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Summertime... and the livin' is pregnant...
Summertime... and the livin' is pregnant...
Things here are quite fine. Wonderful really, when you
consider how things will look around this place in the
wintertime. Not that I'm not looking forward to visiting the
children's park/playground in winter when they turn it into
a little ice-skating pond, which should be great fun (I can
recall those glory days of college ice-hockey----yeah
right!) But I think I prefer watching the little toddlers
sit in their giant sandbox and throw sand at each other. I
also particularly enjoy seeing the older ones lay stomach
down on the swings and turn themselves around and around
with their legs until they've wound up the chains that
suspend the swing-seat so tight that by lifting their feet
off the ground---blast off!!! How wonderful to be young and
to play without any worries. I'm not nostalgic for being a
child, however. I am perfectly content with not being a kid
anymore. I think it's even more wonderful to be older,
experience life for it's complexity, and then have the honor
of parenting your own little swing-set torpedo machine
through a happy childhood.
Every time I stop and realize that there will soon be a
person, of some name, with some physical characteristics,
all of which are unknown yet, that contains inside himself
the gene combination of Matti and I, I just have to laugh.
We are so different-him with his sometimes moody, intense
personality, with potential to be ridiculously silly,
childish, and happy as well as
frustrated/ambitious/pessimistic/realistic/serious (all
depends on how you look at things, doesn't it?). Then
there's me with my almost fallible sense of optimism and
good-natured-ness. I am like a combination between a rock,
with all it's steady, constant, reliable, unchanging
qualities, and Gumby, able to bend and twist and nearly
always easy-going to an ever-changing world (or mood of a
husband). I am also entirely prone to connecting myself even
too strongly to others, passively willing to define my own
existence and identity by my efforts to support and
accommodate others. And in the process I can be a little
bossy and controlling about the whole thing because I am
pretty 'sure of myself' (reads: stubborn). I am yin and
Matti is yang, and our child will be….who knows! It does
make me laugh to try to imagine our personality
characteristics crossed in some unknown amounts of each to
create a new person. Of course, this person could be unlike
either of us in any apparent way. But it's still interesting
to giggle away at the thought of a brooding intense child
with a simultaneous optimistic nature. Like oil and water,
it seems, but we shall see what the mix produces, over the
long term future.
When I'm not envisioning the long term future, I'm
looking downward at the massive growth that is Angelica.
Well let's be fair-not just Angelica. Angelica+1. "Over
here, party of 2" I fee like shouting, as I take up the
amount of space of several adults. Or so it feels! Actually
third trimester, for me, is more about feeling like a senior
citizen (of about 80 years) with a 25 pound weight strapped
on instead of your normal belt buckle. Especially in this
heat wave we've been under, I just can't seem to casually
stroll down to the library and back like it's nothing
anymore (can't be more than a mile each way.) I feel so...
handicapped!
When you're used to having a young body that runs 5 miles
daily and feel energized afterwards, not only not looking
slim and active in summer clothes gets you down, but feeling
like you're about as likely to go out and enjoy the outdoors
with any kind of gusto as your great grandmother (whether or
not she's alive is a moot point!). But I guess this doesn't
get any easier as you get older, and I am glad I'm 23 and
not 33. The breasts are still perky, my skin isn't
problematic with these preggo hormones, and my hair is
thicker and softer than ever. So I'll try to keep reminding
myself of those things over and over and ignore the rest!
And also focus on the major task laying ahead of me:
childbirth, which will be a new thing for me! I'm quite
excited about it, of course, but a bit nervous. I want it to
go smoothly, naturally, without any complications, of
course, but since I left my crystal ball in the states, it's
the vast unknown. The end result is the best part, of
course, and it will be a life changing day from
Angelica-'young woman, recently married, but still able to
pass her time reading way too many novels and sitting in the
park alone eating ice cream', to AngelicaMommy. One word. I
do want to meet this person who spends most of the day's
energy on squirming around my womb and making my tummy
change shapes and which way it leans towards. What can I
say, I'm in pre-love for this baby.
