I got to go pee TWICE during my ultrasound in order to help the Parasite2 shift around in various needed positions to measure the heart and ribs and head and bones. Considering how small my bladder is and the fact I was so full it made me want to barf, this was the biggest relief ever.

Neither time helped with proper bit identification, though: The little bastard jerk Parasite2 was either spine up, crossed-legged, or sitting breech with her/his bottom firmly planted on my cervix, hiding the goods.

I know it’s ridiculous because the baby appears healthy and I’m healthy and we’re all healthy and there are compelling reasons to be all surprised in the waiting room, but I’m so disappointed. I feel silly even saying it when there are many other things in the world to be upset about, but I am.

Like I said with Lucy almost three years ago, there are so many uncontrollable things about pregnancy — what and how your body grows, the symptoms, when you go into labour, when and how the baby will be born. For me, there is something comforting about knowing this one thing about the new addition to our family.

But, I’ve got another 20 weeks to get used to the surprise and come up with a boy’s name to go along with the girl’s one we’ve had for a long time. The nursery was going to be green anyways, and I’m sure we have some neutral-coloured outfit kicking around to bring the Parasite2 home in.

And hey: Now the delivery will be just like the movies, when the doctor yells, “It’s a X!” and Eric will get to rush out and tell everyone.

(I still think it’s a boy. And I’m waving to you, too, you bit-hiding pipsqueak, but only with ONE FINGER.)

Outside: Three hot young worker men, glistening in the rain.

Inside: One bulging pregnant woman with a ridiculously full bladder, with teeny baby stomping on said bladder.

Not only am I un-glanceable and de-sexed from the breasts down, but the being responsible for my condition is having a merry time reminding me.

Thanks, you little Parasite(2).

Of course, hot guys are digging around in a sewer. And one of them has long hair. Aaaand the other just scratched his arse with a bulky gloved hand that was just holding a drain hose.

Fantasy so over.

Tomorrow morning is my mid-point ultrasound, where we hope the Parasite2 is healthy and limber.

Keep your fingers crossed (or maybe wide open?) that s/he’s bits are on full display.

I will honestly be completely shocked if this is not a boy. There are either male bits inside me, or this is one evil girl. At least I am finally off the Diclectin (although mid-afternoon can still be a nauseous time), and the painful acne has been beaten down. Note drugs were needed to combat both.

Share: Did you find out the sex of your babies while pregnant? Why or why not?

All of you, for the most part, have at least one child. Some, I know, have more, or know they want more, or are pregnant with subsequent kids.

So I’m really curious to know — being pregnant with our second, and last, child — how will you, or did you, decide the age spacing of your children?

We always knew Lucy would be at least 2 before we’d want to be pregnant again. “At least” turned out to be “within days of her second birthday,” but I am loving how it turned out. At 27 months, Lucy is just adorable right now. She’s still controllable, she’s a cute chatterbox, she listens and plays make believe and generally is completely edible. Lately I’ve been saying if I wasn’t already pregnant, I’d want to be.

I’m also loving the seasons of this pregnancy: I went through the real crappy times when it was still cold out, and am now in the energized second trimester in late spring/early summer when I can still easily run after Lucy and garden and paint and travel in the nice weather. This *should* also play out well with transitioning Lucy into a big girl bed, and potty training her this summer.

I also needed to make sure that life could — and would — return to some semblance of normalcy, even if it is a “new normal.” You know, that our evenings would once again be free (Lucy now goes to bed around 7:30 p.m., and sleeps until 7 a.m.), that we could do stuff with and without her, that my sense of self wasn’t lost (just altered) and that the world really does continue to exist and function after kids.

Finally, from a completely selfish, body perspective, I got tired of being in limbo: Knowing that I’d be pregnant and breastfeeding again, that my body would change again, that my boobs would change again. I felt like I couldn’t invest in nice clothes or bras knowing that my body wasn’t done morphing. And working out, in some respects, began to feel a little pointless knowing what was (hopefully) right around the corner.

