Monday

I'm excited to have my first pregnant friend on "my side" of our family of friends... we have a few friends on Mr. Ibis's side who have young kids and one who is pregnant, but so far on my side I've been the first to reproduce. We got a phone call yesterday from some college friends of mine (of course they are Mr. I's friends now too) telling us they are expecting their first and she is 12 weeks along. Exciting! I was surprised to find that although I couldn't be happier to be out of first tri, I was strangely nostalgic to hear my friend describe their success and the early days of pregnancy... I can see already how I will miss being pregnant when it's over.

I do believe I have my first official craving: chocolate. And, surprisingly, desserts of all kinds. This is strange to me because when not pregnant I don't have much of a sweet tooth, and during first trimester the only sweets I could tolerate were popsicles because they were cold and tart. Now I find myself eyeing dessert cases with an animalistic lust I have never felt for pastries before. Every time I pass a supermarket checkout I think that a chocolate bar sounds like a fabulous idea. This is so not like me! I think I've been pretty good about indulging in moderation. I eat a couple of carob spirulina protein chunks for snacks during the day (I am a hippie, after all) and I have one cup of hot cocoa each night for dessert. Of course this craving hits me a few weeks before I'm scheduled to take my gestational diabetes test - of course. But I think I'm doing okay with my sugar intake. We will see.

Mr. Ibis and I had a much needed but much dreaded conversation with his mom over the weekend. We were riding in the car doing errands and Mr. I just blurted out without thinking, "So we think we might have found a daycare!" Record screeeeeeeech. There was a brief awkward pause that MIL probably didn't notice but I knew Mr. I was thinking SHIT and so was I. We've known since we got pregnant last winter with the first baby that MIL wanted to babysit when I return to work. At first we waffled and argued with each other about whether that would work. Then as we saw her stumbling more often we agreed it wouldn't. Then as we looked at the cost of daycare we thought, well maybe it would be safe for just a couple of hours here and there. And then a couple of weeks ago when she fell down and needed us to come over and help her up (and admitted to falling on other occasions), that put the final nail in the coffin. At least for me, but I decided not to re-broach the topic with Mr. I at that sensitive moment.

So, suddenly we were having The Conversation. MIL was obviously flustered and kind of stammered, "That's good... who is it?" and I briefly told her about Sue. Then she said "That's nice... but I want to be involved! You know I want to do anything I can. And... I want a baby!" Mr. I said, "Oh, yes, of course you will be involved...." And then to my shock she admitted, "But I am afraid I would drop the baby." Mr. Ibis teased her, "Gee, you're not really selling yourself too well, Mom," and she backpedaling furiously claiming she would never ever drop the baby, she just thought we might think that and so on. Mr. I tried to rescue her from feeling crappy but saying, "Oh we know... I'm more worried about [his stepdad] stumbling around the way he does." To me that kind of left it up in the air a little and I wasn't even sure whether Mr. I was still considering letting her babysit.

So I felt tense and irritable for the next few hours as we were running errands with Mom and didn't have a chance to talk privately about it. Finally we got home and I talked to Mr. I and he assured me that he felt exactly the same way - it's just not safe. Every time we hang out with MIL we see her lose her footing and almost fall. Her blood sugar is very unstable - while we were out shopping her blood sugar crashed and she started shaking and looked like she was going to keel over until she found a glucose tablet in her purse. At other times it skyrockets and she gets very ill. I feel bad for her because I know that she is so excited for this baby, and it's sad that the reality is her body is just failing her and she can't do things she wants to do, like babysit.

Someone on the Bump had a very good suggestion to just make an extra effort to make her feel included in the baby's life without that involving babysitting alone. Visit often, and when he's older and can walk and run (read: not be carried around, and get out of the way if someone is falling) they can have weekly playdates.

One more little note: I'm going to be working on tagging all my posts on this blog, going back to the beginning, to make it a little more organized and searchable if people want to read about certain topics. I'll be starting from February and working my way to the present... look for a menu of post topics in the sidebar as I get that online.