There's really not much news to report from the
land-of-the-pregnant, in case you haven't figured that much
out already. It's hot. Matti works, but not much, and mostly
from home, while I sit outside in the inflatable one foot
deep baby pool we bought to keep me cool and happy. I
alternate between reading novels and my 'Finnish for
Foreigners' textbook I bought, and I must say I now know
something like 200 Finnish words, and can put together
simple sentences….Really! I CAN say a few sentences when I
stop to meditate about it for at least ten seconds and then
crinkle up my nose, look up to the sky, and
haltingly-painfully string together a few very-odd sounding
words with odd endings on them to indicate who's doing the
action, or to replace a preposition, which they don't have.
It makes me feel as awkward as a cow doing ballet, but I
keep at it, because it's not going to get any easier the
longer I put off investing time into memorizing and learning
and processing. The best part is that unlike learning a
foreign language in the US, here I get to be surrounded by
it all the time, and it's like a little thrill for me every
time I walk down the street and hear people saying words I
know. Granted I could never tell you what those teenagers on
the bench over there were talking 'about', for example, but
I did overhear a few words, and I knew some of them! I'm
starting to catch on when people use short sentences, or at
least have some idea what's going on in conversation if the
subject is very simple. It's like studying without sitting
down and putting effort into it, because my brain is always
turned on, and when I hear a word I know, I automatically
translate it into English in my head. One day, when I hear
the same word enough, and translate it into English in my
head enough times, I will eventually think of that word as
being as good a symbol for the idea it represents as the
English word is (well maybe not AS good, but an
instantly-recognizable symbol nonetheless, and I won't have
to translate it into the English word anymore). I come up
with the craziest methods of learning Finnish words which to
me, don't sound a thing like…anything. Let me give you an
example. The Finnish word for 'skin' is 'iho'. Pronounced 'Eee-ho'
with stress on the first syllable and a harsh H starting up
the second syllable. I thought to myself when I first
learned that word that no WAY will I remember that strange
word for 'skin', but then I came up with a mental image. I
imagined one bitchy girl slapping another one across the
face. Then the slapped-girl puts her hand up to her face
(that's where the strong inference to the meaning of the
word-skin-comes in-cheek-skin-face, you get it) and says
"Eeee! Ho!!!!!!" Eeeee! Because it hurt and Ho!
Because she's mad and calling the girl a ho (I have to
picture trashy girls doing this little routine or it doesn't
work.) The word for little girl in finnish is 'tyttö', (tooot-tuh)
and
I remember that one by remembering that it sounds almost
just like a tutu that a little girl would wear in ballet
class. The word for a little boy is 'poika' and I remember
that by picturing a little boy reading 'The Pokey Little
Puppy' (pokey/poika, sounds similar), which was a favorite
book when I was a lil' gal. Anyway, I'm sure you are
starting to 'get' my little method of remembering random
sounding words. Oh, I have one more ----'ystävä' means
'friend', and it sounds like 'ooohstahvah' (those äs are
pronounced like the a in cat), and I remember that from the
phrase "I 'used-ta-have' friends", which makes
some sense since I don't know too many people out here. It
sounds dumb but I never forget a word if I have a good trick
to jog my memory. I'm starting to roll my Rs better, too,
which feels so embarrassing (ok, speaking Finnish at all
sounds embarrassing to me, if you can imagine how you might
feel trying to pronounce, oh, Vietnamese or something), but
I'm getting better.