But I think even if you aren’t able to plan your pregnancies — either they’re surprises or take longer than expected — or you adopt or whatever, whatever the age spacing turns out to be is the right one for your family.

Discuss.

One of the worst — and most visible, unfortunately — side effects of this pregnancy has been acne.

Since the fourth or fifth week, I’ve had red, angry, big bumps on my neck and back. They often don’t even fully form, just sit under the skin puffy and lumpy and make-up resistant and eye-watering sore. My back…well, if you connected the dots, you wouldn’t be able to see much skin. At least nothing really touches my neck — but it’s just ridiculous how much it hurts if a bra or tank top strap sits on top of one of these lovelies.

Truthfully, it’s been embarrassing. For the most part, at 29, I’m past that self-conscious stage of life. But these have really bothered me, mostly because of their location. They’re oddly not on my face at all, but at least facial acne is more…normal and accepted and coverable. I feel like a teenage boy who’s shaved with a dull razor. Or maybe shot with poisonous darts.

(It hasn’t helped that, around 10 weeks pregnant, two people I don’t see very often said — within seconds of seeing me — “OMG, what’s that on your NECK?!”)

I keep waiting for the acne to go away, but six weeks into the second trimester it’s allll still here, and I’ve resigned myself that it’s just gonna be until this baby comes out. My doctor, during my last prenatal appointment, saw how bad it was, and gave me a prescription cream with an antibiotic and anti-inflamallatory. Thankfully, it’s really helping to knock down the little bastards once they appear, although there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do to fix the hormonal pregnancy cocktail that’s bringing them on.

My body, however, seems to have its own sense of humour about the whole thing:

A red bump has appeared right in the middle of my bulging belly, directly north of my bellybutton and exactly between it any the centre of my chest. Which means when the bra is off, my torso has two, um, pointy eyes, a bright red bump of a nose, and a wide, stretched-but-not-yet-popped O of a mouth. If I place my hands on the sides of my stomach, it does look very much like him.

Yes, dear lumpy front, exactly my sentiments…

Lucy came home from daycare yesterday with an ouchie: A blister on the inside of her pointer finger.

She burst in the door after Eric picked her up, and immediately shoved her hand in my face. “Lucy has ouchie Mummy kiss it better,” she demanded.

(Do you do a lot of ouchie kissing? It’s the most powerful tool in my arsenal of Mom Skilz, I think. It can stop a tantrum and tears and full-on meltdown.)

Our first thought was that Julia was running some sort of child labour camp guised as a home daycare, because how does a toddler come home with a blister unless she was swinging a pick axe or shoveling dirt all day? It wasn’t until we dropped Lucy off today (where in a deja vu scene, Lucy burst in my parents’ door, shoved her finger in her Nana’s face, said “Lucy has an ouchie Mummy kiss it better?” before swinging her fist around to my mouth) and my Mom’s face went pale.

Turns out Lucy’d gotten too close to the stove last week and burned her finger when she and Nana were baking Grandpa a cake (with sprinkles). It happened quick, was fixed with cold water and kisses, and my Mom thought nothing more of it.

In any case, The Ouchie is a very big deal at Chez McDougall-Foster. The reason we didn’t know about it for a week is because it wasn’t bothering Lucy until yesterday when it popped at Julia’s. So now it’s sore and stings.

So Lucy whined about it during her after-daycare movie. Before dinner. During dinner when she tried to hold her fork. We promised we’d make it feel better with “special cream” (polysporin) and a band-aid.

Now she proudly shows the band-aid (”Cee-Cee’s ban-ay”) to everyone. This morning I heard her talking to a towel we have laid out in her big girl room (we’re painting), showing it to the fabric doggies and asking them to kiss “Cee-Cee’s ouchie gots at Ju-Ju’s house” better. Spencer’s seen the band-aid. Shelby, the girl across the road, has seen the ouchie AND the band-aid. When she came home this evening we immediately saw it was a NEW band-aid that Nana put on.

