(no subject)

[rivka]

Last night, while I was reading bedtime stories, I noticed that my continuing Braxton-Hicks contractions were starting to be both longer and more uncomfortable. So when I came downstairs, I timed them. Over the next hour, they came almost exactly eight minutes apart and lasted about a minute each time. Each contraction was not painful, but noticeable and uncomfortable.

"That looks like a pattern," I said to Michael, showing him my list of times. He agreed that it did.

"So here's what I think we should do: You clean up the living room a little in case someone winds up having to come over here. Then we should both go to bed."

We went to bed. I had some more contractions in bed. Then I went to sleep and slept all night, thus proving that I wasn't in labor. But at least the living room is clean.

Still not getting overexcited, because I did this sort of thing for weeks with Alex, but I am starting to feel like progress is happening.

So now it's time for a poll. I've been working my way through Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels in my copious free time. I've made it to #16, The Wine-Dark Sea. I'm a reasonably fast reader. So your poll question is: how close am I going to get to finishing the series?

[Poll #1343401]

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

If you call the baby Jack Stephen Wald... actually, that would be kind of nice.

[kate_nepveu]

My mother suggested "Jack" for a boy, along with one girl's name that we really didn't like and the one we ended up picking, unknowingly because I'd deliberately ignored the e-mail with the suggestion.

(My reaction is that "Jack" is a nickname not a birth-certificate name, but I appear to be in a minority on that one, as I believe it's getting quite popular. And people would probably say the same about my name.)

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

I totally agree about "Jack". I don't really understand why people give their children shortened nickname-versions of perfectly good names, but hey, I guess that's not my problem. :)

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

My mother's family believed that you gave kids three names: plain, fancy, and subdivisible. The kid got to pick which name and change through life. Mother was Patricia Lois Jane (subdivisible fancy plain) and she always used Lois and changed her name to that.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

I like that! Give a kid some *options*!!

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Even just having a name with multiple nicknames helps. My brother is Richard and he started out as Ricky*, then in his mid-teens switched to Richard, and in his 30s to Rick.

*My dad was so sure I'd be a boy that he called me Ricky until Rick was born.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

My grandfather was Jack all his life, but he was "John Walter" on his birth certificate. After he'd had a stroke, he was reportedly "not responding to his name" because they were calling him "John" and he didn't think they meant him...

I like the name Jack a lot more than I like the name John, and I like the name Kate a lot more than I like the name Catherine. However, I also like the idea of kids having name choices when they grow up.

[kate_nepveu]

We've actually done SteelyKid a disservice in that light, since her name doesn't obviously shorten or lend itself to nicknames, and her middle name is my last name. But I couldn't really see saddling the poor thing with four names, and her first name was about the only one we were more than just okay with.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

It's a nice name. Opinions vary about whether it's really a disservice to limit nickname flexibility. The family I was born into believed very strongly that a person's name should be one's *name*, and anybody who altered it was simply wrong. After the example of my grandmother (who named a daughter "Elizabeth," and had so much trouble years later with high school kids dialing wrong numbers and asking for some girl named Liz. She had no idea why there were so many of them), my parents went to some trouble to find names for me and my brother that do not lend themselves to nicknames. So I grew up and chose a completely unrelated nickname, as you see here.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Hee! What if he winds up with the worst faults of both? I'd never forgive myself.

We're all set for a name.

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

Ooh! I love that series. I was listening to it on tape when I was commuting 40 minutes each way, but stopped somewhere around book 11 when I had Henry and quit that job. Henry was almost named Aubrey. And be prepared for a boy who LOVES tall ships. :-D

I should really pick it back up again, in print, this time.

I’m choosing somewhere in the middle. Don’t want to get too excited yet, but I want to leave you with a few books for reading during late night feeding sessions. :-D

(Oh, and I wonder if I can tell Jeff I’m contracting to get him to pick up the living room. It’s a good thing you don’t use your powers for evil…)

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

I'm saying the Commodore. I think you'll finish the Wine Dark Sea, if you are a fast reader (and I guess you are). But 2nd babies go faster than first babies usually. And you WERE nesting yesterday :)

I'm so excited for you four!!!! Best wishes,
N.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

I was half-expecting this AM's post to be "I had a baby last night." For me, in my second pregnancy, I started having BH contractions 10 minutes apart and had a baby 4 hours later. In my first, the first sign of labor was water breaking. I am clearly not built for long pre-labor!

I don't know enough about boats to read O'Brien. I bounced off the nautical terminology the one time I tried.

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

I found listening to it to be easier, with all of the nautical terminology. The reader obviously knew how to say everything that I would have bungled in my brain, which helped quite a bit.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

At some point in the series O'Brian realises the casual reader will be floundering a bit, and plays up Maturin's ignorance so that the reader can sympathise or feel superior to Maturin (he gets it so wrong).

I'm kinda nautical — my Dad was a trawlerman — so I know my port from my starboard, and my fo'c'sle from my binnacle, but what I know about sails could be writ on a very small piece of canvas indeed, so whenever the discussion got too technical I just skimmed to the next scene without losing too much, generally.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, am I supposed to be trying to understand the nautical terminology?

[aendr.livejournal.com]

It helps if you read all of the Swallows and Amazons books.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Which I have! But these navy boats are completely different boats!

[aendr.livejournal.com]

I suppose it also helps having one's first visit to an ocean going vessel (an oil tanker) at minus a couple of hours old... Rivka: don't go visiting any oil tankers, apparently they're the devil to get off if you're in labour :-)
I also spent ages in a maritime museum during summer holidays; my dad worked there after he stopped going to sea.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

I skipped lots of it. But I didn't get that far in the series, either.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

I've been having quite a lot of BHes, and keep telling the paranoid side of my brain that if all else fails, I'll know the baby's coming when my water breaks, at least.

It's not staving off ALL the nervous, but some. :->

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. This is a very common concern when you're waiting to go into labor with your first. In fact, real labor will be unmistakable. I promise. The contractions will get bigger and stronger and hurt more no matter what you do, and you won't be able to think about anything else but getting through them. It's very different from either BH contractions or painful prelabor contractions.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

La la la la if they don't hurt and they go away when I lay down, I don't have to time them yet ... :->

Coping fairly well. Actually, I pity women going into this who DON'T have a history of mental illness; I already have coping skills and strategies for defusing my irrational doublethink urges, since I've been doing it for over a decade in regards to my depression.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I know enough about boats, I just thought it was boring. However, so many people whose opinion I respect like it, that it must be good. Just not for me.

[kate_nepveu]

I'm listening to _The Yellow Admiral_ right now and am not as impressed as I was with _The Commodore_, so I think you should pause on a high note. =>

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

12 more hours, Niblet! Then you can share a birthday with Baz!

I don't know about you, but toward the end, my ability to read anything with a plot dropped off the end of the scale.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I don't know about you, but toward the end, my ability to read anything with a plot dropped off the end of the scale.

That was true the first time around, but this time I still feel great, have normal energy, etc. It's really weird.

[bosssio.livejournal.com]

with liam, I was in early labor for about 14 hours, and then went to bed and slept soundly all night.

Early labor started again at 10am and didn't get SERIOUS until 5pm (defined by Andy as "swearing like a sailor through a contraction", and didn't transition to active labor until 9:30pm.

I hit transition around 11:30. Liam was born at 12:30am (would have been earlier but they made me wait until the doc arrived to push him out).

I loved early labor. I even held a meeting with my intern - THAT freaked her out...

btw, my water didn't break until 11:00pmish - at the hospital, right before transition started to build...