The strange thing is that the one person I am most
embarrassed of speaking Finnish in front of is Matti. I
think it's because he considers me generally, all-around
cute, and giggles at me about most things anyway, so when I
speak some Finnish, he gets all tickled about it, and I just
feel so…..conspicuous. So I chicken out and say nothing,
even when I've prepared and orchestrated an appropriate
phrase in my head and am sitting there mentally repeating it
over and over trying to get the pronunciation right. I still
lose nerve and don't want to say it in front of Matti. He is
really strict on the pronunciation, too, not because he's a
nazi about it but because he's trying to be helpful and give
me tips on how to best be understood. But to me his
corrections sound so nit-picky and makes me feel like my
mouth is actually incapable of pronouncing anything properly
in Finnish so I get unenthusiastic about trying in front of
him. However, with anyone else, since they're too polite to
get teacher-y about it, I feel like I can try stuff out. I
think it's important that I just practice, but then again,
Finnish is not a language you can pronounce casually and be
understood, so I guess Matti's tutelage is valuable (and to
his credit, he sometimes tells me that I said a word
'perfectly.' So he's not always critical and never
encouraging!) The best person for me to be around and learn
Finnish is Riitta, my mother-in-law. She's fabulous. She
feels as uncomfortable speaking English as I do speaking
Finnish, so she talks to me in Finnish and I desperately try
to grasp what she's saying with the few words here or there
that I know. She also knows enough English that she can quiz
me on vocabulary by saying the word in English from my book,
and then letting me come up with the Finnish equivalent, or
simply sitting down with pen and paper and writing a verb or
noun in English and then writing the Finnish translation,
and conjugation if necessary. Of course I can get that from
elsewhere, but I'm always more likely to remember a word if
I get the kitchen-table-with-Riitta introduction. She's a
sweetie.
So what else to report besides learning Finnish and
constructing a baby... huh. That about sums things up
lately. Oh, and keeping cool in this weather! I'm starting
to outgrow even a couple of maternity clothing items, so I
feel the need to occasionally scope the sale rack at H&M
and grab a flattering tank top that ties beneath the breasts
and hangs loose around the middle, to perk myself up. And
you saw in the picture I sent, I'm sure, that nifty blue
flowered scarf I got to tie around as a headband and leave
trailing across a shoulder. I read somewhere that
accessorizing is very, very important in maternity fashion
and boy were they right. It's not like clothes look stunning
on you anymore, so awesome accessories are the only way to
save your day! And if I do find an item of clothing that
actually flatters me somehow, I wear it over and over and
would wear it more except the only laundry that gets done
often around here is darks, since all Matti's workout gear
is black and most of his clothes are dark or denim. I have
more whites and light colored stuff, and bright colored
stuff, so it takes me awhile to work up to a whole load. And
it's not a quick prospect to do a load of laundry around
here. The washing machine takes a good hour and a half or
so, and we don't have a dryer (well we bought a second hand
dryer but now it doesn't work-it's a lemon! Blah!) so we
hang clothes to dry on a rack and that takes about 24 hours.
Ok, that's when you know you should really wrap things
up, when you start complaining about laundry rituals….! I
guess I'll return myself to the baby pool and later go out
to meet the two other American mommy-women (one has a baby,
but is moving back to Atlanta in two days, the other is
giving birth next month but she's much older than me and I
didn't really 'click' with her the one other time I've seen
her) for ice cream in the park. I'm still searching for a
good friend who lives nearby, preferably one with a baby,
but I guess I'll meet some of those other mommies-of-babies,
once I have a baby and am sitting in the children's park
with my child and noticing the other young mommies sitting
with their babies. I have noticed a few other young pregnant
women and I've almost gotten desperate enough to grab their
arms and plead desperately with to be my friend. But I
haven't quite stooped so low yet. Desperation-- not the most
attractive, charismatic characteristic, I know.
Back to Top Childbirth
comes and goes with lightning speed!
I
had a FAST labor. He was 6 weeks early so we were a
bit unprepared, but we were at home one day, my water broke,
we threw clothes in a bag, and drove the 5 minutes to the
hospital (lucky we live so close to the biggest hospital in
this part of the country--in some ways I adore living in a
downtown section of a city, in other ways I just want a
house in the country! but I digress...). I had my first real
contraction as we pulled into the parking lot, and for the
first half hour of that we were checking in, I put on a
gown, etc etc, they put a machine to my tummy so they could
listen to his heart rate, and then the contractions hit like
BAM, so much harder and only a few seconds in between. They
shoved me straight into the delivery room, and they told me
I was nearly completely dilated (and this was the first time
they looked!), so I had to sit out one or two more
contractions and then I could push. Less than an hour after
I first got wheeled into the delivery room, my son was born.
