You may remember that I posted a few months about working with 23andMe, a personal genetics company in Silicon Valley that’s making it possible for average Janes and Joes to get access to their genetic information. While I had a few misgivings about “knowing too much”, curiosity won out and I spat (i.e. filled a small vial with saliva to send to the company for genotyping, or analysis of my genetic information).

Finally, 23andMe is ready to announce the project they’ve hired a group of fabulous mom bloggers (including yours truly) to help launch: the Pregnancy Community. What I find the most exciting about the community is the opportunity to contribute to surveys and research studies about health, traits and pregnancy–and you don’t have to be a 23andMe customer to participate.

I’m a skeptic when it comes to technology and health (for example, I’ve never chosen to get genetic testing done on any of my children in utero) and it’s something I thought long and hard about before choosing to partner with 23andMe. But what I’m finding is that knowing more about yourself and your background isn’t scary or sinister in and of itself; it’s just more information that you can choose to use (or not use) however you’d like.

My first post is up over at 23andMe, and it’s all about “why I spat”:

As a mom of five, I’m always curious how it can possibly be that I wound up with such different children, all created from the same basic set of genetic material. There are some things I’d love my kids to inherit from me—-my blue eyes, for example. But I’d rather they got my husband’s skin (he tans much better). And while I hope they love to read like I do, he’s a whole lot better at following user’s manuals, while I can barely tell the difference between slot A and tab B, let alone figure out how to insert one into the other.

Their personalities are all over the map, with bits and pieces of their father and me and other relatives making for an interesting family stew. How much of this is chance, and how much was pre-written in their genetic code? Did, for example, the fact that they all got teeth at 2.5 months of age have anything to do with the fact that I got mine around the same age? Are they jokesters because they were born that way, or is it from their environment? And hey, I know that sperm determine the baby’s gender, but is it really all because of Dad that we wound up with four boys before we finally broke the mold and got a girl—or is it possible my genes have anything to do with it?

Read the rest of my post here at the 23andMe pregnancy community. And you can help move the research forward by sharing anonymously about your pregnancy experience(s). Visit www.23andme.com/pregnancy to take surveys on everything from whether old wives’ tales held true to you, to which common pregnancy maladies you experienced. I hope to see you there!

We’ve been home with Miss Clara since Tuesday. And we are loving it.

Clara is the sweetest baby…just a little model newborn citizen. She sleeps really well (usually 11-12 hours at night, waking up to eat, of course…but only every 4 hours or so). She rarely cries, unless she’s hungry, wet, or needs to burp. When she wakes up during the day, she just looks around quietly, taking everything in. As I recall, William (now five) had a similar disposition as an infant, and he was quite a handful as a toddler–so I’m not off the hook with this one. But there is something to be said for easing into life with a new baby, and she’s sure making the transition easy on us.

I know that everybody has their favorite and least favorite stages of babyhood, and a lot of people are terribly bored by newborns (for me, about 12-18 months is the pits). But I just love this time. It’s so easy to get lost in a newborn baby–the crinkly little face, soft head, the yawns and grimaces and sleepy smiles, the warm lump they make in your arms. I’m usually a person who gets easily bored by the more mindless parenting tasks, and yet when I have had newborns, I feel content to just put my brain on hold for most of the day and sink into their sweet, slow little world.

The only problem? Is that it goes by too fast. Pretty soon Clara will be sleeping less, growing bigger, expressing herself more and more. Then rolling around, sitting, crawling, standing, walking. I’ll love watching her get big and getting to know her as she grows, but I’ll always miss this time.

Which makes me wonder how I’ll ever REALLY be at peace with not having more children. Nine months of pregnancy is a lot to go through just to get a couple months worth of sweet new-baby-ness, but I have to admit that part of me looks at her and thinks, eh, I could do it all again just for a little more of this.

One more day until we’re released from the NICU and can GO HOME! I haven’t seen my boys since last Saturday, when I put Jacob in charge (just until aunt Jenna, five minutes away, could get there) and we ran out the door to the ER. I feel badly about the way all that played out, but I never had a chance to go back home afterward, and we decided that having the little two come and visit would be too traumatic: when they aren’t talking to me, they seem to to just fine, but every time we talk on the phone they fall apart. I think they would have had a really hard time seeing us and then having to leave us again. Boy, do I miss them.

