Steamed Puddings

It’s finally time for me to tell you why I have been so silent for the past few months. Kiwiman and I are adding to our “flock” at christmas.   It’s possible that some of you have suspected this…but up until now I was unable to confirm anything publicly.

There’s a strange double standard at work with pregnancy. Women are encouraged to NOT talk about being pregnant when they are less than 3 months along, even though their eating and drinking habits sometimes change dramatically. If the worst should happen and pregnancy loss occurs within these first three months, I suppose women are expected to not share their grief and receive support from friends. Later in the pregnancy, when gestation becomes obvious, the impending child seems to be all everyone can talk about. I don’t always agree with the odd forces at work here.

I wanted to tell everyone earlier, but found myself in a difficult situation where most of my daily friends are coworkers, and I didn’t want the news to get around at work before the three month mark. Not telling the coworker friends was extremely difficult as they ALL noticed the changes in my habits - for example, I stopped coming along to Friday drinks after work as I felt weird just having water.

I hit the 12 week mark last weekend and so made sure to tell the boss’ boss yesterday. I think my upcoming thirtieth birthday this weekend forced the issue a bit. Kiwiman pointed out that friends would probably find it odd if I didn’t drink as part of birthday celebrations.

(The timing of celebrating my big life events with alcohol has always been against me. I graduated from college a month before I turned 21, so I couldn’t go out to bars to celebrate. I finished my PhD and was two months pregnant, so I chose not to go out drinking with friends…and even though I succeeded in getting my PhD before I turned 30, I can’t celebrate that milestone with a drink either. Alcohol is so well-accepted by my society that it was initially difficult to figure out what to do without it.)

Now that I have told YOU, I can get back to blogging about life in general without having to censor out a large portion of the latest events.

No doubt you will have some questions:

Q: When are you due?
A: Right now, December 28th. In reality this means things could happen anytime around the christmas-new year period.

Q: How are you feeling?
A: Pretty darned good! I haven’t had ANY morning sickness at all. I’m just as surprised by that as you are.

Q: Are you having a boy or a girl? (also) Do you want a boy or a girl?
A: I’m only 12 weeks along, so we can’t find out the baby’s sex for another six to eight weeks at least. I think that we’ll probably find out, but we may not tell anyone. Not quite sure yet how we’ll handle this.  Of course we are just focused on having a healthy human which resembles us more than an orangutan or an alien.