Snowbound Herpetologist

I have been lagging in my posting mostly because I’ve been super busy with work, but also because absolutely nothing exciting has happened.  I feel like I’m in a bit of a pregnancy lull, just waiting it out patiently until things pick up a bit.  I also caught a light cold, so I’ve been valiantly fighting it off with lemon tea, throat drops, and sleep.  Can I just say that I miss being able to take drugs - or even Zicam, for heaven’s sake - when things are not going well health-wise?  I know this probably seems contradictory to the fact that I want to labor med-free, but I promise that it all makes sense in my head :) As promised, husband and I went to our local mom-to-mom sale (way to go, husband, for being one of like three Y chromosomes there!) to pick up really cheap clothes for the baby.  It was a reasonable success, I think!  We spent $100 total, and we got literally dozens of outfits in assorted sizes from true newborn through 6 months.  We still need a few other things (mor

One of the most unexpected things to me about pregnancy (which really should have been obvious to me ahead of time) is the fact that I now fit into literally none of my old clothes, especially clothes that are appropriate for work.  I expected a lot of things not to fit, but I thought that there would still be a fair amount that I could wear.  However, all of my old shirts have become midriffs, and I fully cannot button (or even zipper) any of my pants.  Even my most low-riding skirts squish the baby at the waistband to the point where I can't concentrate on work very well if I'm in a sitting position (ok, who are we kidding, I can't really concentrate on work anyway, but it's even worse when wearing one of these skirts).  I have an entire closet full of clothes, accumulated over the past 15 years (honestly!), and I can't wear any of them.  And I still have 12 weeks to go!!! The good part about this is that all of the clothing catalogs that arrive in the mail now

Husband and I took our “Preparing for Birth” class, and we actually feel really...prepared.  All the other women in the class expressed a fair amount of fear, and maybe I’m just horribly naïve, but I’m feeling pretty good about labor and delivery.  I’m actually sort of looking forward to the challenge!  We have a birth plan, it’s flexible, we’re practicing, and I feel pretty confident in my baby, myself, my husband, and my awesome care providers.  Hey, if our daughter can survive 5 weeks of being continuously scrambled on washboarded Aussie dirt tracks during early cell division and organ development, she can handle a few inches of descent and some rotation.  And it will be so, so much fun to (finally!) meet her :) That said, I plan to go unmedicated.  Because I’ve never given birth before, however, the best analogy to the labor and delivery process that I can estimate is a really, really horrific athletic event (like maybe back-to-back marathons) while simultaneously experiencing

I need a quick break from work today, so I’m going to write a blog post.  I do have a few other gems already written, but they’ve been slated for later posting :) Although our basement is still not finished (or even started) - meaning we are unable to actually decorate the nursery yet since it is still a guest room - I have begun planning.  All of my baby development books say that infants respond best to black and white, but I can’t wrap my head around a zebra print baby room.  I think I’d get dizzy.  So instead, I think we are going with a more traditional “pastel + gray” route, as simple as possible and reasonably unisex. As biologists, it will be unsurprising that we are thinking of a “wildlife” theme.  We sort of have a wildlife theme to our whole house, actually.  I have a rather unhealthy obsession with both owls and dinosaurs, and I expect both may figure prominently in decorations.  We’re even discussing the possibility of a fish tank once we have a better sense of how