Clara continues to do well. We moved into the “parent training room” yesterday, which means that instead of sleeping in a separate room on another floor, we have a little room with two sofa beds, a private bathroom, and most importantly, our BABY in it. Much easier, because we have constant access to her and don’t have to leave the NICU to sleep or go to the bathroom. If we’d had this set-up all along, our stay would have been downright pleasant.

I had an upsetting moment yesterday when the nurse came in to do some weight and IV flushing and mentioned that we’d have to wait until after the last dose of her antibiotic to do the state-required hearing screening. When we asked why, she said that the drug can cause hearing problems. After she left, I looked up the drug–gentamicin–and found that it is well known for causing irreversible hearing loss and issues with vestibular function (i.e. dizziness & balance issues). It was the first I’d heard of it, and Clara’s been on it for nine days.

After a closer look it doesn’t appear as though Clara is at a particularly high risk for developing these problems, but because the drug isn’t routinely tested on newborns, there’s no way to know for sure. I was really upset that we weren’t informed about the risks. In fact, antibiotic therapy (we still don’t know that she actually had an infection) was presented to us as a “Might as well do it, because there are no downsides” option. To me, the possibility of hearing and balance issues are definitely downsides!

I can’t say I’d have demanded alternate treatment if I’d known, but at least I’d have felt like I was part of the decision-making process. As I explained to the nurse practitioner who came down to talk to us about it last night after we had a minor flipout over the news, coming into the NICU, you give up so much power and so many rights over your own child. It isn’t asking too much to at least be informed and to have the opportunity to weigh the risks.

Most people, I believe, would still go along with what the doctor recommends–likely myself included. But in a hospital, you aren’t dealing with docs you’ve hand-selected…you have new caregivers every day, all of them strangers, and each has a different opinion about how things should be done. Why should I trust a doc I’ve never met, just because he’s got the white coat and the education? Doctors are still human and can make mistakes. And as I’m the one who carried her, gave birth to her and am responsible for raising her (and dealing with any issues that might come up later as result of treatment she’s had), nobody has the best interests of my baby at heart as much as I do. At least give me the information I need up front, instead of letting me be blindsided by it later.

The nurse practitioner seemed to get what I was saying and said, quite honestly, that they never discuss those risks with parents. She doesn’t know why, except that from their perspective, they put the biggest emphasis on keeping very sick babies alive and worry about other things later. I really do understand that there are certain standards of care that must be met for safety–and, let’s face it, liability–issues. And I understand that these docs and nurses see awful cases all the time and their first priority is protecting babies against being one of those awful cases. But that doesn’t remove the obligation to keep parents informed members in the process. It’s just the right thing to do. She seemed to agree, and said that it’s something she’ll talk about with the docs (as will I today when they make their rounds). Maybe they will make changes; maybe not. But I’m glad I spoke up either way.

Day 9 of the NICU, with just two more full days to go. Saturday and Sunday were the “scary” days, before we really knew what was happening. Monday and Tuesday were stressful and frustrating, as we tried to get used to this new routine and figure out exactly what Clara’s diagnosis will mean for us. Wednesday through now have been mostly just…boring. There’s not a whole lot to do in a hospital, and Clara can’t go anywhere. If we were at home, I’d be up and about a bit by now, toting Clara around as I helped my boys with their homework or did the dishes or ate. But I can’t bring food into her room, there’s no bathroom in the unit, and I can’t really sleep in here. Many of the things I have to do in order to stay alive have to occur outside of Clara’s little world. While I’m with her, all there is to do is sit in a recliner and wait for her to wake up. (Though watching her sleep has a fascination all its own. She’s awfully cute, and smiles in her sleep more than any of my other babies. Like this:

Maybe it’s the phenobarbital).