No time for an epi, no time for drugs, no time for me to use
all that Bradley Natural Childbirth stuff my husband and I
prepared. I just threw my arms around his neck and beat my
fists against his back from the delivery table (he was
hunched over down to my level) and screamed incoherent
things like, 'help me help me help me'- it was just so
darned intense, and only a few moments in between. But all's
well that ends well, and that's what counts. Aleksi was in
an incubator to get extra oxygen for a few days, and he
didn't start breastfeeding until the second week, and I only
breastfed him a couple times per day - the rest of the time
he got fed with a hose through his nose. He was 13 days when
he came home and started only breastfeeding, and started
gaining weight even faster than when they were pumping my
milk into his tummy around the clock! Go figure. We've had
no problems with it so far, except that so much oxytocin
comes out at first that it puts him to sleep. Sometimes I
can't imagine that he eats enough per meal (sometimes 3
minutes of suckling and he's out like a lamp) to grow, but
he's growing at a faster rate than your average baby, so I
suppose he's not starving!! Oh, Aleksi had jaundice, too,
but a little photo therapy cleared it up, and he was in
intensive care and then nurse monitoring at the hospital
anyways, so, not a big addition to the picture. Man was it
stressful having to go back and forth to the hospital from
early morning until late at night to spend time with my
newborn. NOT how I pictured my first days as a mommy. I
wanted to totally spend the first hours after birth, days
after birth, weeks after birth just totally attached with my
baby and with lots of privacy, but I need to just focus on
the huge thing, which is that he could have had much bigger
problems as a result of being born premature and he didn't.
So yay. Healthy boy.
Back to Top Babyhood
begins...
It's already afternoon here in Finland,
so I'll write some today since I have nothing else to
do right now!
Well, that's a total lie since I COULD
get up and clean up the apartment. My husband not-so-subtly
implied that the place was a disaster before he went to work
this afternoon, but hey, I'm feeding around the clock and
snuggling and napping with my 4 week old in between (ok, and
surfing the net with Aleksi on my lap, too because I don't
need quite as much sleep as him), and my husband has yet to
change a SINGLE DIAPER since we had our son, so I figure, he
can straighten up the living room. Is that so wrong???
Plus if the messy apartment bugged him
that much I doubt he would have spent the weekend going out
drinking with his friends at the clubs downtown here in
Tampere (the name of the city in Finland that we live in)
Saturday night or sleeping all day yesterday to recover. I
hope I'm not making Matti look awful--he asked permission
before leaving me home with the baby to spend a few hours
out with his friends, and I honestly didn't mind. He spends
almost all his non-working time with us, (and a lot of his
working time too, since he has a home office and does much
from it) and the guy friends he was going out with are my
friends too and came over for a few hours (before going to
the clubs) to ooh and ahhh over Aleksi and talk with both me
and my husband. I trust my husband completely, and I know
his friends respect and admire his commitment to me, so it
wasn't anything bad that he went out clubbing for a few
hours while I snuggled at home and napped between nighttime
nursings.
He does this cute 'I want the nipple'
song when he's hungry. he starts breathing fast (like the
tempo of an adult would have if hyperventilating), and opens
his eyes to look around for it, and then adds vocals, in a
soft, voiced 'ah, ah, ah, ah' with his breaths. There's an
'I want the nipple' dance, too, which involves him opening
his mouth wide, and moving his head up and down and side to
side (also known as the 'fish face' in my home), and he will
start sucking on his hands or sleeve or a pillow or whatever
else he finds before I have a chance to unhook the nursing
bra.
