33 WEEKS

What does 33 weeks mean, exactly?

Last night we put the air conditioner in the window, cooled it down to a comfortable 78 degrees, and sat in bed eating watermelon while watching the movie "Fool’s Gold". We were on the hunt for a “brainless” movie, but what we got was so much more; a collection of reductive and imbecilic stereotypes barely worth the energy it took to put down my watermelon and click it off midstream.

You have to understand that Erin’s stomach is currently taut to the point of bursting and it seems every new day brings with it new challenges and joys. The joy of not being able to see one’s own feet. The joy of being helplessly pinned to the floor by gravity. The joy of knowing that little Sava has her eyes wide open when she rotates her upper body and hips and thrusts the kicking leg out directly to into the surrounding viscera and bone. The joy of having a child still in the womb who can already program her own photo categories on smugmug (http://jamba.smugmug.com/Sava). The challenge of getting enough sleep.

Erin typically drops off the map of the living anywhere between 9-10:30 pm and awakens anywhere from 5-6: 30 am. Several days ago I awoke to find her doing taxes in the guest bedroom. It was only 7am, but it was obvious she had been awake for hours as countless stacks of paperwork hemmed her in. When she noticed me standing in the doorway she swiftly inquired into various W-2 and W-9 forms she noticed missing and then returned quite busily to the task of sorting and filing.

Last night I agreed to go to sleep early in order to help Mama get some needed rest. Every so often we receive meat and surveillance cam catalogs addressed to the former owner of our PO Box. Following the movie, I read to Erin from the “Allen Brothers: Great Steakhouse Steaks®” catalog to help put her in the sleepy zone. Roe Conn, whoever that is, is quoted as saying of the Allen Brothers catalog, "No question, they have the best tasting...Heat&Serve items available anywhere!” What could be a more perfect endorsement? After informing Erin that August is considered “steak hamburger” month, I read her a little of the soothing prose:

16 steak burgers 6 oz. ea.
Baby Back Ribs uncooked
10 half slabs 12-13 lbs.
USDA PRIME Filet Mignons close-trim 4 filets 8 oz. ea.
USDA PRIME Boneless Sirloin Strip Steaks 4 steaks 12 oz. ea.
USDA PRIME Porterhouse Steaks 4 steaks 16 oz. ea.
Chicken Breasts 8 breasts 5-7 oz. ea.
Veal Rib Chops 4 chops 12 oz. ea.
Domestic Lamb Rib Chops 8 chops 6 oz. ea.
USDA PRIME Bone-In Ribeye Steaks

I barely got to "22 Steak Dogs & Sausage Sampler" when I noticed Erin was fast asleep. Gently I turned off my light and rolled over, but my fingertip grazed Erin’s belly and that was it. Next instant she was wide awake and very upset about my having touched her and the noise of my rolling, the sound I was making with my noisy pillow, etc. She sat up and began reading our latest collection of baby articles while exhaling forcefully and turning the pages noisily, irritably. Only after several “talks” about her need for sleep did she finally forgive me.

If any of you don’t know about pregnancy, it is the best of times and the worst of times and requires you to keep your humor or risk losing your sanity. Case in point. On my way into Boulder today I stopped for gas and started thinking about the future, the 8 short weeks before we are to become parents and everything that that means. Next thing I knew I was sitting in my car in the Shell car wash reading Nietzsche with The Velvet Underground's “Who Loves the Sun” blasting away at an almost uncomfortable decibel.

Extreme elation, trepidation or anxiety can hit you anytime, anywhere--though mostly it is elation.

Today’s anxiety is about diaper service (how do we get it, can we afford it, can we ask for help?) and the continuing saga of my employment search. At 33 weeks it’s anyone’s guess what will happen from moment to moment. Perhaps the rest of the day will be bliss as we wander around in the warm air of Boulder, perhaps Erin will send me heat-soaked emails about having the lugubrious body of a whale, or perhaps we’ll find ourselves in our basement, hurriedly rigging earthquake supports for Sava’s crib with only moments left in which to complete the world. Or maybe we’ll go to sleep early and wake up tomorrow refreshed and ready to face the start of week 34 and all that that means.

31 weeks

A long awaited update.....

We are at 31 weeks this Friday (that is 7 months and 3 weeks for those of you not accustomed to thinking in terms of weeks) and everything is going really well. Sava Talulah is growing and kicking inside her mama like a right smart growing bean (around 16" long and 3.3 lbs) and I continue to feel absurdly healthy in this pregnancy (my only complaints have been a general weakness and exhaustion- but that has been getting better this last week since I have been hiking more, and eating more iron, and thus getting more sleep at night). Jamba is thankfully home from spending 6 weeks in Switzerland and Amsterdam for his PhD program in Philosophy and Media Studies at the European Graduate School (he had a transformative experience and is definitely in the right program for his interests and passions) and since his return, has taken over the job of maintaining our garden. It has flourished under his loving care, and I have been enjoying the break by luxuriating in our cool-ish house and being lazy.
While he was gone, Sava and I took a little trip out to the Bay Area at the end of May and had the most incredible Blessing Way Ceremony, thrown by dear friends Jeremy and Sarah, at Jeremy's sweet house in Vallejo. I see it as the beginning of a most auspicious and sacred life for little Sava, who got an incredible start by being surrounded by a circle of the most powerful and loving females, all feeding her lots of love.