Have you been within 10 kms of our house? THEN YOU’VE SEEN THE OUCHIE AND THE BAND-AID.

It’s actually heart-melting adorable how concerned and interested and fixated Lucy is. It’s sure to…

Uh-oh. Gotta run. Lucy, over the monitor, has declared a state of emergency because “THE BAN-AY FELLED OFF.”

The saga continues…

This morning Eric and I had a Google chat about poop. Specifically around, how I, um, had to go, and his assertion that girls don’t poop, or if they do, that it smells like rainbows.

We are easing quite fluidly into a new routine at Chez McDougall-Foster, the Eric is Around the House All the Time new way of life.

He’s set up in his “office” in the basement (he picked his stuff up from work yesterday, and even brought his family photos downstairs), where we communicate via the aforementioned chat and various foot-stomping codes. We meet for a lunch date around 11:30 — the latest I can go without food — and watch Cold Case Files and American Justice together on the couch, our crossed feet touching on the padded ottoman.

For Lucy’s (and ours, too, but more for her) sake, we are trying to keep things as normal as possible. That means Eric’s alarm still goes off at 7 a.m., he still gets Lucy up while I eek out as many extra minutes of sleep as possible, he heads to the shower, and I stay in bed with my arm slung around Lucy’s tiny waist as she watches Rolly Pollie Ollie until the shower water stops and I haul myself out of bed.

I still do breakfast, and he still does morning drop-off. So far, Lucy hasn’t batted an eye. When she says her usual “Daddy go to work,” we smile and nod, because Daddy is going to work trying to find a new job. I’ve started telling her that Daddy’s working from home for a while now, trying to justify his presence when we arrive from daycare.

I think she’s too young to really know what’s up, but bet she’ll find it hard when he does find work and he’s back to his usual hours. Will wait and see, I guess.

For now, I’m loving the extra company and time with him. I do have some adjusting to do, however: Eric walked into our bedroom mid-morning to find me making smelly rainbows in the en suite bathroom with the door wide open.

Whoops.

You know how moms have these…sayings? Like, “Don’t cross your eyes or your face will stay that way!” or “Use your INSIDE voice!” or “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you, too?”

I have one I use all the time, usually aimed at Eric, or his brother, Marky, or his brother’s wife, Jenni, when they are rough-housing with Lucy: “Don’t shake her around so much, or she’ll puke!”

All three of them roll their eyes at me, or exchange looks with each other when they think I’m not looking. But I see them, for I am now a mom, and “I have eyes in the back of my head.” I know they think I’m a big worrywart, but it comes with the territory Momness, along with less sleep and no privacy.

Well. *ahem* Guess what happened yesterday?

About 10 a.m. (two hours after breakfast), Lucy and I were playing chase up and down the hallway. After a particular vigorous run, I scooped Lucy up in my arms, and bounced her back into the kitchen. Where her eyes glazed over for a sec, she burped, then — you guessed it! — puked all over the front of her sleeper, down my hoodie-clad arm, then over my bare hand (ohdearlord, that last part was SO gross).

So, without further ado…

I told you so.

While at the Green Living Show this weekend, I picked up several cards that list cosmetic and personal care ingredients in big and little kid products to avoid. These are synthetics that are potentially harmful — especially to vulnerable, developing babies.

(For the record, I’m SO not saying these ARE harmful or cause cancer or make your arms fall off or or will kill us all tomorrow. They are thought to be harsh or not environmentally-friendly or come from nonrenewable resources. And yes, this information comes from companies that sell naturally-based products with their own agendas. Which is why I’m linking to Wikipedia or Google for definitions, where you can find all sorts of links on your own.)

