writing, actually): his need to lay basically on top of another cat. Milo tolerated this with distinction – though Filbert got his share of swats and playful chases around the house. We would often encourage Milo to “get him,” which, of course, often had the opposite effect. (Milo preferred to do things on his own terms.)

Pets make an indelible marks on you by the uniqueness of their personality. Milo had so many quirks that made him a unique member of our family. He had a tiny kink at the end of his tail. He preferred to drink water straight from a bathtub or sink faucet so that he would soak his head. The only still water he liked to drink out of was a fishbowl – but he knew better than to go to after the fish. If you rubbed the bridge of his nose in the right way he would yawn. In his later years he loved to lay along Anne’s legs, whether they were up on the couch on stretched onto an Ottoman. He could also sleep in very bizarre positions, often with Filbert draped over him in a near-complete smother.

Milo is actually asleep here.

Milo also wasn’t afraid to show his distaste for someone, or that he didn’t like a particular situation. He was known to target a particular person for a poop job out of a long lineup of shoes. He even pooped in the sleeping bag of someone who he didn’t like – an unpleasant surprise for that guy on his camping trip. He was a cat through and through – he never wanted you to see him do something clumsy. After a slip-up he would look around to see if anyone had seen him, and continue about his business as if nothing happened. 

In his later years, Milo’s activity slowed, but he still enjoyed getting his food, getting petted, and having the best spot to sleep in. His energetic skittishness evolved into mellowness, and he became much more approachable, tolerating being picked up and having his belly rubbed.

As many of you know, pets become essential parts of your life, and sometimes they become such a familiar part of your home that they become  part of the scenery. For the sake of Anne, the Spicy Peanut, and me, please give your pet an additional hug tonight – from us – and cherish the love they provide and inspire. 

And so, dear Milo, thank you for the time we spent together. You were a part of our family and you are missed. We wish that you could have met our little one, who would have inevitably enjoyed your soft fur and relaxed demeanor. Our house feels a little emptier these days without you. We love you. 

Well, we had our ultrasound on Monday and the technician said she was 80% sure and the doctor said he was 90% sure about the gender. So – y’all ready for this? Can you dig it? Are you ready to rumble??

It’s a girl!

I attribute the certainty of that statement to Anne. The ultrasound technician said she was 80% sure it’s a girl and then the doctor said that he was 90% sure. But given Anne’s strong feeling, she feels certain. And hey – I’d be happy with a 90% on a test. So it’s time to get off of team uncertainty and onto team girl.

I must say that we were disappointed with the photos and video we got from this most recent visit – they were both poor and few. The video is a bit wonky, but you get a brief glimpse of our little girl at week 17.

Unfortunately the pictures we got this time were all pretty much without variety and not that great.

Still, that’s our little girl. 🙂

Now that you know the gender, you are obviously disallowed from getting us anything that we can even remotely construe as masculine. Even going gender neutral is pushing it, people. It must be pink, it must frilly, and it must conform to that unique American nostalgia – a nostalgia for a time that never existed. Do you think she’s going to win the baby pageant playing with that truck, or throwing a ball? I don’t think so! Hand be that hairbrush and that Barbie.

Anne and I both agree that we will adhere to strict gender roles in this family. In fact, I refuse to even touch her clothing, for fear of gender contamination. And I always avoid the feminine hygiene products the pharmacy by at least two aisles, just to be safe.

But I kid. The Spicy Peanut is a she. We’re having a daughter. We’re so happy.

Last night Anne experienced a distinct moment of quickening. For you non-parentals out there, this is the term that refers to the sensation of fetal movement. As we saw from ultrasounds very early on, the baby is moving constantly in there, but it takes a while for the mother to actually feel that movement. Anne said it felt like a few gentle pokes. I imagine it felt more like the image below.

I felt the baby move!

You see how that joke worked on multiple levels? I’m like the James Joyce of bloggers.

If you didn’t fully get the image-joke, then you fail at movie trivia. Which means you’ll probably also fail at this very entertaining movie trivia challenge. I got 59 right 39 wrong before I stopped. Beat THAT! (OK, you can sort of get some of them by guessing letters and hypothesizing words identifications.)

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to experience a moment of quickening. It sort of seems like something in between something deeply wonderful and deeply disturbing. The wonderful feeling of your child’s burgeoning awareness, and the growing bond between you. Also a reminder that there is a living thing inside you clawing at you, like in Alien. Wonderfully disturbing. 

So Anne got a doppler for home. You know, the thing that the OB uses to listen to the baby’s heart. We’ve been assiduously monitoring the baby’s heartbeat nearly every day like prenatal cardiologists. Have a listen:
Pretty cool, huh? At our last OB visit on the 5th included one of these but we just talked over it.

