I'm a natural in the dark

My total weight gain so far is 9 pounds, for a net gain of negative 1. 

Yesterday was my last day of teaching all day Saturday!  I am very excited, though I will miss a couple of the students.  I spent most of the day reading, since they were taking finals.  I ran out of book and borrowed comics from Jonathan's car. Good luck--he was recently loaded up with Geoff Johns comics by Sterling.  Bad luck--I picked Virtue and Vice to start with (the one where the JLA/JSA all goes crazy and seven of them get possessed by sins) since I thought a stand-alone would be a better starting place than the middle of a long series of trades.  It was very much like going to a party with a bunch of strangers who've known each other for decades and won't even introduce themselves, let alone explain any of their references.  I am told that many of the trades have character bios at the beginning.  That would have been helpful.  Those of you who are more familiar with these things than I--is there any good way to start reading these things, or do you always have to have started years and years before for it to make any sense?

Today is packing day, since I've got to spend tomorrow morning at the DMV and then go to the midwife again to review the ultrasound.  I am getting very excited about moving. 

Currently Listening Pure By The Golden Palominos see related

All seems to be well with Slippurt.  After a very lengthy ultrasound--over an hour--during which it performed various hand tricks and flips and kicks for Jonathan's amusement, and I got more completely covered with lube than I have ever been in my life (on my calves, even!) the conclusion is that I am carrying a very healthy 16 week baby with long legs and long torso.  The femurs and spine measure at 19 weeks, which is the age calculated from last menstrual period; the midwife had been estimating 18 weeks based on likely date of conception; the overall measurements just make the baby smaller than that, though ultrasound sizing is give or take two weeks, and the inaccuracy increases the farther along a pregnancy gets.  (That's why you should never let doctors frighten you that a baby is getting too big to deliver--any doctor who claims he or she can reliably estimate size from an ultrasound is lying through his or her teeth.  All studies show that they're right less than half the time.)  I think they go with the smallest measurements as the basis for the age estimate, since Slippurt's head is a 16-week head and that's the age they picked.

This all fits with the family history of giving birth two to three weeks after the assigned due date--the baby is right on track for what I expected anyway.  If it is indeed two weeks behind the average growth rate, at least in some body parts, then my due date would probably get bumped up the same amount of time to May 27, though it's really more of a due month than a due date.  Anyway, even if it doesn't change on the charts, it's now May 27 according to me.

Well, I got a new phone and finished most of the Sparkly Day shopping on Wednesday and had a midwife check-up yesterday.  We heard the heartbeat!  Lorri says it is "a really good one"--it's very clear and strong, at least.  And fast.  Babies sound like rabbits doing sprints.  However, she says it is too small for its supposed age, so today we go into a special ultrasound center for fancy imaging that takes 45 minutes.  Either we have misestimated the age, or Slippert is too small and we have to find out why.  I've been very worried about this since our appointment yesterday morning, and was crying on the phone to Jonathan while he was driving up to Sterling's.  

I go back and forth between thinking that this is artifactual concern--they didn't used to have all this imaging technology available, and didn't get so worried about size, and it was okay almost all the time, so the new stuff adds a lot of baseless worry--and that it might be something really bad.  50-70% of SGA (small for gestational age) fetuses, though, are just "constitutionally small," since children grow at different rates both before and after they're born and attain different ultimate sizes.  And women in my family ALWAYS have their babies two to three weeks late, so it may be that we're just slow cookers.  They're always 8 pounds and astoundingly healthy when they're born.  But in the worst case scenario, it is some chromosomal abnormality. 

We also had to put off AFP testing (the main pregnancy screen for birth defects--you know, the one with the 80-85% false positive rate) because its accuracy depends on having correctly guessed what week you're in, and now that's an open question.

I am also concerned about having to drink 32 ounces of water by 9 am and not being allowed to pee until after the test.

Then I have to go the DMV, because my registration expires this month and I haven't received anything yet about renewing it.  It'll be a great day, what with the pressing worry, the burning bladder pain, and the DMV visit.  At least for tutoring this afternoon I'm just giving a final and then letting the kids play games for the rest of the day.

Yesterday was the name change attempt, part two.  Turns out the ease of this name change was drastically misrepresented to me--unless we are going to hyphenate or I am going to take his name, we have to get a court order to get simple marital name change.  And that costs $320 just for the paperwork and court date, which takes at least six weeks to get.  Highlights of the day included my shouting "Because we're not sexist!"  at the hapless social security clerk who was utterly incapable of comprehending, first, that we wanted to combine our names, and, second, why we would want to do such a thing instead of just bouncing merrily into coverture.  That was actually the second highlight--the first was his assumption that we were too dumb to spell our own desired last name correctly, leading to his attempt to change my name to "McKenzie McKenzie Tanner."

And why is it so difficult to have the only logical name for a married couple?  Well, yes, you're right--because the state of California is shamefully reactionary and behind the times.  But specifically, it's because they need a "legal record" of this being our name on paper somewhere.  By way of explanation, we were treated to the story of a man who changed his name to Rambo in a laxer regulatory era and is now so, so sad because he can't change it back.  This is the simplest legal fix in the world:  if the state added ONE FUCKING LINE to the marriage license form, on which both partners could state their preferred married name, then voila!  Legal record, right there on the marriage license, and no need for the ridiculous court date melodrama.  Virtually no extra cost for the state, just add the line to the next set of forms they print out and keep it thereafter.  No extra paperwork, but a big reduction in court backlogs and a huge gain in equity and common sense. 

To sum up, I am deeply ashamed of my state today, and deeply frustrated that we have to somehow come up with an extra $320 and time for a court date.  It makes us tempted to both take "Zeiss" as our last name, just to thumb our noses at the idiotic system that, for lack of one line on a form, denies couples the right to the only logical marital name option.  Or we could keep our names, but then Jonathan won't have the same last name as our children, which would be sad.  It seems important for a family to share a name.