Because of all the waiting (and the fact that Clara still sleeps away most of her days) I’ve actually had quite a bit more time on my hands this week than I generally experience as a mom of many, so I’ve been reading a lot. Today I finished a book my sister brought me called This Is Not Chick Lit. It’s a collection of short stories by emerging and well-known women authors, and it is one of the best compilations of short fiction I’ve read in the last several years. The stories are alternately funny and heartbreaking, with a couple downright odd ones thrown in for good measure. Definitely good for new-mom reading, as many of the stories are short enough to finish in one marathon nursing session or while trapped under a sleeping baby in a plastic recliner in an NICU all day while machines beep all around you. Or, you know, while you’re hanging out on your couch at home. Good read either way.

I also thoroughly enjoyed this essay at Literary Mama by writer Barbara G.S. Hagerty, about how mothering her four children, rather than hindering her from writing, has enhanced and maybe even bettered her writing. An excerpt:

From time to time I fantasized what my life would be like if I did not have the responsibilities and encumbrances of a family. What if I did not have to cook meals for six on a daily basis, settle sibling disputes, sit through long games in the gymnasium, call out vocabulary on flash cards, or find someone else’s missing shoe or lost jacket at 6:30 a.m.? What if each day were a luxurious tabula rasa on which to paint words, eat a carton of yogurt for dinner, sleep whenever, read for hours at a stretch, talk to fellow artists, daydream, or entice the muse? What would it be like to be able to call one’s time wholly one’s own?

Oh, yes. I find myself doing that, too. If only I had hours and hours each week to myself, I catch myself thinking, I’d have finished that novel long ago instead of adding a chapter or two each year, when I happen to have time and am in the mood. Or, I tell myself, I’d dabble in playwriting or poetry, things right now I don’t feel I have the brain space to explore at all. But she goes on:

To my surprise, I found that I missed — ached for — the messy complications of life, the interruptions, and the human encumbrances. In a word, I missed my family. I’d underestimated the ballast that they were in my life; I’d not understood how they enhanced, rather than subtracted from my work; I’d not realized that through being part of a family, I had fundamentally changed.

Yes yes and yes. Motherhood limits and reconstructs my time–absolutely–but when I had endless amounts of time, I can’t say I was a better or more productive writer, student, worker, or human being. Kids have anchored me and given me both fodder for my work and a sense of urgency about getting it done. I can no longer delude myself with the idea that I’ll have all week to finish that story, so what’s the hurry? Now I know that a moment of quiet or a nap time must be seized and used while it lasts. And I actually have something to write about, something that goes beyond my narrow little view of the world and my own self-interest. Perhaps I’d have grown out of that self-interest either way, but in my case, having kids definitely bumped me in the right direction.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that I have a stronger need to write now than I used to. Writing is my work, and it keeps me sane amid diapers and feedings and squabbling kids. But when I was untethered, I didn’t need to write to keep sane. I could also spend my days shopping or watching daytime TV or laying around gabbing with friends…all time-sucking distractions that kept me from writing. Now I look forward to finding snippets of time to write, and when they come, I am grateful for them and jump on them. Even now, while in the midst of a hospital floor and at the tail end of a pretty traumatic experience, I’m finding ways to fit in writing. It’s not the best writing I’ve ever done, clouded by a touch of sleep deprivation and a general brain fog…but it’s something. How could I stop? This–the balance of mothering of and writing, of typing away while nursing a baby or thinking up snippets of prose or article ideas while I’m changing a diaper–is just what I do. There have been times I’ve felt guilty, like I’m not giving mothering my full attention; but then I realized it’s just the opposite. Keeping my mind working makes me a better, happier, less frustrated and likely more interesting mom. Caring for my kids makes me a more efficient, and in many ways more empathetic, writer.

If you’re a writer and a mom, has motherhood changed the way you write for better or worse?

As it turns out, Clara WAS born, on 9:40 AM on Friday the 13th.

I’ve written her birth story here…

and I wrote about her scary seizures 30 hours after birth and the subsequent trip to the NICU.

As you can imagine, it’s been a very busy week around here, and I’m not sure how often I’ll be updating over the next few weeks. You can always check in weekly with my WEtv blog, or follow me on Twitter to get the latest!

it’s my due date too, yeah

We’re gonna have a good time?

Today is the big day–my baby’s due date, according to my calculations. (My midwife had pegged my EDD as 3/10, two days ago, but to avoid getting myself prematurely worked up, I have been mentally going with the later date I came up with instead).