So cute. He is usually wide awake while
nursing and his eyes shift all over the place like he's
suspicious about the situation, and he has his hands out to
his sides and fingers splayed like he is so serious and
concentrating that he has to have his extremities all tensed
up. So funny. He still sleeps all the time so I can't wait
until he spends more awake time so we can start to
communicate. I feel like he's still in his own premature
baby little world and hasn't really registered that he's
joined us in the outside world too much yet. I'm dying for
the day he catches my eye and smiles, just so I know he
knows I'm here and likes me.
ANYWAY, I have a hard time remembering
that he is supposed to still be in my TUMMY! He's nearly 4
kg (we don't use pounds here in Finland--pout), so I'm
thankful I squeezed him out when he was closer to 3 kg. I
will make a note on his due date what his weight is then so
I can again thank my lucky stars that I wasn't pushing a
ten-ish pound baby into the world!!! (I'm just guessing, at
the rate he's growing at).
I clumsily dropped my newborn (just a
couple inches-no harm done) from my arms to the padded
changing table, when I was changing him in the middle of the
night, but he bumped his head a bit and looked so pitiful
with his floppy little body crumpling to the side in a
little heap, and he let out such a mad little wail for sixty
seconds after, that I felt like the worst mom EVER, and the
entire next day kept having flashbacks of that moment. Then
I was actually taking a couple digital pictures of him
nursing at my breast, with my free hand, and the camera
bumped his head (serves me right for trying to take such
close range shots), and he got mad again. Didn't leave a
bump or red mark or anything, but I just have GOT to be more
careful!!!!!!!
So....crappy weather calls for indoor
creativity, I'm finding, and I love baking. I can't imagine
this little teeny guy ever being big enough to help me in
the kitchen, but I guess that day will come before I know
it. , ....I have this huge dread that my son will hate doing
anything with me as soon as he realizes he has a choice! I
know that's silly, but I never had any brothers, just grew
up with my mom and myself, and I know lots about
mom-daughter bonds, but nil about little boys, and I have
this assumption that they want to run far far away from
Mommy and assert their independence as soon as they can
walk. Boys like to be near mommy as they get older, right? I
hope so--I have a huge fear that my kid will want nothing to
do with me so soon. Silly me.
Finnish muses-- I'm taking 'Beginning
Finnish' at the technological university where I'm taking a
few courses this fall (mostly self study courses, since
there are very few courses taught in english, so I can be
home with the baby and work on 'em), and so far I'm the star
of the course, since I've been studying my 'Finnish for
Foreigners' book I bought from the downtown bookstore for
more than half a year. I can still only communicate like a 2
year old, if that, and am too embarrassed to ever practice
anyway, especially within ear shot of my husband who is a
bit critical of my pronunciation and speaks such perfect
English that I feel embarrassed of my early efforts to learn
his DIFFICULT language. This country really rocks in some
respects--free health care, cheap insurances of ALL kinds,
and very very very safe town we live in (hardly ANY violent
crime EVER happens). Plus, I can get by with English since
all Finns under 45 speak it, and I've been making friends.
But man this language is sooo tough and the weather
basically sucks from now until May. I'll see how I can
handle it. Being from Hawaii, I sometimes dream of the beach...
I
might have mentioned that the weather is ugly, and I'm just
sitting on the couch with Aleksi on my lap who alternates
between crying because he has to poop or fart (and that is
tough on the little fellow), napping, and
breastfeeding. He looks to me for help when he has
those little frustrating poopy or farty moments, with a
twinge of indignation at these indelicacies that accompany
life here on earth. Whenever he sends me those looks
with his eyes as if he would file an official complaint
about things if he could, I find myself guilty as sin and
gushily apologizing to him that I'm the one who signed him
up for such a messy, uncomfy situation that is living inside
a human body, and I couldn't have come up with a more serene
existence for him. But hey, he grins like a fool when
he is done pooping, so I guess there is a silver lining to
this imperfect world...
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