A few pics from the day we burried B’s placenta, 2 days after her  birth.
Arp heading down the path to one of the mango and citrus fields on our property:

The placenta.  What more can I say.

It was hot as hell and humid, but I had to wear a hoodie to guard against bugs.  My face is still puffy and I look tired, but I feel pretty good for two days after giving birth.  M is the photographer.

The Birth of B
B’s Birth was so different from the birth of J (now age 4) and M (now age 6) that it surprised me in most every way.
One major differenc came before the birth.  B made us wait a bit more than I expected.  With M, I gave birth a day before my due date.  J came 2 days after her due date.  So with B, I was reasonably expecting that she might show up sometime close to the due date.  I figured it was simply my genetic makeup.  …

After a night of tossing and turning (aka trying to lift the weight of my huge pregnant belly from one side of the mattress to the other), I was hoping to get out of the house for an hour or two with the family.  There is some sort of environmental festival going on in our town this weekend, and I thought it would distract me from feeling so miserable that I’m still pregnant.   But then I headed over to the closet and proceeded to try on literally all of my …

That’s me.  I suppose that’s to be expected for the third trimester.
I feel like I need a nap pretty much every day.  Small outings exhaust me.  I think my iron’s OK, but I should probably open the Floradix that I lugged here on the plane.

Both of my children have so far been born with nuchal hands, a type of compound presentation (head + other part, such as arm, hand, or elbow). When it occurred the first time, at the birth of my son, I really didn’t think much about it. I luckily avoided tearing, which seems to be more common during a compound presentation.
When I was pregnant with my daughter, we ended up having several ultrasounds after the screening scan due to a possible heart problem. During several of the scans, …