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| Sacre Coeur |
Oh, speaking of beer - I'm planning one of our last trips pre-baby right now, to BELGIUM, where we will visit Trappist monasteries/breweries (for Matt) and frites stands (for me) - My friend Maya is coming from the US for two weeks at the end of September, so we're going to take a little weekend roadtrip to Bruges and the surrounding area. As Ralph Fiennes says in movie IN BRUGES, "It's a fucking fairytale town, innit?" We're going to go find out .... We'll also be going hopefully to this monastery in Westvleteren (sp?) that apparently makes a once-in-a-lifetime awesome beer, but you can't actually go INSIDE thethe monastery, you have to call their "beer phone" and make an appointment to pick up a case of the stuff one day a week outside gates of thethe monastery. Matt is really excited about this.
Otherwise, what can I tell you? Well, I do NOT have gestational diabetes, which is a relief - mostly because I really don't want my baby to be over 10lbs, which tends to happen with GD for some reason. I did have to take this insane test that according to my midwife is internationally definitive single test for GD, and which was probably thethe most irritating medical test I've had to take that I can think of - You have to go to the clinic in the morning and drink glucose solution on an empty stomach, then get your blood and urine checked every 30 mins for 3 HOURS. Yeesh. By the end my arms were like pincushions and I was so starving. But, again, like I said, no Gestational Diabetes.
I've also been working on our BIRTH PLAN, which is a totally crazy thing and is requiring me to do more research into labour and delivery than I think I want to do. Okay, I probably SHOULD want to know as much as possible about all of my different choices (and frankly I should be happy I'm at a French clinique that even wants me to MAKE a birth plan as they are not common here). But after looking at MyBirthPlanByDesign, essentially a 6 page template of choices by a New York hyper aware mom/birthing coach, I've learned a lot that I might not have wanted to know. To give you an idea, here is a tamer section:
Miscellaneous environment items (check all that apply):
___I would like to have dimmed lights.
___I would like for people entering the room to speak softly.
___I would like to play music
. ___I would like no one to speak during the actual delivery.
___I would like to wear hospital clothing.
___I would like to wear my own clothes during labor and delivery.
___I would like to be reminded to remove my clothing during the actual delivery.
___I would like to have a TV available.
___I would like to have a VCR available.
___I would like to wear headsets during my labor and delivery.
___I would like to have my birth photographed.
___I would like to have my birth filmed/videotaped
I've decided to choose to have no one speak and to wear headsets during the delivery. How do you think that's going to work out in practice? :)
No I'm just kidding. About the headset and no one talking. I'm sure its gonna be chaos. But hopefully very joyful chaos.
I was reading about labor and delivery the other night and was like ,I really need Matt to read this so he can make sure he's okay to be my primary support during all of this. He signed off on it, but we were cracking up on all the gentle euphemisms to books give to Dads-to-be about the section of labor where your wife may be screaming bloody murder and throwing things at your head: "As you move into active labor, your partner may seem distant or irritable. Don't take it personally if she doesn't seem to be able to take in your words of encouragemnt". Yeah, or if starts screaming curses and throws up on you.
Ahh, the magic of making a child together. Now that we know we're having a girl, we're both a little nervous about the inevitable Princess Phase. I told Matt the other night that it was pretty much a lock that at some point our girl would be into princesses or tiaras or sparkly things or dolls or all of the above. Matt seemed a little stricken. He was like, "How does Disney GET to our children?" And I was like, "Well, eventually we let them leave the house, they go to day-care and meet other children, or go out to a store or a movie." And he was like "Ahah! We will go totally off the grid!" But unfortunately all the places he thought of - Thailand (Thailand? Off the grid?) ,the Congo, etc - All seemed to still have Disney, no matter how remote or wartorn they were.
We basically are both of the opinion that we just have to accept these things, you can't forbid a little kid the things they like completely, though you can modify it (As my friend Nicole told me, when she reads Disney stories to her kids she always modifies them like this "Snow White loved Prince Charming, but she also needed to finish medical school".)
Matt was like, "What am I gonna do? I can't just tell her I think it's stupid, but I DO think it's stupid". We finally settled on him watcihng Star Wars I with her because Princess Leia is a badass princess. However, somehow I think in four years time he will probably be playing tea party with the best of them, if that's what she wants. ... we will see. If anyone has any stories of how they dealt with the princess phase or any other unexpected kid phase they didn't totally approve of .... I"d love to hear.
I'm going to sign off, as it's been a slow week and you all should get back to your final days of summer and Labor Day weekend and all of that. Hope you guys have a great, relaxing rest of the weekend, and more to come next week -
xo CTL
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