See pix at:
http://jamba.smugmug.com/gallery/5132731_RK5CK#306651946_kxaAr

Hope you are all well!

We're Having a Girl!

Despite the best guesses of 9 out of 10 people, we're having a girl!! Sava Talulah Dunn had her first 3D screen review this Saturday afternoon and even the Dr. thought she's got Erin's cheek bones. We'll be sending a link soon to the video for any of you who want to see her in action.

19 weeks- "The Quickening"

Jamba got a wonderful birthday present today (Monday, April 21st) when I was in bed trying to fall asleep after the inevitable 4am trip to the bathroom (my bladder shrinking in direct proportion to the enlargment of my boobs, which incidentally are becoming frightfully planet-like in both heft and gravity), and I was lying on my back (trying to savor the last moments in which I will apparently be able to enjoy this wonderful position) and I was starting to dream about either pancakes or being chased by a swollen mongoose when.... I felt the baby move inside my belly! It felt like my stomach was a little bay or inlet and there was a smallish rowboat gently and faintly knocking against a pier. It didn't feel like fluttering or like gas, which is what they tell you it is going to feel like. It felt like a small watercraft in a bit of wake.

When Jamba woke up at 9 am (his bladder is still apparently quite up to the challenge of sleeping through the night) I got to tell him the good news and he put his hand on my belly for awhile and actually felt it kick a couple of times from the outside! Which I think made him feel pretty happy and was a nice birthday present, and very thoughtful of the (now) 8 oz heirloom tomato, who thus was the first person to be able to give Jamba a present this year.

Incidentally for the moment we have decided to name the child, if it be a boy, Oslo Elliot Dunn, and if a girl, Sava Talullah Dunn. By "decide" I mean these are the selections of the moment, and are subject to fluctuation and of course to meeting the child, who might have a name already figured out for itself and will tell us upon birth. My midwife tells us that we might want to choose a "belly name", meaning a gender-neutral nickname for the baby- and so far it has been "carrot" and "turnip" and "grublet" and so on, but we are still casting about for the perfect temporary moniker. Does anybody have any ideas? Cast your vote!!

17 weeks= a turnip!

The little grublet weighs 5 ounces now and is around 5 inches long, approximately the size of a turnip. Last week it was an avocado. I love how we classify our fetuses by the food item they represent! I wonder if it is a holdover from our cannibalistic days...



He or she can move its joints, and its skeleton — until now rubbery cartilage — is starting to harden to bone.
Mom and Dad are holding up pretty well, surrounded by a loving community in Boulder and far-off friends and family, reassuring us that we are indeed, going to be juuuuust fine.

(If any of you are admiring my fine fashion sense, I should let you know that I am rocking the fab designs of my dear friend Nicacelly (nicacelly.com) ....her yummy dresses are doing double duty as sexy prego gear!)

14 weeks

Dear friends: This blog has been created to announce the happy news that Jamba and I are 14 weeks pregnant.  We are very excited and overwhelmed with the idea that in a few short months we will be parents. We are not sure we are totally ready, but we are as ready as we will ever be, and it seems like the right time.

The dirty facts: Seems that we conceived down in Mexico during our Christmas Break in San Miguel de Allende.  We returned home, to our cozy little house on the outskirts of Boulder, and I found out about 5 weeks later.  We decided to keep the news under wraps for awhile, as we wanted to make sure that this pregnancy was viable (having had a miscarriage at 6 weeks in November).  Now it seems pretty certain, two weeks into my second trimester, that we are going to have this baby, so it is time to spread the news officially! We are due in mid to late September. We have a great midwife, named Elizabeth, whom I love and who serves me herbal tea from her garden when I visit her home for my prenatal exams. We are going to have a home birth. (please-we prefer not to be inundated with people trying to talk us out of this. We promise we will be safe and will go to the hospital at the first sign of any complication.)

A lot of people have asked and so I will address this here: No, Jamba and I weren't officially trying to get knocked up- but we weren't exactly not trying either. The eerie thing is that after four or five years of not getting pregnant- we bought a house in August, and got pregnant two weeks later. Lost that pregnancy, got pregnant the month after. I had always heard the myth- buy a house, start setting up the crib- but I didn't really believe it until now.

One of the most amazing things about this pregnancy has been to observe how the internal changes in my body have been mirroring the cycles of the outside world. Getting pregnant during winter solstice, time of most darkness and stillness, and every day a gradual turning towards the light. I just started to show last week, which means that my uterus has expanded to the point that it is starting to peek up over the top of my pubic bone (see photo below), just as the first crocuses of spring have started to poke their heads out of the ground. (Yes, all you smug California folk- it is mid-march and we are just starting to see the first dang flowers. You see, in Colorado, seasons are experienced fully and discretely, and sometimes extremely completely (as in, after a full weekend of working outside in the garden, about to plant all my little seeds in my new raised garden beds,  I woke up this morning to a three inch blanket of snow draped over all the leaves, filling my wheelbarrow. I know. It seems impossible.)  

Anyway, to wrap up the analogy, we will be giving birth in mid-to late September (get it: harvest time?) Which is pretty cool.  I have always enjoyed symmetry.

Love to you all, and we will try to keep in touch via this blog and send pictures of the burgeoning belly monster!

Love

Erin and Jamba

jambafish@gmail.com

erinoes@gmail.com, 

erin cell 720-628-0293

jamba cell 720-938-4342

14 Weeks

Erin at 14 weeks