I’ve been 10, 3, and 10 days past my due date with the last three pregnancies. Really no reason to think this time will be any different.

And yet, this baby has been SO LOW for the last week and a half that I really wonder how much longer I can walk around like this. Actually, I barely CAN walk around like this. I made a point of not adopting “The Waddle” during my previous pregnancies, as easy as it would have been to give in to that penguin-like shuffle during the loose-ligament-ed last month or two. But this time, I’ve been waddling since 32 weeks along, apparently lacking either the physical ability or pride to fight it off a fifth time. Last night, everyone in the family was laughing at me because I wasn’t walking through the house…I was lumbering around, like a sleepy bear. I growled and resisted the urge to paw somebody in the head.

I’ve been napping every day. Sometimes twice a day. My brain is foggy and my body is heavy. And as eager as I am to go into labor, every night around 10 PM I think “Hmm, I’d love to have this baby, but maybe I’d just as soon wait until tomorrow now so I can get a full night’s sleep…”

Jon’s been commuting back and forth from Chicago as much as possible, and will be home tonight for at least four days (more, of course, if I have the baby!) Maybe once he’s here tonight I’ll feel settled enough to go into labor. Or maybe it’ll be another ten days. That’s the trick with letting babies come when they’re ready…there’s just no way of knowing when that’ll happen. As much as I know that the induction route is not for me, the end of each of my pregnancies gives me fresh understanding of why so many women make that choice. It’s HARD to wait, and it’s hard not being able to “do anything” to really get things moving. (Yes, I know all the natural methods of jump-starting labor, but I’ve done ‘em all and my babies still come late. I think they come when they’re ready, and while you can speed things up a bit, it’s often not enough to warrant the discomfort and other potential downsides of trying too much “jump-starting”.)

I’m trying to be patient, keep myself occupied (but not rushing-around busy) and just keep in mind that each day that passes brings me one day closer to when this little girl is going to show up. Easier said that done sometimes, but it’s what I’d tell a fellow expecting mom to do, so I suppose I need to practice what I preach.

And now, where was I? Oh yes. A snack, then a nap, then perhaps another snack. A moment of wonder when I feel a twinge, wondering if it could be The Real Thing. One of these times, it will be.

Tonight? Not likely, but possible. Either way, though, very, very soon.

As you may have been able to deduce from the links I post here, I write a twice-weekly pregnancy blog for WEtv.com. Because it’s a blog, I like the content to be as up-to-date and timely as possible (it would hardly do for somebody to read about an event on Twitter and not hear about it on WEtv for two or three weeks!) But that makes the whole baby announcement thing tricky, especially since the blog goes up on specific days. What if I give birth on Thursday, thereby making Thursday’s already-written post irrelevant, but don’t exactly feel like taking time away from my baby-induced haze to write?

Pre-writing a baby announcement is one answer, but that presents a few challenges, too. After all, before the baby has actually arrived and all that immediately precedes her arrival, there’s just not that much to say. So I’m thinking of taking a tip from the Mad Libs most of us had on some road trip or other as little kids (and, if you were like some people I know, wrote dirty and/or potty words in) and doing a Mad Lib Birth Announcement, to be filled in after the big event. It would go something like this:

__________ ________ started just like any other ______, but within _________ I knew something was different. Sure enough, by __:__, my contractions were ________ minutes apart, and I knew I was really in labor. After _______ _______, I decided it was time to ______________________________________________. Some time later, I _____________________, and soon afterward, I ______________________________________. At one point, I looked at my husband and said “___________________________!”

Finally, after _________________, I was ready to push. Pushing the baby out was ______________! I couldn’t believe how __________________________. The baby was born at ___:___. She had _______ hair, weighed ____ pounds, _____ ounces and was ______ inches long. She looks just like______________________! We named her _________ ____________. Baby _________ and I are doing ____________. She likes to __________ and __________. I am feeling __________________________________ and can’t wait to ______________________________. I will write more later, as soon as I _____________________________________________. Here’s a picture of ________________. Isn’t she ________________?

How do you think I’ll fill in those blanks? Hopefully there won’t be need for any cuss words…