Monthly Archives: March 2010

My pregnancy ritual: hydration



My pregnancy ritual: hydration, originally uploaded by sundaykofax.

Here’s how it goes:
*Get out tea gear (see photo)
*Put the kettle on.
* Fill tea basket tea.
*Pour hot water over tea basket into white teapot
*Fill thermoses with hot water while tea steeps in pot
*Move basket from white tea pot to the first thermos
*Put lid on teapot
*Put lids on thermoses (noting which has tea, and which has hot water)
*Take teapot and thermoses into the office, where my mug is waiting
*Drink all the tea from the teapot
*Open the thermoses, switch basket to hot-water thermos
*Drink tea from thermos 1
*Drink tea from thermos 2

Here’s how this came about:
My sister, who’s already had a bebe, gifted me the jar you see, full of pregnancy tea. (The tea is equal parts red raspberry leaf, nettle, and oat straw. I think she added red clover just for kicks, and I’ve recently added alfalfa.) This was the jar of tea she had when she was pregnant, and I love that I get to use the same one. My sister said that she began to crave the tea, and never got tired of the taste. She also attributed the tea to the fact that her umbilical cord was incredibly strong. "They had trouble cutting it.", she said, gleefully.

I’m finding that by having tea every day, I manage to stay well hydrated. I’ve been drinking it since Thanksgiving, and I haven’t gotten tired of it (which is kind of amazing).

Oh, apparently teas that are normally otherwise fine to drink can sometimes have adverse affects during pregnancy. I liked having a huge supply of tea that I knew I could drink a lot of, without worrying about the effects on le fetus. There are some commercial brands of mother-to-be teas, which have very similar ingredients, but this was MUCH cheaper, especially considering how much of it I’m drinking. I was able to find all the herbs at my local health food store. I think the grand total was $15 to fill up the jar (and that’s at a fancy store in Cambridge where John Malkovich shops).

Babies are easy, let’s make a website

One of the things I love the most about my partner/sig.oth./hubs/spousal unit is that we’re kind of like Transformers. On our own, we’re pretty great, in our own ways. Together, thought, we make something much more kick-ass and powerful.

IMG_0928

Last night, I offhandedly made a comment about a frustration I’m having with a particular aspect of a website I’m using. Jason kidded that he could make a better version. I kidded back a really great domain name.

I saw his eyes literally light up. “That’s great!” he said. And it was on.

We had made plans to finally have dinner at Scups, so he grabbed a small notebook and we started plotting a new website to build.

We spent the whole dinner talking over each other and writing down notes. What’s the workflow for building this? Is that a feature you need right away, or could that be part of the second round of work we do? I don’t think people would bother with that thing. How do we keep spammers out?

(I’m spoiling all of this by not telling you any details. Sorry!)

By the time our food came, we had a really solid plan for a site that could build in a matter of weeks, and this time (as opposed to previous ideas we’ve had), it had a tiny bit of a revenue generator built in. (It would nice if we could recoup that server expenses.)

When we got home, I started in on a UI design for each of the types of pages (index page, sign-up page,etc.), and Jason set up the domain and … did a bunch of stuff I’m actually not familiar with, but has to do with the back-end of how the site would function.

See? That’s why we’re so awesome together. I bet other couples have their own version of this, in the medium they’re versed in: Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera painting, our friends Jill and Adam building houses, The White Stripes*.

If only our daughter could be all the best parts of us working together. I’d comment out the need for glasses, and change the CSS so she’d have a fighting chance at not being of medium height only.

*Technically, they’re ex-spouses.

MUCH more belly

It’s been a while, and because of the pace of visible growth, you’re going to be able to tell. What I find interesting is the change to my posture.

7 weeks13 Weeks
18 weeks22 weeks31 Weeks, side view
(That’s 7, 14, 18, 22 and 31 weeks.)

I’ve also been taking pictures of what it looks like when I tighten my stomach muscles.
31 Weeks, sucking in
I should have nicknamed the fetus “The Six Pack”.