We’ve started to confront another one of the risks in pregnancy: mental retardation. Of the mother. Did you know that studies show that women lose brain cell tissue during pregnancy? (In case there are other pregnant women reading this, I thought I’d mention that studies show that women lose brain cell tissue during pregnancy.) Accordingly it’s common in pregnancy for women to feel scattered or forgetful. If Anne buys her own birthday presents now this might make things more exciting for her next month.

The most recent manifestation of Anne’s forgetfulness, though, has been clumsiness. I think Anne may have broken 3 glasses in the past month. If this continues we may have had to have added glassware to our baby registry. Yeah, those highball glasses are for…the baby. For all the…breast milk it will be drinking. Out of a glass. As a newborn.

Did you know, by the way, that women expecting girls have been documented to be MORE forgetful than women expecting boys? Unfortunately, we have no index of comparison. We only have fewer glasses.

Our next ultrasound is March 21. That will be just before week 17 starts. If the baby cooperates, we might be able to determine the gender! Stay tuned – we’ll try to post more often.

One batch of borscht (Lilliputian perspective).

It was frickin’ freezing in the Bay Area this past weekend, so we went utterly soup-crazy. Last weekend we realized that we had about 4 chicken carcasses in the freezer, so we ended up making an enormous pot of chicken stock, using one of Anne’s mom’s recipes. (Great recipe, thanks Bea.) We used some of it in a chicken pot pie that we made earlier in the week (best we ever made), but we still had a ton left over. What better way to use it than soup?

So we ended up making matzo ball soup (we made the balls from a mix) and two different kinds of borscht: one with cabbage and one without (for me and Anne, respectively). 

Now we will never stop eating soup.

I should note that the night we ate some of the matzo ball soup we ended up also making pork meatballs, potato pancakes, and lightly sauteed kale. The meal was a kosher battleground.

We purchased some of our baby furniture last week. You’d think that purchasing something like a crib would be relatively straightforward. Actually, you probably wouldn’t think that. Because you’re probably not an idiot. As you can probably guess, there are particular regulations about the dimensions of a crib, presumably so your baby easily can’t break off pieces and fashion a shiv or something.

You can check out the particular crib we got at this website. The cool thing about this furniture, besides the organic non-toxic finishes, solid wood construction, dovetailed joints, corner blocks, and self-closing drawer glides, is the fact that you buy the toddler front and slats, so it can eventually support a full bed. So hopefully this bed will last the Spicy Peanut until teenagerhoodedness. Or at least until they are physically able to construct it into a shiv. 

(Children have a strong desire to make shivs, from birth. This may be because they are trapped in a room with no discernible exit for nine months.) 

We confess that we’ve also bought a few decorations for the baby’s room. Prepare yourself for “farm chic”:

Look at that beautiful pregnancy glow, btw!

This is one of three paintings we got – we also got one of a sheep and a cow. These approach the hear-tearning level of cuteness. (See our “hear-tearingly” blog post from earlier.) Luckily the baby won’t have much hair when it’s born. 

So the baby room is starting to come together, at least in our imaginations. (For those of you who haven’t heard, our landlord is moving back in and we are moving to a different unit in our condo complex. But that’s another blog post.) The furniture looks great. Well, it looks like it WILL be great based on the catalogue and what we saw in person. The order time kind of varied depending on whom you talked to in the store, so it looks like it’ll take between 10 and 18 weeks. So it will arrive in the spring, maybe the summer. Good thing we’re planning ahead. They’re apparently built to order in Romania and shipped over by cargo ship, NOT speedboat. Hopefully it will arrive it time so our baby isn’t sleeping in a cardboard box when we take it home.

But at least we’ll have a car seat! Did you know that by law in California you’re not allowed to leave the hospital without one? This is what Anne tells me. Perhaps this is part of OB/GYN training. 

This generates a lot of questions. Does this law still apply if you have a home birth? Do they check the brand of car seat? I.e. could I crudely fashion one out of cardboard and construction paper? What if I drove a motorcycle or a go-cart to the hospital?

We will be getting a good car seat, don’t worry. We’ve already done the research. Note: the most important piece of data that came out of that research is the fact that Chicco is pronounced “keeko.” And yes, we want that travel system. See how fancy I’ve gotten, knowing what a “travel system” is? See, I’m becoming a parent.

As is my wont, I will end with a cat anecdote. Filbert got his teeth cleaned today, under general anesthesia. The poor guy lost 6 teeth!

With the puffed cheeks, he kind of looks like a 19th century British banker from this angle. Pish posh!