While I knew of some of these (parabens and phthalates) I thought you might like to see what other things to look for on an ingredient list. As with food, if you can’t pronounce it, it’s probably not good for you…

• sodium lauryl/laureth sulfate — a cleansing agent that creates foam and suds (which is why many natural products are not near as “soapy” as we’re used to)
• parabens — preservatives used in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. Controversial studies have linked it to cancer and increased estrogen.
• phthalates — used in plastics to make them more elastic, and found in everything from shower curtains to sex toys to nail polish and perfume and iPods. Controversial studies have linked it to hormonal imbalances (especially in fetuses) and allergies.
• petrolatum — a greasy, film-building skin protector widely used in cosmetics. Byproduct of petroleum (duh).
• phenylenediamine (PPD) — used in hair and textile dyes, printer ink and photographic products. A known allergen.
• coal-tar colours (FD&C or D&C) — synthetic food and cosmetic colour dye.
• diethanolamine (DEA) — used to create a creamy texture and foaming action. Linked to cancer, decreased brain development and miscarriages.
• dimethicone — a silicone oil used in shampoo to make hair slippery and shiny.
• formaldehyde — too. much. to. process.
• phosphate — commonly added to dishwasher detergent to help soften water and boost cleaning power. Excessive amounts in our water can create excess algae.
• oxybenzone — organic compound used in sunscreen and cosmetics as it absorbs UVA rays. A known carcinogen that penetrates the skin and creates free radicals (this one scares me, because I’ve been wearing sunscreen cream for years, and regularly slather it on Lucy. Need to look into it more and find alternatives.)

FYI, two of my favourite Durham retailers (who also happen to advertise, yes) carry wonderful natural baby bath products. Tamarra of Lollipops & Lizards (online) now carries the Little Twig line, and Shelby of Natural Earth Tones (Oshawa) has the All Things Jill line. Both are great priced (the higher cost of natural and organic products is always an impediment for people, myself included, which is why these are great).

President’s Choice had a HUGE booth at the show and was really promoting its Green products. We got a free, full-size sample of their floor cleaner and cleaning putty. Currently, we use the laundry soap, toilet paper and paper towels, and will switch to the dishwasher detergent when our stock is up. I love that these are so accessible and reasonably priced.

A company called Live Clean gave away tons of mini bottles of shampoo and conditioner to promote their eco-friendly body care line. Their stuff is 96% plant derived, and they gave out this neat bookmark that you can plant to make a wildflower garden (what clever, clever marketing).

This post is huge, so I’d better stop before your eyes roll back in your head from too much info or you click screaming away from the hippie-ness. Hope it all helps!

Being the short-term thinker I am, I have yet to fully comprehend that in less than six months there are going to be two children living in my house.

I’m firmly, obliviously entrenched in pregnancy survival mode. It’s sort of nice living in this state of denial.

But the odd time I do let my mind wander into the near future, these are the random things I worry about:

• learning to breastfeed again. My nipples cringe when I even look at nursing bras, remembering how utterly painful the first few weeks were
• sleep. Or better yet, lack thereof. We have been so blessed with Lucy and so comfortable in our freedom from 7:30 p.m. - 7 a.m. that I know this baby is going to kick our asses when s/he arrives. This turns into near panic when I read posts like Mary Lynn’s — then hear it again from Eric (he works with ML’s husband) in the form of Ed’s red, blurry eyes
• two children = four appendages each. Last I checked, despite wishes every night, I only have two hands *sigh*
• baby crap gear clogging up the house. It’s so nice now having Lucy’s toys tucked away beside the sofa out of sight. I think back to the early baby months of swing, bouncy chair, receiving blankets, small trippable toe-stubbing toys and say bye-bye living room
• oh, the screaming and crying around dinner time. Do you remember those?
• Spencer becoming a hermit when he realizes, “ohdeargod there’s another one.”
• Lucy’s reaction in general

But then this afternoon, at the grocery store? There was this frazzled-looking mom, hair in a sloppy pony tail, crusted spit-up down her back wearing mismatched socks, leaning into an infant seat and nibbling on the bare toes of her three-month-old to his gummy-mouthed delight, and I realized all the above doesn’t matter for moments like that one.