Like a rolling stone baby

Ooschie has this new thing where he likes to seize up into a hard little knot and just curl up inside my ribcage. I call him my stone baby when he does this, and sometimes if it's really feeling awkward I try to gently push him back down a bit. This never works.

Stone babies, or lithopedions, fascinate me. Like most prenatal horrors, I learned of their existence shortly after I became pregnant, watching some program on TLC (why are there so many shows about what can go morbidly wrong with a fetus on TLC?). This was when I first realized I had theretofore been completely blind to every single reference to pregnancy and babies that are apparently ubiquitous to pop culture (either that, or everything really is about babies, just all of a sudden). Even this season of Dexter begins with our hero, Dexter Morgan, sleep-deprived to the point of incompetence because of the new baby in his household. Last week's season premiere included a hilarious remix of his morning routine, after new fatherhood:

Note his former hipster kicks have been replaced with a sensible Hush Puppy.

Anyways, in case you're too lazy to read the wiki I linked above, stone babies are a rare phenomena wherein a miscarried fetus is calcified inside the mother's body rather than reabsorbed or aborted by the woman's body. This calcification prevents the dead fetus from becoming infectious to the mother - like some frightening pearl, only fetus-shaped. There's one somewhat famous case of a woman in her 90s delivering a lithopedion that she had carried for 60 years.

Less frightening (in fact, probably a comparative zero on the gross-out scale), Oosch, rapidly running out of stretching room, is now relinquished to sliding his knees, elbows and feet across my abdomen with such fervor that I swear I can see his footprint.

Not my (or any real) belly

Well not quite, but it is quite alien to see tiny appendages poking through my skin (sometimes a half inch out of my body).

What else is new? My linea nigra has started to develop, but so far it's really faint and only above the belly button. So far, my new hypnobirthing class does not seem to be too crystal-woowoo-hippie, which is something of which I had been sort of wary. My pragmatism allows me to keep a sense of humor about plenty of it, but I actually don't find myself rolling my eyes about everything. I guess sometimes keeping an open mind can be helpful.

My diabetes is being so easily controlled by diet that I am still suspicious of a misdiagnosis. So far, the only glucose spikes I'e experienced have resulted from white bread: a hot dog (and bun) on the train last week, and twice from Popeye's biscuits (I was able to deduct that it was the biscuit because I ate the same thing twice - once with and once without the biscuit, and only when I had the biscuit did my blood sugar jump). So no more white bread. Cherry Garcia cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory, however, seems to have no effect (I reckon the fat and protein helped slow the absorption of sugar into my bloodstream).

The nursery is seriously almost done - the furniture is being delivered this week and we have only to organize the closet and storage space to start arranging things. The Totoro mural needs only a few details to be complete. Will post photos when that happens.

Now I need to go fix dinner because this tiny golem in my belly is getting restless.